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In Conversation with Charlie from Charisma on Command #ptya

2021-10-10 · Livestream or live hangout · Ali, Charlie Houpert · recording, 1 h 2 min · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness, Business and entrepreneurship, Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers

In a Part-Time YouTuber Academy conversation streamed live, Charlie Houpert of Charisma on Command tells Ali and his students how format experiments and Charisma breakdowns grew his channel, how he makes tips "crunchy", avoids copyright claims, hires and A/B tests thumbnails, and how he keeps his self-worth apart from the numbers by deciding what is enough.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Going live with the academy community for the second streamed conversation

00:00:58 — From Kickassery to YouTube: the Bill Clinton video, format experiments, once a week, burnout and A/B testing

  • ★★ Ali first discovered Charlie Houpert's content around 2014 through his book, then called Kickassery, which he says changed the game for him in social skills. — 00:00:58
  • ★ Charlie Houpert's Charisma University was the first online course Ali ever signed up for. — 00:01:25
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says The 4-Hour Workweek inspired him to start a business, because he did not want to spend his life moving diagonally up a corporate ladder in a job he did not like. — 00:02:04 · The 4-Hour Workweek
  • ★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's first business, a parkour training DVD, did all right but did not work as a business because he was not committed to it. — 00:02:36
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charisma on Command started with dating advice and pivoted to charisma in general, because Charlie's closest friends were embarrassed to be associated with dating advice in the pickup-artist era. — 00:03:14
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie made one video on Bill Clinton for a blog post and six months later it had 100,000 views, more than the Charisma on Command website had had in all its preceding years; from then on YouTube was the way to go. — 00:03:41
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says his 10 to 20 talking-head tip videos did not work; the breakthrough was the format: "fame jacking", taking a famous person and playing their clips, which grew into the Charisma breakdowns. — 00:05:36

  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says format is the number one lever for experimenting on YouTube: if nothing has stuck yet, try an animated video, a breakdown or an interview rather than new topics in the same format, because formats have multipliers. — 00:06:42

    “the number one lever for experimentation is in format”

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's New Year's resolution for 2016 was to put out a video once a week no matter what. — 00:06:42

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says there is something to uploading once a week: you learn to make better videos and get a lot of feedback on what the audience wants without burning yourself out. — 00:07:28
  • ★★ Ali thinks once a week is the magical sweet spot for uploads; his channel went up to two and three videos a week and is now back at about one a week. — 00:07:28
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie believes anyone who does something for an extended time will burn out, and uploading once a week extends that timeline; after about four years he felt he had said what he had to say. — 00:07:54
  • ★★ Ali thinks that in about four and a half years of weekly uploads he missed only one week, around 2018, when he was on holiday. (hedged) — 00:07:54
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charisma on Command has pulled back to two videos a month, made by Charlie's co-founder Ben. — 00:08:30
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Since Charisma on Command made fewer videos it has had some of its best months ever in business, which Charlie puts down to the relationship built with the audience over five years. — 00:08:30
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Testing thumbnails and titles on back-catalogue videos that were not doing well turned two years of flat views into an S-curve, Charlie says. — 00:09:10

00:09:17 — What makes a Charisma on Command video go viral: the yes list and the don't list

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says Charisma on Command's most popular video was serendipitous, but they now keep a document of what their audience wants, such as Marvel actors and trending moments and events. — 00:10:08
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's lists for his own audience: athletes such as LeBron James, singers and YouTubers do not do well; Game of Thrones and Marvel actors and world-known A-list celebrities do, and so do the topics confidence, respect and keeping a conversation going. — 00:12:07 · Game of Thrones

00:12:52 — Being a boss, and crunchy tips

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says the biggest challenge of his YouTube career has been being a boss: he is not a good trainer and is better at saying things once in a video. — 00:13:28

  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says videos need "crunchy" tips: a crunchy tip is one that does not feel as if it could come out of Cosmo magazine, unlike "smile in an interview" or "have a firm handshake". — 00:14:31

    “a crunchy tip is something that's that doesn't feel like it could come out of cosmo magazine”

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie makes tips crunchier with specificity ("make eye contact for three seconds when you're in a group" rather than "make eye contact") and by comparing and contrasting good and bad behaviour. — 00:14:59

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie finds the five seconds or one second of a video that spikes the viewer's enjoyment, by asking friends and rewatching, and trims as much as possible of everything else, including setup and intro. — 00:16:13

00:17:07 — Editing: the first editor, effort in the first minute, copyright claims and fair use

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie found his first editor other than himself by asking his audience in a video to edit a 60-second section he had already done and send it in. — 00:17:40
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says one to three things make any channel successful: for Peter McKinnon production value, for Charisma on Command the breakdown format rather than its production value. — 00:17:40 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Asked what takes longest, Ali's students always answer editing: people who have never edited do not realise how long it takes to edit a YouTube video. — 00:19:05 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's pro tip to save editing time: put most of the effort into the first minute; many YouTubers end with one long talking head, and it works. — 00:20:00
  • ★★ From analysing big channels, Ali's team finds that something happens every second at the start, then every three and every five seconds, and by the end a talking head, once viewers are invested. — 00:20:29
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: To avoid copyright claims rather than litigate fair use, Charlie keeps borrowed clips under about 15 to 20 seconds, cutting away to B-roll; at 30 seconds a network claims the video. — 00:20:54
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie disputes every copyright claim at least once with a short, professional fair-use reply citing the four factors; about eight times out of ten the claim is dropped. — 00:22:24
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie sped up his process by batching, recording all the audio and then grabbing all the A-roll, and later by outsourcing the grabbing of the A-roll to his editor. — 00:23:51
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says most of Charisma on Command's editing time now goes into After Effects graphics in the first section and finding B-roll, changing the scene every three or four seconds. — 00:24:19

00:25:00 — When and whom to hire; Ali on outsourcing his laundry

  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie thinks people hire too late. — 00:25:00
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Once YouTube made money, Charlie put a dollar amount on each hour for everything in the business, and the answer was that he should do nothing but make videos, by far his highest return on time. — 00:25:21
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's first hire was a remote personal assistant, still with them, for incoming emails and customer support, who wrote stock responses to common questions. — 00:25:49
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie thinks YouTubers at Ali's level need real-life assistants: anyone still doing their own laundry and worrying about meals while growing a business should ask what that costs in dollar value. — 00:26:10
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: On what to hire for, Charlie says: the biggest things that keep you from contributing the maximum value to your business. — 00:26:37
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says Matt D'Avella might not outsource editing right away because it adds so much value to his videos; find the things you do that are not driving value and get them off your plate. — 00:27:01 · Matt D'Avella
  • ★★ Once his channel made money, Ali saw that an hour taking the bus to the post office to return a £20 Amazon item could instead go into writing scripts for three new YouTube videos. — 00:27:30 · Amazon
  • ★★ Only in the last few months has Ali applied this rigorously, outsourcing his laundry and other parts of his life. — 00:27:59
  • ★★★ Ali is happy to pay someone a decent wage for chores so he can spend more time on his business, but will not put a dollar value on time with friends, board games or relaxing, which he values for itself. — 00:28:29

00:28:57 — Keeping the energy with sincere questions; 1,200 thumbnail tests

  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie keeps his energy up because he is excited by problems he genuinely cannot answer: videos from sincere questions are where he feels most inspired and does his best work, while assembling ideas from books burns him out fastest. — 00:29:29
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's content tip: break ground on things that are new to you and cannot be found in a book or by asking someone; such videos are interesting because they probably tell people something never said before. — 00:29:55
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says Charisma on Command's sales work because people do not compare them with other options: much of what viewers find on the channel they have never heard before, though some ideas he took from Tony Robbins. — 00:30:43
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie feels he has said all he has to say about charisma; a survey of his email list asked how to make money as a small YouTuber, which he had never codified and now finds exciting. — 00:31:12
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: For established YouTubers with enough view velocity, Charlie recommends TubeBuddy's A/B testing software for thumbnails, at about $50 a month, as absolutely worth it. — 00:32:04
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charisma on Command's editor runs thumbnail A/B tests on old videos every day; about 1,200 tests have generated millions of views. — 00:33:06

00:33:28 — Repeating content, business versus art, and outsourcing too much

  • ★★ Ali passes on advice from a vidIQ coach his team works with, which he thinks Derral Eves gives too: you can repeat content every three to six months, because most people will not have seen most of your videos. — 00:33:56
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie sees an inherent tension between business, which is audience-focused (what does the audience want), and art, which is inner-focused (honest expression whatever others think). — 00:34:24
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie agrees with Derral Eves that the audience is fine with a creator repeating himself and may even benefit from the reinforcement, but repeating does not fire him up. — 00:34:24
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie has built enough of a financial cushion that chasing more money with much of his time is no longer worth it to him, so he wants to do more of the art side. — 00:35:07
  • ★ Ali began outsourcing editing and research after business books such as The E-Myth Revisited showed him the power of outsourcing. — 00:35:36
  • ★★★ Ali got to the point of outsourcing too much of the art of his videos and spending all his time on Zoom calls in business meetings, odd since he quit his job, taking a break from medicine, to do what he wants with his time. — 00:36:01
  • ★★★ Ali has realised he needs to be more involved in the art side of his business, which he enjoys and is uniquely good at; he says he kind of sucks as a manager, so someone else could manage the team. — 00:36:26
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie calls ludicrous the presumption of every business book that you want to maximise profits: what he wants is to live a happy, fulfilled life. — 00:36:53

00:37:18 — Self-worth and analytics, deciding what is enough, Ali's 10-year vision

  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: To keep his self-worth apart from YouTube, Charlie no longer looks at the comments; he learned over time that he was never as great or as terrible as people said, and his team passes on useful requests. — 00:37:18
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says that past a certain size a creator is dehumanised and becomes perfect or a devil in viewers' minds, as celebrities were in his own; so he judges his work by how he feels about the video. — 00:38:23
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says he knows what it takes to make a video with high views and sometimes chooses not to; Don Draper in a thumbnail, for example, does very well. — 00:38:47
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says it is very important to sit down and decide what "enough" is, because as you grow the goalposts keep moving: more subscribers, more money, forever. — 00:39:31
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie remembers being happy in Brazil, renting out his own bed on Airbnb, when enough meant a job he cared about and his rent paid; he thinks of it whenever he feels he needs more. — 00:39:57
  • ★★ Ali feels on a hamster wheel: he gets the same views at 2 million subscribers as he did at 1.5 million, and wonders whether he is falling out of touch with his audience. — 00:41:08
  • ★★ A couple of weeks earlier Ali's team had a one-day session with a business coach, working out their core focus, values and 10-year mission. — 00:41:36

  • ★★★ Ali does not care about the numbers: his 10-year vision is a profitable business that helps people while having fun. — 00:42:04

    “My 10-year vision is I want to have a profitable business that helps people while having fun.”

  • ★★ Ali says talk of personal fulfilment is easy while his numbers are going up; the real test comes if they start going down or plateauing. — 00:42:30

  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says a very good month is a curse, because happiness is measured against last month (September 2021): after a ten, a five feels bad; a higher and higher bar for happiness is the worst torture. — 00:42:52
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says YouTube designed its analytics to keep creators on a hamster wheel making more videos, in a way as toxic as the Facebook news feed. — 00:43:35 · YouTube, Facebook
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie's spreadsheets for business decisions have a column for profit, one for happiness and one for required time; he spends more time in his own simple Google Sheets than in YouTube's analytics. — 00:43:35 · Google Sheets

00:44:31 — The Charlie and Ben Show podcast

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: The Charlie and Ben Show podcast breaks even; Charlie knows growing it would need guests, research, interesting topics and maybe clickbait. — 00:44:31
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says the most important marketing decision in a business is its name, and the worst is to put your own name in it, which means a lot to you and little to anyone else. — 00:44:31
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie started The Charlie and Ben Show to make his private conversations with his best friend Ben public with no extra effort, and to be a more complete human in public than on Charisma on Command, even disliked for his politics; it met both goals. — 00:46:12
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie modelled the podcast idea on Joe Rogan and found he does not have that personality: "we're not Joe Rogan". — 00:47:04

00:47:33 — Hit pieces, mean comments and kindness in real life

  • ★★ Ali says it was a mistake to read and watch the hit-piece videos and hate threads made about him: they made him feel terrible, because a specific video, post or forum thread hits differently from YouTube comments. — 00:47:33
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: One hit video about Charlie kept him up at night; he invited its maker on his podcast, promising fair treatment, but they made another hit video instead without acknowledging the invitation. — 00:48:45
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says criticism sticks only where it points at an insecurity: a jibe about something he is secure in would not stick, so mean comments are useful ways into your own insecurities. — 00:51:21
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: From therapy and psychedelic experiences, Charlie says people have a deep fear of being alone and not being liked; seeing that insecurity for what it is diminishes the effect of specific attacks. — 00:52:08
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie has lost connection to faceless comments, nice or mean, but connects with people he meets, and nobody has ever said something mean to him in person. — 00:52:58
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie passes on a friend's advice from reality television: go outside and count how many people are yelling at you; it is zero. — 00:53:34
  • ★★ At a creator event Ali was thanked by a successful YouTuber whose sister had just got into medical school inspired by Ali's videos; such kindness in real life is overwhelmingly positive and shows him the channel helps people. — 00:54:03

00:54:31 — Enough: low expenses, profit over views, relationships as investment, the Stoic floor

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie keeps his expenses low and says growth of a business is driven by ego: people ask how many employees you have, as if that mattered, rather than your profit margin. — 00:55:29
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: At VidSummit Charlie was blown away by how little business sense the creators showed: views were the metric, and some with bigger channels were disconnected from profit and business model. — 00:56:11
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: When focused on business Charlie is not adding views or subscribers but doing a good job, being ethical and adding profit: he wants a lean business with a large profit margin, built sustainably with no short-term cash grabs. — 00:56:34
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says the best investment is in relationships: if everything is wiped out, friends will take care of you, which makes him more generous while he has money. — 00:57:17
  • ★★ Sleeping on a friend's floor a few weeks earlier reminded Ali of the Stoic practice of being cold and hungry on purpose and asking "is this the condition I so feared?": if he lost everything, life would still be pretty good. — 00:58:07 · stoicism
  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says Tim Ferriss's exercise of defining the worst-case scenario and how to mitigate it has helped him make decisions that seem risky but are mostly upside, such as starting a business and moving to Brazil. — 00:58:36 · Tim Ferriss

00:58:59 — From digital nomad to stability

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie says the value of one phase of life must be reversed to move to the next: after a stable home he needed to move every six months, and now he wants stability. — 00:59:29
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie still recommends the digital-nomad life to younger people working out what they like and what motivates them: seeing other cultures shows what you take for granted in your own. — 01:00:15
  • ★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie now lives in California, expensive as hell but sunny, and tries to get as many people as he can to come there. — 01:00:15
  • ★★★ Charlie Houpert and Ali are partnering for the next cohort of the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, whose enrolment opens the next day (11 October 2021) at 4 p.m. UK time. — 01:00:39 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

01:00:59 — Charlie joins the next academy cohort

  • ★★ Charlie Houpert: Charlie will join the Part-Time YouTuber Academy's executive package about once a week, on viral videos with charisma on camera and on making money as a small channel. (hedged) — 01:01:22 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Charlie Houpert is co-founder of Charisma on Command, a YouTube channel of nearly 5 million subscribers that teaches confidence, humour and likeability. — video description
  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Charlie Houpert will run two workshops during the upcoming Part-Time YouTuber Academy course. — video description · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Charisma on Command · Charlie Houpert · crunchy tip

Also: People: Angus · Ben (youtuber, mentioned from 2021) · Bill Clinton · Derral Eves · Donald Trump · Joe Rogan · LeBron James · Matt D'Avella · Peter McKinnon · Tim Ferriss · Tony Robbins

Works: Charisma University · Game of Thrones · Kickassery · The 4-Hour Workweek · The Charlie and Ben Show · The E-Myth

Organizations: Airbnb · Amazon · Facebook · LegalEagle · Marvel · vidIQ

Concepts: audience retention · burnout · fair use · fame jacking · fear-setting · hedonic adaptation · leave money on the table · premeditating adversity · stoicism

Places: Brazil · California

Events: VidSummit

Products: Adobe After Effects · Google Sheets · TubeBuddy

Only in the description or credits: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

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