How to Create a Short-Form Video Series
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Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner.

I'm your host, Michael Stelzer, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today, I'm really excited. I'm going to be joined by Pat Flynn, and we're going to explore how to create a short

form video series. Yes, not just short form videos, but a series of short form videos. I think you're going to find today's show absolutely fascinating. If you are new to this podcast, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcasting app. We've got some incredible content coming your way. Now let's transition over to this week's interview with Pat Flynn. Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.

Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Pat Flynn. If you don't know who Pat is, he's the host of the Smart Passive Income podcast. He's the author of multiple books, including Will It Fly and Superfans. And his forthcoming book is called Lean Learning, How to Achieve More by Learning Online.

Less. Did I get that right? Is that actually what the title is? It's spot on. Spot on, Mike. Okay. And his Pokemon channel is called Deep Pocket Monster. Pat, welcome back to the show. How are you doing today? Thank you. I'm doing great. I don't know if this is like the third or fourth time, but it's always a pleasure to be here and on your stage as well at Social Media Marketing World, which is going to happen really soon. I'm excited for it. My guess is this has got to be at least your fifth time on the show. I'm super stoked that you're coming back to the conference and to the show. Today, Pat and I are going to explore how to create

a short form video series. This is something I've never talked about before. I don't even know if Pat's talked about it before, but I'm really excited to dig in deep. So let's share a little bit about your journey into short form video. Pat, start wherever you want to start. Yeah, it's interesting because when I spoke at Social Media Marketing World previously, I was tasked with talking about long form video. Everybody was coming in talking about short form video and how viral you could be and all these other things. And I was like,

And I hadn't really dove into the world of short form. In fact, I had a little bit of a not great experience with it in the past. It wasn't really working for me. I had tried it once and it just wasn't working. So long form has always been the name of the game for me. The metaphor that I used on stage, in fact, was short form is sort of like

Kids coming to your house for Halloween, they get the candy that they want and then they leave and move on to the next house, right? That's them swiping away versus long form is people coming over to your restaurant and they sit down, they have an experience. There's multiple courses. They come back the next day with their friends. They talk about it with their partner. All that kind of stuff happens. And that's like still my meat and potatoes to go along with the metaphor. It's still what I love to do. However,

And recently, I started a short form experiment, thanks to the encouragement of a friend of mine, who had created a series. And in fact, I had noticed that a number of other creators on places like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, were doing really well with series. Like, I was following them. I was interested in what was coming next, which...

had really never occurred to me was like, okay, how can I continually follow somebody who's just creating really short videos? I was usually following larger creators on long form content, but not short form creators. But then I started to see a lot of people like there was a guy named Tim Nacky

who was betting 10 cents for every follower on a blackjack game. And so, of course, the next day he had more followers. And so he bet more. And the next day after that, he had more followers and he bet more. So I had to subscribe because I wanted to just see how far he could go. There was another guy, Brian,

I think his name is Brian DeChambeau. He's a famous golfer. He started doing a series where he started to shoot a hole in one over his house. He had a nice glass house. So you're like, are you going to break this thing? But he had a golf sort of putting green in the back and he tried to shoot a hole in one for every day that it was. He had that many chances to shoot a hole in one. So day one, he had one ball. Day two, he had two balls. Day three, he had three balls. And I was just like, there's something here with regards to kind of knowing what's going to happen. But

but not knowing the outcome every time, right? I know the format of the video I'm gonna get from Tim Nacky, from Brian, from, there's another creator who I love in Hawaii. He goes around and just shoots photographs of strangers with their dogs. And he approaches them in a really respectful way, gets out of his comfort zone to do that. It's very inspiring. And every video ends with these beautiful photographs of,

of dogs with their owners. And it's just, again, I know what to expect in every video. I just don't know who the owner is gonna be and what kind of dog it is. So I'm really interested to follow it every day. And it has sort of become a ritual.

So I started to ask myself, like, okay, can I do something similar instead of just approaching TikTok and Reels and Shorts like I did before, which was just let me come up with a random idea every day. Could I create a framework, a format so that my audience would know what was coming, but also be interested to find out what happened the next day and the next day and the next day?

So I had this long form YouTube channel that you had mentioned earlier, Deep Pocket Monsters, done really well in four years. It has 1.5 million subscribers. By the way, I didn't know anything about Pokemon before this. So I'm using storytelling tactics. I'm using challenges and other things to grow in this space. It's even turned into a live event that hosts 5,000 people each time, which is pretty amazing. But I wanted to see if I could crack the short form code.

So separately, as an experiment, without ever linking to it, I decided to do a 60-day experiment where I was going to find a framework where I could come in and every day have sort of a template to choose from to create a story out of Pokemon cards. So every day, I open a pack of cards, and in the pack of cards, I might get a really good card or a really bad card. Either way, you know what's coming, but also not sure what I'm going to get in the end.

And I reinforce this with a fun little jingle at the beginning. Many of you might know of this channel that I'm talking about. It's called Should I Open It or Should I Keep It Sealed? Or as I like to call it now, S-I-O-A-O-S-I-K-A-S. That's the acronym for it, which nobody ever remembers, but that's okay. And at the end, if I get a good card, the little voiceover person I hired goes...

wow, you actually got something good and it changes, but it's positive. And if I get something not great, meaning not of much value, at the end they go, oh, you should have kept it sealed. And I've had more voiceovers done to sort of

amplify the not great hit at the end. What I want to know, and by the way, I love this story. Tell us a little bit more about what happened at Daytona and then bring us up to the present. And then we're going to spend a lot of time kind of deconstructing a lot of the in-between stuff. Yeah, we'll break it down for sure. I found this format. What was nice about it was every day I could just

Open a pack of cards. I knew how to film it. Editing it just got faster and faster and faster each day. What once took one hour in the beginning to piece it together and find all the sound effects and all the things now just takes me like 15 minutes.

But the goal was to not get millions of views. The goal was to just see after 60 days if I could keep it up for 60 days and find something that was quick. And if it worked, it worked. Awesome. I'll keep doing it. If not, no worries. I gave it a shot at least. So that 60 day time frame is really key because around day 21 and 22, I looked at the numbers and they weren't great. I was only getting a few hundred views per video compared to my long form channel where a video will have a million views after a week.

And so I was like, I don't know if this is worth it, but you know what? It doesn't matter because my goal, the one thing I can control is showing up every day and getting to day 60. And of course, the more reps you get, the better you get at not just editing, but you start to see what's working, what's not. Around day 32 to 33, something happened. One of my videos took off. It saw a million views in less than 24 hours, kind of out of nowhere.

And it just started to push all the other videos up. The next day after that, that video had hundreds of thousands of views and I started to see myself on this new plateau. I was no longer getting just hundreds of views per video. I was getting 10%.

tens of thousands, if not sometimes hundreds of thousands. And every once in a while, another video around day 40 or 45 popped again and saw 3 million views. And I started to notice that, okay, some of these videos that are popping off and doing really well have some interesting things in them. For example, the first one, I was actually at an actual real life card shop

as opposed to just in my office. And it started at this card shop and I showed myself buying that pack with a little price tag on it. Oh, that's interesting. The other packs that I opened didn't have that. So I started to incorporate more of that and more of the videos that have done well

are the ones that follow that same path with a sticker on the pack that I purchased from somewhere. And little things like that got picked up along the way. Today, I now have back behind me here my gold play button for 1 million subscribers. This was achieved in 199 days across YouTube,

TikTok and Instagram, I now have over a billion views from this brand new channel that just started 250-ish days ago. It has led to five-figure additional revenue

It has led to brand deals and partnerships. It has led to me getting invited to the Detroit Lions Vikings game on Ford Field in January, where they invited me to open a pack of cards before the game on the field. That was a playoff game, right? Wasn't it or something like that? It was the week before a playoff game, but it was just as important as a playoff game. It determined the first ranking in that division. So like,

What the heck? This is coming out of nowhere. But I was able to find something that the world now looks forward to every single day. In fact, I get a lot of comments that say, oh, time to go to bed now. Thanks, Pat. It's just become a part of their daily routine. There's even little things in here that I'm sure we'll talk about even in more depth that have

showed up as more storytelling tactics. For example, I started to notice around day 40 when I started to get really popular that a lot of people were making fun of my thumbs. My thumbs are club thumbs. Like if you've seen Megan Fox's thumbs, they're kind of weird looking, right? It's a thing. Anyway, people started making fun of them. And so I'm not bothered by it. I've had these thumbs my whole life. They work just fine. I think they're okay. But I started to play along with that with the audience. In fact, I've

I bought some fake thumbs on Amazon and put them on one day and didn't say a word. And everybody was cracking up and noticed it. And it was like, why is he wearing fake thumbs? And he's like, oh, he's so embarrassed. I brought him back the next day and I started to call them Diglett thumbs. Diglett is a Pokemon that comes out of the ground that has the same shape of my thumb. So now they're known as Diglett thumbs. And I'll pause in just a second here. I was recently at a card event

This thing has grown so big that when I was talking to people, other people would say, oh, that's Pat. He's the should I open it or should I keep it sealed guy? And they go, really, is that you? Let me see your thumbs. I show my thumbs and my thumbs are now my ID because I've just purposefully injected that into the storytelling of this video that again, when you subscribe, you know, every day I'm opening a pack, but you don't know what pack. You don't know if it's going to be a good hit or not.

and it has created this phenomenon where there's now parody channels. Somebody opened a pack of bologna the other day using my audio and put bologna in a card sleeve at the end and said it was like, oh, this is $1,000 bologna. Obviously, that's bologna, but it was really fun and there's a lot of other parodies that have showed up too. So this thing has gone worldwide. I found the formula. I've shared it with other people who are now growing as well.

There's a lot to unpack here, but that's kind of the story. For those that don't know, Pat and I have been in a mastermind group for a long, long time. So I got a chance to kind of hear about a lot of this great stuff behind the scenes as it was unraveling. And I would say for sure, it's probably the fastest growth you've ever experienced on anything you've ever done. Would that be a fair assessment? That is absolutely correct. Yeah. So what do you want to say to creators and marketers right now that are

are not sure whether they should create a short form series, a short form video series. What do you want to say to encourage them? I would say think about some of the things that you follow yourself and why we follow things. We don't subscribe to things because we liked that thing. Oftentimes that's a big mistake that creators make. We create a video or a podcast or something. And at the end we say, hey, if you like this, subscribe. We treat it like a like or follow or heart because

Right. But those things already exist. Now we're asking them to do another thing if they like the video. Rather, people subscribe because they know what they're going to get next. They know they want more of that. Right. And so that's what you need to think about. And so if you're creating just kind of random videos here and there, or especially for us creators who are in more educational space, like me and the Pat Flynn channel with entrepreneurship and a lot of people who are listening to this channel, you got to realize that there has to be some thread that

stitches these videos every day together. The other thing is like, you might be wondering, well, do I have to go daily? No, but by going daily, you create a lot of sort of what I like to call voluntary force functions. I talk about this in my new book. You're creating a constraint or parameters by which you are able to work in and not able to work in. Meaning,

You are forced to edit faster because you have to come out with a video that day, or you learn how to batch process videos so that you can chunk it and then not have to worry about it the rest of the week. You make specific decisions because you don't have time. You take the things that would normally crowd or overwhelm people out in order just to get to that schedule because with reps comes reward. With reps comes reward.

And again, making your success not how's the video doing today, but rather did I actually create a video today and did I learn anything from it? When you do this, it becomes so fun. I look forward to it every single day and I do batch process a few of them so I can get through three or four a day and I can wait a little bit if I'm not feeling it. But it is something that I look forward to every day creating. I like the

the sort of storytelling and the relationship I have with my audience now. And what I thought wasn't true, that you couldn't build a relationship with somebody just by creating short form video. It's absolutely true, but you have to show up consistently in order to make that happen. Yeah. And if I add a couple thoughts on what I think the value of this would be to anyone who's listening right now, it's really hard today to show up in front of an audience. And there are people that want to,

What you might have to offer and the idea that you can consistently deliver a short little story, a short little dopamine hit, a short little fill in the blank every single business day or every single day day can be really, really valuable for your business because.

Pat has options now, right? Pat has lots of options. Pat has a conference, right? And obviously he's going to do this while he's at his conference. Obviously the channel can be sponsored by his conference. There's just so many things that you can do with this because in a very short period of time, Pat has,

I would imagine there are people that watch this short channel that don't even realize you have another channel. Is that correct? They don't. In fact, after the 60 days, I decided to be more open with the fact that I'm actually the owner of this channel. Many people knew because they recognize my voice and my thumbs. But

But they didn't see your face. That's important. They did not. They didn't see my face. Right. It's a faceless channel. Everybody's asking for a face reveal. And I'm like, I revealed my face on this channel. So after 60 days, I let everybody know on the shorts channel. I say, hey, I also have this other channel, Deep Pocket Monster, if you want more longer form videos and vice versa. Some people were like, I didn't even know that was you.

That's crazy. Or I didn't even know you had a long form channel. I follow you every day and I look forward to it. And it's interesting. A couple of days I've been late to publish, like I'll publish at 9 p.m. instead of 8.30 p.m. Pacific, which is

I have it on the dot 830 p.m. Pacific. It's gotten so routine for people that when I go at nine, people are like, oh my gosh, I thought something happened to you. I thought you got in an accident or something. I'm like, no, I just had a late dinner tonight. I didn't get to the edit in time. It's that routine. And again, because they know exactly what to expect. I've also added sort of a second part to this too. So in sort of phase one was I open these packs and I get a good hit or not. I've

Now added a sub series to the channel that kind of keeps that story going. So that good card that I pull, I'll get it graded. What you can do with your collectibles is you can submit them to companies that then look at the card, see how the condition is because they're not always perfect out of the pack. And then they put a grade on it from one to 10. So I have a second series where I take these same cards that I opened and

I get them graded. I wait a couple of weeks and I share the story of me opening the pack and then getting the grade and then revealing it in 60 seconds. Those videos see even more views now. Is it a behind the scenes almost or no? No. It's just a continuation of the story. Okay. I opened the package that it came in. It's now in a nice little plastic container with a nice little grade on it. And I covered the grade with my thumb. So that's the thumb again. And then I reveal it.

And then it's like, hey, you got a good grade or too bad, maybe next time. That's it. I'm in works now with a company. I can't reveal the name of this company, but we're now working with this company for a third installation, if you will, of the card journey. Card being pulled, card being created or graded, and then now card being sold. And I'm working with a potential partner to help with the selling of these cards that want to spend a lot of money for me to recommend this company. So again, these opportunities are coming and it's endless content, but

from just, I'm opening packs and it's insane. Again, coming up with that framework is the key though, coming up with that series. And the more complicated you make it, the less it's going to work. Let me say that again. It has to be simple.

because it's easy. Oh, the should I open it guy? He opens a pack and sometimes it's good or not. You know, Brian, he's shooting a golf ball over his house to try to hit a hole in one and whatever day it is is how many hits he gets. Oh, Tim Nacky or Justin, he comes up to strangers and takes these incredible photos of these dogs. Super easy to understand, super easy to share. I've seen people try to create series and frameworks where it's like there's too many rules. There's too many, like,

If it takes more than a second for me to get it, it's not going to work. It has to be super simple. And then you can...

add to that later. But if it's too complicated to begin with, it's never going to work. Okay. So let's talk about beginning steps. Here's what we know so far, based on the story that you've told us is that you recommend having a 60 day period of time in which you are experimenting. And what kind of goals did you have when you set that up? And do you have any recommendations on setting goals and kind of the mindset we have to have in the first 60 days when we get started? The goal is to get to day 60.

And to try to get a little bit better with each video. That's it. I know I could have created like, and it's traditional for us, especially those who grew up in information age and with, you know, entrepreneurship education, especially as you need to set goals for yourself and have this many views on videos and try to by day 30, see where you're at there. And like, that's fine. But I like to take the lean learning approach, which is just let me do the thing that I can control.

And get through the experiment and then assess whether or not it's worth continuing or not. And more often than not, you're going to see some incredible results happen when you just focus on showing up and being consistent rather than getting in your own head about the numbers and it not working too well and questioning yourself and trying these other tactics and reading other things to try to get in there and make it better. It just starts to cloud everything. Rather, the learning comes from the doing.

The learning comes from the doing. And because it's 60 days, it's doable because it's something you can control. You can do it.

And that's why it works. It's not a forever thing. Although at this point, you know, with the success of this channel, this is going to continue to work because it's been working really well. But the beauty of this is if it doesn't work, you can go, okay, or hey, boss, we did this for 60 days and it just doesn't seem to work for us. So we're going to scrap that idea. No longer needs to be a part of our discussions and we can move on to something else. That is also just as valuable rather than like, oh, I don't know if this is going to work or not. Okay, let's give it a real shot and then move on from it if it doesn't.

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Get the knowledge that's transforming marketing careers right now at socialmediamarketingworld.info and make 2025 your breakthrough year. Let's talk about the concept. Like you said, the concept needs to be simple. Help people understand conceptually how in the world they can come up with a repeatable series because I think people might need

need some wisdom on this. Yeah, you just need to lay it all out on the table. Good ideas, bad ideas, anything that comes to mind. I also love to use, honestly, I love to use AI. I know you're a big fan of AI and using it as a tool. I use Claude and I also use ChatGPT as a creative tool

brainstorming partner. That's what it's been most useful for me for. So I'll sometimes feed prompts into ChatGPT and treat it as if it's somebody sitting across from me and we're just trying to brainstorm a good idea. And that's where this starts. You know, it might start with, I had an idea once. Gosh, do I share it? I think I'll share it because I don't think I'll have the time to do it anyway. But this is like how ridiculous these ideas can be, but how they could potentially work. So you could have this idea for a short series was Heads or Tails.

I flip a new random thing every day and you have to play heads or tails and I'll keep track of how many heads and how many tails we get. First couple of days might be coins. I might flip, you know, a plate. I might flip a pillow. Later on, I might, as the channel grows, flip a car, who knows? But every day it's going to be heads or tails and you're going to know I'm going to flip something and you're just going to play this little game that'll give you a little bit of a luck draw every single day. It could be as simple as that. And then you experiment with it and it may or may not work. I don't know.

There was a girl in the Pokemon space now who's doing something where she listed all 1025 Pokemon on this wheel that when these Pokemon get selected, she removes it. And you have to try to see if your favorite Pokemon is the last remaining Pokemon. So, of course, any Pokemon fans going to step up and consider their Pokemon, their favorite Pokemon and go, OK, well, I'm going to be here for the ride and see if my Pokemon is the lucky one at the end. And she doesn't.

removes like 10 per day. So it's going to be over 100 days of her doing this, which is going to build this audience and we're going to get closer and closer to the end. And that's a cool idea. She's experimenting with it. She's on day two, but she's already gained more followers than she ever has before because of this. These ideas don't have to be life changing, crazy ideas. And I would relate it to something. And this is important because yeah, like the heads or tails thing may work.

But how does that relate to your brand and your business? So for the people listening to this, especially, you're not just trying to create an audience. You want to create...

a specific kind of audience who understands what you're about. So having a brainstorming session has been the most helpful thing for me. Having a moment in time in the calendar to sit down and come up with ideas, whether it's you and your team, you and ChatGPT or Claude to brainstorm and come up with a format that's easily understood. And if you want to know if it's easily understood, go down the office and say, hey, what do you think of a video series where I do X, Y, and Z?

When you say that, what do you mean? Okay, that doesn't work yet. They're already questioning it, right?

That's how you can test it and validate it and micro test it ahead of time before you actually put a little bit of effort into it and give it a real shot. Okay, question for you on AI. A lot of our audience is utilizing ChatGPT and has the advanced voice mode where you can talk to it. I'm sure you've experimented with this before. Do you find it useful to start with AI and say you are a video critic, short form video critic?

who specializes in helping people create video series that people want to watch every day. And then you could go on to say like, I am in the marketing niche and my ideal customers are businesses who have marketers that work for them

that need more leads, sales and exposure. Help me figure out cool little ideas that could be super, I don't know, that people want to watch every day. And then do you have it start feeding you ideas? I love that. And then, I mean, is that kind of where we're going? Because I

I have no idea how I would do something like this. You know, I just don't, I have no fricking clue. And I'm sure a lot of people aren't nearly as creative as you are. Yeah. That's a great place to start for sure. Just like that. And you might come up and see ideas from chat to BT, like, okay, every day reveal a product and hide the price. And then you guess what that price is and have your audience guess. And at the end you reveal what the price is and see if you're high or low and you keep this running tab and

of whether you're too high or too low over time. You're like, oh, I've overshot by $1,000 this past week, or I'm really low, and it's just, again...

allowing you to teach these educational related things while playing a fun little kind of game, if you will, while you go. And you call it like high-low sales pitch. I don't know. I'm just making up a name. Hey, everybody. Day two of high-low sales pitch. Here's the product. What do you think the price is? I think it's this. I was under yesterday, but I'm not going to let that affect what my price is today. So I'm going to guess this product, which does X, Y, and Z. I think this is going to be around the $150 mark. So I'm going to say $150. Okay.

$400, this is ridiculous. This is way overpriced. We got some problems. That could be a way that you could kind of come up with a game. Again, a strategy for 60 days. And now through that, you're sharing your level of hopefully authority. Even if you get these prices wrong, you're sharing your level of authority for the way that you think about how things could be priced, right? Might need some fine tuning, but that's how we can start to create a little framework around something like that for the audience that you mentioned.

Yeah, I think the key to doing this right is really to dial in this concept. I mean, without the concept, everything else we're going to talk about really, it feels to me kind of doesn't matter unless you're telling me you didn't really have the concept dialed in when you started your channel. Did you or did you not? Did you know you were going to? I did not. In fact, you

It was the sixth video that the should I open it kind of framework came to be. Because I was just doing a few things that other people were doing. I was going to Best Buy. I was finding packs and opening them. And I was like, hey, I got something good. Cool. The next day I went to Barnes & Noble and found some Pokemon cards behind the counter. Opened them up and just was like, wow, these are really neat. So you knew you were going to open cards. You just didn't know yet exactly what you're...

unique thing was gonna be. That came later. That's important. - Yes, indeed. And so I got started. Again, I think it's important to have an idea of what you wanna do. Go do those things. Understand that you're still in the research process as you are publishing. Again, this is lean learning happening as you go. You learn and figure things out and pivot versus I could have spent, just like creating a business plan, I could have dialed it in beforehand, which would have probably overcomplicated things

And I was able to already by day six, having filmed a few videos, having edited a little bit, already understand how that part works. So then when I combine the new framework, which again, I didn't know when I came up with that framework that it was going to hit really well, but I liked it. And I said, okay, I'm going to do this and do it for a period of time just to see if it sticks. And it has stuck. We're even creating merch very soon for this specific brand, which is kind of insane, but

Yeah, it's a great time. Okay, so here's what we know so far. First of all, we know that a series is really valuable and everybody should give it a shot for at least 60 days. You don't have to have this concept completely dialed in. Pat just knew he was going to be opening Pokemon cards. It sounds like he didn't really know that it was going to be this open, should I keep it open or sealed concept until a little bit later down the journey, which I think is really valuable. That means we don't have to have it completely figured out. We just have to have a conceptual, I'm going to open cards concept

there's going to be some sort of hope that there's something valuable inside. That was the premise in the beginning, presumably, right? Yeah. You could also kind of modify this a little bit. If you already have an existing brand, for example, you don't have to create an always ongoing series. You can create a limited time series. Okay. What if for the next 14 days, we're going to do, we're going to highlight a billionaire for the next 14 days and we're going to uncover how they became a billionaire. And today we're featuring so-and-so and you just kind of

work on that. Right. I don't know. Born with it or built it. That's what we should call it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Born with wealth, wealth or built the wealth. You know, that would be a fascinating little history thing. Born with it. That's good. I like that. See, I like even, even having another person in the room, you can go like, Oh, that's great. What if we did this? What if we did this? Okay, let's try it. Yeah. So, okay. Let's talk about the actual things you learned along the road on the actual creation of the, of the content. Cause there's so much lessons here. There's so much that you,

have learned. And I want to really start with the fact that you chose to do a faceless video, because I think this is so liberating for so many people. You do not have to show your face, right? Like talk to us a little bit about how you just use the fact that you're a podcaster, even though you were comfortable behind the camera, because you've already got another successful YouTube channel. You're already set up to do great quality audio, right? So what was the idea there? Here's the thing. I learned from my other channel that when I'm opening cards, because we've

opened long form we've opened cards on long form videos and I look at the analytics of those and I look at the retention graphs and the parts of the retention graph that dip

where people are leaving or skipping over are when I show up on camera. They don't care about me when the premise of the video is look at this mystery box I bought from eBay. They want to see the things inside the mystery box, not me when I'm trying to explain everything. So it's very clear to me that this would work without my face. It's not required. Plus, the second thing was like, I want it to be separate from me and I don't want...

the reason for it to succeed be just because it's me. It's because of the content and the structure and the way that I had predicted the algorithm would react to this eventually, which it did. That being said...

There is very clear personality in this faceless channel. There are people who've tried to rip off this series with their own same format, not even using the same music. Many people have created their own different kinds of music like rip it or ship it or, you know, whatever. And everybody in the comments goes, this is just a deep pocket monster or short pocket monster rip off because that format had become something that I had really brought to the table and

And so the personality in there with my dad jokes show up as I'm talking. Sometimes a Pokemon with a funny name will come up and I'll make a dad joke on the fly about it. Sometimes a weird looking Pokemon will show up and I'll zoom in on its eyes and I'll go, well, that's scary. Whatever it might be, I kind of mix it up a little bit. So my personality shows up. And of course, my thumbs have become sort of a quote unquote character character.

in this and whenever we see a Diglett card pulled in any of these packs, it zooms in on my thumbs. It just reinforces that. Anytime a Pikachu shows up, we have this little meme sound that says like, "It's Pikachu!" Which was from an old vine that I had just brought back and every time I see a Pikachu, if I forget, people get mad. It's just become a part of the character of the channel now, which wasn't all there at the start. It unfolded as I went.

But even though it's faceless, which I think, like you said, is very encouraging. You don't need to show up on camera. You still need to show up personally. It's your voice that matters, right? It's the voice. It's the visuals, the branding. At the beginning of every video, I flip the pack over so it creates some sort of movement. As far as this is a big tip, you want to have movement at the beginning of these videos. If I started the videos with me just holding the pack straight away and talking for five seconds about what this pack is and then opening it,

People would leave versus I share the back of it. I flip it really quick with some quick little intro like this pack was from 1999. That's old. And then it's the should I open it or should I keep it sealed? The jingle, which is just a couple seconds. And then I go into it and I'm already moving, opening the pack. The answer 99% of the time is I open it because who wants to have me keep it sealed? Although I do keep people on their toes every once in a while. Every few episodes, like every 30 or 40 episodes, I'll actually not open it.

And people are very surprised because they're so used to seeing me open it. So anyway, that's again, I'm just, I feel like I'm taking people on a daily journey

through the packs that I'm opening. And sometimes we have very lucky streaks. So I'll call that out. We're on a luck streak. The last three videos we've hit, which has been insane. Let's see if we can keep that luxury going, which of course holds people till the end. Or if I'm on a bad luck streak, I amplify that. Oh my gosh, the last seven days in a row, we've lost over $100 in our packs that we've opened because we've gotten nothing. And I hope this isn't forever. So that just, again, makes it more joyous when I do pull something.

But again, to go back, there has to be some personality there. And like you said, it's the voice. And my big secret is in the voiceover. The voiceover is the secret. I actually feel myself opening my packs pretty much in silence unless I have a natural visceral reaction on a card that I might pull that's very expensive or something. It's usually just in silence. Plus, you hear that sort of ASMR of the crumple of the foil around the pack of cards. But

I take that, which just takes a minute and 30 seconds generally to capture on my iPhone. So I'm not using any fancy equipment. I'm just using my iPhone. I then airdrop that over to my computer and I'm using a tool called ScreenFlow. It's just very old. I love ScreenFlow. I use ScreenFlow. Yeah. Yeah. ScreenFlow is great. It's like so minimal because I don't need all the fancy things, but use whatever tool that would work for you. My friend Alex, who does a daily uses CapCut and that works well for him too in his process. Whatever works for you, you're getting the same end result.

And then I have a template that has the same song. I have my folder of sound effects that I can drag and drop into. I've just over time found quicker ways to do these things. I know the shortcuts now in ScreenFlow so I can just get it all done real quickly. Give us a kind of script. Like after you film the whole thing, what are you saying? Like in the 60 seconds or so? Yeah. So I often don't record it all in one go either.

So I've tried to do that. Sometimes I get lucky and I can just do one voiceover take. So my process is I bring that raw file into ScreenFlow. It's a minute and a half generally. I chop it up. I speed up the parts where I'm opening the packs because you don't need to see me slowly open the packs. And then I kind of use time lapses in between there. It's really easy to do in ScreenFlow. And I get it. So it's 59 and a half seconds.

Like I get it to 59 and a half seconds. Why 59 and a half seconds? Because I'm using shorts. And yes, you can have shorts that are longer than 60 seconds, but for certain music that you use and because it just goes into the shorts feed much faster, I keep it at 59 and a half seconds and I can monetize it through the channel. So 59 and a half seconds, it's all done the way it is. And then I'll go and record my voice.

over as a separate track, those parts. So in the beginning, usually it's like. - So wait, are you playing the video back while you're, and then you're reacting to what you see? - Yes, I hit play and I'm recording and I'm talking while I'm watching the video and then I'll stop, take that recording, just put it where it needs to go and then I'll do the next part. - Do you have a general script? I mean, how many do you normally open the videos? - I usually open with, sometimes it's like, this is episode 45, that's it. Or it might be this pack is really old.

That's it. Okay. Or I can't believe I am doing this. That's it. Okay. And then when I, you'll see me on the video, flip the pack again, you can just go to deep pocket monster on any of these channels and see it or short pocket monster on YouTube. But usually I'll start with this pack is called tag team. It's from the year 2016. It came out in this era and the chase card that we want to see the number one card is this card right here. It pops up on the screen.

have a little pop sound effect when that shows up. All the meanwhile, I'm still visually opening the pack. I'm not sitting there holding the pack and explaining. Things are happening in the video while I'm explaining. That's the other big mistake. This is, again, the beauty of voiceover is you can have movement happen the whole time and explain what's happening later as it's happening versus what most people do is, okay, I'm gonna hit record. Hey guys, this is my pack. This is from the year 2000. I'm gonna open it now and we'll see what happens. You can have all those things happen simultaneously.

And then I slowly reveal each card if it's one pack. If it's more, it's more sped up. But usually what happens is I slowly zoom in. You don't even notice until the end that I've slowly zoomed in to the very last card and the music changes at the very end and starts to get tense. It starts to amplify the anxiety and then whoosh.

I reveal the last card and it's either, wow, you actually got something good or, oh no, you should have kept it sealed. And the song comes in. And there's usually a little stinger at the end. I had my voiceover person kind of like offer a few spoken words to support what had just happened. So if I get a bad card, they go, well, bad luck today, Pat.

Or, ah, you should have kept it sealed. Or like, what are you doing, you idiot? Or something like that. Just it changes almost in every video, which is a little tactic I use because the people who have seen my videos wait to the very end because they know it's going to be some random voice that either knocks me down or lifts me up higher if I get a good card. So there's a little there's like three things keeping people to the end. Number one, it's the mystery of what's inside this pack.

Number two, it is which card in this pack am I gonna get and is it like, am I gonna lose out on this? Or like, should I have kept it sealed or was it a good idea to open it? And three, that little stinger at the end with the voiceover, which I like to mix up. So I've put in all these elements in these videos where I'm getting in general 45 to 50% watch rate after millions of views. That's huge.

Some of those videos have seen upwards of 18 to 20 million views. As far as revenue, I've seen thousands of dollars from some of those individual videos. And...

What I do also, this is a little trick I do for that 59 and a half second video. I'll create another export of it at 60.1 seconds. So I just stretch the end just a little bit or make one of the time lapses in the middle just a little bit slower that is unnoticeable just to get it over 60 seconds. Why? That's the video that I publish on TikTok because TikTok monetizes your videos if you qualify for monetization.

for videos more than 60 seconds. So I'm using the same videos. I'm just exporting two versions, one for YouTube that's under 60, one for TikTok that's over 60. And I use the same one that's over 60 on Instagram and on X now too. Instagram, I don't make any money off of because I wasn't a part of the legacy monetization program and I'm not really trying to get subscriptions or any gifts there. TikTok, I am generating revenue. And last month, to give you an idea, it was $8,000 in revenue from my shorts on TikTok

And from YouTube, just the YouTube shorts alone, it was $16,000. So this is generated with 15 minutes a day now, an additional $24,000 a month coming in. But more than that, the exposure, hundreds of millions of views and the brand opportunities, like you said, selling into my event later or any merch that I might have coming out soon. This has created so many opportunities.

because of the more awareness of it. The ad revenue is just kind of a bonus, in my opinion. Pat Flynn will be presenting at Social Media Marketing World on something completely different on, I believe, personal branding and content marketing, if I'm not mistaken. And Pat, you've got your brand new book coming out. Tell us when that's going to be out and a little bit more about that book.

Yeah, thank you. So this book has been in the works for three years. It is something that I wrote for my kids who are entering their teen and young adult life and for anybody out there who feels very overwhelmed with a lot of the information and just everything that's out there. I mean, there's so much info now. We're not just at...

like a buffet filling our plates full with information. We are now being fed, force-fed information without us even knowing it through all these algorithms and all these things. So how do we navigate this and achieve our goals through so many resources? Because back in the day, remember, information was valuable because it was scarce. This was why if you had an Encyclopedia Britannica, you were like seen as a little bit higher class because you had information that others didn't.

Now, passing through the blogosphere, the podcast sphere, and now where we are now with AI, all the information we ever need to achieve whatever we want is out there. It's there and freely available in our pockets. So which information should we follow? How do we navigate this? How do we actually find success? And

The reason I also wrote this is because a lot of people ask me and they see the success of the new YouTube channel now, less than a year, a brand new shorts channel that has blown up, the SwitchPod invention. I had never invented anything before. I've always used the same kind of approach with new things that I attempt. And I put that approach inside of this book, Lean Learning, How to Achieve More by Learning Less, coming out June 3rd. It's my very first traditional published book, which is a huge deal. My previous three were self-published, so...

I'm excited to see what's going to happen. It's been a journey, I will say, and an interesting learning experience. And again, same thing, learning as I go. But I feel like this is meant for the world,

In the way that the world is now and where things are going, we need to learn how to navigate all this, especially with just everything being available to us now. So I appreciate the opportunity to share that. I will be sharing a bit about that on stage and in relation to some of the channel stuff that we just talked about today. But I really hope people are encouraged to at least give it a shot. The beauty of shorts and TikTok and reels is like there's real no penalty other than just

The video just doesn't do well, but you learn and you keep going. I feel like there's a lot more at stake with longer videos because you're putting more time and resources into it. I feel like, like Mike said, if you can nail the concept and framework, that's 90% of it for you. So spend a lot of time there, brainstorm with people, with AI to come up with something and then give it a shot and then go from there.

Outside of meeting you in person in San Diego at Social Media Marketing World, what's the preferred social platform if people want to connect with you or if they want to work with you? Is there anywhere in particular you want to send them? Yeah. So for entrepreneurial business related things, I mean, a lot of my work crosses over even on Deep Pocket Monster, which is Pokemon. I do Pokemon.

talk about business a lot and a lot of lessons I've learned. And I pass that forward to a lot of the adults and kids who watch that channel. Anyway, at Pat Flynn on Instagram and YouTube is my entrepreneurial stuff. You can also find me on X at Pat Flynn. However, Deep Pocket Monster and Short Pocket Monster. We've talked about those things today. If you're curious to see those things in action. And again, I just hope to see all of you at

social media marketing world. It's an event that I've attended every single year since the beginning. I'm a huge fan of you, Mike, and everything that you do. And I'm just super grateful to have another opportunity to be on stage and teach our people while we're there. Pat Flynn, thank you, my friend, for coming on the show and sharing your insights with us today. I can't believe we're done already. Like that went by so fast. Thank you, Mike. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 660.

Hey, if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a regular listener, I would love a review. And would you let your friends know about the show? You can tag me on Facebook, LinkedIn and or X and do check out our other shows, the AI Explored podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving.

The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Social Media Marketing World 2025 just wrapped and the insights were incredible. Did you miss it? You can still get all the recordings on AI strategies, organic social tactics, and a whole bunch more with your virtual ticket, but only until Friday, April the 18th. Visit socialmediamarketingworld.info and make 2025 your breakthrough year.