If I’m being honest, the past couple of weeks have been rough. I’ve been healing from an infection that ended up putting me on a clear fluid diet for a while and completely draining my energy.

So right now, I’m focusing on healing and taking things a little slower than usual.

Sometimes your body has a way of making decisions for you.

And after such a full summer, maybe this is the reset I needed as we head into Q4.

We’re still looking forward to everything September has in store, so here’s a little peek at what’s happening behind the scenes at Essetino this month...

🎬 Essetino Backstage Pass

A big part of September will be slowing down and focusing on making what we already have even better.

Things like: growing our Substack community, serving our clients, and revamping our YouTube strategy so it better supports the body of work we’re building as a whole.

And while there is absolutely no shortage of new ideas, opportunities, and other cool things we could be doing, we’re resisting the urge to add more right now.

I actually just wrote about this in a recent article: Subtraction is the New Addition.

Sometimes you have to remove the extra things, distractions, and unnecessary complexity so you can give 110% to what you already have on your plate.

Sometimes you need to slow down in one season so you can pick up speed in the next.

💎 Community Spotlight

This month, we want to highlight Leslie Tagorda.

Leslie is founder of Star Powered and creator of the AstroBrand® Method. As a professional astrologer and brand strategist, she works with leaders and changemakers to leverage planetary cycles for success in business.

We did a YouTube Strategy consultation for her business and I was SO happy to receive her message sharing these wins!

✨ Currently Sparking Joy

Auret + Autumn = 🥰🍂

I know everyone is probably still trying to squeeze out the last little bit of summer, but I’m already over here getting excited for cooler weather, cozy sweaters, colourful leaves, and yes...rain.

Fall has always been my favourite season. The weather, ambience, fashion, flavors - everything speaks my language. This is also the time of year when routines settle back in and life just feels a bit cozier.

💌 This Month’s Mantra

“Subtraction is how you get better.”

📺 Coming Up on the Channel

✅ Last week, Jewel showed you how to write and schedule notes in Substack using a desktop. Watch it here.

✅ Later in the week, Jewel walks you step-by-step through what you get with our FREE YouTube Authority Checklist.

✅ Soon after, Jewel show’s you how to delete old chats and clear your ChatGPT storage to free up space and keep your account organized.

✅ Then later in the month, Jewel reviews the book ‘Winning’ By Tim S. Grover, which takes a more extreme stance on what real success actually requires.

Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel so you don’t miss a thing…

Talk soon,

Auret & Jewel

Subscribe to The Profitable YouTube Playbook

By Auret Esselen & Jewel Tolentino

A fresh take on using YouTube for experts, business owners and thought leaders - we call it the Anti-Viral Strategy. Subscribe for weekly insights on growing your presence, getting found in search, and attracting aligned clients through YouTube - all backed by what works now and 11+ years of real-world experience.

Subscribe now

If you haven’t seen or heard of The Bear, it’s about a professionally trained chef named Carmy and his struggles with running a Chicago restaurant. I gotta admit this show was very hard for me to watch at first because it’s SO chaotic with the constant yelling and intense sensory overload…but I decided to give it another try because everyone was talking about how great the show is.

I didn’t realize how much I’d relate to Carmy in his struggles of integrating the artist he is, his craft and wanting to make art, along with his other role of being a business owner and team leader.

In one of the episodes from season 3, Carmy has this flashback to when he was trained by one of the best chefs in the world. He nervously hands over his dish to the chef, preparing to get ripped apart.

The chef reprimands Carmy for repeating an ingredient, grabs a piece of painter’s tape, writes one word on it, and hands it back to Carmy, points at the paper and says ‘THAT’S how you do better’.

The word was: SUBTRACT.

As entrepreneurs, we are FULL of ideas. And we want to keep adding. But when we add something, we may not realize there’s a tradeoff - and that tradeoff is often the quality of that very thing we’re trying to improve.

I can’t count how many times this advice of ‘simplify to amplify’ has held true for me as a YouTube strategist, artist, and business owner.

Four years ago, my music coach gave me the same feedback on a song I’d just gotten back from the producer. I wanted to create an epic orchestral version of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes but with a tiny bit of Middle Eastern influence to it. When he listened to the track, he absolutely loved it but said it could be better. His main feedback to me was that certain parts were trying to ‘do too much’.

He said a piece of work always gets better when you question whether every element needs to be there in the first place. If it doesn’t serve the final product, remove it.

That song ended up getting signed to a sync agency for TV and film placement (btw you can listen to that song here on Spotify if you like!).

The same ‘Subtraction’ advice goes for improving the performance of your YouTube channel.

If your channel is trying to do too much, you’re diluting its potency.

This could look like:

• Posting 3+ videos a week

• Covering every topic in your niche to cast a wider net

• Putting too many words on your thumbnails

• Speaking to multiple audiences

• Stacking too many CTAs (subscribe, book a call, download this, follow me here)

These are too many things trying to do too many things.

Let me give you a specific example.

A lot of YouTube channels don’t make it clear who the videos are actually for. The positioning is too vague. Our instinct is to avoid narrowing. We’d rather appeal to more people, because we assume more viewers means a better shot at finding the ones who are actually a good fit.

But that thinking is backwards.

Instead of “get viewers to attract buyers”, why not just focus on attracting buyers? Remove the step of casting a wide net and just create videos that will attract your ideal client.

This is why an effective YouTube strategy always starts with defining your buyer first, then building content only they’d watch.

And sure, that means fewer views, but you’re doing it for a higher-converting audience. I don’t know ‘bout you, but I’ll take that tradeoff any day!

A past client of ours is a mental health expert who has been featured on CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The Mel Robbins Show. When she came to us, she already had over four thousand subscribers, so this wasn’t a starting-from-scratch story.

But her channel was stagnant. She was consistent, posting her podcast episodes straight to YouTube, but the channel wasn’t producing much beyond views and subscribers.

We audited it and found her episodes, titles, and thumbnails weren’t speaking to her actual audience and weren’t using the language her ideal client would type into search. We got clear on exactly who she was talking to, rebuilt the positioning, and restructured the content.

Within four months, her reach increased by 45%, and the viewers were more engaged: watch time was up by 26% and she was getting 42 opt-ins from the channel.

This is what happens when you give a channel the right strategy underneath it.

(want me to build a 90-day YouTube strategy for your business? At the time of writing this, I have 2 more timeslots open for this month and you can snag one by upgrading to our founders tier)

Subscribe now

So what can you subtract from your YouTube channel to get better results?

Think through the whole path: a video reaching your ideal client, getting the click, holding their attention, and moving them to act.

Run each video through these four audit points and try these subtractions:

1. Not reaching your ideal client? Narrow down to the topics your ideal client is actually searching for, the exact phrases they’d type into a search bar or ChatGPT. Pick your top 3 pain points and build your next 90 days around those alone.

2. Not getting the click? Every single word in your title and thumbnail should speak directly to your ideal client and give them a reason to click. Cut everything else.

3. Not holding attention? Cut your fancy intro with music. Cut the ‘Hi I’m so and so’ intro out too. What you say in the first 30 seconds has to match why they clicked. If it takes you over a minute to get to the point, you’ve lost them.

4. Not moving them to act? Remove the extra links in your description. Leave the most important one. And make it easy to find - if you have paragraphs of text in your video descriptions, cut it down to 3-4 sentences.

Note: Each of these subtractions is just one lever, not the whole machine, and there are dependencies across all of them. Like for example, if your videos aren’t moving people to take action, the real issue might live further up the funnel, in whether you’re attracting the right person, or getting the click, in the first place.

Either way, narrowing what you’re doing will still move you closer to the results you want. Subtraction is the new addition.

Having said all this, the #1 thing that matters in growing your channel is having good video content, which comes down to what’s actually IN your video.

So I’ve asked Jewel to show you what a less-is-more approach actually looks like inside a real video, you can copy her exact template (or give it to a team member who’s helping you with your channel) and apply it to the next video you film.

You can access that now below.

From Inside The YouTube Authority Lab ⏬

Read more

Alice asked, “What road do I take?”

The Cheshire Cat says “Well, where are you going?” and Alice replies “I don’t know.”

And then Cheshire Cat replies with this…

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

When I was a kid watching this movie, I didn’t catch the ENORMOUS amount of wisdom in this one line. I just thought this cat was annoying and creepy as heck lol.

But man is this ever true, on so many levels.

But most of the time, we don’t just want to go ‘anywhere’, right?

I mean, there are times when I’ll feel like going on a drive so I’ll take my car and drive to no where in particular. That’s me going ‘anywhere’ just because I love driving my Camaro.

But without a defined destination, I’m just in motion. And motion may feel like momentum or progress, but it’s not the same thing.

James Clear draws this same line in Atomic Habits: motion gives you the feeling of progress, without the risk of finding out whether any of it actually worked.

James defines “motion” as the planning, researching, and prepping that feels like progress but never actually delivers a result. Motion is safer, because it lets you keep working without ever finding out if the work was pointed the right way.

Posting videos with no defined destination is motion. You’re doing something, and it feels like effort, but effort isn’t the same as arriving somewhere on purpose.

Often, that lands you somewhere you didn’t want to be. Or it lands you right back where you started (like Alice, her whole trip through Wonderland ends with her waking up in the exact same spot where she started). I’ll admit that sometimes consistent motion can eventually get you where you meant to go, but that’s like finding a needle in a haystack and that route requires a lot trial and error, which gets costly - not just money-wise. Going this route and hoping to eventually ‘get there’ spends what I consider one of our most precious, non-renewable resources: time.

And I think this is why YouTube can feel VERY expensive at times.

It’s the belief that ‘If I keep posting videos, I’ll grow eventually’.

Consistency alone is not a strategy. You need the strategy first, and then your consistent posting becomes the implementation of that strategy.

I’ve run YouTube strategy consultations with clients who’ve been posting for two, three, sometimes more years, and they still don’t know if it’s working because they never clearly defined what success looked like to begin with. Or their definition of success was some arbitrary version of “growth” but I always ask – views for what? Why?

That’s why the very first step within our Anti-Viral Strategy framework is defining what you actually want the channel to do for you. It’s the first question on our intake form before we build out the YouTube strategy for a business:

How do you define success on YouTube?

After reading hundreds of answers to that question, I can tell you most expert-based business owners, coaches, consultants, service providers have way too many answers to this question - and that’s the problem.

I often see some version of:

“I want more views, subscribers, watch time, SEO, becoming an authority and it’d be nice to get clients too and reach monetization.”

I know we want all the things. As a multi-hyphenate creative and entrepreneur, trust me I do too!

But wanting all the things is just another version of “I don’t know which path to take.”

By trying to be everywhere, we end up nowhere. Just another Cheshire Cat scenario, except instead of: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there”, Cheshire Cat would say to us: “If any road will get you there, you don’t know where you’re going.”

You will be tempted to write multiple things down to that question of “how do you define success on YouTube”. I recommend choosing one instead - your primary objective. The kind that, once you hit it, makes the rest of that list feel less necessary or already achieved.

Gary Keller calls this the Focusing Question in his book The ONE Thing, which makes a case that this one question can lead to extraordinary results:

What’s the one thing you can do that makes everything else easier or unnecessary?

I’ll give you an example. One of our clients chose her primary objective to be: ‘get my first high-ticket client from YouTube’. A high-ticket client for her meant a sale into her group mentorship program.

Once she landed that client, the rest of her list took care of itself. Because she wanted her videos to build authority, generate trust, and attract the right viewers…and landing that client proved all three. She also stopped caring about subscriber count, because the person who became her high-ticket client wasn’t even subscribed to her channel. That “want” became unnecessary.

So before you post your next video: what’s your definition of success on YouTube?

If it’s not properly defined, you end up in one of two places:

Either you pay for it in time and energy, grinding through effort without knowing if it’s working - sometimes long enough until burnout and eventually you’ll decide to try another path, repeating the same loop (I see this more often than I’d like to).

Or you end up chasing someone else’s definition of success (i.e. tracking views and subs because that’s what everyone else looks at, wondering why growing those numbers never seems to grow the business.

Align first. All decisions after that - your filming format, whether to post YouTube shorts, how long the videos should be, what text should be on your thumbnails, etc. - everything else gets so much easier once you actually know what you’re aiming at.

Let’s go.

~Auret Esselen

P.S. Inside the YouTube Authority Lab, Jewel shows you the simple tracker spreadsheet we use with every client, how we track every video in the production queue (your inputs), and which KPIs to track and where to pull those numbers (your outputs), especially if you’re going after opt-ins or sales to a specific landing page. It’s built to keep the channel pointed at your goal instead of just staying busy. You’ll also be able to download a copy of this tracker so you can start using it on your YouTube channel. See below to dive in if you’re already in the Lab, or hit the button to upgrade.

From Inside The YouTube Authority Lab ⏬

Hey, it's Jewel 💎

Auret walked you through the Cheshire Cat problem: without a defined destination, any road will take you there, and on YouTube that usually means grinding through content that never quite connects to the business.

I want to show you what the opposite looks like in practice. One client, one clearly defined objective, and the tracker we use every month to measure whether the channel is actually doing its job. The numbers at the end of this are going to surprise you.

You don’t need a million subscribers. You need to know where you’re going.

We’re giving you a copy of the tracker we use with our clients as a thank you for being a subscriber.

It’ll come blank with the base metrics already set up. Add your own offers and lead magnets alongside those, fill in your numbers each month, and let it tell you whether the channel is moving toward your objective or just moving.

Here is the download link. Make a copy before you start filling it in 🙂

Cheers,

Jewel

P.S. If you prefer we just tell you what to do, upgrade to our founders tier “Custom YouTube Strategy”. We’ll build out your content strategy for your business/niche, we’ll get on a 1:1 90min YouTube strategy call, and give you a research-backed plan so you know exactly what to focus on for the 90 days.

Subscribe now

When I think of “going viral”, I think of influencers doing entertaining, trendy content.

I think of a past client I know who has over 300,000 subscribers and millions of views because he creates viral content - and barely makes $50 a month from that audience.

I also think of the many YouTubers I know who ended up burning out or quitting YouTube because they went viral for a particular topic and now feel stuck creating content about that one thing, for that audience.

I see our work at Essetino Media as uplifting the voices that aren’t necessarily “loud” or “broad-audience” enough to fit the influencer mold… but MAN are they ever brilliant and have a message that can help so many people.

Voices like Jen Kem. Atima Omara. John Briggs. Maeve Ferguson. Tamara Hamai.

You may not have heard their names (and if you have, brownie points!). Just know they are doing incredible work. And I truly see what we do - putting those voices on YouTube - as a positive ripple effect that will continue to impact audiences not just now but for years to come.

This is why you may have heard me call our approach to YouTube the “Anti-Viral YouTube Strategy” because it’s more about creating content that aligns with your values and goals, attracting the right people who deeply resonate with your content…enough to eventually opt into your email list (or Substack!) or become a client.

The Anti-Viral strategy is not for you if you just care about “getting lots of views and subscribers fast”.

More views and subscribers do not equal more people joining your community or program.

This is about aligned attention, not just attention.

And it’s definitely not ‘fast’ because that’s not how trust works (ESPECIALLY in today’s market where we’re all being waaaay more discerning of who we give our time and money to).

The Anti-Viral Strategy runs on three lenses.

Subscribe now

Whenever I do a channel audit, I run the entire channel through these three lenses:

ALIGN. ATTRACT. ACTION.

Let’s run through each one. As we go through these, I want you to answer these questions with your YouTube channel in mind.

1. ALIGN. Your channel should serve a clear role in your business, and so should every single video on it. If it doesn’t align with the channel’s job, it’s just content… and our time is way too valuable to just create content. It’s gotta have a purpose, it’s gotta be intentional. What does success look like for you on YouTube? What do you want the channel to do for your business? What’s the bigger vision, and how does the channel support it?

2. ATTRACT. Your channel needs to speak directly to the ideal viewer you want to reach (your ideal viewer = the person that you best serve, ideally the person who would be a good fit for your offers). When your ideal viewer lands on your channel, is it obvious to them that this channel is for them? Are you creating videos on topics your ideal viewer is actually typing into search (queries based on real challenges or desires)? Are you using language they’d recognize? That last question is a big one – I wrote a LinkedIn post on this about translating your expertise into the language your clients actually use, in a way that makes them understand why it’s relevant to them. You might be explaining things the way YOU understand them, in your own language, but your audience isn’t there yet. They may be describing their problem in completely different words.

3. ACTION. Your channel needs to guide your viewers toward a particular action. ONE main call to action. I know it can be tempting to list out 20 different things you want them to do (Subscribe to my channel! Leave a comment! Like the video! Join my substack! Check out this digital product! etc. … don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about, I see you lol). I want you to pick the one best action - is it subscribing to your Substack? Opting in for a specific checklist because that’s the best place to start with you? Is it requesting a discovery call? This call to action needs to live on the channel homepage, in every video description, and either be visually shown or verbalized in every video.

When someone tells me their channel isn’t producing, this is the diagnostic. One or more of these three is always missing.

I’ll give you an example - we had this one client who is a founder and speaker in the personal finance space. She specializes in helping women entrepreneurs manage their money, simplify investing and achieve financial security.

When I asked her some of these questions, it was clear she wanted to grow her Financial Freedom email list/community, get more opt-ins from YouTube and convert them into her high-ticket accelerator program.

When we audited her channel, over 80% of her viewers were male and mostly from India - totally different from the audience she wanted to attract.

She had 7 different links in her video descriptions with no clear signal on which one to click after watching - there were just way too many lead magnets and resources that she was linking to (essentially all competing with each other), and no call to action anywhere on her banner. ALIGN was missing (what she wanted the channel to do and what it was actually doing were misaligned). ATTRACT was definitely missing (completely wrong audience). And there was some aspect of ACTION but it needed to be simplified way down (remember we need ONE primary link or call to action and keep it the same everywhere).

We built out a new YouTube strategy for her with our recommended positioning (based on competitor and market research), gave her channel homepage a complete makeover and revamped her content strategy to attract her specific audience of women entrepreneurs with established businesses.

If you want to see where your own channel is leaking on ALIGN, ATTRACT, or ACTION, Jewel breaks it down below for you - channel homepage upgrades and changes you can make today.

See ya there.

~ Auret Esselen

From Inside The YouTube Authority Lab ⏬

Hey, it's Jewel 💎

Auret walked you through the three lenses of the Anti-Viral Strategy: Align, Attract, and Action. Now I want to show you where all three show up before a single video plays. Your channel homepage is not a setup step. It's a live business asset, and most people set it up once, forget about it, and let it quietly work against them. I'm pulling up a real client channel to show you what each element looks like when it's doing its job, and where to find every setting in YouTube Studio so you can update yours today.

A homepage that doesn't reflect your current goals is quietly breaking your channel's credibility before anyone watches a single video.

I’ll see you in the next article/video 🙂

Cheers,

Jewel

P.S. If you prefer we just tell you what to do, upgrade to our founders tier “Custom YouTube Strategy”. We’ll build out your content strategy for your business/niche, we’ll get on a 1:1 90min YouTube strategy call, and give you a research-backed plan so you know exactly what to focus on for the 90 days.

Subscribe now

When Jewel and I visited Valensole this past June, I stood at the edge of one of the fields and thought about how every row had to be planted, carefully tended to, pruned and watched through every season, before any of it became the lavender economy we know today.

These fields are cultivated in cycles and seasons, not just planted once and left to grow on their own.

It’s funny because this mentality of “planting once and left to grow” is what I see a lot of business owners and experts do on YouTube.

I see so many treating their YouTube channel like a storage shelf, a place to dump older video content like podcast episodes or livestreams, and now those things are just collecting cyber dust.

I also see channels where that “planting once and left to grow” approach becomes an autoloop that doesn’t produce any results. Meaning, you’re releasing a video and leaving it to grow. Releasing another video and leaving it to grow. There’s consistency in planting a video here and there but because there’s no real strategy behind the videos. There’s planting but no cultivation or development toward a specific goal.

Posting videos and hoping one day it pays off is not a strategy.

If someone taught you to just post videos or that consistency alone would be enough to gain traction on YouTube, getting you to feel like ‘doing something’ is the same thing as progressing toward your goal - it’s not.

This is a very real gap that exists between “posting videos” and “getting email subscribers or clients from YouTube”. And I remember years ago when we got on YouTube, we had to figure this out for ourselves… because everyone was just talking about ‘getting views’ which is not the same goal.

Over time, we’ve developed what I now call the YouTube Authority Formula and it’s the same framework we use behind the scenes working with our clients (typically coaches, consultants, experts, service providers who create educational content).

The YouTube Authority Formula solves the core problem of a channel that a) doesn’t reflect the calibre of an expert’s work and/or b) isn’t producing business outcomes.

There are three layers that turn a channel into an asset for you - and the order matters.

Pillar #1 - Strategy

Strategy always comes first. Always. Before releasing videos, before tweaking titles or thumbnails or anything. Being strategic with your YouTube channel means getting very clear on what you want the channel to do for your visibility and business, who you want to attract, and what action you’re guiding your viewers toward. It’s looking at what we want to achieve in super clear detail and creating the conditions to make that possible.

This pillar makes sure every video serves the primary objective of the channel and reaches the right viewer, not the most viewers.

Ask yourself: If a prospective client watched the last three videos, would they be clear on how you can help them, would they feel like the content was speaking directly to them, and would they feel compelled to take the next action step with you?

Pillar #2 - System

Once you have a solid strategy in place, then you focus on what an effective production system looks like for staying consistent with releasing videos, even when you’ve got a zillion other things going on.

This pillar replaces inconsistent, one-off posting with a repeatable production system that you can realistically keep up with. And constraints are your friend here. Meaning, if you only have 3hrs a month to work on your channel or you have no interest in editing your own videos, etc. - we build a production system that aligns with those constraints (otherwise, you’ll just fall off!).

Ask yourself: What actually happens between having an idea for a video and it going live? Is that process the same each time and is it something you can realistically keep up with?

Pillar #3 - Syndication

Once you’ve got the hang of consistently releasing strategic videos on your channel (for at least 90 days), then you can focus on syndication. This is really how YouTube becomes the main engine that powers your entire content ecosystem, so you don’t need to create anything new or reinvent the wheel.

This is what turns your YouTube channel into a hub that amplifies and compounds your content strategy across other platforms.

Ask yourself: When you publish a video does it show up anywhere else - your emails, other social platforms, or does it live on YouTube and stop there?

If you answered no to any of those ‘ask yourself’ questions - it’s showing you what season you’re in and which pillar(s) need cultivating.

Don’t try to fix all three at once. Take it one step at a time. And just a reminder, Jewel walks you through implementing this framework pillar by pillar inside the YouTube Authority Lab. If you’d like that support, upgrade now to see your next step.

Subscribe now

Until next time,

~ Auret Esselen

1. Michel Krausz, director of CPPARM (the French government’s aromatic and medicinal plants authority), quoted in The Connexion France. Note: This figure is a few years old, and lavender production has declined since due to plant disease affecting the crop.

It started with our travels in June to Paris and the French Riviera and even last month, I intentionally didn’t book a single speaking engagement, workshop or podcast interview. I did this on purpose so that we’d have more room to think, to build, to work on the things that often get shoved into the ‘important but not urgent’ pile (and as a result, they get de-prioritized because other things are always more urgent).

A few things Jewel and I are reflecting on right now:

• What can be added/removed/changed within our done-for-you YouTube services that will absolutely overdeliver for our clients - even more than we are now?

• What does a live in-person event look like, either here in Vancouver or up in Whistler?

• How can we become the best YouTube publication on Substack?

The creative energy is oozing right now. So we’re heading into August feeling energized by these questions rather than feeling stretched thin. Our calendar will pick up again soon enough, but for now we’re enjoying the extra time with family, the longer summer evenings, and pouring our energy into the projects that excite us most.

So here’s a little peek at what’s happening behind the scenes at Essetino this month:

🎬 Essetino Backstage Pass

Substack Relaunch

If you’ve been following along our journey, you’ll recall we officially relaunched our Substack on June 9th with this article here (link to I resented.. article).

Since then I’ve been sharing my thoughts, insights, case studies, and reframes on YouTube’s platform, YouTube strategy for business and visibility in general.

For me, it’s been a chance to return to my roots. I’ve always loved writing, and Substack gives me the space to dive into the strategy, bigger-picture thinking, and ideas that don’t always fit into a YouTube video. At the same time, Jewel brings the implementation side to life, so it’s been really fun to collaborate and build something that reflects both of our strengths.

Since that re-launch date, we’ve welcomed 67 new subscribers and what’s meant even more to us are the thoughtful emails and comments we’ve received from readers saying how much these articles are resonating and changing the way they think about YouTube. I just wanted to share a few below...

“Love this! We say the most enrolling thing you can do (in sales conversations) is be yourself!! Thank you for this powerful example and shedding the light on authentic, messy, original is ranking better and more relatable and trustworthy.”

“I needed to hear this today!”

“Thanks for this great email, Auret and Jewel. I like the idea of being a thought leader on YouTube a whole lot more than a content creator.”

“What a great piece again. This topic/focus really resonates with me.”

Don’t worry, we got more coming 😉

This month, you can expect us to go deeper into what an effective YouTube strategy actually looks like for an expert or business owner who cares about attracting clients from YouTube, not chasing vanity metrics (I call it our ‘Anti-Viral YouTube Strategy’).

And since I know a lot of you have YouTube channels that are just kinda ‘sitting there’ collecting cyber dust, we’ll talk about the difference between planting vs cultivating a YouTube channel - and how to be more intentional so you’re doing the latter.

Because that’s really what this publication is about. It’s not about creating more content to feed an algorithm…this is about sharing your craft, building a searchable body of work, a portfolio of your ideas, sharing real experiences, and integrating what you do with who you are...

I just think that’s a much more meaningful way to approach content creation, and judging by the conversations I’ve been having lately, it seems like many of you do too.

So it’s gonna get fun ‘round here, hope you don’t mind!

💎 Community Spotlight

This month, we’re celebrating Noel Lorenzana, a CPA and Tax Resolution Specialist.

Noel recently hit a huge milestone on YouTube: 75,000 subscribers 🎉.

We did a few YouTube coaching sessions with Noel a few years ago and it’s been so cool to see how much he’s grown on YouTube.

In his post celebrating the milestone he shared that he feels called to this work and simply keeps showing up, learning, improving, and trusting the process.

And I see why he keeps growing because that pretty much sums up the secret to success on YouTube (or anything for that matter!) - being able to do these two things at once: continue showing up/planting the seeds without getting discouraged AND stay adaptable/know what to improve along the way.

Congratulations, Noel 👋We can’t wait to see what the next chapter looks like.

✨ Currently Sparking Joy

What’s still sparking joy for Jewel (and okay...maybe me as well 😏) is all the butter and baguettes she ate in France.

If you’ve ever been to France, you know the butter is just out of this world.

It sparked so much joy, in fact, that she vacuum-sealed five blocks of butter and brought them all the way back home to Vancouver. 😂

She’s been eating it every day since she got home.

💌 This Month’s Mantra

“There's only one thing you can become the world's leading expert in with zero competition, something no one can ever take from you or do better. That's being more of yourself.

Bring more of you into the work. That's your edge.”

📺 Coming Up on the Channel

✅ This week, Jewel check’s out YouTube's new AI feature in the channel analytics dashboard. How does it work and is it useful?

✅ Later in the week, I share how to add or switch out your logo to a PDF doc using Adobe Acrobat Pro.

✅ Next week, Jewel walks your step-by-step through what you get with our FREE YouTube Authority Checklist.

✅ Then later in the month, we discuss why our YouTube videos don’t get millions of views and why we’re totally ok with that. What are the real metrics that matter?

Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel so you don’t miss a thing…

Talk soon,

Auret & Jewel

Subscribe to The Profitable YouTube Playbook

By Auret Esselen & Jewel Tolentino

A fresh take on using YouTube for experts, business owners and thought leaders - we call it the Anti-Viral Strategy. Subscribe for weekly insights on growing your presence, getting found in search, and attracting aligned clients through YouTube - all backed by what works now and 11+ years of real-world experience.

Subscribe now

The belief is this: I need to sound like and act like my competitors (or *insert some successful YouTuber’s name here*), in order to see success on YouTube.

They don’t outright say this…it shows up when I audit a channel and see the same things over and over again like:

• Using clickbait-y or hook-y titles

• Super polished production and/or perfect filming setup with that colored backlighting style that every big channel seems to use right now

• Borrowing the same thumbnail style - colors, fonts, facial expressions, etc. - from someone who’s already getting traction.

None of that is wrong on its own. And YES copying what others do is literally a working strategy that many people use.

What DOESN’T work (and honestly scrunches me up) is when a client doesn’t actually like doing it or it doesn’t feel like them - and they do it anyway.

So I ask them the same questions: Does this feel natural to you? Do these things accurately represent what you talk about in the video and/or your brand? Do these things resonate with your audience? Can you keep this up consistently without burning out or feeling gross because it’s not you?

If the answer is no to any of these questions - Don’t. Do. It.

HubSpot’s own research (in their Consumer Trends Report) found that, when it comes to social content, people prefer relatable and authentic video (63%) over polished, high-production video (37%).

And in my work supporting business owners on YouTube, the clients who naturally lean into who they are…into what actually makes them different, are the ones who see traction. And it’s not always the most charismatic or funniest or entertaining or well-spoken person.

I had a client who was super dry, nerdy and ‘seemingly boring’ on camera, and his channel still blew up because his audience appreciated the value he shared in his videos and how raw he was being. He wasn’t trying to be hype or anything (which was common in his niche) - his audience could tell he was being authentic and trusted him more.

Look, there will always be competition. Other people talking about what you talk about, in your space, to your audience. You might explain it differently, but your viewer is watching their videos too.

What makes you stand out is never going to be more of them. If anything, trying to be more like a bigger channel makes it harder. You’re not just competing with their expertise anymore, you’re competing with their style of delivery and the way they package their videos, and the traction they’ve already built. Their viewers and the algorithm are already familiar with their content. If you’re a new channel (or working on resuscitating the one you have), you haven’t built that credibility with the algorithm or your viewers yet.

Sounds cheesy, I know. But that’s why many brush it off or think it’s not enough.

You already hold an uncontested monopoly in being yourself…the specific mix of the stories you have, what you’ve lived/studied/explored, and how you actually think through a problem. Nobody can copy that unique mix.

When you lean into who you are and the algorithm sees your viewers staying and actually engaging, it starts showing your videos to more viewers with similar watch patterns. Ironically, sometimes it suggests your videos on the bigger channel you were trying to imitate in the first place. And that’s a good thing by the way - that’s you benefiting from their audience instead of trying to beat them at their own game.

I watched this happen with our client, Jen Kem.

Before we started managing her channel, she used to rent studio space to film her videos, hire a videographer, get all done up with hair and makeup, have multiple outfits…the whole polished setup shebang. But something about this setup just wasn’t bringing out the Jen that we knew - the passion and conviction that she speaks in, the flow in which she tells stories or anecdotes etc. - it was too rigid, formal, and the version of her that shows up in person and on stage disappeared in that studio setup.

So when our team took over her YouTube channel, we scrapped it. Now we either capture her in person, speaking at live events or on dedicated YouTube-filming Zoom sessions. We come to the call with prepared topics and prompt her/ask her questions that align with the strategy of the channel, she answers them naturally, we film it and edit it for YouTube.

And one of her most-watched videos to date is actually her sitting in front of her laptop on a couch, no makeup, not dressed up, sharing raw, unscripted thought. That video is now pulling views from Alex Hormozi’s audience.

(Side note: the latter part was intentional - we optimized the video to pull from Alex’s audience. The former part was not - we didn’t anticipate recording her, she was just on fire and we wanted to capture it!)

This video did well because she showed up as Jen, not Alex. Because of what she’s saying and how’s she’s saying it given her expertise and experience as one of the top brand strategists for personal brands and thought leaders.

(by the way, I gotta give a little plug here…Jen just launched her Substack publication “The Missing Manuscript” - I saw a teensy preview of it and it’s GOLD, check it out here).

So my reminder to you is: don’t be tempted to copy what others are doing. Instead, how can you bring more of YOU into how you show up on YouTube? (or anywhere, for that matter).

Bringing more of you is your edge.

Jewel's been filming for over a decade and has put over 2,000 videos on camera between us. She's pulled together the exact setup she uses, the locations, the gear, the mindset reps, and the one question you need to ask yourself before you ever hit record. That's inside this week's YouTube Authority Lab.

See you there.

~Auret Esselen

From Inside The YouTube Authority Lab ⏬

Hi it’s Jewel here 💎

Auret laid out why being more of yourself is the only edge no one can copy. Now I want to get into the part that actually keeps most people stuck before they ever get there: filming.

Not strategy. Not titles. Just the physical act of hitting record and talking.

Here’s what I’ve learned from over 2,000 videos between us, and from watching our clients get in their own way on this more times than I can count.

The setup, the location, the wardrobe, none of it matters as much as getting the video done and getting the reps in 🚀

As mentioned in my video above, here is Auret’s 19 Tips to Make Filming Videos Easier ⬇️

That's the whole framework. Decent gear, used consistently, with a setup simple enough that you can go from zero to filming in under five minutes. That's what 2,000 videos taught us.

Cheers,

Jewel

P.S. If you prefer we just tell you what to do, upgrade to our founders tier “Custom YouTube Strategy”. We’ll build out your content strategy for your business/niche, we’ll get on a 1:1 90min YouTube strategy call, and give you a research-backed plan so you know exactly what to focus on for the 90 days.

Subscribe now

I was staying in Théoule, a small village in the south of France, in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and masterminding with a group of friends, leaders and founders. We’d just finished a session and took a break. I stepped out onto the patio, sat down with my laptop in front of this view, and something told me to just start writing. I was in total flow and felt so much joy sitting there writing. I forgot that writing does that to me…it always has.

It was in that moment, I made a decision to do content differently moving forward.

The way we’ve approached content for years was:

YouTube first – film the YouTube video, and that video becomes the mothership for your Infinite Content System, the piece everything else gets extracted from:

1. YouTube shorts

2. Instagram reels and posts

3. LinkedIn posts

4. Email newsletter

5. Substack

One video, feeding every platform downstream - it allows us to be strategic with our content, without having to reinvent the wheel for every single platform.

But on that patio, I remembered a few things about myself that had gotten buried under the work.

1. I’m a writer. A writer who happens to make videos. But a writer, first.

When I was a kid, I came home from school and wrote stories of adventure and mystery. I journaled. I wrote poetry and lyrics. I had a poem published in a collection when I was nine, and won a Nashville songwriting award.

2. The act of writing for me is more than just another mode of producing content. Writing is an act of thinking. It allows me to go beyond surface-level communication and naturally express deeper levels of thought, see things from different perspectives, find common patterns across disciplines, and share stories. Writing is art. And I’m always looking to integrate more of my art with my business.

3. In my business, I’m really great at sharing what I know, but that’s not the same thing as what I see and how I think. As we go further into this age of AI, I strongly believe the world will need (and require) more of the latter.

We don’t need more information on how to do things. We need discernment, and a better understanding of how to sift through/think about the information so we can make better decisions.

So here’s what’s changing. Instead of using YouTube as my mothership, I’m shifting to a Substack-first approach.

I’m writing the Substack article first, and that piece becomes the outline for the YouTube video, which still feeds the same downstream formats it always has.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “*gasp* Auret, are you abandoning your YouTube-first approach?!” - yess AND this isn’t me telling you to deprioritize YouTube.

In fact, Jewel will still be using YouTube as her mothership - because her best thinking happens speaking out loud. Mine happens with writing. Even when I’m planning my YouTube videos, I’ve always started with writing notes before filming. I just never called that the mothership. I called it prep.

It doesn’t matter whether you do a YouTube-first approach or Substack-first approach. What matters is deciding which platform lets you create in a way that best expresses your thought leadership, the one that will feed everything else. Get that right and it naturally raises the quality of your entire content ecosystem.

If your ideal client isn’t there, you’re wasting your time and effort, because the content won’t grow your business. When the way you create on a platform doesn’t match how you actually think, you sacrifice depth with your audience, which may or may not matter to you, but it matters to me. And if you can’t show up there every week without burning out, your entire content ecosystem sits on an unstable foundation. Because if you break that foundation, everything downstream breaks with it.

So I’ll ask you what I asked myself on that patio. Where do you do your best thinking? Is it on the page? Out loud? Somewhere else entirely? Comment below, would love to hear your thoughts.

Next week, I’ll introduce you to our framework, the YouTube Authority Formula, the big picture roadmap that tells you exactly what to focus on, and the three layers for turning your channel into a brand visibility and business growth asset.

And if you want the tactical side behind this thinking (creating your Infinite Content System), Jewel breaks it down in the YouTube Authority Lab (our paid subscription tier, it’s $15/month, cancel anytime). She's been running this system for herself and our clients for close to two years, and she's pulling up the exact tool we use inside this week's YouTube Authority Lab to show you how it works step by step.

Until next time,

~ Auret Esselen

From Inside The YouTube Authority Lab ⏬

Read more

She stumbled upon our video (which was published early last year) from YouTube’s search results, watched the video, clicked the call to action link in our video description and filled out the form on our website to request a discovery call.

What if a video you filmed 1/2/3 years ago is still finding new clients for you today, without you touching it, boosting it, or posting about it again?

This actually happens on our channel often because we have a lot of videos still being found today in search results, compounding our visibility, and I want to show you the data behind it.

In my 7+ years of presenting and talking to many people about YouTube, I find that most people understand YouTube is a search engine…but they don’t really, truly, deeply understand what that means for their business and how they can leverage this.

Over the last 365 days, the Essetino Media YouTube channel generated 876,901 views and 23,168 hours of watch time.

Here’s the traffic source breakdown, straight from YouTube Studio analytics:

YouTube search: 304,854 views (34.8%)
External traffic: 436,919 views (49.8%)

Within that external traffic, Google Search alone sent 334,121 views, which is 76.5% of all external traffic and 38.1% of total channel views.

Yahoo Search sent another 3,877. Bing sent 1,326. DuckDuckGo sent 1,902. Brave Search sent 805, etc.

And then there’s this: ChatGPT.com and the OpenAI app together sent 2,594 views to the channel in the last year. We haven’t focused much on optimizing videos for AI search results so this is without really trying. As we start to apply more AEO methods (which we’re testing right now), I am anticipating the percentage of views from AI platforms like ChatGPT to increase.

But I’m sharing all of this with you so you can see that these are all different forms of search platforms where our videos keep getting surfaced.

When you add up YouTube search and Google Search alone, that’s 638,975 views, or 73% of all views on the channel, coming from search. And some of these videos are from years ago.

One video, published once, being discovered across multiple search environments simultaneously, for free, for months and years after it was filmed.

Your videos can surface in multiple search environments at once:

• YouTube’s own search engine.

• Google Search, where videos are indexed simultaneously.

• Google AI Overviews.

• ChatGPT and other AI tools.

• Perplexity, where YouTube is the number one cited domain.

• Bing and every other search engine downstream.

You publish once. You get surfaced across all of it.

This is what I mean when I talk about our Anti-Viral Strategy. We’re not here to chase feeds, do a daily content grind just to stay top of mind, or try to ‘stop the scroll’. We’re here to build a searchable body of work that earns its own distribution, long after we hit publish.

And the research backs this up beyond my own channel or our client’s channels.

A BrightEdge study tracking AI citations from May 2024 to September 2025 found that YouTube is cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI search results 200 times more than any other video platform.¹

That means the experts building their authority on YouTube right now are the ones AI will be referencing for years to come. The videos you create today become source material.

This is how our voice and message can continue to be heard in the noisy landscape of AI-generated content - by having AI serve up and cite our videos. I mean if you can’t beat ‘em, let’s find a way to join ‘em with integrity - right? 😉

And here’s what makes this specific to YouTube in a way no other platform can claim: the viewers who find you through search aren’t scrolling and getting interrupted by your content. They went looking. They typed in a question, and your video came up as the answer. That’s a categorically different person than the one who saw your Instagram post in a feed. The viewer who finds you through search is already in the mindset of seeking, which means they’re far more likely to watch longer and eventually buy from you (I wrote about this in a previous article, which you can read here).

Think about the hour you spend writing an Instagram caption, finding the image, deciding whether to post a story too. That post lives in feeds for 48 hours, maybe less. My channel data shows that same hour invested in a YouTube video is still generating views 365 days later, across search engines, AI tools, and platforms I didn’t even publish to.

This is why if you create educational content, you need to be on YouTube.

And if you’re already on YouTube - go into your YouTube Studio Dashboard > Analytics > Advanced and check your traffic sources to see if your videos are being found in search traffic.

If you need some extra help optimizing your videos for search, consider upgrading to our YouTube Authority Lab subscription tier. There Jewel walks you through our SEO method and exactly how to optimize your videos so they surface in search, get indexed by Google, and earn the kind of AI citations this data is pointing to.

Subscribe now

See you there.

~ Auret Esselen

1. BrightEdge, “AI Engines Choose YouTube 200x More Than Any Other Video Platform,” data compiled May 2024 to September 2025. Reported via Search Engine Land: https://searchengineland.com/youtube-ai-search-citations-data-462830 and BrightEdge: https://www.brightedge.com/resources/weekly-ai-search-insights/youtube-presence-ai-search

So I will just tell you what happened.

We walked the cobblestone streets of Montmartre where Picasso and van Gogh once lived. We stood in front of Monet's water lilies, the actual canvas, paint that a real hand moved. Notre Dame. The Louvre. The Eiffel Tower lit up at night. There's a subtle magic about Paris... a synchronistic heartbeat you can feel radiating across every site.

Then we took a train south to Provence and stayed in a tiny town that taught me how to live slower and love bigger. Humble accommodations. Locals who treated us like we were welcome there. We hiked the Mary Magdalene pilgrimage and walked into the Basilique Sainte Marie Madeleine while the organ was playing, and I'm not exaggerating when I say every cell in my body smiled. We stood in lavender fields. We ate croissants that pretty much ruined every croissant I've ever had since. And we did all of it with my favorite travel buddies... the stories from that stretch alone could fill three newsletters.

We finished in the French Riviera for the Cannes Lions Festival and a leadership mastermind, staying in a villa with a view of the Mediterranean Sea. Good humans, good wine, good long talks on a terrace at the end of long days. We even had one day where we had breakfast in France, lunch in Monaco and dinner in Italy! I mean, it was just so perfect.

As I reflect on the past couple of weeks, I'm realizing I really needed this. It gave me enough space to process, to reflect, to actually look at how I want to show up for the back half of this year and beyond.

So, I'm heading into July full instead of empty, which is rare and worth naming.

Here's a look at what's happening behind the scenes at Essetino this month…

🎬 Essetino Backstage Pass

Substack Relaunch

Last month, we officially relaunched our Substack 🎉

To date, we’ve shared our expertise through YouTube videos and repurposed those into Substack posts. But lately I’ve been craving a space for deeper conversations, and I’d love to share more of my written thoughts with you on YouTube strategy, content marketing, and visibility as a whole.

Here are a few things you can expect:

• Behind the scenes conversations and stories around being visible on YouTube and what it takes/what to expect

• Real examples of what’s actually working right now on YouTube for consultants, coaches, speakers, educators, and personal brands using YouTube as an asset for growth

• What we’ve learned building a YouTube strategy that has generated multiple six figures in revenue without paid ads, going viral, or chasing trends that don’t feel authentic to us

• Insights on how to build a YouTube presence that reflects the calibre of your work and feeds your business goals, pulled straight from what we’re seeing in the field/in our work with client

If you’re the type to enjoy more raw thoughts, stories and behind-the-scenes content, you’ll probably feel right at home here.

To get a taste, I invite you to read these first two articles since the relaunch (if you haven’t already):

I Resented Creating Content for Years

The Viewer Who Hires You is Searching Not Scrolling

Q3 and Q4 Goals

July is also a good checkpoint to re-assess and re-align goals for the rest of the year. We zoom out to look at the bigger picture and ask ourselves what’s working? What’s not? What do we want more of? What feels aligned...and what feels like we’re doing it just because we always have?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be mapping out and rejigging our plans for Q3 and Q4, including some exciting projects, speaking opportunities, and ways we can better serve our community.

It’s one of our favourite exercises because it brings so much clarity and intention to everything we create.

💎 Community Spotlight

We ran our first 4-hr YouTube Strategy Lab this past month and it was a HUGE success with our community and the Thought Leadership Collective 🎉

We absolutely LOVE turning that intimidation around YouTube in people into excitement and pure “holy sh*t why have I not done this sooner!”

Some big wins were shared in the room like:

“I’m updating my YouTube channel now”
“I’m so clear now on what I need to do next”
“I’m going to film videos this weekend”
“This finally feels DOABLE!”

We’re considering hosting more virtual hands-on workshops like this, where we actually get work done for your YouTube channel together in the room. I’d love to hear from you - is this something you’d be interested in? Comment below.

✨ Currently Sparking Joy

What’s sparking joy for us this month is simple: a Vancouver summer. ☀️

We’re hoping to do Widgeon Falls again, the hike near Pitt Meadows where you canoe through the marshes first and the waterfall is only reachable by water, hidden in the forest like it’s testing whether you actually want to find it. You do. The effort is sooo worth it.

And we’re planning a trip to Playland, which is the main amusement park here in Vancouver. Going to take my 3 nephews there (they’re ages 7, 10, 13) when we get back from France. Fun fact: Vancouver is home to Canada’s oldest wooden roller coaster 🎢 it’s rickety as hell but that’s why everyone loves it. I’m not a fan of the roller coaster but reeeaaally love the Atmosfear ride. It’s a next level swing ride - you’re raised 218ft up to the sky while spinning 360° at 70km/hr. For some, it’s a ride that leaves you begging for solid ground but for others (including moi) - it’s a breathtaking experience that makes you feel like flying with a gorgeous panoramic view of the entire city.

💌 This Month’s Mantra

“Be the first.”

📺 Coming Up on the Channel

✅ Later this week, we share a presentation we did with Hailey Rowe discussing our YouTube Authority Formula.

✅ Next week, Jewel explains how to add or remove admin access to your YouTube channel, an updated version of this video for 2026.

✅ Soon after, I share 19 tips to make filming YouTube videos easier for business owners - all tried, true and tested by us!

✅ Then later in the month, we talk about how YouTube invited us to their creator event in Cannes. I go through the process of filling out the form, and will update you guys if we get to go.

Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel so you don’t miss a thing…

Talk soon,

Auret & Jewel

Subscribe to The Profitable YouTube Playbook

By Auret Esselen & Jewel Tolentino

A fresh take on using YouTube for experts, business owners and thought leaders - we call it the Anti-Viral Strategy. Subscribe for weekly insights on growing your presence, getting found in search, and attracting aligned clients through YouTube - all backed by what works now and 11+ years of real-world experience.

Subscribe now

Think about it.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “content creation,” I get an instant ‘blech’ response. A feeling of ‘I really don’t want to do this’ or ‘that’s just not me, I’m not a content creator.’

And it’s funny, because even though I create content and help my clients create content all the time, I wouldn’t call myself a content creator.

In addition to being a YouTube strategist and agency owner, I’m also a singer and music artist. And I share this with you because it’s genuinely changed how I think about creating content.

Take one of my favorite artists of all time: Michael Jackson.

Ten studio albums, and dozens of singles, thirteen of which hit number one on the Billboard Hot 1001. But most of what he wrote never made it that far. In a 2001 online audio chat sponsored by Rolling Stone, Jackson said he wrote so many songs for one album that he "didn't even want to say the number," just to get down to the 16 that made the final cut2. The rest stayed in the vault. Some leaked years later. Some never surfaced at all. The songs you know, "Billie Jean," "Thriller," "Man in the Mirror," are a tiny sliver of a much bigger body of work that most people never actually heard.

When I started to think of myself as the artist of my YouTube channel, where every video contributes to my body of work, something clicked.

Because it became less about making content and more about craft. More about shaping and building my catalog or portfolio, knowing it would eventually lead to the ‘hits’ that others would come to know me for.

That’s really how we approach YouTube with every video released on the channel. Sharing your expertise, your stories, your way of thinking - that’s what builds trust with others. And this catalog that you’re building will naturally separate the people who resonate with your work and buy from you, from the people who never were your audience to begin with.

In fact, we’re not just creating a body of work - we’re creating a searchable body of work that will continue to be found and referenced for years to come.

By the search engines. By AI. By other people in your industry.

This is what makes YouTube different. It’s the only platform where what you publish today can continue to be discovered and keep working for you years from now.

We’re not here to feed an algorithm daily, or stay on a content hamster wheel that ends up burning us out.

We’re not here to compete with the louder voices in our space or area of expertise. And we don’t have to sound like them in order for us to get a better ROI from our videos.

We’re here to be the artist. To be ourselves. Because I have no interest in becoming a viral influencer, and I’m not here to be a general content creator.

I’m on this platform because I want to be known and respected for my craft and area of expertise. And I’m here to leverage the search engine side of YouTube, because it’s what feeds all other search references and that will work for me in perpetuity.

So what kinds of videos do you create to best leverage the search engine aspect of YouTube? There are 3 specific video types that build this kind of searchable body of work, the ones we’ve seen actually generate leads for our clients.

A single video should do at least these three jobs at once: it positions you as a unique authority in your space, it leverages YouTube’s search algorithm, and it attracts the right person, the one who eventually becomes your client.

If you want to see what those video types are and how to apply them to your business, Jewel covers that inside the YouTube Authority Lab.

Talk soon,

~Auret Esselen

“Our views are so low on our videos... I feel like we got shadow banned or something.”

She was consistently publishing YouTube videos for over a year, posting weekly podcast episodes to her channel and hadn’t seen much come from it (a very common “point A” I see in many of my clients).

And I explained to her that, in me auditing her YouTube analytics - I saw absolutely no signs of shadow banning… I actually saw that YouTube was showing her videos to thousands of people who appeared to be the right audience but they just weren’t clicking on her videos to watch them (hence the ‘low views’).

I asked her what are some things her ideal client would be typing into the YouTube search, Google or even ChatGPT.

She paused and she said, “I’m not sure; I’ve been using Claude to generate some of those ideas and to help me come up with titles - is that no good?”

The problem isn’t Claude. The problem is asking Claude (or whatever LLM you use) to write titles without giving it critical context like: what your YouTube strategy is, what’s the objective of your channel/video, and who is this video supposed to attract?

When you don’t give your AI tool enough context, it defaults to writing for the broadest audience and the most common pattern in its training data, which includes a lot of viral content creator-esque stuff like story hooks “I tried this…”, typical marketer hooks “The ONE thing…”, pattern interrupts (which can sometimes be click-baity or based on fear-based marketing “Don’t do X until you’ve watched this”), etc. Titles and angles that may capture attention of a scroller on YouTube.

But the viewer who seeks out expert advice is not scrolling. They’re actively searching.

A searcher types something into the search bar. She has a problem, a question, a decision in front of her, and she’s looking for someone who can help provide answers or insight. A searcher is a high-intent viewer compared to a scroller. High-intent because she’s more likely to be a potential buyer, because she’s seeking advice or knowledge on your topic of expertise.

A scroller is being moved by the current of the feed, the algorithm deciding what he sees next, open to being entertained, surprised, enlightened, hoping to pass time. He’s not there to hire you.

Most of the YouTube advice out there is for that second viewer.

If you’re not looking to become the next Mr Beast or viral influencer, and you instead want to attract clients from YouTube, you’re going to be led astray by that advice (and by AI if you don’t give it the right context!).

You actually want most (over 50%) of your traffic to come from search. Like this just taken screenshot of our channel, so you can see the majority of our traffic comes from search:

(Most of our external traffic, by the way, is from search too - Google Search.)

This distinction is the foundation of the Anti-Viral Strategy, and it’s the reason most expert channels stall at a certain point and never figure out why.

It’s also why my client’s “shadow ban” wasn’t a shadow ban. Her titles and thumbnails were being generated by AI without clarity on her audience or what her audience was searching for, so they ended up working for nobody.

I always love sharing this story of another client of ours, Tiffany at Investor Life, who made a $10,000 sale into her high-ticket mentorship. That client came from one video that had under 100 views at the time, and on a channel with fewer than 1,000 subscribers at the time.

That video would’ve been considered a failure by every metric the scroller world cares about…and yet, it was the most successful piece of content her business produced all year.

Juicy, right? This is good news because you don’t need many views on your videos to make sales - you just need a handful of the right viewers.

(Side note: this is also why I keep saying that YouTube SEO is not dead…it’s just different. You can watch this video if you’re curious to hear my thoughts on that. For an expert-led business and YouTube channel, search is THE strategy I’d recommend focusing on - especially since AI will be referencing you/your videos…more on that in a future article! 🤓)

A year of making content for the wrong viewer slowly trains you to sound like someone you’re not. You’ll quit YouTube because you won’t see results, you won’t feel like you, and you’ll feel pigeonholed into talking about something you don’t want to talk about… I’ve seen it happen so many times.

This week inside the YouTube Authority Lab, we’re focusing on how to be found in the search algorithm. Jewel is going to show you examples of what this looks like in practice so you can implement this on your channel.

You can access this now by unlocking the paid content below.

See you there.

~Auret Esselen

From Inside The YouTube Authority Lab ⏬

Read more

Not the uber charismatic one who puts on a performance when they speak to camera, nor the one who chases trends or dances next to pointed text on Instagram reels. Nothing wrong with that… it’s just not for me. And you won’t find me on TikTok. 🙅🏼‍♀️

I don’t care about being a viral influencer or being the next Mr. Beast.

Here’s what I DO care about: being respected for my area of expertise, speaking and sharing my voice, educating others because this work impacts lives, growing my business, creating every day, and finding opportunities for connection and resonance.

For a long time, I deeply resented creating content because what I wanted to post didn’t look like the content that ‘did well’. And I dunno about you but, when I don’t feel connected to the content I’m creating, trying to stay consistent is not only impossible…it’s actually quite a miserable endeavour!

And for a lot of smart, thoughtful business owners, that’s usually the point where the whole thing starts feeling exhausting before it’s even begun.

Not because they aren’t capable of doing YouTube…

…but because they’re trying to force themselves into a version of YouTube that was never designed for them in the first place.

The only way I was able to figure this out was to create, test and refine my own strategy over the years - even though the ‘gurus’ said ‘you’re doing it wrong’.

Fast forward to today, that same strategy has:

• Generated multiple six figures in revenue and attracts new & aligned email subscribers every week.

• Attracted speaking opportunities every month, because the right people are finding our work and inviting us into rooms we didn’t have to pitch our way into.

• Made filming soo much easier - we can be ourselves on camera, with a setup and filming rhythm that is easy to get into.

• Built a body of work that compounds - when I get on a sales call, people are already pre-sold because the videos pre-qualify and have been doing so for years.

This is why this publication exists - to simplify YouTube and to teach you how to truly leverage this platform so you can build something that lasts. You’re not creating content here. You’re building a thought leadership asset.

What you can expect in the free publication

Every week we share what is actually working on YouTube right now for consultants, coaches, speakers, educators, and personal brands who want their channel to do real business work. Channel positioning. Video topics that earn the right viewers. Filming setups that make you look as credible as you are. Titles, thumbnails, and structures we test in our own work and with our clients.

This is also where we share our proprietary frameworks: the Anti-Viral Strategy, the YouTube Authority Formula, and The Profitable Channel framework, all developed inside our agency Essetino Media and used by the multi-6, 7, and 8-figure personal brands we serve.

And that’s just the free publication.

What you can expect in our paid publication

I want to take this opportunity to also tell you about our upgraded membership tiers, if you could use some extra accountability and are serious about implementing what you learn here.

The YouTube Authority Lab

The YouTube Authority Lab is our first paid subscription tier. Each week, we break down one key YouTube lever into bite-sized, actionable steps you or someone on your team can implement right away. Alongside that, you’ll get access to the prompts, tools, and templates we use with clients, plus real-world breakdowns of what’s working on YouTube right now, inclduing winning video formats to title angles and thumbnail approaches you can immediately apply to your niche.

Custom YouTube Strategy

Custom YouTube Strategy is our founding member tier. You get everything inside YouTube Authority Lab, plus an annual private 90min YouTube Strategy Session with me (Auret) and Jewel. This is for you if you want to move faster and have us build out a research-backed YouTube strategy for your business (or update your existing strategy) so that it aligns with your goals, with what your market is searching for and what we know works to get you better results on YouTube. The strategy we build for you will tell you exactly what to focus on over the next 90 days to position yourself as a trusted authority on YouTube and attract the right audience.

Upgrade to The Lab or Book Your Custom YouTube Strategy.

Subscribe now

While May was pretty chock-full of travel and speaking engagements, June is going to be very similar except with more French baguettes! (foreshadowing...keep reading😂 )

And in the middle of an already full calendar, Jewel and I also enrolled in two intensive courses at the same time. One on AI, one on Substack.

Both worth every hour.…but also, why do we entrepreneurs do this to ourselves? 🫠

There’s something I’ve come to love about how Jewel and I run this business - we’d rather be in the room learning the new thing while it’s still new, than wait until everyone else has figured it out.

The AI course is already shaping how we’re thinking about client work, and the Substack one is rewiring how I’m approaching this very newsletter you’re reading.

More on both soon.

But for now, here’s a little peek at what’s happening behind the scenes at Essetino this month…

🎬 Essetino Backstage Pass

YouTube Strategy Lab

On June 12th, Jewel and I are hosting a brand new YouTube Strategy Lab in collaboration with The Thought Leadership Collective.

It’s a live 4-hour intensive designed to build out your YouTube strategy - one that aligns with your business - and also map out an uber clear system for producing videos that feel manageable long-term.

This is going to be so much more than just a passive webinar or generic workshop.

It’s a hands on working session with only 20 virtual seats available, and we’ll be giving live feedback throughout the workshop as participants build in real time alongside us.

More details on this coming very soon 👀

GUILD Mastermind in France

Hold onto your baguettes people…Essetino is going to FRANCE! 🥖

...Paris, Provence, Cannes and the French Riviera to be exact!

We’re headed out there for a retreat with our GUILD Leadership Mastermind.

It will personally be my first time in France so I’m excited to also tour around Paris and do some sightseeing (if you have any recommendations for what I should see/eat/do, let me know!).

The GUILD is an invite-only mastermind founded by our business advisor Jen Kem for high-level women founders, thought leaders, and business owners who are building brands rooted in real impact, visibility, and sustainable growth.

We’ve talked about these masterminds before, but they’re always such a special experience - a few days spent deepening relationships, sharing ideas, and sparking aligned partnerships (or as Jen calls them, creationships) that often grow into bigger, more meaningful opportunities.

💎 Community Spotlight

This month, we’re celebrating Faith Marshall, who is getting ready to launch her new YouTube channel, Dementia411 💛

We recently drove down to Seattle to film with Faith and, in true “batch content day” fashion, Faith filmed 10 videos in under 3 hours 💥🎬

Dementia411 was created to be a resource hub, to educate and support families navigating dementia with a loved one. It’s channels like these that make us feel incredibly honored to help amplify such an important mission.

✨ Currently Sparking Joy

As mentioned earlier, Jewel and I are heading to France for the very first time!

We’ll be there during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which brings together creatives, marketers, and tech leaders from around the world. It’s the largest gathering in the creative marketing community and is often referred to as the “Oscars of advertising and marketing.”

I absolutely cannot WAIT to sip some espresso, see some iconic architecture, and of course eat all the baguettes, croissants, and cheese my heart desires.

In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll just be over here brushing up on my Grade 10 French 😂.

“Merci beaucoup” and “je ne comprends pas” should get me pretty far, right?

💌 This Month’s Mantra

“Don't scale your thinking. Scale the distribution.”

📺 Coming Up on the Channel

✅ Earlier this week, Jewel talks about her experience building a brand new channel from scratch - including the affiliate income she’s earned so far, some of the free products she’s received. Watch it here.

✅ Later this week, I’m talking about why YouTube is one of the most powerful platforms for thought leaders right now - especially in the age of AI - and why sharing your perspective online matters more than ever. Watch it here.

✅ Next week, we’re debunking 30 YouTube myths 👀 Some are obvious…some definitely aren’t. A few of them are probably holding people back more than they realize.

✅ Then later in the month, Jewel reviews Be Your Future Self Now by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and shares her honest thoughts on the book, the ideas that stood out most, and whether it’s actually worth the read.

Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel so you don’t miss a thing…

Talk soon,

Auret & Jewel

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial

Because I did not want to be pigeonhole’d into talking about 1 thing just to please an algorithm. Barf. 🤮

And people judge us all the time for it…

‘Why does that video only have 82 views?’

‘Why do you only have that many subscribers?’

What they don’t know is that we chose not to niche down - on purpose. And yes, we are sacrificing ‘fast growth’ on the platform - but ‘fast growth’ is not what I’m after.

I’m not measuring my success by # of views or subscribers.

I’m measuring success by “did this video reach the right viewer?” and “did it resonate with that viewer?”.

I’m not interested in creating trending content, going viral or vanity metrics. I’m interested in positive comments, # of email opt-ins, requests to book a call, and sales/business revenue, which is a completely different strategy.

And this is why it’s easy to be led astray or feel utterly disappointed about your channel. This is why most don’t even bother with YouTube, period.

Because the majority of YouTube advice out there was built for content creators.

If you want more views, more subscribers, better thumbnails, and a smarter upload schedule - there is no shortage of people or AI outputs telling you exactly how to get there.

But if you are a coach, a consultant, or a service-based business owner?

That advice is solving the wrong problem.

Views do not pay your invoices. Subscribers do not book discovery calls.

A channel with 500 highly specific, deeply aligned viewers will outperform a channel with 50,000 general audience viewers every. single. time.

I have spent years watching brilliant experts build YouTube channels that look like content creator channels instead of business assets.

The content is good. The results are not.

That is why I’m relaunching our Substack publication and we’re calling it:

The Profitable YouTube Playbook.

It is a Substack publication for coaches, consultants, and service-based business owners who want a YouTube channel that reflects the calibre of their work and actually attracts clients. Not just an audience. The right community.

It re-launches today 🎉 and I have some juicy thangs lined up for you.

Founding Members get something a lil’ extra special - something the standard free subscription does not include. That tier closes June 26th and will not reopen at this price.

Regardless of whether you’re a free or paid subscriber, my intention is the same: to share what’s actually working NOW on YouTube for business owners who care about building the right audience around their work and don’t care about becoming a viral influencer. If that’s you, I think you’ll find something valuable inside this publication.

Subscribe and you will be inside from day one. 😉

~ Auret

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial

Especially with how quickly AI is changing things.

People aren’t just going to YouTube to get answers and learn things anymore... they’re being more discerning about who to actually trust now.

Which means your content isn’t just content anymore.

It’s convincing people (or not) whether you are a real human being and whether you’re trustworthy/you are who you say you are.

So if you have real experience, real insight, and real stories…that matters a lot more than having the perfect lighting or filming setup.

I know there can be a bit of a barrier to entry when it comes to YouTube, but the people who are willing to show up, share their perspective, and stay consistent over time are the ones who end up building real authority.

Not just views or subscribers, but actual trust with the right people.

In this week’s video, I break down three simple shifts I’ve seen make a huge difference when it comes to turning YouTube viewers into clients.

This isn’t just theory - this is based on what’s actually working with our clients right now.

Things like how you position your content, how you build trust over time, and how you use YouTube intentionally to convert.

If you’ve been showing up on YouTube (or thinking about it), but you’re not quite seeing how it connects to your business yet…

This will help you see it differently.

Click below to watch 👇

🎱 If this is resonating and you’d like our help in building a custom YouTube strategy for your business, we’re opening up a few 1:1 spots over Zoom.

👉 Click here to see if its a good fit.

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial

Yeah Rihanna, you heard me. 😂

One of our clients made 16 high-ticket sales in 90 days.

And no…her videos weren’t getting thousands of views.

In fact, most of them were under 100.

Which, if you’re like most people, you’d probably look at that view count and think…
“ok, this isn’t really working.”

But it was…because the right people were watching.

And that was the plan all along - it’s exactly what we strategized for.

Not a huge audience or random views. Just the kind of people who were already aligned with her work, felt connected to her message, and were ready to go deeper.

So while the numbers looked ‘small’ on the front end of the channel, the backend data told a completely different story...and I LOVE these kinds of stories! 🤓

In this week’s video, I walk through what this actually looked like for our client, Jen Kem. She runs a mentorship program and mastermind for thought leaders, and wanted to use YouTube to generate leads for her business and live events.

If you’ve ever looked at your view count and felt a bit discouraged…this might shift how you see your channel.

Click below to watch 👇

P.S. Since posting this video on YouTube, Jen is now at 22 sales from her channel. 🎉

P.P.S. Question for ya: We’re hosting a live in person YouTube workshop in beautiful Kelowna, BC Canada this July. Do you want to meet up? I’m just finalizing the details right now, but in the meantime, if you or someone you know may be interested in attending, hit reply and I can share the link with you.

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial

Should you create a brand new YouTube channel from scratch…or continue to use the one you have?

We get asked this all the time and honestly, the answer to this question is quite nuanced.

Maybe you want to pivot your content strategy, or you have a lot of older videos that aren’t relevant anymore...

...or maybe you just can’t stand the branding (or lack thereof) of your channel and just want a fresh start!

But with switching to a new channel, more questions like “ Will I lose the subscribers I already have? “ or “ Will I confuse the algorithm? “ come into play.

So that’s why I created this video below for you to watch.

Because while there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all answer…

There is one direction I tend to lean toward in most cases.

Click below to see why 👇

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial

*breaks out into choreographed NSYNC moves*

...just kidding. Sorta.

May is going to be jam packed for us with a mix of travel, speaking engagements and getting knee-deep into AI conversations. We can't ignore that AI is going to (and already has) COMPLETELY changed the marketing landscape - so in upcoming posts, you'll hear us talk more about what that means for your business and what to do about it.

For now, here's a little peek at what's happening behind the scenes at Essetino this month...

🎬 Essetino Backstage Pass

Thought Leadership Forum at Human Tech Week

On May 12th, we’ll be speaking at the Thought Leadership Forum, part of Human Tech Week in San Francisco.

And I need you to understand the size of what we just said yes to...

5,000 leaders in one building. 300+ speakers. Seventy percent of the room is C-suite and founders. This is like the Super Bowl of human leadership in the AI era and I just feel SO honored that we’re going to be on the field.

What’s this even about? It’ll all be built around this one question:

What are you building that AI cannot take from you?

Like, the actual irreplaceable architecture underneath your expertise. The body of work that outlasts every wave of disruption coming at us faster than anyone predicted.

I’ve been in this industry for 15 years. I have been to A LOT of events. And this is the event I wish had existed a decade ago.

Jewel and I are speaking on a session called “The Integrity of Visibility” - specifically, what it means to build influence & trust on platforms in the AI era.

You’ll leave with your H-OS (Human Operating System) Influence Portfolio Map completed in the room. A personalized strategy report in your inbox within 48 hours. And a 30-day move that is built for your specific Architect type.

If you’re anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area on May 12, you gotta be in this room.

Here is how to get in:

1. Grab the 1-Day Pass for Human+Tech Week here.

2. Use code TLC20 at checkout for 20% off.

Note: Registration will close May 10th. And if you are coming, let me know so we can set aside some time to meet in person!

💎 Community Spotlight

This month, we’re celebrating a long-time member of our community - Roland Leveille 🥳.

If you’ve been around for a while, you may have seen him pop into one of our livestreams.

Roland is such a great example of someone who simply creates because he genuinely loves what he does. We first met years ago when he joined our SEO course, and he’s still applying what he learned to this day.

What’s even cooler? This is actually his third YouTube channel…and all three are now generating revenue in multiple ways.

His newest channel just passed 1,000 subscribers and officially reached monetization in March, which is a huge milestone 🎉 Since then, he’s already generated $570 in ad revenue and brought in 18 customers through affiliate sales…even before monetization kicked in.

He actually sent me a message recently sharing one of those sales, and it was such a cool full-circle moment to see.

Huge congrats, Roland 👏

✨ Currently Sparking Joy

We’re going a little nostalgic this month…

Jewel made her mom’s recipe for lumpia for the very first time - a Filipino spring roll dish she grew up with. It’s something her mom has made for as long as she can remember…usually for special occasions like Christmas, birthdays, and Thanksgiving.

But in recent years, her mom hasn’t been able to cook because of her dementia. It’s really so hard to watch a parent lose the ability to do something that once came so naturally...the last time she made it was in 2023.

I remember when I attended their family gatherings, the lumpia dish would be the first to finish - it was that good!

So I love that Jewel decided to resurface this tradition.  Together with her dad, we made some pretty delish lumpia (I mean, they didn’t look as perfect as her mom’s but I was still pretty damn proud!). It just felt really meaningful to carry on the recipe and traditions that she grew up with.

💌 This Month’s Mantra

“It’s ok to be a ‘work in progress’. It’s not only ok, it’s necessary for building anything worthwhile.”

📺 Coming Up on the Channel

✅ In next week’s video, we talk with Roland Leveille (who we mentioned earlier) about how his new YouTube channel is changing the way he does business - and is already bringing in real customers and sales.

✅ Soon after that, Jewel explains why we don’t get very many views on our YouTube videos…and why we don’t care! We’re breaking down the real metrics that matter and why chasing views isn’t the key to success.

✅ Then later in the month, we do a YouTube thumbnail case study where we break down how we improved our click-through rate from 1% to 6% with a few simple strategic thumbnail changes.

✅ At the end of the month, Jewel breaks down what to do if your ChatGPT storage is full on the free plan, showing simple steps to make room for new conversations without upgrading. Watch it here.

Make sure you’re subscribed to our YouTube Channel so you don’t miss a thing…

Talk soon,

Auret & Jewel

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial

It’s better to have 100 views and make a sale than 10,000 views from random people who don’t buy.

(I know, I know…cue the broken record…) 🔂💿

Because those “high view” numbers don’t actually mean much if the right people aren’t watching (or in this case, listening).

And honestly, this is where a lot of people get tripped up on YouTube.

It looks like things are working - views are coming in, videos are going up - but behind the scenes, it’s not really translating into anything meaningful for the business.

Building lasting influence, elevating your brand authority, and actually attracting leads requires a completely different approach than going viral.

Which is why, most of the time, the issue isn’t the podcast itself…

It’s how it’s being positioned.

In this week’s video, I sat down with Vince Quinn - a former sports radio broadcaster turned podcaster - and we got into what it actually looks like to use YouTube strategically as a podcast host.

We do a quick audit of his channel, and walk through a simple, practical way to position your podcast so it actually speaks to the right audience…from your titles and thumbnails, to your descriptions and overall channel setup.

Because when this is done well, each episode builds trust, attracts the right people, and starts contributing to long-term growth in your business.

Click below to watch 👇

P.S. As our “thank you” for being part of this community, I’d love to gift you a free YouTube channel audit between now and May 1st. If you want one, send me a DM. 😊

Peek Inside the YouTube Authority Lab

Try our paid subscription free for 7 days. Every month, Jewel walks you through one specific action step to move your channel forward, plus the frameworks, prompts, and templates we actually use with clients. You’ll also see real breakdowns of what is working on YouTube right now, not recycled advice from two years ago.

Get 7 day free trial