SPI 923: Short-Form Video Case Studies (From Challenge Participants!)

SPI 923: Short-Form Video Case Studies (From Challenge Participants!)

Pat Flynn: Recently, we hosted a challenge, and this was a challenge to create short form videos for 30 days straight. And thousands of people participated. And I wanted to pull out a few people who participated in this challenge from our community who had seen some stellar results. And when I talk about results, I’m not necessarily always going to be talking about just a bunch of views or a bunch of subscribers.

In fact, the first person I wanted to bring on, Karen who has a channel called Gluten Free From The 513. She reviews and talks about gluten free products. She used this challenge as a way to create a format. And some really incredible things happened as a result of this stuff that actually even surprised me.

But before we get to that, I do want to let you know that starting on April 7th, that’s Tuesday, April 7th, you can participate in our next challenge. And this one should be even easier for you. Why? Because it’s not 30 days. It is a 14 day challenge. Same thing, but we’re going to create for 14 days together.

You and the rest of the community, because again, we want to kickstart you. We want to help you start to build momentum, or keep that momentum going, or restart it if you started before and you didn’t get it to the end. We want to give you another period of time for you to focus, and, and this could be something that could be done that is an extension of what you’ve already started, or it could be something completely new, an experiment.

Two weeks. You got this. And all you need to do to participate in this challenge, like you had to do before, is go to this following website. SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days. Again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days. You sign up there. I’ll give you some things to think about ahead of time leading into Tuesday, April 7th, and we’re going to go daily again, but this time for just 14 days.

You can do this. Just two weeks. All right. SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days. Okay, now let’s get to the little interview with Karen from Gluten Free From The 513. This will be about 10 minutes or so of just understanding how the first challenge went for her and what unlocked as a result. Here’s Karen.

What was it about the challenge that really helped?

Karen Bemmes: What it helped us do is actually really focus in on what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. And we had done some shorts before, but we hadn’t really done them with the purpose.

Pat Flynn: Sure, yeah.

Karen Bemmes: The way you had set it up, where it’s like, let’s be very focused on what we’re doing.

We were just kind of throwing it out there, seeing what hit and what didn’t. And so that really helped us to decide what it was that we thought we really wanted to do.

Pat Flynn: That’s great. Well, tell me about the channel and what you decided to do.

Karen Bemmes: Well, what we had just pivoted to was gluten-free cooking because in the last channel we were just doing like some holiday tips kind of thing.

And what seemed to really hit were the recipes that we were doing, and specifically the gluten free recipes, and I’ve been eating gluten free for a long time, I know what the challenges are, I know how hard that can be, and so we thought, well, what if we go ahead and just kind of dive into that, and originally we were going to be very specific location as well, but just the tweak of one word, and, and something you said, it was, I forget what it was, but I was like, Oh, I need a different name for the channel.

And we literally went from Gluten Free In The 513, and the 513 is the area code where I live. So we went from Gluten Free In The 513 to Gluten Free From The 513, which opened it up to, if we travel, it’s still within what we’re doing, where we can say, you know, we’re in this town this week, or, you know, even little things like that, when you’re watching some of the videos that, that were associated with the challenge. It would just be that little idea where it was like, Oh, that’s what I need to be doing.

Pat Flynn: Love it.

Karen Bemmes: You know, and, and that’s like my favorite part is like, you change that little thing and it just makes all the difference.

Pat Flynn: That’s amazing. And it, I could kind of see where the new videos started.

Like they all kind of have the same feel to it. Tell me about the structure of your videos and how that made it easier for you to create.

Karen Bemmes: Oh, that was amazing because again, we had not really had a structure to what we were doing before. And what we decided to do was we were tasting gluten-free snacks because there’s a ton of them out there, and many of them are terrible.

Yeah. And I did have a few that were terrible that I had never tried before. But having that structure of just do it the same way, and that’s what you had said, just do it with the same structure every day. And if it starts to go well, keep with that. If not, make some little tweaks. And that’s really what we did.

And it, it was those little things that once we got confident in that, it actually gave us the confidence to do other things. Like we weren’t confident with long form. I had never gone live and we were like, okay, well we did this and we were seeing some growth. What if we tried this? What if we tried this?

Pat Flynn: So, wow, no way.

Karen Bemmes: That’s what it really, and I did my first live cooking video and I got more views than I had ever gotten on any video I’d ever done, so that was really exciting.

Pat Flynn: Wow. Oh wait, that was yesterday.

Karen Bemmes: Well, I, yesterday was my third one.

Pat Flynn: Okay. Because I, I saw yesterday you already have about 3000 views on an Easter brunch that you were making. So the one from last week, Join Me to Make a Delicious Easy Easter Breakfast.

Karen Bemmes: Easter Breakfast. And the one before that was St. Patrick’s Day Meal.

Pat Flynn: Oh, yeah, yeah. You’re in the thousands of views on those.

Karen Bemmes: It was probably good. I couldn’t see that there were that many people watching, but it was exciting that like people from Europe were watching and I don’t normally have an audience that was that big.

And so and we were talking back and forth and, you know, I was saying, well, what do you do and what, you know, what’s. Somebody was on yesterday from France, and we were talking about what do they have for, you know, what’s your main meal on Easter, and what do you serve, and some of it’s the same, and some of it’s different.

Pat Flynn: And that’s really cool.

Wow, so the Short Form Video Challenge unlocked confidence in you, kind of more than anything.

Karen Bemmes: A lot.

Pat Flynn: And now you’re making live streams, you’re getting thousands of views, you got people around the world now. Are you having fun with this?

Karen Bemmes: I’m having the best time. Other than having to clean up my kitchen after I cook, it’s been great.

You know, it’s really fun. And again, it’s the little things you say about asking people to subscribe, because I was always really hesitant about that. And I only do it a couple times in the hour live that I do it, but we’re getting more subscribers that way, you know, and People aren’t offended that I’ve asked them to subscribe to my channel.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, well, you’re cooking good stuff and they want to see more of it, which is amazing. So I’m guessing that you’re going to be doing more live streams. I hope you do. It seems to be a medium that you love, which is, which is great. You’re still continuing with the shorts. It looks like as well. I see some of these videos, the shorts that you’ve done during this challenge have dozens of views, and then every once in a while you’ll get ones with thousands of views.

How do you mentally keep going when you create a video and maybe it just doesn’t, like a short form video, it just doesn’t do well. What keeps you going the next day? And the next day?

Karen Bemmes: Honestly, you have hammered No matter what we’ve done, whether it’s YouTube or podcasting or anything, that you’re just going to have some that don’t go anywhere.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I say that all the time.

Karen Bemmes: You do. And, and I’ve gone back, you know, I’ve seen when you’ve shared like the first videos that you did and the first podcast that you did. And I think there’s this tendency, especially when you’re new, where you’re like, well, I’m not Pat Flynn. Well, to see you go back and show your beginning stuff and go, well, he wasn’t Pat Flynn then either, so we all have to start somewhere, you know, and I think that’s the big thing is the more you do it, the more comfortable you get and the more you find your groove.

Like, I don’t want to be Pat Flynn. I want to be me at that level. So I think that’s the thing. And, you know, and Not every meal I make is good. Not every television show I watch is great and not every episode of a show that I love is great, you know, so even they mess up. So if I mess up and I have one that only gets 17 views, so be it.

Pat Flynn: Karen, this is very inspirational. Tell everybody where they can go to catch your live streams, your videos, where should they check you out?

Karen Bemmes: I go live every Monday at noon Eastern time, so that would be like 9 a. m. Pacific, and the name of my channel is Gluten Free from the 513. And we have a blast. I mean, I make a lot of mistakes, which I think that’s another thing that I’ve learned from you, is it’s okay to make mistakes.

You don’t have to be perfect. And I actually had my first kind of negative comment about that. She’s like, I watch an artist and they practice 20 times before they do the painting on their channel. And I was like, My grocery budget will not allow me to practice something 20 times.

Pat Flynn: That’s a great answer.

Karen Bemmes: And it was funny because everything else I had made that day, I’ve made dozens of times, and it all turned out, and I tried an experiment, and I told them I was experimenting, and it turned out terribly. And I was like, oh well, you know, whatever you cook, it doesn’t always work. And when she said that, I also have the confidence from doing this challenge to be able to say to that person.

You know, literally, my grocery budget doesn’t allow for that, you know, and everybody makes mistakes in the kitchen. And that’s one thing to have the language, but what you gave me, and I might get a little emotional with this, because that used to be the thing that scared me the most, is what’s going to happen if somebody says something mean, and I’m a very emotional person, and I’m okay with it now because I know who I am through this challenge.

I know who I want to serve. I know what I want to give, and if somebody doesn’t understand that, then I’m okay with that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, they’re just misinformed.

Karen Bemmes: And that’s been the gift of the challenge for me.

Pat Flynn: That is huge. That’s worth more than any number of subscribers or dollar value. Wow. Amazing. Karen, thank you so much for sharing that.

And kudos to you. I’m proud of you. I will say that.

Karen Bemmes: Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Right here for everybody.

Karen Bemmes: I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, too. I work with my son. So when I say we, he does a lot of my editing and helps me with my videos. So I have loved this challenge, and I can’t wait for the next one, to be honest.

Pat Flynn: Thank you so much, and the livestream stuff’s gonna inspire a lot of people, too. I think that’s gonna be great. And of course, there’s always room to improve. I’m looking at your page now, and although you have thousands of views on these livestreams, we could probably make the thumbnails a little better, and we can work on that.

Karen Bemmes: Yeah. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re just trying to get a little bit better. Like you say, 1 percent better with each video. What can you do better on the next one than you did on this one? So, I love that.

Pat Flynn: Amen. Karen, thank you so much. Again, Gluten Free From The 513 Go and check them out, and you’re amazing.

Thank you, Karen.

Karen Bemmes: Thanks, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Alright, I hope you enjoyed listening to Karen, and wow, incredible happenings as a result of her just getting started. The unlock, not just with, yes, more followers and more views, but with more confidence. That has now allowed her to go live. That is incredible, and if you check out, again, her stuff, Gluten Free From The 513, you could see her go live, and the thousands of people that watch that, and hopefully tens of thousands in the future, and I just love what she said about now how she deals with haters.

So good, so powerful. But we’re not done yet. I have another person from our community, Adam Hague from Dice Drinks and Dad Jokes. You can find him on Instagram and on Facebook at @DiceDrinksAndDadJokes. He talks about 3D games, 3D like tangible games like Warhammer and those kinds of things. He builds models and stuff for those kinds of games and chose to do something kind of interesting to start off his 30 day challenge.

We’re gonna get into that and just exactly why he’s now on day 64 of that challenge and what has happened since, what he’s learned, what he’s noticing, all those kinds of things. So let’s dive in to Adam’s story. Again, Adam Hague from  @DiceDrinksAndDadJokes.

Alright, we got Adam here from  Dice Drinks and Dad Jokes, which is one of the best names for a channel I’ve ever heard.

Adam, what is your channel about?

Adam Hague: So, I’m into tabletop wargaming and diorama buildings. I like making little miniature worlds by hand. The main drive at the moment has been this crazy, massive castle that I’ve been building brick by brick.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, so I went on your channel. Again, it is  Dice Drinks and Dad Jokes. I’m very familiar with Warhammer and those kinds of games. Cause I go to a lot of card shops and a lot of card shops have these miniature landscapes and people are playing a game and it’s just like these little figurines that people put on there and they paint them. They design them.

You come up with different sets and you’re doing a brick by brick sort of castle build right now. Is this what your 30 day challenge was about?

Adam Hague: Yeah. So my big thing has been long form. So I’ve had my YouTube channel for three and a half years and it’s all been long form, apart from every now and then a short.

And so when the challenge came up, I was like, at a thought, because a lot of what I do is very time consuming, very involved projects. And so my long forms would be a month, two months in between, because they were big, big projects. So I kind of thought it would be nice to, to do like just a daily approach to the same thing.

So do something massive. Every single day just show the methodical process of putting it together. And so I have experimented with making things from tiny little miniature foam bricks before. In fact, one of my most popular long form videos involved the cutting of thousands of bricks and placing them.

And so I thought, oh, I’ll go with that. And so it’s funny because the first two videos I, once I started actually building, I was like day one of building my castle and day two of building my castle, but I actually had two kind of prior videos. So the first one was cutting 10,000 foam bricks and then the second one was texturing 10,000 foam bricks.

Pat Flynn: Oh my gosh.

Adam Hague: Yeah. And that kind of set me up with the crazy amount, a pile of bricks to use. And then every day I’d add 60. Or or so more every now and sometimes there’d be more, sometimes there’d be less.

Pat Flynn: The 30 day video deal challenge ended a while back. And you are still in the brick building process?

Adam Hague: Still going? Yep. Sorry, day 64 of gluing the bricks, but I think it’s 66 including the those two.

Pat Flynn: Oh my gosh. And I’m looking at some of the views. I mean, bro. Day 35, almost a million views. This one, cutting my castle to fit, 3.5 million views.

Adam Hague: The focus, yeah, that one’s gone nuts.

Pat Flynn: Oh my gosh. When did you know this was going to take off?

Adam Hague: I had an inkling that just the spectacle, the, um, the ridiculousness of it would appeal to some of my audience because, like, I’ve had lots of comments. In the past with my long form stuff, cause I do tend to go a little bit over the top. And so I figured that doing something this ridiculously pedantic.

Pat Flynn: It’s amazing, dude.

Adam Hague: And long, long term would appeal. And yeah, so it was interesting because I mean, I was getting, okay, and now I say this, it’s all relative, of course, you know, so I’d be getting a few thousand views, which was awesome. And it’s funny cause Instagram actually took off a lot sooner than YouTube. And prior to the challenge, I had 500 followers on Instagram.

I hadn’t really done much. I’d posted a couple of pictures and things like that. And that’s now I’m 27,000 followers or something. So one of the videos took off and got five and a half million. And interestingly, it got a hundred thousand on YouTube. So that one kind of took off before YouTube did. Yeah.

It’s just, the interesting thing has been trying to replicate the ones that take off because it’s, it’s not always the pedantic bricklaying, it’s like a specific part of the build, but yeah.

Pat Flynn: Oh my gosh. First of all, congratulations, Adam. That is, that is, that is awesome to grow on Instagram by 20,000 in 60 days from just literally cutting foam bricks and texturing them and placing them is amazing. And I think just this speaks to the idea of the series, of following along on a process and seeing how it goes and like you said the ridiculousness of it is a part of the draw and the spectacle of seeing all these things that you’re putting it’s amazing it’s just like it’s very formulaic it’s great and you have a goal and I love that you call that already some videos do better on Instagram than they do on YouTube I imagine that the vice versa is true too there’s some videos that pop off on. Are there any videos that like did really well on both?

And like, could you dissect that for us a little bit?

Adam Hague: Yeah. I mean, they, as I said, there was the one that took off on, on Instagram and it got a hundred thousand views, I think, on YouTube, which is. Really good. I mean, at the time that was massive and cause I clicked on to the fact that right at the start of the video, I, after painstakingly gluing all these individual foam bricks, a retractable blade, and I just started cutting into it.

And so I think the shock value of like, what is he doing? He’s just, he’s painstakingly like all these bricks and he’s cutting into it. But then I cut into it to make something better. And then it looked way cooler by the end of it. And so I think that. Seemed to work and ’cause the port colors one, the one that red took off on YouTube had a similar kind of vibe.

It was, I cut into it and, and put a little gate and everything. So, but the, the big trouble with me, of course, with that is I don’t wanna be cutting into this thing all the time. There’s only going to be specific moments that I’ll do that, but, but it has become a bit of a meme, I guess, or it’s, it’s definitely seems those videos tend to do the best.

So I guess I will be cutting into my castle.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. And you know, not every video has to take off either. This is a longer story. It’s a, it’s a long form video kind of broken up into a bunch of smaller videos and it’s able to reach and see more people. Are you seeing any movement on your long form videos as a result of this?

Adam Hague: That’s a really good question. It’s hard to tell because It’s just been Shorts at the moment. I’ve had a little bit of a surge on a couple of them, but probably more importantly, some of my really old shorts that I put on a couple of years ago or whatever, suddenly took off. There was one, I think that I had 5,000 views or something and it’s like three years old and now it’s on 40,000.

So yeah, it definitely fed into the Shorts. Not so much, not nothing really obvious into the long form.

Pat Flynn: Any particular. Other patterns you’ve noticed over 64 videos, things that you make sure to always include or do to just keep that momentum going for yourself?

Adam Hague: Yeah, so every 10th day, so this is a new thing, I’ve brought in, I think I’ve done it in the last three, yeah the last three, so a decade, I’ll start with a single brick that I will write down.

40 or 50 or 60 on. So for every 10th day.

Pat Flynn: Oh, that’s cool.

Adam Hague: That goes smash onto the, and it’s a different color to the rest of the bricks as well. So on the, the big scheme of things, you can see these little blue bricks amongst all the yellow, which kind of signifies every 10th day. So, oh, I like that. And those videos have done better then all the other bricklaying. Yeah, so it’s just has an interesting little spike of views, which is quite fun.

Pat Flynn: That’s cool. Almost like a little series within a series, if you will.

Adam Hague: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Little milestone episodes and little Easter eggs for people. I imagine people would see day 50 and go, well, where did he put day 40?

Let me go back and watch the day 40. Oh, where’s the day 30 one?

Adam Hague: Yeah, yeah.

Pat Flynn: Which is great. And tell me about the community that you were building. Has this led into anything other than just like viewers for these videos?

Adam Hague: I’ve got religious commenters, which is wonderful, I think, so this hobby appeals to a lot of neurodiversity out there, I get lots of comments about, the autism is hard in this one, and things like that.

Which is great. And the ADHD and all that kind of stuff. And it’s all very much in my wheelhouse. So, um, so, so that’s, that’s really neat. There’s one guy who comments every single video. He gives the exact percentage of the bricks versus the original 10,000. I mean, it’s easy percentage to do, but it’s quite fun.

A little percentage, every single video. And then there’s another one that makes a gag about the buttresses and there should be a hanging latrine in between my buttresses and it’s every single every single video he keeps asking, where’s the latrine between my butt truths is so that’s fun.

Pat Flynn: And then there’s people replying to that comment too.

Yeah.

Adam Hague: Yeah. Yeah. So it becomes a little bit of a gag, which is cool. And then I’ve have managed to gain a few YouTube members, I presumably through the series because I have seen a little bit of a spike there, which is nice, which is nice. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Nice, man. Well, congratulations. It’s really fun. Everybody definitely go check it out. Dice Drinks and Dad Jokes. So, what happens after you get to the end? Have you thought about what happens next?

Adam Hague: Well, I could string this out for a long time, Pat. So, I mean, the joke is, and I get this a lot in comments as well, it’s like, 10,000 bricks is not gonna be enough, bro. And it’s 100 percent true.

Pat Flynn: For the actual build that you’re, like, the plan for the build that you have?

Adam Hague: Yeah, so I have considered doing a brick per subscriber or something like that. That’s kind of neat. And just see, see where that goes. So I’m almost on 40,000 subscribers with YouTube. So that’d be 40,000 bricks. I have actually bought a secondhand tumble dryer with the goal of using it to texture.

It’s just going to be this ridiculous hundred thousand bricks thing, so it should be fun. But, uh, yeah, so I’ll stretch it out forever, basically, as long as I can.

Pat Flynn: I mean, I have a series within my Pokemon series. Every Sunday, I open this particular pack that I’m trying to find this card for. And what has gotten really good engagement is asking the audience, like, how many packs do you think it’s going to take me to find the Charizard?

And, uh, everybody just guesses. And every time I, it looks like that I’m going to get it. I show people who’ve guessed that number. Spoiler alert. I haven’t gotten it yet. And I’m at pack 376 or something like that, but people love to guess. So maybe there’s a way to guess how many bricks are going to be required.

And then just start to get people to feed numbers into the comment section and just kind of allow them to get in on it too, which you’ve already done that a little bit, which is wonderful. So I’ll definitely be keeping up on the story. Again, at @DiceDrinksAndDadJokes, both on YouTube and Instagram. Are you seeing any success on TikTok and or Facebook as well?

Adam Hague: I haven’t branched out there yet. Oh, you haven’t?

Pat Flynn: Okay.

Adam Hague: Yeah. Yeah. No, no. That’s that’s in my to do list. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Okay. Well, when you have the time for that, we’ll see how those catch up or not. And we’ll, I’m sure, catch up again sometime soon. But Adam, thank you so much for the insights. This was really amazing.

Adam Hague: Cool. Thanks so much, Pat. Cheers.

Pat Flynn: That was Adam Hague. @DiceDrinksAndDadJokes and oh my gosh, what an incredible run he is on right now. And what he could do with now this momentum that he’s built. He’s got the long form videos, added this fun little 10,000 plus foam block challenge thing in the first 30 days and now 64 days.

And I don’t know how many days it’s going to take, but as he said, it can be endless. And he’s got this following now. He’s got this culture that he’s building. These little jokes every 10 days getting in there. I love it. I absolutely love it. And I also love the fact that you could have these kinds of results as well.

Again, not necessarily about the views. But like Karen from earlier, about the confidence, about getting out of your own way, about learning how to get better at editing, finally hitting record and hitting publish, that’s what this is about. So if you’d like to participate in our next upcoming challenge, April 7th, all you need to do is go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days.

Again, we want to just kickstart you. SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days. You got this. Make sure you hit subscribe and follow here and make sure you’re following me on Instagram as well. I will be posting daily on Instagram during this 14 day challenge, just like I did the 30 day challenge.

And that’s at @PatFlynn and I’ll offer some tips and show off some results from others during that process as well. Thank you so much. Best of luck. You got this.