Vidpros Insiders

Daniel Kosmala Explains The Real Reason Your Content Isn’t Making Money

• Vidpros Insiders • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Meet Daniel Kosmala, Head of Creator Growth at Uscreen, as he breaks down what actually drives growth and revenue in the creator economy and why most creators struggle to turn views into real income.

If you’ve ever wondered why some creators with small audiences make more money than those with millions of views, how to actually understand your audience, or what separates content that converts from content that doesn’t, this conversation is packed with practical insights on what actually matters.

In this episode, Daniel shares lessons from working directly with creators every day, helping them grow and monetize their businesses. We talk about the biggest mistakes creators make when it comes to audience understanding, why most people think they have a funnel when they actually don’t, and how poor messaging and positioning hold creators back from making money.

Daniel also explains why engagement matters more than follower count, how creators should approach selling without turning off their audience, and why most people focus on features instead of outcomes. We also dive into email marketing, content strategy, and how to build a system that turns attention into revenue.

We also discuss the importance of human connection in content, why overproduced videos can sometimes hurt performance, and how authenticity and real communication are becoming more valuable than ever in today’s content landscape.

Daniel Kosmala is the Head of Creator Growth at Uscreen, where he works directly with creators around the world, helping them grow, monetize, and build sustainable businesses through video.

Whether you’re a creator, entrepreneur, or trying to turn your content into a real business, this episode is for you.

Learn more about Daniel:
Uscreen: https://www.uscreen.tv
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Daniel_Kosmala/videos

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👍 Drop a like, share your thoughts in the comments, and let us know: Why do you think most creators struggle to turn views into revenue?

SPEAKER_00

Most creators think growth is about views, algorithms, and going viral. Danielle Kusmala shows that what actually drives real results is something very different. In this episode, he breaks down why most creators struggle to make money, how to build a real business behind your content, and what actually moves the needle when it comes to growth. So, for people discovering you for the first time, how would you describe what you do today and who are you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I'm Daniel and I am a creator. I am a dad. I'm a husband. I have too many kids. No, I'm just kidding. I have I have four wonderful kids. And I work at UScreen as a uh as the head of coaching and creator growth. So I've been doing that specific role for about two years, and all I do is I get on calls with video creators from all over the world and help them figure out how to market and grow their businesses so that they can make more money. Because ultimately, if our customers are successful, it means our business is going to do well too.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. And what what does your role at UScreen actually look like, like on a day-to-day? On a day-to-day?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That's a great question. So, like just for today as an example, I have been on calls with some customers talking to. I was the reason I was late to our podcast recording is because I was on a call with a potential customer who's trying to learn more about UScreen and trying to figure out okay, I'm switching business models from I'm selling courses and one-time products to now I'm gonna sell a membership. How do I go about the strategy for that? How does it differ from one-time sales to subscriptions? Um, what do I need to know to grow the business? What should I expect right out of the gate? So I'm on calls talking about things like that. Um, I help people diagnose what's wrong with their funnel. I'll help them with messaging problems, I'll help them with email problems because I've been in marketing for 15 years. I've been at USCreen for seven years. I worked in a subscription business for a few years before that. And so I I have um a quite a depth of knowledge when it comes to marketing and growth, and just making sure I use that to help USCreen customers grow their businesses.

SPEAKER_00

What was it like for you actually getting into this industry and in the creator economy? Like, did you know anything prior? What were you doing before that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, uh so I have made dumb videos since I was a teenager, so it's it's going on 20 years of making silly videos, and I've always kept up that skill. I used money that I probably shouldn't have spent in college to buy my first camera, which was a Canon T2i, and have bought and sold many cameras over the years. I've like looking around to see where my most recent one is, and so I've always kind of been a creator at heart and a creative person. I like making videos for my kids and my family. Like, we'll go on vacation and I'll make little videos of them. And then I actually got into this world. So I was working in a subscription business where we created courses for pastors to like run the church, the business side of their church. Um and from there, I was I left and was like, I need to figure out what's next. And I wanted to get into the software world, and I was like, I know creators, I know the creator economy a little bit, although it wasn't yet really called that. And I happened upon UScreen, and they were looking for somebody to make YouTube videos for them. And I was like, I can make videos, I know marketing, uh, it's the software world. I really like the product. I I saw what was possible with the product, and so I shot a video in my living room one day and sent it to the founder and got a call, and then just started. I've made thousands of videos for UScreen uh over the last seven years for YouTube, for our customers, for ads, for all kinds of stuff. And so that was really like getting my foot in the door. And I I mean, I've always been a big YouTube watcher. Like when YouTube came out, I was in high school and I would watch silly videos on YouTube. So going again, going on what 20 years of that, and so I love consuming content, so getting to create it, it was just like a a privilege that I just kind of I wouldn't say I stumbled into it, I earned my way into it by working hard. Um, but that's kind of where things got started in terms of creator world for me.

SPEAKER_00

It's so funny how similar the way we both started is because I it was exactly the same way, and I made the same dumb decision of buying a camera in college, it was a Sony A73, and I had no idea what I was doing, and I feel like I started as a semi-professional in a way with that camera already. But yeah, I I also started with uh VinPro just like being in front of the cameras, and I think this is how you get started, right? You just have to put yourself out there because in a way we're all creators at heart. People post things every day on social media, it's just that you have to think how you can monetize that because we're all doing that already, don't you think?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And it's funny you mentioned the Sony A7 III was the camera I bought a month into my time at UScreen. I was like, oh, the camera I had, I was like, this is the quality is not where I need it to be. I was like, I need a full frame sensor, I need 4K, and so I went and bought a Sony A7 III, and that was in 2019, I guess. And I love that camera. It was my workhorse for years before I finally changed cameras to something else because I have a problem with gear.

SPEAKER_00

What what would you say shifted your perspective once you started working with creators and not just marketing?

SPEAKER_01

Shifted my perspective in what way?

SPEAKER_00

Like in your your marketing perspective, I would say, because you're working with marketing for a company, and I think once you actually get into the creator economy, there are things that are gonna be a little bit different, a different different approaches, I would say. Is there anything new that you've learned that you were not using in the past?

SPEAKER_01

That's a good question. Honestly, I would say the answer to that last question is no. I would say there I have I haven't necessarily learned anything that's different. What I was surprised by is I fully, when I started coaching people and coaching creators through their pro their growth marketing problems, I fully expected that everyone was going to be unique and different, which they are. Everyone has their own unique perspectives, the way they approach their content, how they operate, how they think. All of that's unique. What's not unique is the problems that they then run into when it comes to growth. Because what they're great at is creating content in most cases. They're great at creating content, whether it's fitness, whether it's cooking, whether it's card magic tricks, whether it's about becoming a samoyer, whether it's about becoming an insurance adjuster or a farmer. They're all really good at that. But they've spent all their time doing that and focusing on being really good at that craft or being really good at whatever it is that they're good at, and they don't know the marketing world. So I would I came in and within weeks of spending eight hours a day basically on calls with people, I realized, oh, there's a very similar pattern here among all of these people. And that is they all struggle with they don't know their audience as well as they think they do. Right? A lot of people are like, they'll go to their Instagram insights or they're gonna go to their YouTube channel analytics, and they're like, oh, I primarily have men who are 18 to 24 and live in the United States. Like, okay, that's great. You can infer a decent amount from that, but it doesn't tell you how much they money they have to buy things. It doesn't tell you their politics, it doesn't tell you how they think about things, it doesn't tell you how they talk about themselves, it doesn't tell you how they talk about their problems, so you don't really know them. And so it was like that's step one, figuring learning more about your audience and going really deep with them. The second is most people think they have a funnel problem, and they do, but most cases they don't even really have a funnel. They're just like, I have social media and I have this thing I have to sell. Let me just kind of like slam those two things together and hope for the best, which will get you some conversions, but it works a lot better when you have a very systematic strategic approach to things, and it's like, yes, you warm them up here, and then you get them to an email list, and then you get them to buy one small thing from you for five dollars, and then they trust you with $20 a month. It's this journey and making sure you structure that the right way. Uh, most people are terrible at selling, honestly, is the third thing. Most people, it's the same thing. I have this thing that I do, and I have this thing that I sell, and I'm just gonna talk about those two together. And but that ends up with them being like, well, you you get free, uh you get free coaching on my classes, you get uh 300 videos, you get community, you get a PDF on nutrition or whatever it is, and they they list all of these things, and it's like, why do you the audience is sitting there thinking, why do you think I care? I don't care about it. You haven't made me care. Why should I care about any of this? Because you're talking about what matters to you because you're the person who built the business, and you're not talking about the outcomes that you help people achieve, which is what they actually care about. They care about resolving the tension in their life that they currently feel, and you have to position yourself as the solution to that. And most people don't do that. Um, the fourth thing is most people are terrible at email, and that's a huge thing. Like email marketing, whether you like it or not, we all check our email inboxes a minimum of one once a day, most of us dozens of times a day, it feels like. And if you're showing up like everyone else is writing emails, you're just gonna get ignored like everyone else. Because I ignore 80% of what comes to my inbox because it's poorly written, it's poorly structured, it's impersonal, it's boring, and it doesn't get me excited about what's inside. But if you can do that, you can probably win with your email. So those are kind of like the core things, or some of the core things, and a lot of people under-leverage AI, like, and I've been saying this to people for two years, and like, hey, you need to start using this because like there's no avoiding it, and it can help you as an individual person trying to run a business and a content empire by yourself, like it can help you do more with less. So that's kind of the core things I see. Um, that was, and it was a realization for me going back to your original question of like what changed my perspective? The perspective change was oh, everyone is not necessarily unique in the sense that they all share many of the same problems. And yes, they're wrapped differently, but the at the core, those problems are all the same. And so if I can help more people solve these core problems, I can help more people.

SPEAKER_00

And is there like any lesson that you've learned like early on about growth that changed completely your perspective that you apply to all of those clients?

SPEAKER_01

I this this might be more existential of an answer than you're looking for. Um I struggle a lot with the idea of like growth for growth's sake. And the question of like when is enough enough? Um, because I I think, especially in America, that is something that not enough people stop and ask themselves. It's always just more, more, and more. It's like I need the nice car, I need the nice house, I need the pretty girl, I need the fancy gadgets, I need the updated kitchen, I need like but do you do you actually need those things or or or are you just like filling an empty spot that needs to be filled by something different or better or more important? Um so for me, I think that question comes like the thing that I wrestle with is does or rather where I come back to is who really needs my help? Do do like does this person who came to me, do they really need my help, or are they okay? And they'll they'll be able to figure it out on their own. And who can I actually go spend time with that really needs my help, that it's actually gonna make a difference in their life? Because that's who I want to help. Like, I want to help the single mom who left her job and is trying to spend more time with her kids, and so she started this thing and it's making a little bit of money, or it's making just enough to cover their bills, but she needs more breathing room. Like, I want to go help that person, or I want to help the the wife whose husband lost his job and she all of a sudden unexpectedly became this the primary breadwinner for their family. They have kids with disabilities, and she's making uh okay money, but when you lose an entire income, you need to replace that. And can I help her? I want to go help her solve that problem so that her family has that breathing room back and they're not all stressed. So that's how I kind of answer that question.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, because social media growth doesn't exactly go side by side with making money, right? Like I think you've mentioned in the past, like I have I have an audience is different than I have a business. So when you get clients like that, what what does that shift look like? What what are your priorities? Because I don't think from what you're saying, it's not really the algorithm and growing on social media, right? It's actually building a foundation, something a little bit deeper than that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so when I look, anytime I get sent like a creator or somebody on our team is like, hey, can you help this person? I I have like this process I go through to diagnose their business and figure out where do we start, what's broken, what's missing, how like where can I, where are the biggest opportunities for growth for this person? And the first place I go is always their social media profiles. That's the first place I go because I want to know what we're working with. Because in in this age, like if you don't have a social media following or an email list, like the likelihood that you're you have a massive SEO presence is basically non-existent. SEO is in this massive state of uh unrest and upheaval right now. So that I think I've seen one customer at UScreen in the last seven years that had an SEO strategy that was successful. Everyone else has a social following. So I'll go to their social profiles, and as long as they have if you have, and this is my seven years of experience, so not a universal truth, there are exceptions, but in my experience, if you have 15,000 followers, you can make a full-time living from doing selling things online, from selling video content online specifically, because that is my specific um focus and field of expertise. If you have less than that, you can still make money and decent money. Like I have seen people with less than 10,000 followers make tens of thousands of dollars. It is entirely possible. Now, it again it comes down to what's enough for you and what do you need to live the life that you want to live? Because some people, that's forty thousand dollars, others, it's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So it's it just depends. But that's kind of where I go is what does their social look like? And from there, that's kind of how I determine next steps.

SPEAKER_00

Have you ever had clients that had like maybe less than 5,000 subscribers and they yet managed to be successful somehow?

SPEAKER_01

Of course. So there, like I said, I think I think at like the very bottom of that list, like you can make money, you can get probably a hundred subscribers paying subscribers for something when you have like 2,000 followers. You could probably make that work because it all comes down to how well are you engaging and fostering and serving that audience. That's what it comes down to. Because there are people I've met with 100,000 followers who have no engagement and they're they're making money, but not as much as this person. There was somebody during the pandemic, she started going live on Instagram and had a following of like 10,000 people, and she still to this day has less than 40,000 and is one of makes like the amount of money that she makes still blows my mind because she has stewarded her community on social media so well. She responds to every with 30,000, 40,000 followers, she still responds to every single DM she gets. And yeah, it takes a lot of time, but that's how deeply she cares about stewarding and engaging that audience. And so that level of engagement shows if you do that with 2,000 people, yeah, you can get results. Just like if you have 20,000 people, you and you have that level of engagement, you're gonna get even better results.

SPEAKER_00

Why do you think so many creators get stuck at the views but no revenue stage?

SPEAKER_01

Ooh, what a good question. That's ooh, I don't I I wasn't you're you're catching me up with a curveball on that one. Why do so many creators get stuck on views, but can you say it again? Why do they get stuck on views? But no revenue.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I think it kind a lot of it comes down to that engagement piece. Like just as an example, I was talking to a creator within the last two weeks um who has 50,000 Instagram followers. And she's doing fine, but things have been flat, and she's wants to figure out growth. And then I start scrolling through her feed and I'm like, you have uh this many followers, and I'm getting as many comments as you on my post. And I have like I don't my personal Instagram has like 600 followers because it's all family and friends and stuff, because I've never been like, oh, let me go grow this until honestly the last few weeks or months. So to me, it comes down to that like, are you engaging or are you just giving people eye candy that they can quickly see on Instagram or see on their YouTube Shorts feed, and they can consume it from a far away, like at arm's length, versus something that's gonna pull them in because it resonates deep within them and makes them say, Oh man, I need to like comment on this. Because that that happens to all of us, even though it may not be often for some people, it happens more for others. Some people are obviously more vocal, but there are those creators where you see a post and you're like, This resonates deeply, and I have to respond to it. So I think it comes down to have you cultivated um engagement with that audience, and sometimes it means getting your hands really dirty in the trenches and responding to every DM, regardless of your following size. It means responding to every comment and not just responding with thanks so much or hearts or whatever it is, because that's the number one thing I see a lot on social media is creators think that engaging is just responding to a comment. It's not, because it's called social media. And if I had a social conversation with you and you said something and then I said something, and then we both just stared at each other, that's not a conversation. Yes, it has to be back and forth, and it has to be somewhat even. And so one of the strategies that I coach people on is like if you're on Instagram and you have been guilty of just commenting, thanks, so glad you're here. Super surface level, quick things that you can do in five minutes. That's fine, but when you don't get the results you want in terms of engagement, you can't be mad. Because what you need to do is you need to that person just told you something about themselves. Great, ask them a question and get them to tell you something else about themselves. Because what happens is like, if I follow somebody with a hundred thousand followers and I comment on one of their posts and they come back and respond to me, what what's the difference in how I feel if they just say thanks versus thanks, Daniel? When was the last time you did this? And they're actually asking me what feels like a personal question, and then I come back and like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they responded. And what you'll see is like people rage posting back and be like, ah, they're so excited. They post like three times, and then your engagement triples in the span of a week because you put in 30 seconds more effort with each comment.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, one thing that I notice is that in this industry, a lot of people are metrics obsessed and they forget about the human connection, the human level, which is all it is about if you think about this. People were on social media all day long. In a way, I always say that people are lonely and they kind of use their phones as like their friends, they're like having dinner and watching a YouTube video or whatever. And people are always focused on the first 30 seconds and how to make this fast-paced, and they forget to make it relatable in a way. So, uh is there like any mistake that you notice that is very common with creators when all of this is happening, they're not generating revenue, but they still like they're sure they're on the right, they're on the right path because that's the information that is out there, so they keep doing like the same mistake over and over again.

SPEAKER_01

I think you said a lot of great things there. And I think the thing that lands or that comes to mind for me is it's so easy to forget when you're staring at a lens that there's a person always on the other side. And I I've been talking about this a lot recently, both on my podcast and just with people I know, because you forget that. Like, I'll sit down in front of the camera, knock out a video, and then I'm like, well, I hope that gets viewed, and then I used to, I used to get really disappointed when I'd see view counts. And it was like I was building a channel and it we get a couple hundred views per video. And then we got to a point where it was like a thousand views per video, and I still like wasn't happy with that. That wasn't enough. And somebody sat me down and was like, if you were in a room talking to 400 people a week, 500 people a week, one just one time a week, wouldn't that be crazy? I was like, Yeah, that'd be wild. Like, you're already doing that. You just don't get to see their faces, you don't get to feel their reactions. And so something that's been really impactful for me is reminding myself of that regularly. And I actually, like, even to the point of how we're filming this podcast. Right now, I went and got an one of the Elgato teleprompters and connected it to my computer so that you know, typically with something like this, you're looking, you're not looking at the camera, you're looking at the person's face, and so then they're over there, but everything's over here, and it's like this disconnect. Well, I wanted to unify that experience, so I've got your face right behind my camera. So I'm looking at you and actually connecting with a person rather than just a soulless lens of my camera, which I love my cameras, but they don't have they don't have a soul. So like they're they're missing that human element. And so for me, it's giving myself reminders that there are always people on the other side, and that if I can help, if a piece of content I make reaches one person, and that changes something for them or helps them unlock some piece of growth, or they go and do something different in their life that makes this huge downstream impact in who they become or what they're able to do with their life, and all of that was because I just sat down and watched or recorded a video. I think that's worth one view.

SPEAKER_00

Do you think this type of connection that is more vulnerable is the reason why small creators sometimes are are way more successful than bigger creators? Like, because I noticed that when it comes to small creators, when they start their own business and they talk to their audiences, and from from people that I've been interviewing in this podcast, I noticed that they make something much bigger than people with millions of subscribers sometimes.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, I think I think Mr. Beast is a perfect example of that, to be honest, because you can kind of see the trajectory of him as he's gone from small creator to big, well-known creator to holy cow to biggest creator. And similar to that, that arc of him getting bigger and bigger and bigger, is he shares less and less and less and less about who he is and what he cares about and what he does. And like now, to the point of like, you know, people know he's engaged and like he has a fiance and all that, but like he does not share the personal stuff that he used to of like what he's doing with his friends or blah blah blah. Like you just I just see that so often is like you're as you get bigger, you get more guarded and concerned about who has access to you, so you don't get hurt, I think, in a lot of cases, or taken advantage of. And so by a direct result of that, you just like close off access to yourself and start limiting who and what has access to you. So I understand it. I think it and I think it's a hard as someone who's not been in in that position at like such a huge scale, like I can't, it's hard for me to even imagine what that's actually like in practice, but I understand it, I think, from a gut level. But I wish there was a better way.

SPEAKER_00

I I always say that there's like mainstream YouTube and normal YouTube, because in a way, when you see people actually getting bigger on YouTube, even the way they speak in front of the camera is different. There's like a different tone in their voice that, in a way, to me, it separates the audience from you. I I personally love that that type of content that is completely raw, that like if we make some sort of mistake, just keep it in there, you know. I feel like we're missing that again on YouTube, and people are craving for it today. Because that's what YouTube used to be like maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I I I feel like we've seen some surging of that in certain areas, like with vlog creators. I think there's like um who's the the bodybuilder, Sam Sullick, I think is his name. Right. He's just absolutely monstrous guy, and he blew up just making I think he was using his iPhone and just like he'd set it up in his car, record himself going to the gym and talking about his workout, and then he'd film his workout and just like slap it all into a video and put it up there in like minimal edits. It was very raw and unfiltered, and he blew up huge, absolutely huge. And I've seen a lot of vlog channels kind of make a research because there it was like the vlogging of the 2010 to like 2015 era with Jake and Logan Paul and all that stuff, whether you liked it or not, and then it like got a everyone got a bad taste in their mouth for it for the next few years, and then it's like, oh, we're back in the cycle and it's coming back. But what people really like is not this these prank wars and these overproduced videos with celebrities and over-the-top things, it's this authentic, real, human approach to things, and I I love that. I I love watching that stuff. I'm there's a creator I worked with, she just started a YouTube channel recently, and she had. I talked to her a few weeks ago, she had 200 subscribers and had three videos, and all three videos had over a thousand views. And I was like, you're on to something, you are on like whenever views outpace your subscriber number by that much, your channel's gonna grow. And now two weeks later it's already doubled, and she's over 500 subscribers, just because she's being real and authentic and honest with her content.

SPEAKER_00

How important do you think editing is? Because too much can actually hurt your content, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think I mean editing is how I got my start. Like I taught myself how to edit when I was a senior in high school and or junior maybe, and just kept up that skill. And but I I always struggled with like the hyper overproduced stuff and that era we went through of like kind of around COVID times of where it was like you gotta get the hook right and you gotta get the retention in the first 30 seconds. And I'm like, I I've always approached editing from how do I want people to feel when they watch this? I don't care if like if somebody decides that they this isn't holding their attention, they don't want to watch it, that's great. That's not a reflection of me and my editing skills because I put out the end product that I'm proud of, and what I wanted to do was connect with people who this connects with. So I I have always been a less is more person when it comes to editing. Like I'm a very simple person. My and part of that may be like I didn't have the time or energy to devote to becoming like a shredded or somebody who's got like crazy cuts and amazing VFX and motion graphics and all that. I was like, I have time for cuts and maybe some J cuts and like very simple transitions. I'm not into that, like, oh, I'm gonna take my phone and video what's on the screen, and then all of a sudden I'm on my it's a transition to me in my editing window or whatever. Like, I'm very much editing can really good editing can still be very simple, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00

And now changing a little bit of topic, uh, when it comes to creator business and making money again, because I know that's something you're a pro at. What I'm actually curious, you know, what are some businesses that you've noticed that have been very um, you know, some areas that you've noticed that have been very successful and profitable that people can get into if they're actually doing social media and they're thinking about starting a business from it?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think it comes down to a few things. Part of it comes back to that thing I said earlier about knowing your audience, because your audience is going to tell you what they want from you. And if you don't listen, you run the danger uh and the risk of trying to sell them something they don't want and that you thought they wanted. So I think that's like the core thing here is are you are you actually tuned in and engaged with your audience to know what they actually want and will buy? And if so, there's plenty, there's plenty of opportunity, there's opportunity everywhere. People have been saying YouTube is saturated for 15 years. It's still not true. It wasn't true then, it's not true now. People will start to say the same thing about oh, well, subscriptions and subscription fatigue. I've been hearing people ask me about subscription fatigue for five plus years. People are still buying subscriptions, and not just a little, like everyone is still buying subscriptions. It is still possible to build a sustainable business with recurring revenue that way. I think it's a matter of for the creator who's trying to figure out what's next or how do I even start monetizing. I think it's one, you've got to figure out what your audience wants from you and making sure that you're delivering the product that gives them what more of what they want from you that they're will actually willing to pay for. Because people work hard for their money. They think about like, is this worth my money? So you got to make sure that whatever you deliver gives them that. Um I think that that kind of covers it because that can look like in-person events, that can look like merch, it can look like PDFs, it can look like one-on-one coaching, it can look like courses, it can look like a video subscription, it can look like an app. There's all different ways for this to work, but it's a matter of finding out what does your audience want and what are they willing to pay for, and will you give them that?

SPEAKER_00

When it comes to that, do you think niche positioning is actually important?

SPEAKER_01

I think n I think niching helps. Like, and the example I'll give is I get ads all the time. So I'm a dad of four young children. I'm I have a full-time job, my wife works full-time, I've got two dogs, I've got a cat, I've got family nearby. Like, there's a lot going on. Yeah. When I get an ad that is for a shirtless guy, totally shredded, running it like a five-minute mile, it's like, give me 10 weeks, bro, to get the base shape of your life. I'm like, this guy doesn't know anything. He doesn't know anything. He that's all he does 24-7 is run and lift and eat. He doesn't, and sauna and cold plunge, I'm sure. Like, that's all he does. But when I get an ad from a guy who's like still in really good shape, has like a visible six-pack, but has like obviously more body fat on him, and it is like POV 4 a.m. when I'm waking up to do my workout before my kids get up. If you want to like figure out how to squeeze the margins of your day because you're a busy dad, let me know. Yeah, I'm I one of those is definitely more appealing to me. So it's about finding the right route for who you are and what you do, and and honing in on that. Like being specific is not a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00

Do you think it's more uh sustainable to grow your audience that way than actually just being the first guy that you mentioned?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, the first guy, there's always some legit legitimacy too, right? Like, but how many, how many of the my question is like, how many of those people are following just because they like what they're looking at? A shredded dude who's absolutely jacked, sweating, like we all have an appreciation for it. Sure, great. Like, but is he is he engaging people at the deeper level? Is the question I'd ask. Like, is he actually getting the audience he wants to do the things that he wants? Because I'd if if you bring both of those to me and are like, I which one of these would do you want to invest in, I'm going with the guy who's more specific.

SPEAKER_00

Interesting, because um I I think about that a lot because when you were mentioning that, I was thinking about the type of content that I consume, and it's never the content that is a little bit more superficial that I've that are things that I don't relate to. In a way, I always look for creators that I can learn something from. And I always say that when you're watching a YouTube video, you click on that video because you want to learn something from it, and eventually, if you end up liking the person, you click because of them. Because, but in the beginning, you just like you you want to get something out of what you're watching. That's I think that's human, right? So I I I I do agree with you so much when it comes to that. And do you think that um when it comes to creating like some sort of paid membership or community, is it is it something that it's um easy now for creators, or do you think it's a process that takes a long time and you have to build like trust and build your community before you actually charge in? Like what would be the step by step if I if I were a creator coming up to you and saying, I want to start building some sort of membership?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's a I find that question a little challenging to answer because I think it's it it packs a lot of nuance into one small thing. Um what I would say to that is I think the core thing is a lot of what I've already kind of stated, which is like, do you have an audience and how engaged are they? Because if you have those things, I think you can do anything that you want from there. Um when it comes to building a membership, like is it going to take time and energy? Yeah, but so is anything else. The the perk of membership though, or a subscription-based model is that, and I I run into this all the time with creators coming from different models where they were selling, let's say, PDF guides or one-on-one coaching or courses or like eight-week fitness programs or eight-week, you know, 12-week chemistry program is they do a launch, and then if they do nothing else, no more money's coming in. Like they can just take those people through those 12 weeks, but if they don't keep launching and selling, they're not making any more money. Whereas if you do a launch like that with your subscription, those people, even if only 80% of them stay for three the second month and then the third month, you're still making money from them. So your baseline is always going to be higher. So you yeah, some months you may make 10,000, but maybe your average baseline is 20,000 a month, and then the next month is 21, and then 22, and then 23, and you build on that foundation.

SPEAKER_00

So do you think uh the reason why most memberships actually fail is because they have like a short-term goal? Do you think it's it should always be like a long-term plan?

SPEAKER_01

I think you should be willing to commit a minimum of like at least a year to seeing something like this through. I think in most cases you should give it longer than that, like multiple years. It should be a long-term play. Because long-term, but long-term risk has long-term reward, in my opinion. So I think, yes, like you have to be willing to do that. But there are also ways to test into it on a smaller scale. Like we at UScreen, we launched a smaller tier tier plan to help people get to their first dollar in revenue faster because we know that if we can get them to their first dollar, it's easier to then get them to their first hundred, and then they're more likely to get to their first thousand. And if we can help them hit those milestones, which we have data on, and we're diversifying the product to make it easier and easier for people to do that, then it's more likely they'll stick around and it's not just isolated to the creator who has the five million followers or the five hundred thousand followers. Instead, it can be okay, I I'm this person, I have 5,000 followers, and I'm ready to start monetizing. Should I do coaching? I don't know. Should I do a course? Should I do a subscription? Well, UScreen lets me test into one, two, or all three of those, and I can figure that out without being on the hook for years at a time or tons of money, and then from there I can graduate into additional features and whatever else I want to do with the platform.

SPEAKER_00

When you look back at clients that you have worked with, the ones that were successful, is that any specific pattern that you notice that works, then it's something that people don't usually mention when you look for advice on social media?

SPEAKER_01

Oh, for sure. For sure. And it's often the thing people don't want to hear, which is people just are lazy. Like they just don't do things. People, I cannot tell you how many times I've sat on a call with a customer and I've said, here's what you need to do between now and next week, between now and the next month, whenever our next call is, you need to do these three things. Nothing else is important. You've told me everything about your business, you've told me everything about your life. We're friend like we get along. I love talking to people, I love being friendly with people. You've told me everything. You need to go do these three things, or the business is not going to move forward. And more than 50% don't do those things. The difference to me, in my experience, is will you act? And most people just don't default to action. They default to finding reasons not to act, to procrastinating, to talking things to death. But that's not how you learn, and it's not how you make changes. You make changes by doing things, failing or succeeding, adjusting, and doing things again. And so, in my experience, that is the clear differentiator is do they go and act? Because the woman I mentioned earlier, whose husband lost his job and she felt pressure to make more money. I worked with her starting in January of last year. And by the end of the month, January of 2025 was the highest revenue month she had ever had in her business after five years of being on the US Green platform. Because she I told her, I was like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get you some quick revenue, we're gonna do a flash sale, we're gonna do this. She went and executed and was just next week, we'd show up and she'd like, what now, what? What do we do next? And she would go and execute. Highest revenue 2025, best year ever for her business. Because she I think she went and did what I asked.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I think there's this misconception, and I noticed that from talking to my friends that um if you work on social media, it's easy work, you're not actually working, you're just recording a video and you're making easy money, and people don't understand a lot that goes behind it, right? So I think it comes from that. A lot of people they want they want to become influencers just because they think they will stop working and they will just make money. So what do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_01

I don't think there's anything I've ever done in life that I did well that didn't involve just doing the work. And it's for some reason it it's being an influencer has gotten this stigma of like you don't do anything. Some of the influencers I know are some of the hardest working people I have ever met in my life. They hustle and they work their butts off. They sleep less than anyone and work more than anyone I know. Sure. Are there influencers who don't work hard? Sure. But at some point in their life they probably did work hard. And that like, I don't know why creators kind of get that stigma of like, oh, you're just making a bit. No, it's hard work. It's hard work. And anything worth doing is worth doing well.

SPEAKER_00

What role do you think um content play versus experience versus community when it comes to um building um a sustainable audience and keeping people engaged?

SPEAKER_01

So you said what role does content, experience, and community play? Yeah, exactly. In building a sustainable experience?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, if you were like to rank those things, what would be man, that's hard.

SPEAKER_01

And by experience, do you mean like the user's experience?

SPEAKER_00

And your own I I would say your own experience in a way, I would be more interested when it comes to the creator's experience in the process.

SPEAKER_01

I think I've I've said this for many years, but people I and I don't know that I still stand by it, but what I used to say is people will come for your content, but they'll stay for community. I think that's true to a degree. However, I have seen data, hard data, that says people come for content and they stay for content. And like with a subscription business specifically, we know that people who watch on average one video a week from your membership or your subscription. If they watch one video a week on average, the likelihood that they're gonna stay is like incredibly high. So if you can just get people to watch one video a week, they'll keep paying you. So if you can get them to watch five videos a month, they'll come back the next month. If you get them to watch five videos that month, they'll come back the next month. So I think content is like probably the number one. It's what brought them to you in the first place, it's what's gonna keep them around. And then I think community is like really close behind that because ultimately we want to uh commiserate's the wrong word, but we want to we want to feel the part of something and we want to talk to people about the things that we care about. It's like I love and have for many years watching Good Mythical Morning, one of the huge YouTube channel, great daily show, and I found somebody at our company who also watches, and they had a hilarious video last week and I sent it to her, and I was like, this one's absolutely unhinged. Please watch it because I need to talk to somebody about it. That so like I think there is power in community, but I think without the content, you don't have the community in a lot of cases.

SPEAKER_00

Do you think creators actually overcomplicate content and growth strategy? Because there's so much information out there that I feel like you get lost easily.

SPEAKER_01

Of course. There's platform updates, there's gurus, there's experts, all of them telling you all these things. But what it comes down to, at the end of the day, all of it comes down to Did you help someone? Did you give them value? Did you make them laugh? Did you make them smile? Did you make them feel something? And if you can do one of those things, then your content is worthwhile.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna do like another ranking for you, but if you were like to tell me what moves the needle the most, uh content quality, consistency, and positioning, what would it be? If you're a content creator and editing is eating up your week, pay attention. VidPros is a professional video editing service built specifically for creators, not random freelancers and other AI tools. You get a dedicated human editor who learns your style, basing, and brand from day one. You film your content and upload the raw footage. Your editor handles everything cuts, captions, color grading, sound design, and short form clips. We deliver everything through Google Drive and Frame.io so you can leave timestamped feedback and request unlimited revisions. We started a $100 trial week that includes 10 hours of editing. Go to vidprills.com and start your $100 trial today. Stop editing and start growing.

SPEAKER_01

I'd say consistency is number one. I think positioning is number two, and I think content quality is number three. I think a lot people will forgive video quality or even audio quality to a degree more than they will forgive you not showing up when you're supposed to. If you keep showing, like if I show up every week, but my quality is hit or miss, at least I'm showing up, and people know what to expect from me. But when I don't show up consistently, they don't like we've seen it with all these creators, all the big creators, they'll stop showing up on their regularly scheduled, and people are like, I don't care about the quality, just give me content. I want to watch something, I want to hear from you. So that's how I would rank those two. And then positioning is an interesting one to throw in there, but I I'm I'm ranking that second just because I think how you frame your content also carries a bit more weight than the quality of it. And those two, I I might be you you might be able to convince me to swap two and three, but I'll stick with that ranking for now.

SPEAKER_00

I get that. When I first started uh in this industry, for me it was always quality first. But what you said makes so much sense. Like you see, creators like people they love those creators and they just want they just want more. And I feel like whenever you're doing any sort of business, it's all about risking yourself. So it's it's all about doing it, whether it's your best work or not, at least you've done something, you're gonna learn something from it. There's gonna be an outcome. We don't know what what's gonna be, but you know, something is there. So I do agree with you that consistency is gonna be is gonna play a much bigger role when it comes to that. For you, have you is there like a difference when a creator is thinking like a creator and they start thinking as a business owner? Like, what do you think they should transition in their mindset and what would that process be like?

SPEAKER_01

Ooh, that's a big one. That's like you're you're knocking on a really big door there, of something that I think about a lot, because I think too many creators start to build businesses without thinking about themselves as a business owner or a business operator. And then they end up in a position where they're not measuring and structuring the business in a way that's actually gonna help them grow, and instead they're doing what they did with their content, which is kind of flying by their intuition or the seat of their pants, and they don't know how to improve it. And so then they've reached a certain level by doing what has always worked, but they don't know what worked to get them there, so they don't know how to get from where they are to where they want to go. And that happens with the business too, is that they don't measure basic data, they don't measure basic analytics, and so they have no foundation to say this is where I am, and to get where I want to go, I need to do this to get to level one, I need to do this to get to level two, and they don't have any of that. So I think more creators need to start treating their content like a business, and like uh I was again, I was talking to somebody the other day, and we were scrolling through her Instagram feed, and I told her, I was like, How how do you decide what reel you're gonna post next? And she said, just whatever feels right. And I was like, Okay, well, if we look at what has felt right for the last couple weeks, none of it is resonating with your audience. So this one got 400 likes but zero comments. Why is that? 400 likes is a very big signal that people like what they're seeing, but then the substance is missing to get them to engage. So can you take that post, that exact same post, what variable can you tweak? Can you go change the caption? Can you go change the text on screen? Can you change the cover image? Can you change the music? Which of those variables are you gonna go change and then repost it and see what the performance looks like and you repost it? Because guess what? The majority of people who follow you on social media aren't seeing every post. They're just not, especially when you have a huge audience. It's a fraction of your audience seeing every post. So it's okay to repost and test that way. And most people just don't think like that when it comes to their content. And if you start thinking about that, start thinking that way about your content, then when it comes time to think about your business, you'll already be in a better mindset place to start from.

SPEAKER_00

And you also now I feel like you you have all this experience behind the cameras, but now you have an experience in front of the cameras too because you have your own podcasts. Like, what made you start it and what it is, what is it about? Like, if you were to summarize it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so what made me start it is I mean, I joined UScreen seven years ago just to create YouTube videos, and I invested thousands of dollars in my own education trying to figure out how do I grow a YouTube channel, and I was like, I should start a YouTube channel, but nothing ever felt right to me. I never felt like really compelled to go and do like a vlogging channel with my family or you know, how to on building a business or anything like that. And then when I started doing this coaching journey, I realized I have deep experience in this area. People are telling me I'm good at it. I think I'm actually pretty good at it. And I really love talking to people. Like I love meeting new people, I love getting to hear people's stories and what made them who they are, and how that then transitioned them into the journey of becoming a creator and whatnot. And so that's where the podcast was birthed out of it, and this idea of like, what can I do to help people have a better day? And that's the name of the podcast is Better Days. Because it, and if the only thing I can do is just have a conversation with them, or if I can just point them in the direction of one piece of knowledge that helps them move their business forward or their life, or I can share a story from my life and something I learned, and then that resonates with them. Like, maybe that's that's the difference I want to make. So it was just coming to this realization of like I have this area of expertise and it deeply overlaps with the conversations I'm already having. So I should probably just start recording those because it ultimately it's it's more for me. It's selfishly like I love having conversations with interesting people, and that's what I get to do with the podcast, and the benefit is sharing it with other people who might get value from it.

SPEAKER_00

Who do you think your audience? Who do you think your audience is? Because one thing that I notice is that you focus on feeling stuck in clarity instead of tactics, which is something that I love. So when you think about your audience when you're recording, what who is your do you have a target audience in mind?

SPEAKER_01

The target audience I'm aiming for is honestly other video creators because that's the world, that's the space I know. I think that's where I'm starting, to be honest. And I think it will grow beyond that scope because there are like the episode that I that got published this week was with somebody who's not a typical creator. It was actually my former college professor who's still a college professor and does like stadium announcing for um American football in a stadium with like 90,000 people every week uh in the fall. And like he just has a very different perspective on things, but he's still a creator in a sense. And so I liked branching out that way. But to get back to your core question, uh my audience is I want to help creators who are running businesses. That's that's who I really care deeply about and know that I'm good at helping and want to help. So I want to have conversations that I feel are beneficial interesting to me and beneficial to those kind of people who were looking to build a business.

SPEAKER_00

One thing that I notice with a lot of creators is that they feel stuck when they're actually doing well. Is there like any pattern that you've seen from people that you have talked to that they're actually doing well, but they feel like they should be further along in the progress?

SPEAKER_01

All the time. It happens all the time because what happens, and we're all guilty of this, is what we get we get so used to checking the data of where we are currently, of looking at view counts for the most recent video, of looking at comments from the most recent video, or the most like the last week, or maybe the last month. One of the things that I always do when I'm looking at anyone, anyone's business is I will look at all that stuff, the more recent trends, but then I want to zoom out and I want to see as far back as the data will go, like, where did you start when you started this, or when you started with us, or when you came to us, where were you? How much time has passed, and where are you now? Because what often happens is that they're like, oh yeah, I haven't looked at this in a while. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say that to me. Oh, I haven't looked at this in a while. Oh, I haven't thought about this. Oh yeah, I should look at this more often. And then I'll look and I'm like, hey, did you know that since 2022 your business has grown 66? And they're like, oh no, I didn't realize that. I just felt like I wasn't doing very well. I felt like things were slow the last few months. I'm like, well, they they are slow the last few months, and you're correct. Like, we should look at some course corrections here, but in the big picture, you nearly doubled your revenue from last year to this year. So you're doing just fine. You're doing just fine.

SPEAKER_00

Is there any conversation or guests that you've had on the podcast that impacted you the most? That you think about a lot, that maybe helped you think differently when it comes to your work or whatever?

SPEAKER_01

They that's a hard one because uh there's there's not a ton of episodes yet, and there they've all been so much fun to me. I think about Mary Lou Mandel, who talked about um there was a moment where she was on a shoot at a school, I think she said, in somewhere in Oklahoma, and some girls came up to her and were like, I didn't know other girls, like I didn't know girls could do camera stuff. And uh and she realized that like that was the moment for her where it was like I need to go be a model for other little girls who need to see people like me doing work like this, it's little things like that. Or uh my professor that I was just talking about, him talking about how he's been doing this announcing job for 20 years in front of a basically a hundred thousand people a week, reaching millions of people every year. His vo people, millions of people hear his voice every year, and he still follows the same process he followed that got him the job, which is practicing in advance, rehearsing in front of his wife, like going through the script days and days in advance. He still follows that because that preparation matters and showing up consistently at a high level matters. So it's I I can't, I don't know that there's just one. I feel like I walk away from every conversation a little bit changed, and that's kind of the goal for me.

SPEAKER_00

Is there anything that you've no noticed like in your personal approach to YouTube to your career that shifted once you started doing your podcast?

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah. Um one of the things it that's changed for me is when I made content in the past for UScreen or for other brands or for even other projects that I was involved in. It was always gotta get more views, gotta improve retention, gotta reprove, improve this, gotta improve that. With the podcast, I don't care about that. I'm not, I like I will put them out there and I'll check to see how things are performing and I'll check to see if people are leaving comments because I I love feedback. I love getting feedback because I it's one of the best ways for me to improve. But I'm not if a if a podcast gets 10 listens, I don't care. That's fine. I'm glad those 10 people got to listen to it. If it gets a thousand, awesome. But it's not it's not going to affect my mood because what I'm doing this for is for myself and for the people that I know will listen and for the people that I'm going to talk to. It's for those those people, and those people are gonna get what I want them to get out of this. Everyone else is just missing out, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00

Do you have an advice for people that are feeling stuck when it comes to content creation?

SPEAKER_01

Try something different. Just like I'm not saying I I actually uh wrote about this on LinkedIn recently. I don't think quitting is like I'm not a big fan of quitting. Um I'm a fan of remodeling though, and breaking like if if you're feeling stuck, you've been feeling stuck for a while, break it down to the studs, break it down to the bones, and figure out where the construction process went wrong and do something different this time and rebuild it and just keep like you're an amateur builder, you're not gonna build the world's most beautiful $30 million mansion on your first try. You're gonna have to build a bunch of shacks before you get to that building a nice house stage, and you need to be okay with that construction and demolition over and over phase.

SPEAKER_00

And where do you think the creator economy is heading over the next few years?

SPEAKER_01

I wish I knew. I should probably just ask like ChatGPT or Claude, because basically whatever they say is gonna go.

SPEAKER_00

Um or maybe they could be the problem. We never know what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's that's such an interesting question. I think I was I was actually thinking about this recently of like, is it even like I feel like people are using the words creator economy even less now than ever? Like it just is just like it's kind of just part of the economy now. Like we're seeing all these mainstream deals happening for huge creators like Dude Perfect and Mr. Beast, and like all these things that used to be legacy media are all kind of bleeding together, and I think we're just gonna see more of that, and whatever's gonna happen with AI is gonna happen, and there's there's some things we can do to shape that, but I also think a lot of that is just gonna there's gonna be some reactivity to that. So I I'm still excited because I st I think a lot of what create a lot of what AI can't take from us is the our human creativity, and I think there's gonna be more art or art-oriented people and creators coming out of the woodworks and being able to make a living from that because of all these changes. So I think there'll be some of that, but beyond that, I don't I just I try not to spend too much time thinking about it because I can only control so much.

SPEAKER_00

And my last question to you is if you could give one piece of advice to creators trying to build a real business today, what would it be? What is the most vital advice that you have?

SPEAKER_01

That's hard because I would give probably give them a lot of advice. But if I had to bring it down to one thing, it's have a framework for yourself to test, make a change, try again, and just re repeat that cycle. And it yeah, it's gonna feel old at times, but it works. There's a reason people do it. Um, I think that's that's the biggest one. And the other one is like this, well, this is tangentially related. Stop procrastinating. This is and this is to the version of me in 2019. Stop waiting. You are good at what you do, people want you to share that, and they're waiting for you to share it. And you're doing yourself and you're doing your audience a disservice by not just putting it out there for them now. Don't wait six years like I did. Don't wait six years. Do it now.

SPEAKER_00

I completely agree with you, and honestly, thank you so much for doing this. So I know you have a podcast. If there's anything you'd like to promote, just please promote it right now.

SPEAKER_01

No, you can follow me, Daniel underscore Cosmala on Instagram, K-O-S-M-A-L-A, and the Better Days podcast with Daniel Kazmala is on YouTube, it's on Spotify, and I would love to have you join along for some of those conversations. But thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. If there's one takeaway from this episode, it's this views don't build a business, but consistency, connection, and actually taking action do. Subscribe, leave a comment, and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.