From Web Designer to YouTube Strategist for 19 Years

Jeremy is 49 years old and has been in digital marketing his entire career. He started as a web designer in 2000. This is his 25th year in digital marketing.

As he put it, "I was actually one of the first digital marketers because the internet in America started in like 1995."

He started in web design, got into SEO around 2005 or 2006, then started wanting to teach everyone all the SEO, digital marketing, and web design stuff he knew. Because back then there wasn't a lot of knowledge for the top 1% players.

He started making courses. One of his mentors was Linda Wyman from Linda.com, who ended up selling her course company for over a billion dollars to LinkedIn. That's now LinkedIn Learning.

Jeremy created a similar product called Xtrain Expert Training. They actually created the first 30 hours of training for Adobe Television. Adobe Television got 10 million plus views a month on their training platform and YouTube.

Around 2006 when he was getting into online education, YouTube had started in 2005. YouTube is 20 years old now, and Jeremy has been a YouTube strategist for about 19 years. He's been in this space since the beginning.

With his knowledge of digital marketing and SEO, it was very easy for him to figure out YouTube. He's spoken all over the world, worked with over 20 of the top 100 brands in America, and worked with thousands and thousands of channels.

Now he owns a company called Creator Unlock where they've created the first ever YouTube strategy platform for small businesses.

The Biggest Change in YouTube's 20 Year History Just Happened

I asked Jeremy to walk me through the evolution of YouTube over the past 20 years.

At the beginning, it wasn't about mobile phones. Then around 2007 or 2008 when the iPhone came out, it went from desktop viewership to mobile devices. When Jeremy talks about the history of YouTube, he's really always talking about viewership because the viewers drive the shows and the technology.

But here's what shocked me. "The biggest change ever to take place on YouTube happened this year, in my opinion, in the last 20 years."

We started on desktop. We went to over 90% mobile views because everyone was on their iPhones watching YouTube videos. But now, last year and this year, the number one source of watch time on YouTube is televisions.

YouTube is bigger than Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu combined. That's how many people are watching videos on YouTube.

What does this mean? "We used to make these how-to videos like how to get rid of rats in your basement type of video. But now people are leaning back, not clicking and watching. So we went from desktop to mobile devices to vertical videos to now television shows."

YouTube is rolling out the ability to have episodic Hulu style experiences and Netflix style experiences with your YouTube channel.

Why Watch Time Is Everything

Jeremy gave me an incredible example. He did a lot of YouTube strategy for a company called VidIQ. They help people with titles and thumbnails. When he started working with them five or six years ago, they had about 100,000 subscribers. Now they're over 2 million subscribers.

VidIQ is getting five to 10 minutes watch time with their how-to videos. They're really teaching you how to fish, how to get more views, how to get more subscribers.

There's a new channel called Colin and Samir. They have one, two, or three hour long shows and they're giving you an experience. They'll bring on Mr. Beast and it's like a podcast. Colin and Samir's average video gets 45 minutes watch time. Average.

The number one ranking algorithm on YouTube is watch time.

"YouTube is going to, if you really think about what YouTube is, it's an advertising platform. They want to sell ads so that they can make more money. If they have a choice between sending you a video that you're going to watch for 10 minutes or 45 minutes, they're always going to send the 45 minute video to you."

Colin and Samir is going to absolutely destroy every other creator channel and blow up a billion times faster because of 45 minutes watch time, not five or 10 minutes.

The biggest change today is the lean back television style shows are dominating everything. How to fix your toilet or how to get rid of rats are still important and still part of the strategy, but they're really small in comparison to entertaining and educating people in a multi-hour show format.

How to Optimize for TV

I had to ask Jeremy how people should be optimizing for TV and how that differs from mobile.

"The only thing I would say is storytelling, anticipation. There's things called curiosity gaps."

He's not trying to click people. He wants you on the edge of your seat and excited about the next thing that's going to happen.

Jeremy watches a lot of fishing YouTube channels. Some of them are pretty boring. But he watched a video last night where they caught an 850 pound tuna. "If in the first two seconds I didn't see that 850 pound tuna, I would have not watched the 30 minute video."

It's about the teasing and the storytelling. Every Disney movie has a formula that closely follows the hero's journey. You probably have a wicked stepmother, you failed, you had a horrible life, everything sucks, everything's broken. You find a prince, everything's starting to look up, and then happily ever after.

"You really want that kind of philosophy in your videos. Even if you're teaching people how to clean toilets, you want a Disney level show for cleaning toilets or removing pests."

And the reason is human nature. Jeremy gave me an example that hit hard. What if you started a pest control video with something like, "These bed bugs could have killed my sister."

Bed bugs have actually killed people before. It's rare, but what if you do a video reporting of someone who died from a bed bug? "This bed bug killed her sister." Then you get into it, like how to prevent them, the whole thing, the history.

"That is a big difference than how to fix a leaky toilet the easy way, 2026. I'm not gonna say that stuff's dead, but I'm not gonna say it's alive either."

The Future Is About Personality and Storytelling

I asked Jeremy about the competition on YouTube and how it's getting harder to stand out.

Even though Roger Wakefield, one of his students and a business partner for Creator Unlock, still ranks number one in the world if you type in plumbing or plumber on YouTube, the idea that a plumber could outrank him in 2026 is very tough because of the competition.

Every year there's more and more. And now with AI, you could go make a million videos on pest control in a year. Even if you get one view per video, you're going to dominate.

So what does it mean to be a creator now? Jeremy said, "It's about personality, storytelling, and differentiating."

When you're selling a course, you're not actually selling a course. You're selling access and accountability. People want to be held accountable and they want access to the best people in the world who are already millionaires. They don't give a crap about a course.

When Jeremy was working with Adobe, they learned that over 90% of people never read a book they buy. Over 70% of people never even open a course they buy and never will.

What does that mean? People want access, they want accountability. That's why AI is kind of killing courses in his opinion. People are just getting the answers and making stuff happen.

The Truth About AI Videos

I had to ask Jeremy about AI videos and faceless channels because I'm both fascinated and worried about this trend.

His perspective was refreshing. "We started with the phonograph and then the record player and then the eight track and then the cassette tape and then the DVD, Blu-ray, now digital music. We're always, technology, everything is always evolving."

He thinks today, 2025, AI videos in general suck. But the advancement that's happening is insane.

He could imagine that if you want another version of Star Wars five years from now, you're just going to type in a prompt. Spider-Man in Star Wars taking place in Disneyland.

"If you don't believe that there's something past digital music, you're probably lying to yourself, right? Because everything always evolves."

Jeremy has a student, Austin Armstrong, who's the founder of Syllabi, one of the largest faceless AI softwares for videos in the world. And his take is clear: "Faceless, not faceless, AI, not AI, none of that matters. The only thing that matters is storytelling, watch time."

He gave me a great example. If you have a history channel showing footage of World War II, no one cares about you unless you're Tom Hanks. They want to see the footage, the guns, the bombs, the planes.

Jeremy remembers when digital cameras came out. All these older gentlemen said digital cameras are stupid, they're never going to replace film. "What I don't want any of your audience members to think about is being the old dude sticking to film."

The difference between a digital camera today and a film camera is laughable 10 or 15 years later. The quality is light years ahead.

A faceless channel could be ten times better than your channel if you have good storytelling and drama and excitement. "Faceless, AI, none of this matters. It's a vehicle to help you create."

How to Tell a Good Story on YouTube

Jeremy is a data scientist and a nerd. Storytelling on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook is a little different than storytelling in a classical book or movie.

The big difference is we have our phones in our hands, maybe tablets, kids screaming in the background. We need a hook to happen faster.

Mr. Beast is very good at this. He usually starts with the word "I." I gave away a million dollars. I helped feed 10,000 people. I helped a thousand people walk for the first time.

That is ten times more powerful than most YouTube creators or stories or books you'll ever read. You really have to start people off with the promise, the hook, the curiosity gap, the excitement.

A lot of people get confused with clickbait. "A lot of people actually believe clickbait's bad and you're just wrong and I'm gonna tell you why. The reason you're wrong is clickbait is not bad if it delivers the promise."

It's human nature. If there's a baby with three heads, you're going to click and read that. But if the baby doesn't actually have three heads, you're a terrible marketer, you're a terrible creator, and you're lying to people. If it delivers the truth, it's not clickbait. It's just an exciting headline, exciting story, exciting hook.

Mr. Beast has had the opportunity to meet Jeremy a few times. Jeremy was on Beast Games. Mr. Beast spends most of his time developing a story, not the thumbnail, not the title. He develops the premise of a story.

Going back to that philosophy, are you teaching people how to get rid of bed bugs or are you talking about how someone died of a bed bug? The old school thinking is how to fix a leaky toilet in 2026. The new philosophy is, "Could a leaky toilet cost you a thousand dollars a year?"

Teach People to Fish, Not How to Click Buttons

This is something Jeremy emphasized multiple times. Your mindset should be about a story, not a thing. He calls teaching single tasks "button pushing."

He had a Mustang once and used a YouTube channel to help him figure out how to fix the alternator. He never saw that YouTube channel again because he fixed the thing. "I know they didn't make any money for me. I don't care about that creator."

"Never teach people how to click buttons. Never teach people just one thing. Teach them to fish."

This is what he did for VidIQ that helped them go from 100,000 to 2 million subscribers. Instead of teaching people how to click a button in YouTube to do a thing, like how to make a playlist, he taught them why or how to grow on YouTube, how to get more views, how to get more subs.

"Teaching them the fish will keep them coming back. Teaching them to do a specific task will guarantee that you'll never see them again."

YouTube Shorts vs Long Form

I asked Jeremy about the difference between YouTube shorts and mid to long form videos.

If you're into vanity, and he argues vanity can actually be quite a good thing. If you're selling a book or a course on pest control and you have 100,000 subscribers, people are going to want to subscribe faster. That social proof of being one of the top creators in the world is going to help you grow faster, grow your business faster, grow trust faster.

Vanity can be a phenomenal tool. If you're all about that and getting views and subs, then shorts are by far the easiest way to get there.

But if you're into making money or having people actually watch your content or being emotionally engaged with you, "99% of anything good coming out of YouTube comes from YouTube longs."

From making money with ads to convincing and converting people to buy one of your products or books or courses, it's like 99% of brand deals, everything still comes from YouTube longs.

Even though there's billions and billions of views a day on YouTube shorts, 74% of people's watch time on YouTube still comes from longs.

The First 30 Seconds Are Everything

Jeremy ran the largest skateboard YouTube channel for five years with six million subscribers. What they did was the first five seconds was what the title and thumbnail was about. A montage of people falling and screaming and landing. Before they land the trick, they blurred it out and let the audio of people screaming "Yeah, you did it!" play.

It's blurred so you can't see it. That's a tease. That's the curiosity gap.

"The intro, in my opinion, the first 30 seconds, you must have 70% of people still watching. That is a huge trigger for YouTube."

If 40% of people are still watching in the first 30 seconds, YouTube's not going to share your video. You have to make the first 30 seconds so compelling that most people should still be watching.

Within the first 30 seconds, YouTube realizes you're either going to watch the video or you're not. "That first 30 seconds has to be better than the rest of the video."

Niche Down as Far as You Can Go

Jeremy is huge on niching down. I brought up an example from Joy Hawkins' webinar where he was auditing a fitness channel and said it wasn't niche enough. They might have to go into calisthenics or something even more specific.

Working out is huge. The first thing you should do is figure out what kind of workouts you do, then study the top 10 creators in that area.

There are creators with millions of subscribers that just do calisthenics. There are creators with millions of subscribers that just do muscle gain or abs. Someone doing 100 pushups a day are not the same person that are running. Someone running every day probably doesn't want to bench press 500 pounds.

"Understanding your audience, you know, when I was a kid, people used to say, don't be an underwater basket weaver. What I'm telling you now is to be an underwater basket weaver. Find your exact people."

Jeremy has clients that are so specified they may only have 50,000 subscribers but they're making millions a year. One of his students is at about 200,000 subscribers now. He's the largest lawn weed control channel. He teaches people how to control their weeds and how to create weed businesses. It's called Lawn Care Life and he's just a happy redneck out of Birmingham, Alabama. This dude is making millions of dollars a year.

"It's not the size of your audience. It's not getting views. It's not going viral. You could easily make a million dollars a year with 10,000 subscribers if you have the right people in the right niche."

"If you're everything to everyone, you're going to be nothing to no one."

And this applies to everything. Your website, your business card, everything should have the same message. Roger Wakefield is all things plumbing on his website, on his business cards, in his mind, when he tells people what he does. He teaches people all things plumbing. So he can talk to plumbers, he can talk to apprentices, he can talk to moms who own houses. It doesn't matter, he just talks about plumbing stuff.

How Local Businesses Should Get Started

I asked Jeremy the big question. How do you get started? How do you begin building a YouTube channel for your home service business that will actually generate revenue?

"It's a very, very, very hard question to answer."

First off, you have to believe in video. You have to be willing to get on camera. And you have to be willing to suck for your first hundred videos.

Jeremy gave the example of Joy Hawkins. When he started working with them, they probably had 100 or 200 subscribers. Now they're arguably the second or third largest channel in the world for what they do.

They did not believe at first. At all. They're like, this sucks, it's so hard. They have multiple people editing and filming. It's hard to do this.

"I believe mindset is really important. If you're out there and you're a believer of video, you watch TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube videos, you can do it."

What you can't do is duplicate what someone else does. You have to be yourself and do it in your way.

That's why he created Creator Unlock. They help people find their niche, do deep research. They audit your channel, perfect your niche, research between 300 and 500 videos and tell you what the top performing videos in the world are for what you want to talk about.

When you want to make a title or a script or a thumbnail, they tell you what to do. What the next 10 videos should be. They have a scripting tool based on the best performing videos in the world.

"That is really hard to figure out."

He's working with a lot of real estate agents right now and they're struggling. The reason they're struggling is they're not video people. They're not video editors. They're not online marketers. There are so many skills: writing, script writing, titles, thumbnails, graphic design, video editing. It is really crazy hard.

"I do believe that AI is going to be a huge game changer for small businesses, whether you're home services or not. If you believe in video and you stick with it, you'll be OK. If you think you're going to make a couple of videos and go viral, you're going to fail."

Jeremy's Message to Local Businesses

I asked Jeremy for his final message to local businesses and creators.

"I think that you should really believe in one aspect of what you do. And I really think you should manifest for 30 minutes every day of what you want to achieve."

Your website, your business card, your Facebook page, your YouTube page, your Instagram account should all be the same thing. If you tell your grandmother what you do for a living, you should have zero difference between your YouTube page, your business card, and your website.

"In the age of AI, in the age of where we are, you should niche down as far as you can go."

One thing he can say with extreme certainty in the last 19 years of doing this: "The plumber or the drywaller is going to make more money than the person going viral doing dances."

They're going to make thousands of percent more money when you have something to offer, sell, add value to, entertain people. You're going to make a lot more money.

My Main Takeaway

This conversation completely changed how I think about YouTube. The biggest shift is understanding that YouTube is now primarily watched on TV, not mobile. That changes everything about how we should be creating content.

The days of quick how-to videos dominating are fading. People want stories, entertainment, multi-hour experiences. They want to lean back on their couch and watch, not click through quick tips on their phone.

For local businesses, the opportunity is massive but the competition is real. You can't just post a few videos and expect to go viral. You have to commit to being on camera, telling stories, teaching people to fish instead of just showing them how to click buttons.

And niching down is critical. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Find your exact people and serve them incredibly well. You can make millions a year with 10,000 subscribers if they're the right subscribers.

Thanks for reading, and if you found this valuable, make sure to check out the full podcast episode. Jeremy drops even more insights and examples that I couldn't fit into this recap.

Head over to CreatorUnlock.com to get a free channel audit and check out Jeremy's YouTube strategy platform built specifically for small businesses. You can also follow him everywhere at Jeremy Vest or Creator Unlock.