YouTube is Hard Until You Build a System Like This

Creating content's hard, and most knowledge businesses waste a lot of time and miss out on leads, clients, and sales because they don't have an easy, repeatable way to create content that turns into paying clients. So if you feel like you've been on a never-ending content hamster wheel, or if you haven't even started yet because it all feels like too much, I'm gonna show you the five-step system I developed that over 1,200 of my students are using to make YouTube content fast, easy, and repeatable.

The kinds of videos that get leads and high-ticket clients every day. So let's start with the part that stops most people before they even get going, figuring out what to actually make videos about. Now, you've probably already tried asking ChatGPT to just give you a list of video ideas, and it certainly will do that if you ask. It'll give you 20 topics in 10 seconds, but those ideas are really just the AI taking a guess.

It's pulling from what it thinks might work, not from what people are actually searching for. And if your videos aren't based on real demand, they just sit there doing nothing. So that is what the first step in my system solves for. We're gonna be using a specific AI tool to do way better than guessing.

I call this the demand scan, and here's how it works. You open up ChatGPT, but not just normal ChatGPT, not even deep research mode. You wanna turn on agent mode. That's the secret to this working.

You're gonna tell it as much as you can about your business, your offers, who you help, and what problems you help them with. Then you wanna tell it to go right to YouTube itself and start typing partial searches related to your niche. Not full questions, just the beginnings of them. When it does that, it's gonna read back how YouTube auto-completes those phrases, which is YouTube telling you exactly what real people are searching for right now.

So say you're a nutritionist, right? The AI goes to YouTube and types gut health and just stops. YouTube's gonna fill it in. Gut health supplements, gut health diet, gut health and weight loss, gut health subliminal.

Then it would type in something like bloating after and it gets bloating after eating, bloating after quitting alcohol, bloating after a gallbladder removal. Every single one of those is a real topic that you now know has real demand behind it. And you probably wouldn't have come up with half of them just brainstorming. It does this over and over with different partial searches across your niche, and you can end up with 50 or 100 proven topic ideas in minutes.

You just have to ask for them. Now, the best part is you pretty much just do this once. That's it. And this gives you a content calendar for your entire year.

So just go through your list, pull out the topics that you know you can cover well, and slot them in there. All right, so you know what videos to make. Now, you've gotta write them. And this is where most people get stuck the longest.

Either they try to write the whole thing themselves and it takes them days, or they just hand it off to AI and they get back something super generic that could have just as easily been written for your competition. So no, you can't really rely on AI alone for your scripts. They'll never help your business that way. The stuff that makes people trust you, wanna work with you, and pick you over everyone else, that has to come from you.

But that doesn't mean AI is off the table either. I happen to use the bookend rule. So in the bookend rule, the first 10% comes from you. So for whatever topic you're covering, I just want you to brain dump everything you know about it into a Google Doc.

Your frameworks, your steps, your tips and opinions, stories from your clients, things from your own life that make it personal. It doesn't have to be good writing either. It doesn't have to be organized. Just get it down on paper.

Now that's the stuff that only you can bring that elevates your whole script. Now for the middle 80% part, I like to use Claude, not ChatGPT. ChatGPT is great for that initial demand scan that we did because agent mode works really well. But when it comes to writing, Claude is just way better.

It writes more naturally, it follows instructions better, and the output is a lot closer to something that you would actually say on camera So the way I set this up for myself is I built what called a Claude project So if you haven used one it basically the same as a custom GPT or a Gemini gem It's just a customized workspace where you can load in a bunch of documents and instructions and then Claude references all of it every time you ask it to write something in there. So I've loaded my Claude project with all of my training documents, right?

my writing style, my background info so that it can pull stories from my past, storytelling frameworks, and video structure rules that I've come up with over years of doing this. I've also given it a really detailed set of instructions for how I want scripts to be written. So every time I paste in a new brain dump for a new video, it already knows exactly what to do with it and how I want it handled. So you paste in all that stuff that came out of your own head and experience into your cloud project, but sometimes what you come to the table with wouldn't make the most complete video on its own.

So this is my secret weapon at this stage. I also paste the same brain dump materials into a second clod window, and then I ask it to do a deep research dive into the topic. I tell it just to fill in any gaps in the material with what it can find, you know, supporting stats, case studies, extra tips that I haven't covered. Then I take all of that supplemental research and add that into my Claude project too.

But here's the real trick. In my instructions, I very specifically tell Claude to always put my stuff over and above the research materials. In other words, draw from my notes, my stories, my frameworks first. Only use the research to fill in the gaps and make the script feel more complete.

That's what keeps the final script original and specific to me rather than, you know, the generic version of it, it could have written on the research alone. And then it writes a really good first draft built on your initial 10% as the foundation. That's the middle 80%. Then you just come back for the last 10.

This is where you make any edits, you know, if it got something wrong, correct it. If it says something in a way you wouldn't say it, change it to how you would say it. And, you know, add in any last minute stories or examples you can think of. You're just making sure it's as good as it can be at this stage.

Then you're done. Now, there is one more shift that's going to cut your scripting time in half on top of all of this. So I want you to stop making one video at a time, if that's what you're doing. You want to batch your videos.

Plan four at once. Think of it as like a month's worth at a time. Then you script all four. Then you shoot all four.

Then you edit all of them. You're not switching between writer brain and camera brain and editor brain every week. You stay in one mode, finish it, then you move on to the next. It's just so much easier.

And when I switched to doing it like that instead of one-offs, I was able to compress like eight days of content work every month down to four. Okay, next comes the part that I used to dread every time I had to do it, getting on camera and delivering the whole thing. So when I first started making YouTube videos, shoot days were rough to say the least. I had everything that I wanted to say outlined on these little note cards.

So I'd look down and I would try to remember the point that I'd look back up and deliver it. But it was just an outline, not a full script. So I would either ramble way too long at a point or I'd forget something important that I wanted to say. And trust me, when you don't really know what you need to say and you're just staring at that camera, it's a really weird naked feeling.

And I messed up a lot. And the more I messed up, the more it started messing with my head. And by the end of a video, you could see that I was just kind of beaten up mentally. So yeah, shooting took way longer than it should have, plus editing took twice as long to cut out all those mistakes.

But I found a really easy fix. I started using a teleprompter. That lets me really tightly control my script so it stays on point, doesn't waffle, and I don't have to think about any of that in the moment. My only objective when I shoot now is just to make it feel natural, like I'm just talking, not reading.

That's it. All my thinking was done before so I can just be free to take that off my plate today as I record this And that just makes it so much easier But here are a few things that you need to know and prep for so that it can be this easy And it starts with scripting. So when you do that final edit, you wanna make sure it sounds natural, like how you would actually say it if you were just talking to someone, you know? It shouldn't sound like a written blog post.

It's been wordsmithed within an inch of its life and overly polished. Use contractions. deliberately put in those little throwaway words like so or the thing is, you know, the kind of transition that gets you from one sentence to the next in a nice flowy way. So when you're editing your script, think flowy, not flowery.

Next, you need the right setup. So if you're using your smartphone to record yourself, you want to download the PromptSmart Pro app. It's the only teleprompter app I've ever found that has this feature where it keeps up with your natural speaking pattern. It just advances as you talk.

The other ones I started with, you could adjust the speed. You can make them faster or slower, but then it's just off and running and you have to keep up with it. And sometimes it feels like you're talking too slow and sometimes you're like racing to catch up. But this particular app lets you speak way more human.

You know, sometimes slow when you're making a point, then you can speed up when you're excited. You know, people can subconsciously clock unhuman behavior in a video. And a constant rate of speed is one of those kind of robotic things that people will ding you on, especially in this world where so much is AI. Now, if you're shooting with your phone, it's really easy to use.

It's basically all in one. You just read off of it and it records you on the same device. If you're using a camera like I do, you just need to buy an actual teleprompter device like this one. It attaches right to your lens and then you put your phone underneath it with the app on and then it reflects onto the one-way glass.

That lets you look straight into the lens the whole time and nobody can tell you're looking at words as you're talking. Okay, so your video is shot. Now let's talk about editing because this is where most people think it gets really complicated. Editing used to be super hard, right?

Because YouTube rewarded editing styles like this. This is what they called retention style editing. All the quick cuts, lots of B-roll footage of you doing other things, fancy motion graphics, all that crap. It's all there to keep people glued to the screen, but that's not really needed as much anymore.

And that's not because YouTube changed, it's because of the people watching it. Turns out, the kind of editing that used to keep people watching longer has the opposite effect now, at least when it comes to educational content like you'll be making. More serious people who are most likely to become a client or buy your course or your membership, they came to your video to learn something valuable, which means you can just teach it. Your script and your delivery are your secret weapons now, not how many cuts and sound effects you can jam into your video.

Just record yourself talking like I'm doing now. We call it talking head style. Maybe you want to add some text on screen here and there to underline certain points that you want to make, or record your screen if you're doing a tutorial, or even use an online whiteboard tool to sketch out certain concepts. Videos like that are doing really well right now with minimal edits.

Now for the editing part itself, you can do it yourself with a tool like Descript. That's gonna transcribe your video into text like this. It pretty much ends up looking like a Google Doc. So editing mistakes is as easy as highlighting what you wanna cut out and deleting it.

Then deleting that text literally takes that part out of the video. They've even got AI features in there so you can remove pauses and filler words so it doesn't drag. Or you can just outsource your editing to a freelancer. That is the ultimate easy button and I would do this as soon as you possibly can.

I would so much rather see you spending time prepping and shooting your next video than spending a lot of time editing this one. And now that you know how simple your video editing can look now, that means you don't need to pay for a super skilled editor. You can absolutely get one for like 50 to 100 bucks per video. Okay, so when we talk about content systems, this is where it gets really powerful.

Because you've done all this work, and while YouTube's still gonna give you about 95 of your results you can still wring some extra marketing out of what you already done for not much more of your time or energy Now the harder way and I think the less powerful way of repurposing content, is what everyone thinks about, right? Chopping it up into short form videos that you can just put everywhere. But there are three big problems with that approach. First, shorts don't convert into buyers.

This has been studied to death and the results always come back the same. Shorts get views and not much else. The second problem is it's pretty hard to turn long-form videos into short clips that make sense on their own. And finally, even with AI tools that can help you do it, it's just a time suck.

Believe me, I've been there. You're gonna spend as much time chopping a video up and choosing which ones work and posting them everywhere as you could spend making your next YouTube video that's gonna get you way better results anyway. So we're not gonna be making shorts here. The kind of repurposing that works 10 times better completely skips cutting your video up at all.

I'm talking about taking your original long-form video and just putting it on two additional places. The first is to embed it on your website. So if you've got a blog section, every single video you make is gonna get a dedicated post on your site. Just embed your video at the very top and then put a written article version of it underneath.

And for that part, all you gotta do is ask Claude to do a light rewrite of your shooting script as a blog post. And you don't even have to do any editing of that at all. And this is worth doing because a 2026 Bright Edge study found that pages with both an embedded video and written content pulled 34% more organic search traffic than either format did alone. So it's a pretty good SEO play for an extra 10 minutes of your time.

Plus, when you embed your YouTube video on your own website, Google can show your site in those video search results. instead of just linking to YouTube. And that means all that traffic goes to a page you control where your opt-in and your service pages are just a click away. So that's repurpose place number one.

And the second place you wanna repurpose your video is maybe not what you'd expect, Spotify. Now, the reason this is such a powerful repurpose is podcasts are right up there with YouTube when it comes to building trust and actually getting clients. And it's for the same reason. They both go deep, right?

Someone listens to you talk for 10, 15 minutes or longer, and they start to feel like they know you. That's what converts. And Spotify handles video podcasts now, so you don't even need to convert it to an audio file. Just upload the exact same video to Spotify, and then people can choose to either watch it or just listen to it in the app, whatever fits what they're doing.

And I honestly just started doing this a few months ago. I launched my own podcast. It's called Content That Sells, and it's already building a pretty decent audience for being so new. I've got over a thousand listens and that number just keeps going up every month.

And the best part is I didn't have to create a single extra piece of content for it. And since we're talking about making things easy here, if you wanna make this even easier for yourself, you can set up an AI system that automatically takes your finished video file and puts it up on YouTube and Spotify all in one shot. So that's the full system. It's five steps and each one is gonna make your content way easier to make.

But if you want my help actually doing this for your specific business, that's what my YouTube to Clients Academy experience is all about. And this isn't just another video course. The coolest part is I get to hang out with you guys every week in these small group coaching sessions where I personally weigh in on your ideas, your scripts, whatever you're working on that week. And yeah, the groups are actually genuinely small.

So you do get real time with me coaching you through it. So there's a link below in the description Now, if you wanna make 2026 the year you finally get your business on YouTube so you can get the best clients you've ever had, primed and ready to pay you for your expertise, I'm saving you a seat in my free hour-long training masterclass, How to Get Unlimited Clients from YouTube. It's packed with the five secrets that you need to start off strong and make this work for you in months, not years.

All you need to do is go to westmcdowell.com slash record to get in. Again, that's westmcdowell.com slash record.

I promise it's gonna be the best hour you spend on your business all year.