SPI 924: Unexpected Wins From Our Short-Form Challenge

SPI 924: Unexpected Wins From Our Short-Form Challenge

Pat Flynn: Today, we got two more amazing guests who were former participants of our Short-Form video challenge. And if you didn’t know already, we are now just starting our next short form video challenge. It is not too late to join. And it’s not a 30 day challenge this time. It is a 14 day challenge. And if you’d like to participate, even if you’re listening to this in the future, you can still get the information to get your 14 days started.

Again, one video every day for 14 days. You can do this. Just go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days, again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days.

And today we’re speaking with two amazing participants in our community from the last challenge to give you some inspiration and talk about some more vulnerable things about what it’s like to get started.

And first, we’re chatting with Virginia A. Lee, who started a channel, and she’s gonna talk about what it really took, the courage that it took, and the kinds of videos she’s doing, and what worked and what didn’t, this is really what it’s about, and showing you that there are so many more benefits to this than just getting a lot of views and building a large audience.

Yes, that can happen, but the two stories you’re going to hear today are more mild growth audiences, but there’s a lot more that has come out of these challenges for these women than you might think. So, let’s first speak with Virginia A. Lee. Here she is.

Virginia, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Virginia Lee: I’m excited to be here, Pat. Thank you for inviting me.

Pat Flynn: I’m so grateful for you. Right before we hit the record button, you said you were a little nervous about this, and I think that’s, you know, I’m so excited to dive into your videos because you took the challenge on, and I think a lot of people are nervous putting themselves out there.

How did you get the courage to just finally hit publish on your videos?

Virginia Lee: I mean, I think your own success with the short form channel, with the Pokemon, and having been a long term member of the SPI Community, I figured you obviously know how to teach, you found success with short form video, and I figured, you know what, I’m just gonna give it a shot.

And secondly, I think I was looking for permission to get back into short form video. I know that in the accelerator sessions, I mentioned that I had been posting on TikTok until about, like, I think March of 2025. And then a family member made a comment about one of my videos. And after that, I stopped posting videos. And for me, I think like just joining your short form video challenge, it was like giving myself permission that, Hey, you know what? Okay, I’m nervous, I’m scared. But yeah, I want to join the challenge. I’ve just done very well with 30 day challenges in the past.

Pat Flynn: Thank you for sharing that.

You know, and I think a part of it is doing it together with other people at the same time. You’re kind of in it together and we can be, you know, a little scared and nervous, but that’s okay because that just means you want to do a good job and you want to put your best self fout there. So your channel, Virginia A. Lee, we can find that on Instagram and YouTube. What did you choose to do for the 30 days? Tell me a little bit about that.

Virginia Lee: I loosely decided to focus on my recent trips to Canada. I’d visited montreal and Quebec City in December and the Vancouver, British Columbia area in November. And I figured kind of little snapshots of what foods and interesting restaurants and food stores I saw along the way.

Pat Flynn: Nice. That sounds great.

Virginia Lee: But after that, I did take detours. And now that I’m on day 66 of daily posting, I have taken multiple detours outside of the food and beverage space.

Pat Flynn: And that’s okay to do, right? The nice thing about the daily that I’ve heard from a lot of people is you have a lot of room to try and experiment and you can go here, you can go there until you find your voice.

How long did it take you to kind of find your rhythm? How many days in until you really kind of got into some momentum.

Virginia Lee: I feel like it was like maybe the second week, whatever week, where one of my videos, it was a eight second faceless video about maple syrup taffy on snow in Quebec City. And across three platforms, it’s gotten 45,000 views.

Jennifer Sinclair: Wow.

Virginia Lee: And I was like, wait a minute. And Pat, it was a huge learning experience. Not just like the good confidence and ego boost, but prior to joining the Accelerator when I did videos and even at a previous job where a professional video producer shot and edited video of me speaking. Most of my videos until that faceless maple syrup taffy video had been the so called talking head, I’m either speaking in a conference room or in front of a store trade show, and this one was like, I was kind of feeling desperate, I was like, oh, okay, like, It’s 10 o’clock. I need to post this daily video. What can I do? And I’m like, oh, this maple syrup on snow on, well, crushed ice seems interesting. So I just put it out there and boom, it took off.

Pat Flynn: Wow. And it’s funny that you say that because a lot of times in my past, videos that I’ve put a lot of time and effort into don’t go anywhere.

And then the ones that are kind of, In the spur of the moment, not too much editing that feel just kind of sometimes haphazard, they seem to do really well sometimes. And that’s not always the case, but it just shows you that you don’t have to have it be perfect, and that sometimes a random idea can can do something.

So what did you learn from that, seeing that? Something quick and easy like that could potentially take off and see a lot of views. What did you take away from that?

Virginia Lee: Well, my takeaways were that I learned that shorter is better. I think across all my videos, most of my higher performing ones were under one minute with a very clear message.

It wasn’t trying to explain everything, but pretty much like one thing. The other thing I learned is that I can choose different formats. I’m not locked into talking head. I’m not locked into faceless or video clips, but I can just experiment. And I would say learning to experiment was a big lesson of the accelerator that first the 30 day format and then extending to 60.

I was like, with a daily video, none of the videos had to be perfect. Not one of the videos were so precious, but I figured like, Hey, this isn’t a great video. I’m going to post it. I have more opportunities and let’s see what happens.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s great. That’s a wonderful lesson. I appreciate you sharing that, Virginia.

Tell me about your process. You’ve done this now 66 times now, or 65 about to be 66. Tell me about your routine for recording and editing and publishing.

Virginia Lee: So in the beginning, most of the videos were actually videos that I had previously recorded, but were embarrassed to post. So it was kind of just going back and editing to make them shorter.

And after that, it’s been recording new content, but it was pretty much choosing the video, video clips and or photos. In the beginning, I was relying on ChatGPT to help me with choosing the photos and the TikTok, the first slide caption and the description. And then TikTok is what I’m familiar with. So that’s where I did the editing.

I posted on TikTok, went to SnapTik to remove the TikTok caption, and then Posted pretty much the same text description on Instagram. On LinkedIn, I did change things around because that’s where I have the largest audience. And then post on YouTube. And although I hated it, I hated it in the beginning that I had to go to the YouTube app to change the thumbnail, I did end up doing that because I do think changing the thumbnail even for a YouTube short is putting my best foot forward.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, especially with things like food, if something comes across somebody’s feed and it’s like a face of somebody they don’t know, like what’s the reason to click on it versus this maple syrup on snow, right?

Or your polvorones and those kinds of things. That video did pretty well, too. It looks like that one had 10,000 views on just TikTok alone. Your maple syrup one is at 18,000 on TikTok alone, and you have well over a hundred followers now, and I know you started kind of close to scratch, so you’re doing excellent.

I think that’s wonderful. And how are you processing, as we finish up here, you know, the idea of what success means on these challenges or on these videos? I know some people I’ve spoken to, they’re like, oh, my videos are not getting a lot of views, but I’m still learning and I’m still benefiting from it.

Some people who’ve gone through this challenge have seen millions of views. But you don’t have to have that for it to be successful and success is different for everybody. So what does that mean to you or what are you hoping to achieve with this exercise, Virginia?

Virginia Lee: Continued experimentation. I have allowed myself in some of my more recent videos to be more vulnerable, like talking about a new side hustle.

So I do think going forward, it’s going to be experimentation and making videos that are more entertaining, but at the end of the day, I want to create videos that educate and inspire people. So success for me is just staying with creating videos.

Pat Flynn: I love it. I love it. One of your more recent successful videos has a thumbnail here that says, I ran three Chicago marathons because of Jeff Galloway.

And that’s, to your point, inspirational. You’re telling that story a little bit. You’re giving credit to somebody. That is incredible. So I just want to wish you all the best, Virginia. Thank you so much for coming on and inspiring. Where can people go? Where would you recommend they go to kind of follow along on your journey?

Virginia Lee: I would say follow me on TikTok at @VirginiaALee.

Pat Flynn: Virginia A. Lee. Thank you. I look forward to seeing where you take this, Virginia. I appreciate you so much.

Virginia Lee: Thank you so much, Pat.

Pat Flynn: All right. Virginia, thank you so much. And thank you for even sharing some more details about some of your videos and some of the things about where you want to go with this. I think that is really inspirational and I cannot wait to see you continue this, whether you continue on the daily or maybe go more times per day or less.

It doesn’t really matter. The whole point of this is getting out of your own way.

And another person who did that was Jennifer Sinclair from Catucopia. Yes, cat, C A T, because she’s got her cats on camera, which is kind of a cheat code when it comes to these short form videos. Getting any animals or things like that makes it a little easier to gather attention right away.

But we do talk about some of the ups and downs with Jennifer’s channel and things that are going on and where her ideas came from. So here she is, Jennifer Sinclair from Catucopia.

Jennifer, thank you for joining me here on the podcast. And, Catucopia. Is your channel.

Jennifer Sinclair: Yes.

Pat Flynn: How’s it been going with the challenge?

How did it go for you overall?

Jennifer Sinclair: I loved it. I did the long form challenge, and that was also quite supportive, but the shorts were easier for me. And I felt like people were around me, encouraging me, even if they were not verbally encouraging me every day. And, you know, yeah, so I had the Catucopia logo up from the previous challenge, which was something I did manage to do when I had gotten my channel set up and everything, and then it was during a very busy time in my life.

I had been unemployed when I first got on SPI, and I got a job. And it’s this kind of job where it’s by the hour, so the more hours you do, you’re a little encouraged to, like, keep going. And I was like, I’m just jumping on this after regular work, after cat sitting, and then I’m gonna go record my cat wave in the common room at my house.

And it was actually really fun because something to do that’s like a little bit different, that’s with something I love, cats. I guess the one question I’m coming up against at this point is do I actually have a business or am I just making cute cat videos?

Pat Flynn: Sure.

Jennifer Sinclair: But I’m also excited to continue throughout 2026.

I’m gonna make him, I’m thinking maybe 10 tricks or something like that and I’m just gonna keep going. And I get subscribers every day.

Pat Flynn: That’s amazing. Subscribers that are coming because they’re finding Chaplin in your video series. Tell me about the video series. What was the idea behind the 30 Day Video Challenge?

Jennifer Sinclair: The initial challenge was to teach my cat, Wave, who is semi feral, to do some tricks because it’s a good bonding experience. And cat tricks are like the bread and butter of cat behaviorists, which is a business I wanted to start in 2016, and I’m still thinking about. So, you, you kind of get them doing any little movement toward the trick, and encourage them with a treat.

And he did, he had never learned how to high five. Others of my cats in the past had, but he learned how to high five. 17 days.

Pat Flynn: 17 days it took.

Jennifer Sinclair: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: And so what were you noticing within those first 17 days as far as the videos and the reach that they were getting and the audience that you were building leading up to that?

Jennifer Sinclair: I was not very into the analytics at first and why, you know, I did get a lot on the day that he achieved the high five. And I noticed that afterward, like kind of way afterwards, he was really hitting my palm hard with his little paw and people could hear how excited I was in my voice. And, but I mean, I got a few comments.

I’m not someone who likes to, you know, where anything blew out of the water. I mean, I’ve gotten like a couple comments here and there on each video, sometimes no comments, and I’ve got 100 something subscribers. So that’s not the success in it for me, but reaching like even over a thousand people for a person who’s doing it the first time was really exciting.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I think that’s great. You know, a lot of people didn’t take part of the challenge because they thought it would not work for them or they had never done it before. And the consistency, I see it here, hundreds and some videos having thousands of views. Which is amazing, and I think, you know, the exercise here was not just about like, let’s see if we can make money from our short form videos, it’s, can we get used to the idea of hitting record and hitting publish?

And you did that, and that’s awesome. And as far as your other question from earlier about, well, I don’t know if I have a business here, You do know that you can create content that gets found. And that’s a really important part of this puzzle. And I’m super proud of you for that. And then from here, you could, you know, once you get some ideas, once you start making maybe connections with various people who seem to, you know, comment every day and follow you and you start to build this audience, that’s where you can pull ideas from or start to inject some of your own to see if they hit the mark or not. I love the fact that you are going to continue this and we get to see this progress. You kind of have a little bit of a cheat code with your cat and your pets being in the video, so that’s awesome. The last thing I want to say is, at what point did it feel like you started to get into a rhythm of doing this?

A lot of people are afraid and even don’t know about the technological parts of this. Was it easy for you and how long until you got into a good rhythm?

Jennifer Sinclair: It was not easy. It’s so funny, because my whole family considers me the one who’s good with technology, but I was just like, these captions, I love to do captions because a lot of the time I’ll be somewhere where I can’t have a loud phone and I don’t have enough of my headphones so I like to read captions, so I wanted to put those on all of my videos and using edits, using the ones that are right on YouTube, there would be a lot of errors that I’d have to correct and it would be like an hour and 15 minutes or something, mostly having to deal with captions.

Very frustrating. And then, on one of the meetings, Caleb mentioned CapCut, which has great AI captions. And just two days ago, they decided to say I needed to upgrade to Pro if I was going to use their captions. So now I’m back on edits, but it’s like maybe 25 minutes.

Pat Flynn: So it’s getting faster. That’s good.

Jennifer Sinclair: Yeah. And I switched my technique too. I always kind of say the same things, especially when I’m doing training. So I switched to a voiceover, and I’m not even scripting, I’m just kind of, I watch the video a couple times, and I get a good sense of what the length is, and I say the things.

Pat Flynn: I love it.

Jennifer Sinclair: And it’s been working pretty well.

Pat Flynn: And that’s what we figure out as we go. You didn’t know to do that on your first go around, but as you iterate, as you start to optimize and try different techniques, some start to work better for you. And I found the same thing happened with me too. Several days in the voiceover idea coming in after I hit record and then sharing what I am seeing works really, really well.

So Jennifer, I just want to say thank you for participating in the challenge. It’s really cool to see you continue with it. Definitely check out at @Catucopia, C A T U C O P I A on YouTube and Instagram. Were there any differences between the two platforms for you? Maybe one working better than another?

Jennifer Sinclair: YouTube is actually working slightly better for me. I think it’s because I keep it more focused. On Instagram, I also post stories of my cat sitting clients and, Oh, this is something I really still need to do. Meta business suite. So, my stories on Instagram are posting to both regular friends and business people, and then they go to Facebook, but it’s my regular account, which is kind of pointless and I think people feel inundated.

So, I just need to put, I have a Catucopia Facebook, and I just need to fix that up.

Pat Flynn: Facebook page. Great.

Jennifer Sinclair: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: That’ll be great. And Facebook, for a lot of people, has been the number one driver of new views for some of the people participating in this experiment. So, if you haven’t done that yet, that would be a great thing to do.

And Jennifer, I just want to wish you all the best, and thank you again for a little bit of insight on how your 30 days went. I appreciate it.

Jennifer Sinclair: Oh, thank you so much. I look forward to more.

Pat Flynn: Alright, I hope you enjoyed those interviews with Virginia and Jennifer. Thank you both, and thank you for being a part of the SPI community as well.

Cannot wait to share more stories like this, especially coming out of our current 14 day short form video challenge. And if you’d like to participate or get more information about how you can do something like that yourself, go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days. Again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days.

You got this. It’s just a matter of getting out of our own way and seeing that it’s not that scary. Yes, it is scary, which means it’s important to you, but there are some great things that can happen, not just with views and building audiences and maybe even a business off of this, especially if you want to gather those communities and bring them onto an email list and serve them.

But what it can do for you as a person and with your confidence, we’ve seen it here today and I want to see it with you as well again, SmartPassiveIncome.com/14days and I’ll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much. Best of luck.