What No One Tells 40+ Business Owners About YouTube | Ep. 59

Are you a business owner over 40 wondering if YouTube is right for you? In this video, I reveal what no one tells 40+ business owners about YouTube and why your experience is your secret weapon. We’ll talk about authenticity, building trust, the We Don’t Care Club mindset, and how to grow your channel without chasing trends or spending hours on content. If you want to build a thriving video brand and reach your ideal audience, this is for you!

▶︎ Build Your Binge-Worthy Channel Without Spending Forever: https://videobrand.link/be-bingeworthy

✨ Cringe or Binge: How does your channel rank? Download the VBA app to analyze your channel in 1 simple step. It’s free! https://videobrand.link/app

📹 Be Binge-worthy on YouTube: https://videobrand.link/become-bingeable

🟣 Video Brand Academy: https://videobrand.link/vba

🎥 CRUSH IT ON CAMERA GUIDE: https://vidpromom.com/crush

🎧 Video Brand Infusion Podcast: http://meredithmarsh.co/podcast

📲 Download my FREE Video Brand Academy app! 👉 https://videobrand.link/app

👉 Consistent Sales of Your Course with YouTube: https://youtu.be/GBhulsp0s-4

📹 Follow on YouTube for Video Podcast: https://youtu.be/zkscCExxg9Y?si=B2EAIPxJV0-jEP-7

Transcript

If you are a business owner over 40 and you've been avoiding YouTube because you think you can't compete with the younger creators, this is one perspective shift that might just change how you show up online entirely. And most experienced business owners are approaching this kind of backwards. And if you're one of them, it might actually be costing you. So we're gonna dive into it today here on Video Brand Infusion. My name is Meredith and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can build your thriving video brand with YouTube. But let me start off with maybe the biggest lie that you've been telling yourself about YouTube, especially if you've been putting your time and effort into other social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, for example. And that is the idea that your audience isn't on YouTube, and I completely understand why people might think this, but hear me out. It's not a matter of asking yourself, is my audience even on YouTube or deciding, well, my audience isn't on YouTube. The reality is your ideal audience is on YouTube because everybody's on YouTube and that's because as a business, you exist to solve problems for an ideal audience, right? You exist to help people reach some desired result that they are searching for. And YouTube is the place that people go to look for solutions, to find answers to questions, and find experts who can get them to that desired result that they are searching for. So whether your current Instagram audience is currently on YouTube is irrelevant because there are millions of other people, just like your current audience on the other platforms who are going to YouTube and actively seeking out the exact kind of information and expertise that you have to share. And when they're going to YouTube and not finding you, they're finding somebody else in your niche, in your industry. There might be niches where the younger you are, you know, the better your content is gonna perform on YouTube. But think about the business that you have. Think about your ideal customer. Are they looking for youth and beauty, or are they looking for experience, expertise, and authenticity? Now, here's what I think is gonna really blow your mind about YouTube, and it's the exact opposite of what's happening on places like Instagram and TikTok. What you know works well on TikTok and Instagram reels is trends chasing and information delivered in an entertaining way. And if you don't stay on top of those trends, the music trends, the dancing trends, the meme trends, then you are less likely to get your content actually found by people because why do we go to TikTok and Instagram reels? To be entertained and do the doom scroll, whereas with YouTube and long form content on YouTube, especially, what works really well is depth and authenticity and relationship building. What that means is, in my mind, your content is being found because of you, your personality, the value that you bring to your niche or industry, the relationships that you build and not like your ability to chase trends. The bottom line is YouTube rewards authenticity and watch time, meaning long form content over trends. So while everyone else in your niche or industry might be learning a new dance move for another 15 second reel or a TikTok, you get to show up as yourself and be rewarded for it. But there's something else even more important than authenticity. Believe it or not, you a 40 plus aged business owner on YouTube has something even more valuable than authenticity, and you have it right in your back pocket. And if you are anything like me, trust or perceived trust even comes from experience. It comes from years in the industry, years in the field that you are practicing your business in. It doesn't come from trends, it comes from experience. And when you are a business owner over 40, even if you are just starting out, you have this unfair advantage of being seen as a trustworthy person simply because of the number of years you have on this earth. You have the been there, done that advantage, and now more than ever in the age of AI, things like storytelling are incredibly important in your marketing, in your content. And the longer you've been doing this, the more mistakes you've made, the more stories you can tell and the more impactful you can be with your content. And back to what I said earlier, your business exists to solve a problem to help people reach some kind of a desired result. And so when your ideal client or customer is struggling with something that your expertise can get them out of that struggle or that pain that they're in, they're going to go to somebody who has been there, done that, survived it, not just somebody who can speak about it, dance about it, and create entertaining videos about it. Now, although YouTube is my primary platform, my powerhouse platform, as I like to call it, for my business, for where I create and publish my content, I do consume content on other platforms. And there's a really funny trend happening right now in the short form world that is this concept of the We Don't Care club. I think it started with a woman probably in her forties or fifties who was just listing off all of the things that she really no longer cares about. And it turned into this, we don't care club. And I thought this was so funny because the We Don't Care club can extend to your business online and the content that you create too. Because I think there's a lot of freedom that comes with approaching things with the we don't care mindset. Now, I'm not suggesting that you don't care about anything. You care about your customers. You care about yourself. Of course you care about your family and you care about how you show up and deliver value, deliver content to strangers on the internet, but I think for a lot of people, I know, myself included, there comes a point in time where you just don't really care what other people think. You don't really care about like trolls and negative comments because you know it doesn't really matter what they say or think, as long as you know that you are showing up as your best self, giving your best expertise in helping people in your business, we don't care what negative Nellie thinks about it. It's almost like your age gives you a little bit of permission to just ignore all of the stuff that doesn't matter and focus on your people instead of trying to please everyone and be seen as perfect and having all of your stuff together. I really think that the We Don't Care Club mindset is actually a business superpower for those of us who are 40 plus. So now that you know being in your forties, fifties, sixties, even seventies and eighties on YouTube is a competitive advantage for growing your audience and growing your business with YouTube, it's important that you know how to build a thriving channel without spending hours and hours creating videos. Let's be honest, regardless of your age, you don't have the time or the energy for that, right? So here's what I see happening with most experienced business owners. They finally get the courage to start their YouTube channel. They create good content, they upload regularly. And if that's you, but you're not really seeing new subscribers come in or you're not really getting a lot of views on your video, it can be so easy. And I see this all the time with my clients and students. It can be so easy to think, well, it's probably because of my age. It's probably because I'm not very tech savvy. I'm probably doing something wrong like with my editing or something. But in all likelihood, it has nothing to do with any of those things. It certainly has nothing to do with your age. It's most of the time the fact that you're missing the strategic foundation of how to make YouTube work for you instead of against you when you're publishing your videos. So in my very next video, I'll queue up here on Build Your Thriving YouTube channel without spending hours creating videos. I'll show you exactly how to set your channel up so your content starts getting the attention that it deserves, even if you only have time for one video a week and you're not super tech savvy and you're just getting started. So this is actually one of the most popular topics among Video Brand Academy members because it solves the exact problem that's keeping business owners kind of stuck with YouTube, which is how do I make YouTube sustainable when I have an actual business to run? So I'll cue that video up for you now, and let's get your channel working as hard as you do.