The Formula To Break 100 Million Views On Shorts (ft/ Jenny Hoyos)

All right, today we're gonna get smarter about short form video. Short form video is something I am mega, mega long on. Why? Well I don't know, have you ever seen TikTok, Instagram Reels? Have you seen YouTube shorts? These things are taking over the world. So today's guest is Jenny Hoyos. She is a short form video genius, to be honest. I mean, every single short she does Gets like ten million views.

Every single one. And it's not because she was famous before. It's not because she's doing crazy, crazy stuff. She has just figured out how to make viral short form videos. So I wanted to ask her. Every question I could. This is an episode of me learning from her. The tricks. So how does she come up with ideas? Like how do you figure out a good idea versus a bad idea? How does she structure the video? How does she script it? How does she film it? What are the uh elements of the hooks that make

the video more viral versus medium viral versus low viral. Like what is that knob? So this interview is me talking to Jenny Hoyos, a eighteen year old short form genius who is going super viral And uh she's gonna teach us. So in the next hour We're gonna get really smart about short part. All right, let's do it. I feel like I can rule the world and know why Be what I want to

Let's jump in. What we're gonna do is in the next, I don't know, 45 minutes. You are going to tell us the specifics, the tactical, the breakdown. Of how you have cracked the viral code. You know how to go viral, TikTok, YouTube. Yeah.

You are eighteen years old. You live at home in your parents' house. It's only been two years since you started doing a lot of the content that you're doing. I went scrolled all the way back and it started off not not so great, but then now you're getting like 10 million views per video. You've had a hundred million view. Short. That's kind of incredible. What

Is that you? Is that what your what your life is like? Give people a sense of who who are you? Yeah, you I mean you nailed it right on the head, yeah, so I'm Jenny Hoyos. I'm a Ютубер. Who makes videos around the life of a cheapskate, I guess you can say. I guess you can call me like

You know, the anti Mr. B. So you know, people call me Mr. Least. Yes, uh which is which is amazing branding. I mean we've had Mr. Beast on here and he's like I spent three million dollars per video. And I'm curious also. When you record, uh do you like you know, we talked about Hollywood, if you ever see an actor in their van or their their truck before they're gonna go do a scene, they'll kinda get themselves into character, they'll get themselves into state of mind, nobody can bother them, nobody should go talk to them, like

They are getting in the zone. I'm curious. Do you do anything to kinda get yourself into a s a certain state of mind? I remember There's a care creator called Miss Excel that I I love the story. I've told this many times, but She creates content of all things about Microsoft Excel, how to use it better.

But like she's super high energy. She's like dancing and doing other stuff. It's like dancing plus Excel. It's a weird combo, but it works. And she said something like Before I go record. I'm not Like, you know, I'm not thinking about what I'm gonna say. I just get myself into a state where I she's she she said, I feel magnetic.

Like I just get my charisma, my my energy up. So high and when I feel like I'm there, I run to my camera. I turn it on and I start recording because I believe she said I believe that All content is just energy transmission. It's me pushing my energy through the phone to you. The way I feel, I'm gonna push it through, and then you're gonna feel that way too.

I love the way she described that. That's very much how I do this podcast. I'm just curious. Not everybody does things that way. Is that similar to what you do, or how do you how do you approach kind of getting in the right state of mind before you create a piece of content? Oh my gosh, I love this question because I used to struggle with this so much as like honestly an introvert. Most people wouldn't like The CBS one, but like yeah. The introvert with a billion views. Yeah.

did basically what you said. I used to like try to bump up my energy so that when I film I have like the highest energy. But now I try to have like Consistently high energy. throughout my day, every day. And I actually built that muscle by doing this thing uh for like a month. I would set up my camera.

For an hour and I would do a uh The stand up comedy show to myself. I I'm I'm like improvised or Yeah, improvised. I've never like I've never done stand up comedy. I don't know comedy. Like that's amazing. And and I did that just to like learn Uh Not be scared, like, tell bad jokes and just like

Be myself a natural. Then after that I would like record my entire day. Almost. And like it wouldn't even go online. That is fascinating. You actually did that. You would you would in the morning, you would turn on the camera and you would just do a stand up routine just to get yourself

To feel confident to be okay. And to get your kind of like Charisma reps. Yeah. Is that what you were doing? Like people go to the gym, you were doing that? Actually okay, here's what I would actually do.

This actually sounds cringe because I've never said it before. There's this YouTube channel called Charismo on Command. So in the morning. I'd watch that, right? Ha ha ha. And then like throughout the day, like I would repeat like the The things I learned in my head. And then at night I would do the stand up comedy show.

Like throughout the day, I would try to record as well, just so like get my reps in. But that that's essentially what I did. I tried to like build up my charisma and personality just by like recording videos that no one's gonna see. I don't think that's cringe at all. I think that makes total sense. Um Whenever I see somebody who's good at something, I don't assume They're just good at it, I assume. They've worked at this.

And when you see somebody who's good on camera or somebody who's got a personality that's really, you know, charismatic. I assume it's because they practice being charismatic. Maybe they did it informally, just in school all the time, cracking jokes at the lunch table and whatnot, and that's where they got their Ten thousand reps. But

If you don't have that or you're starting as a as an introvert or somebody's bad at it. There is a w deliberate way to get better, just like any skill, just like building muscles, just like becoming good at you know, tennis or whatever whatever else it is. And I actually feel I actually look for this. I look for things That are

really valuable to have. But Mm. Nobody wants to practice it. And even worse, Um

People would find it cringe or lame if you said, I'm practicing this. Yeah. Because I'm like, that's a gold mine. That is We agree that it's valuable. Nobody really works on it. So if I so I don't even have to work that hard to get great at it. Um the become better than most people at it because most people are not practicing.

And even worse. Even if people wanted to practice, they'd feel so lame or it's taboo or it sounds cringe or it sounds awkward to do it. That's a that's a barrier to entry. Most people will are not willing to do that. I hunt down those those skills and I develop them and I it's it's really great to hear you at age eighteen doing that same thing. That's that's really amazing.

So you you've said before there's four criteria for an idea. Novelty. Uncertainty, knowledge gaps and complexity. Can you Explain what this means. Knowledge gaps is basically telling the viewer I know something that you don't, which is why you have to watch. Or similar to we were talking about before, how it's like I did X, so you don't have to. Um, and then uncertainty is basically.

Telling the viewer that you're doing something Crazy that you don't know. what the outcome could possibly be. Such as like I recently made a video where I sold everything my family owns. There's so much uncertainty and how is her family going to react. We need to see their reaction to her selling everything. You know, I'm not a uh I'm not so much of a a TikToker or YouTuber. Just yet.

Will be soon. But when I write even a blog post or a Twitter thread or something like that. I will often put like the central Curiosity gap, uh, which is basically

What What is the person curious about? that I can put up front where they're gonna wanna read to the end to see the payoff. Mr. Peace does this in his videos too, right? He did a video recently which was like I have people age one to a hundred

Uh trapped in these rooms. And the last person out is gonna win. And the curiosity Who's gonna win? Is it gonna be the old person? Is it gonna be the young kid? That actually is something that comes down to the uh video idea itself, because when I'm brainstorming an idea. We want the idea itself to have so many questions that need answered because at the end of the day. Like

content creation on YouTube, what piques people's curiosity is a problem that needs to be resolved at the end of the video. or a question that's gonna get answered at the end of the video. And that's what I try to do in all of my videos. So let's look at one of them. So twenty three million views, you have What does one dollar get you at Starbucks? Like literally the title is The question, the unresolved question. Yes. I don't know. What can you get? And I guess it's more like

What's the most you can get for the buck for the buck, right? Yeah. So how do you get the most bang for your buck? That's kinda brilliant. Okay. Who has the best dollar menu? Three point one million views. Also unresolved. Which Which place is it gonna be? And you can see literally the first frame is like

You holding a dollar bill with Burger King behind you. And it's kinda like, you know, you could see what you're gonna do. You're about to test visually, you could see you're gonna test ca what can I buy with this dollar at this place. Um so the unresolved question is kind of interesting. The other thing I like that you do Yeah. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, but like It seems like you weave in your personal life or your personal stories. So it's not just like

I'm gonna do this crazy thing. It's like It's my mom's birthday. And I want to get her a gift. And then you do the crazy thing, but at least The video is more like I don't know.

I I kinda connect with you more. I see your mom I like that you're buying your mom a gift. You're kind of earnest about it. Is that a tactic that you think about, you know, kind of a personal story versus just a generic stunt? Totally. I think that's what makes the videos. Like quite frankly, there's so many people Who can do the same idea and it just doesn't go as viral because they're not telling a story. And that's why I try to weave in like my personal life because It's more relatable, more people comment about it. That's how we get that returning viewership.

So what's an example of a video you did with a story that you could have done without? Okay, the best example I have was I have a video where I made E Garden. On a budget. You know, and if you search up

Other people's videos making a garden? They were averaging the twenty thousand views, like People who make gardening videos don't Average.

I views. So what was the difference? How did you get if a normal garden video, twenty thousand views, your garden video, twenty million views? What did you do to to juice that video up? I told the story. of how ratatouille is my favorite food. But it's so expensive.

To buy it. But technically speaking I could just make a garden to have infinite ratatouille for life. And it's my and it's my favorite food. So it just works out. And then also my mom and my grandma were helping me for a portion of the garden. It just interweaves so many things that the people can insert themselves into. Right. So you took a normal thing. With

m medium to low stakes. You added your why. Why I care about this. And the why doesn't have to be life or death. I think that's kind of important. I think Uh, you know, a lot of the YouTubers did it as life or death. It's like This is, you know, the craest stunt you've ever seen. And I think Ryan Trahan and you Ye I think you guys are very, very likable because

It's almost like low stakes. stakes. Oh a thousand percent. Especially like now on YouTube, people are so used to like these high stakes. Like seeing ten thousand dollars in a title anymore, people don't even know what that even means because they're seeing people like Mr Beast Spend a million dollars. So it's like you know People are just so numb to these numbers or these stakes where almost these low stakes are high stakes. Right. Okay. So let's take a let's do an example.

Here's an idea. And let's try to make it better using some of the some of the techniques. We'll just riff on this and see where see where it goes. Live live improv here. Okay, so um let's say I wanna make a video about me um Me making dinner. So I'm cooking dinner.

One out of ten, you know, video concept. It's not not gonna be the most exciting. Let's use show me how you would make it better. So let's use either novelty, complexity, knowledge gaps or uncertainty, how would you kind of make that idea more interesting? I love this. So

For me. If I was to make that idea. Making dinner. Right. Intrinsically not intriguing at all.

But what's relevant to me is How much of a struggle it is as someone who has like a health condition. Right? So like That's one angle, right? Then there's also the angle of like

You're doing it on A budget, which is what I usually do. So that now that that that's even more of an intriguing angle, like Trying to make a healthy meal on a budget,'cause healthy is supposed to be Expensive.

Right. Or I it could be um It could be, I'm trying to make a fancy dinner. But I don't know how to cook. That too. Or I I I'm I'm a total beginner, but I'm going for gourmet.

Yes, exactly. And then like there's so many different layers. And I also love to do juxtaposition where it's like Okay, I want to make a gourmet dinner. With Leftovers.

Yeah. Or like a lunchable or something like that, right? Exactly, turning a lunchable into gourmet. Then you know, all of these are great ideas. And then at the end of the day, it's like which one makes you most excited. Gotcha. Okay, cool. And then the personal story part would be why am I making the dinner in the first place? Why does this matter to me? What are the stakes? So you we made the idea more interesting.

By adding the contrast, the juxtaposition, the complexity. The novelty. But then the personal story might be um I invited my Mom over for dinner. She's cooked for me my whole life. I told her I was gonna cook her an amazing meal. Only problem is I've never, you know, I'm an adult now. I moved out of the house.

But I've never cooked dinner for anybody. I've never hosted guests. I gotta do it. The story is even better now, because there's even an angle where what if You the video is something along the lines of like You're gonna turn to lunchables. Into the Dinnerables because lunchables

They don't have a dinner option. It's just Lunch bubbles. Right. And then what's even better is Your mom would always would never cook for you, but she would always give you lunchables for lunch. So now for dinner You're gonna give her lunchables. I mean, it sounds a bit complex, but like as you script it.

You don't remember like With complexity, the goal is to like add layers to give people more reasons to watch, but you don't want to actually confuse the viewer. And that kind of comes back in with the way you copyright it because you want to say it in a way that's, you know, easy to digest and drip feed. That context. Right. Yeah, I was uh when when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast and he was telling us about some of his video ideas.

What I realized was I was like, Man The reason his videos can get a hundred million, two hundred million views Is because It's a concept so simple, you could literally just draw it with a stick figure drawing and people would get it. Two people who don't know each other trapped in a room for a hundred days.

Winner you know, if they if they make it the whole way, they get a million dollars, right? These are like simple universal Easy to understand ideas. The what you just did with the lunchables, dinnerables thing. Is Both the kind of like

That that amusement. Like I'm doing this just for my own amusement. I'm not doing this to impress you. Um, I'm I'm doing this to scratch my own itch. Can I? Can I do this? And like I think that's very likable and also very simple to understand. I think that's I turned lunchables into dinnerables. Visually, you can imagine that. Yeah. Okay, that's great. All right. I'm excited for you to go make that video someday. All right, so we got Ideas and how to

how to basically brainstorm to turn any kind of mundane idea into a better idea using the using those techniques. Now Actually pulling it off. So delivering on it. So What is the most important part? What's the first thing you do when you're when you you have the idea now, first thing you got to get right in order for a video to pop off? The hook.

En and it the hook is so important. That sometimes I figure out the most viral hook. isn't the most viral idea. So then I have to come back to the idea and change the idea based on the hook. When do you think about hooks, I guess like what is the

What is the big picture advice when it comes to hooks? And then what is the tactical Process you take. Power should be the first thing. That starts the video. What's a power word? What do you mean?

Power words are things that Will instantly hook people that are very strong words such as Free Зіродор stole or any like

Crazy word. Uh,'cause we and the reason I say that is because I see a lot of people Like Way too many people start their videos with This is

I'm out. This is. It's not telling me anything about the video. Like I'm I I actually scroll because it's like It it's bad. As opposed to someone says Free chicken sandwiches all weekend. I'm in. Wh where are these free chicken sandwiches? I was in the moment you said free. So that's the number one thing. You want your your hooks to start with power words.

The second thing is you want it to be progressing the video. The reason why this is is also bad is because it is just saying a statement. It is not doing anything. This is blank. Doesn't tell me what you're going to do. It's just telling me a statement as opposed to Free chicken sandwiches this weekend, you're already telling me the whole story. Or I'm building a secret room.

You're already telling me the action, even though the even though the power words aren't until Three words in secret. It still works because it's starting with the action. I'm doing blank. I'm going to do blank. The story is progressing as opposed to a stream and being stale.

That's the second thing. And Uh the another thing that's very crucial for hooks is Or in your general like Introduction of your video.

Is To foreshadow the end. Your hook has to be so clear what the video is gonna be about, you're not only setting up the video, but you're also seeing what the conflict is and what's going to be at the end of the video, all in one sentence, which is very hard, but that's what a really good hook has. So I have an example here of one of yours.

You have one that says Movie theaters are overpriced. You said that's the hook and then the foreshadow is So I'm gonna make a movie theater at home on a budget of only five dollars. Exactly.

Yep, exactly, you nailed it. You want your hooks to have the setup conflict and what the resolution is gonna be all in one. What metrics in a video map to that. So like for example

Um you know, on YouTube in a normal YouTube video. The thumbnail and the title matter, and you know that because you could see the uh click to rate how many people actually choose to try to watch your video. When it comes to short form video, what metrics Or the you know, the top two that that are related to idea and hook. Yeah, so the idea slash hook metric would be the view versus swipe away.

Percentage. Vie versus swipe away. And what is like good and then what's like amazing for that percentage, that that number. Yeah, so I've heard the average is seventy.

Where pretty good for me is eighty percent plus. And Excellent would be Eighty five percent plus. But for for for my channel, we average around eighty, eighty five percent.

Which is not is very uncommon. Like I think beasts Is like at seventy five percent. So I've heard. And then the second one is like the uh so you have the the viewer swipe away and then what's the next most important metric? Retention. Retention overall. Yes, retention, I'd say. Is that it just shows how uh how much the viewer enjoyed the video. What do you shoot for with retention?

It depends on the video length, but generally you want to be at at least ninety percent. Uh, my team we usually go for ninety five plus. Wow. And uh Again, I I think for most people it's like

Fifteen percent or something crazy. Okay, so The hook and the first frame. Uh what about the visual? What works in the actual visual'cause there's With short form, there's no thumbnail.

And people aren't really reading the title, I don't think. So what's your what's your philosophy on how what to put on screen, what that first frame should look like? Yeah, I try to keep it as simple as possible. It's very similar philosophy to like a title and thumbnail, same psychology in a way. Where I try to keep it like Little to no focus points. High brightness, high saturation.

And we like we'll go through we'll go through so many lengths and measures. And after effects and VFX just to make it like pop out just that much more. Such as like sometimes we'll add artificial fire just to make it look crazier. Like one in in one of our shorts I went to Hell's Kitchen, but that you don't really get that message across unless you actually add the restaurant on fire. You know?

And it's like something I think. Pointing up at the logo of the restaurant, it looks like there's a fire. Is that not real? There's no fire there. People think it's real. Yeah, so we try to we try to make like things really stand out. Even with the secret room, when I first hit the wall I just dented the wall. I didn't even break a hole. And we actually had to make a VFX. Where it would look like I made this giant hole, like I broke a giant hole. When reality It wasn't a giant hole that broke. It was like a little teeny tiny hole because I had like a little small hammer. So it's like little stuff like that. We try to make we try and enhance.

Things look even crazier in post. Interesting. And so what was the first thing you said? No no little to no focus points? What does that mean? So What I mean by that is we don't want any busyness. To go on. I think you know what's a really good example. If you can show

Who has the best dollar menu, like in the first frame, just pause it. And notice that. That is not a real environment. Like we actually took myself, we rotoscoped myself, and then we found a image of McDonald's on Google that was so much cleaner, that had no cars, the logo was clean, there was no trees, just so it could be perfectly Like just look perfect.

for the viewer, if that makes sense. That's what we try to do. We want the environment to look as clean as possible. So there's no busy points. So all right, so great. So we've done idea. Uh how to go from meh to good to great. We've done the hook, how to grab them by the throat, get that

eighty. Eighty plus percent. Uh view rate. Now you said Foreshadowing is the next part. What is foreshadowing?

And how do you do it? Because I this is one that I've heard uh obviously I've thought about the ideas, I've thought about hooks. Uh this is not something that I do in my process. What is foreshadowing? Foreshadowing is when you give a viewer the expectation of the end of the video. And the way I've coined it is you basically wanna tell the viewer that there's an Amazon gift card at the end of the video. Essentially. Like they need to watch till the end. Sometimes you'll have to explicitly tell the viewer

Oh, you'll get blank at the end of the video. Usually f a lot of my foreshadowing is implied. So who has the best dollar menu? It's very implied that by the end of the video, I'm gonna tell you who has the best dollar menu. Right. Essentially. And that's that's usually the best foreshadowing, one that's like So obvious because it's within the hook and it's implied. When even better, even stronger foreshadowing hook is when you have a mechanism. So an example of that is what does$10 get you in Miami? Now

Not only do you know by the end of the video What ten dollars they to you in Miami? But you also know. Ва хай сента тендола. Now the mechanism is actually seeing the money being spent.

Because in the first second you see, Oh, she spent two dollars we're on an eight dollar budget. And then a couple seconds later, oh now she's at five. And we have a sense of progression of where the video is going. Cause otherwise, if the viewer does not feel like the video is constantly progressing, then they're gonna leave because they don't feel like even though you said that there's something at the end, they don't know where the end is. So it's also very important to make it clear. Let's talk about storytelling. Uh You have a great quote. You said What a storytelling.

Storytelling in one word is Change. Yes. Unpack that. What does that mean? I think the biggest thing is Progression.

I I guess when I say change, I mean progression. So similar to what I was just saying, like the viewer wants to feel like they're constantly either learning or laughing even more, or they are building towards something. They don't want to feel like you know, they're watching something stagnant, like they're just watching paint dry. The best storytelling is when there's character development change in the actual character, where at the beginning of the video, the character started at one point and is now at a new point at the end. So I I subtly did that in my short that hit a hundred million views. So basically I built a secret room with zero dollars.

And my goal was to have a secret spot to watch YouTube. And in the beginning of the video, my mom was yelling at me for destroying the house and how there's nothing under there, like I'm crazy, what am I doing? And then at the end of the video She ended up having the secret room and pretending like it was hers now. It was very subtle, but like

Change like that is what actually made the viewers not only watch till the end to see How that gets resolved. But also re watch the video again knowing that. Yeah, that's interesting. What and rewatching that's a that's like a big part of your strategy, right? Yeah to get number three watch. Number one is hook, and number two is overall retention, which is video progression, and number three is rewatchability. What gets somebody to rewatch?

There's not that many things I get people to rewatch. So it's it's Probably the toughest thing to do. Uh so There you could you could do Easter eggs. Which is essentially like hiding little things in the video that people are gonna comment about and potentially watch again to see like

Did did that actually happen? Yeah, I do that all the time. I like a video, I open the comments, then they reference something that I didn't see the first time, so I end up watching it again. Yes. And then I go back to the comments and I w and it's still looping in the background and I probably end up watching the video three times. Exactly. So that's one way. Another very easy way to do it is Just tutorial videos in itself are rewatchable. Because

People aren't especially if it's on shorts, people are not gonna watch a tutorial once and automatically know all the steps. So usually when you have specific steps or lists or listicles is what it's called, it makes it very easy to rewatch. And then my favorite method is actually having twists in your videos because when you have a twist Now the viewer is gonna wanna rewatch the video with that new knowledge, knowing what the twist is. That's interesting. I like that. Um

What about uh storytelling mechanically? So you know, what are some techniques? I know you've talked about this, uh I think the the butt therefore method, which I I don't know. Did you get that from the South Park guys? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Uh explain explain what that is. Yeah, so but so storytelling is basically

adding conflict throughout the video so that it makes it more intriguing as the video continues. So An easy example is If I made a video going on a walk, let's say, very bad idea, but Yeah.

I went on a walk and then it started raining. And then I kept walking. And then I kept walking and then like like there's nothing there's nothing new that's like really happening because it's just

You just keep doing things. It's like, and then this and then that. Like that's such a boring story, as opposed to constant conflict being created. When you say but so. So For example I was walking, but then it started raining.

So I had to find an umbrella. But I'm in the middle of nowhere and don't know where I am. So I went to pull out my phone. But uh my phone is dead.

So I started running and you see what I mean, like the story feels more intriguing because then you're instantly adding more conflict. And you're instantly finding that conflict much easier by simply saying, but So Yeah, there's a great clip of the South Park guys doing this where they have a story written on a whiteboard and they just cross out all of the ands. They're like, this is how toddlers tell stories when it you know they come from from school, it's like, and then and then this happened and then this happened. And then then then misses she gave me this and then this, and then I got candy and then this. And he's like just cross out all the ands and just try to replace them with butt.

And you know, but so, right? So But this ha I wanted this. Or I was doing this. But then this happened. So then

I was forced to do this. But then I encountered another obstacle. So then I tried this other technique. And all of a sudden, like any story can become interesting just using that Like that's probably one of the highest leverage techniques that just changes the interestingness of a story.

Um Another one is stakes. Do you use stakes in your story? I know like uh, you know, basically what's on the line. Why does it matter that you do this? Um, I know a short is so so small and lengthy, you you know, you can't build it up in the same way you can build up a movie or a documentary, but I have you used that or do you play with that idea?

Yeah, I love using steaks, and the way I see steaks is also like including a why. Right. And Usually with steaks, it's either like artificial or just like a personal Y, but for the most part, I usually try to make like real stakes. I kid you not, like we always default to like what what's actually happening in my real life that we can actually include as real stakes.

So for example, in that secret room video, it's like The initial why and the initial stakes are You wanna watch YouTube, your mom's Not your mom's yelling at you saying you're watching too much YouTube, so you're trying to build a secret room. Exactly. But then by the time you take the sledgehammer to the wall, the stakes have actually elevated. It's like, Oh my God, she's breaking down her house. She better pull this off, or else, you know, now You thought YouTube was a problem.

Breaking the wall is gonna make your mom even more mad, right? So you you uh you know, the best stories actually increase the stakes over time. Yes, and we want the viewers to be at the edge of their seats at all time. Like I know this conversation is like primarily on shorts, but like even on like my recent long form. The stakes were incredibly high where I sold everything my family owns. And and the stakes were it were basically like this is what kept the viewer at the edge of their seat where it's I'm selling everything without my family knowing, and I'm gonna keep selling bigger and bigger items until they notice. When they do

I'm gonna give them all the money I make to prove that. Uh cash is better than trash. Essentially. So now like it's like it's a crazy idea. Stakes are high because her p she can get in big trouble with her parents. And then it's like, you know, w when is she gonna get caught? How far is she gonna get? And while I'm saying all this, I'm showing clips of like me taking the microwave and

A bunch of decor and moving furniture out of the house. And like it's like oh my gosh, this is legit. Like this is crazy. Right. Things are getting messy now. Right. Exactly. Um Yeah, like the you know, even great TV shows Breaking Bad, for example. Ch so what's the change? He's a high school teacher, kind of a pushover. Um pretty boring life.

Then he gets diagnosed with cancer. He knows he's gonna die and that his family's gonna be left with no money. So big stakes all of a sudden. Okay. But He's a high school teacher. So where's he gonna get money? So he decides Two

you know, deal drugs, basically to sell drugs in order to get money. But he doesn't know anything about making drugs. So he goes and he meets his high school you know former high school student. But that guy's a drugie, so he doesn't know anything. So This guy takes over and actually creates a proper lab out of it.

But the the cops come after him, right? That's the story. And along the way the stakes get bigger and bigger. At first it was He needs a little bit of money. Then it's Oh, g the the you know, the dealer that he's working with tries to to rob them, then it's

The DEA's after, but then the DEA is his brother in law. And it just goes on and on. And eventually he's running this empire and the stakes have gotten even bigger. Now it's life or death. And um you know, he's sitting on millions of dollars and so the stakes escalated, which is why A lot of people consider Breaking Bad one of the greatest shows'cause it did that so well. Um I wanna recap. We started off saying Let's build the perfect short.

We did idea. And how you how you could tag the idea to make it Take a Then we have the hook, the first frame. How do you grab their attention and get, you know, eighty percent of people to actually watch versus just swipe away?

You have foreshadowing, which is hinting at what's to come, the payoff, the promise of what might might come at the end. And then you have the retention, the storytelling, what keeps you hooked, what keeps you engaged, that sense of progress as the video is going on. Last thing is the ending. So how what's the end of this perfect short that we're creating? What what do you how do you think about an ending and how do you what do you do in your endings? I noticed some of them are kind of like abrupt. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. Yeah, so

A lot of people on short form content Will sometimes not even give a payoff because their retention will be like Crazy high because it would have no drop offs. But at the end of the day There is no viewer satisfaction.

If you just like don't give a proper payoff. So My intention with endings is to keep it as short as possible while giving some sort of payoff, even if we have some sort of retention drop. Because our goal is to ensure viewer satisfaction. So then next time the viewer knows, Oh, she's at least gonna complete the story at the end of the video. So not frustrating. Exactly. So we want the payoff. to feel so good. And the way it's called is pequen there's there's a theory called pequen theory.

We're essentially You dictate your emotions or feeling or opinion towards something. Based on The ending. So, like just like you would watch a movie, you can be bored for the whole thing, and then like the last thirty minutes was really good, and those thirty minutes will dictate your feelings.

throughout the entire movie. You would say that was the best movie I've ever watched, even if the first half you hated it. Right, just'cause the ending is the last thing that you remember. So that's why we want the endings to feel intense emotion. So just close it off. With either uh strong wholesomeness or like just a

The funniest moment. In the entire video. Um a lot of the times we like to do twists just because they'll have great rewatchability. Essentially. Interesting. Interesting. Um

So that's the that's the perfect short. Now let's talk about the process. So You know, you've done some interesting things. I I I've heard you talk about getting ideas. You're like, I got thousands of ideas for shorts. You know, steal like an artist. What does it mean to steal like an artist and and what have you done to to kinda steal like an artist to generate Lots of

Lots of great ideas. Yeah, stealing like an artist is essentially taking inspiration And r rather than actually recreating video ideas. So for the most part What I mean by that is

Yeah I usually steal from like topics or like different movie techniques. As opposed to like Taking actual ideas'cause I don't know, I feel a little icky doing that.

Well it's still like an artist, not a still like a thief, right? Still like a thief is you take the exact idea. From something directly in your lane and you just copy it. Yeah, exactly. You copy word for word, frame for frame. There's people that are doing that. Still like an artist, I think is You find inspiration.

From Things direct, but also indirect, adjacent spaces, right? Um, and then you put your remix on it. You have to find a way to add your twist. Um to that same base idea. Yeah, I think I think the the the easiest example where I stole like an artist is I'm very inspired by like what Mr Beast does like

Like he genuinely is like changing people's lives. Із філантропік. You know, he's making people happy and it's like How could I do that with the Jenny Hoyles twists? And it's quite literally doing what he does, but on a budget. I think that's like the best example just like

I when whenever like I want to take inspiration from someone, I try to find what's my unique perspective that I can add to it. That's great. You've also um done like build some tools, I think. You like scrape I you scrape uh data off these platforms so that you're able to analyze a bunch of videos, um and you're looking for some kind of outlier, I would assume, or you're looking for something in that data. Can you describe what you did and and what you look for? So

You know, like like you said, uh my team has built uh a bunch of tools And the goal for that is to understand our viewer psychology. So Recently, our number one goal is to increase subscriber conversions because we have over a billion views. Um and um two million subscribers.

Where the average person would have like ten million subscribers. So okay. Well we let's increase our subscriber conversions. And Essentially what we did was we created a tool where We took all my videos and I manually labeled

what I did in each of those videos. So some of them were labeled as Had my family in it. Other videos were labeled as malicious content. So me pranking. Other were others were labeled as like wholesome and et cetera, like

I just labeled every video every video with Any possible thing the video could be about. And a bunch of different like things we did, for example, if I mentioned YouTube or if I said subscribe. Or Literally anything that could have happened, I label them manually. And then we put them in a graph and a chart to see

Of the subscriber conversions on that specific video to find how I can maximize subscriber conversions. And doing something like that, we found that. I double my conversions when I have my family in the videos, and specifically when I'm making wholesome content where I surprise them, such as like, You know, uh giving my mom a birthday present, for example, we'd have twice the amount of subscriber conversions. But then because we have these tools actually

W what what's interesting though is You know, if you don't have this tool, the average person would see On my it'll be like on my YouTube studio, they could be like Oh, you got double the amount of subscribers, so you should do that. That's not necessarily the case.

Because what we found was I got double the subscriber conversion. But ten X less the views when I do that. I actually get my regular conversions when I do malicious content, but 10x the views is Which actually means I'm getting five X more subscribers.

Which in theory means that's actually what's gonna get me more subscribers. It's basically little things like this that we're building tools for to find how we can maximize uh views, retention, viewer satisfaction. And et cetera. One of the other things that uh I really liked was when you you described you're studying the platform and you're like

I will go look at a channel and I look at a short. And you know, if I see a short that has Ten million views. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the best concept if the person On average it gets ten million views. Exactly. But if they on average get ten and this video gets thirty

It's an outlier concept for their baseline. And then you looked at all those outliers to figure out the differences between great ideas versus just normal ideas. Is that right? Correct. Yeah, it's it's all relative.

How did you do that? What what did you do? Just that manual did you just go channel by channel and just try to look at their view, their their view counts? What did you do? Yeah, unfortunately that was all manual. So usually the way I find these outliers is by going to trending every single morning. Every morning I will go onto the trending page and I'll watch every single trending short. That's like your your morning routine. Yeah. And my nighttime routine. 'Cause it's like they change it. And my lunch routine, I'm always doing that. Exactly. What's crazy is too, once you get used to it. You actually don't have to like just rely on trending because now my shorts feed is just a bunch of trending shorts because I watch trending every morning and night. Now when I go on the shorts feed, I find trending like content as well.

And um and then I have a swipe file, which is what I actually learned from the books Dear Like an Artist. And I have a swipe file that I'll put all these things in if I want to Feel like an artist. I want to ask you a couple more questions, tactical questions. One, um

Audience. So do you you know, there's there's different theories in marketing, they're like you need to have a persona or a target a target avatar. There's other people who say, I'm just baking for me. Um, there's other people who say, you know, you should do a market analysis and find the the biggest market possible and then a psychographic analysis, what they care about, blah, blah, blah. All right. That's you know what what do you do? You're you're actually winning. Yeah, so I used to have my younger self as my avatars and Йод!

I think you can go pretty far doing that, but I realized if I want to get to a hundred million subscribers, Like, I need to have multiple avatars. And now at this point, like I don't necessarily talk to one specific person. I'm just trying to cater to every audience. It's like

I guess long story short, I used to do all that market analysis, but now I don't. So Yeah. So what do you use as the guiding principle now? Just like kind of what what would anyb what would everybody be interested in? Is that the the different a different question? Yeah, the guiding principle is making content that's intriguing for kids because at the end of the day, like that's the biggest audience on YouTube. While making it mature enough for adults to also watch. So you know, there's a lot of kids' content where people are screaming. It's like how do I make kids centered content that isn't screaming and is a little more like

Natural. Yeah, like you know, Pixar did this amazingly, right? Like Pixar did it made movies that a eight year old and an eighty year old can both go and enjoy and maybe for different reasons. But it's one product, it's one piece of content that just appealed to such a to totally different age groups. Exactly.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I think it helps having my mom in the videos too. Like I try to have her as much as possible because people can relate to me coming from a young perspective, or people also watch us because they see my mom and they're like, Oh, you know, I watch the videos because it's like it kinda reminds me of me and my daughter. You know, it's like it gives the viewers multiple reasons. Give me your take on where you think this is all is going. So um It's amazing that Every platform is now short form video. It's amazing that people are getting millions and millions. You can you've gotten a video with a hundred million views. That number is is bananas.

Um But also I think people are trying to figure out how to switch to long form and a lot of people are kind of m using their shorts to try to get to that because maybe they sense that the shorts is not building as much loyalty or trust. you know, the algorithm picks what you see not you going and seeing the people you've chosen to follow necessarily.

So Where do you think this all goes? Like five years from now, what does this look like? Where do you think the puck is heading? uh or what are your kind of predictions for what you think where you think the value is Or what you think there may be some misconceptions other people have. Take any of that. Of like where do you think this all is going?

I'm just curious to hear your takes. I feel like I feel like it's gonna be like the extremes that do well, in the sense of like I think either shortfront content is gonna be continuing to grow. Or really long form. Content twenty minutes plus.

It's gonna consider you. Or really quick value. Yes, a really deep or really qu quick value like I don't want to be in between. Exactly. That that's genuinely like where I think it's gonna go. Yeah, I I think I think Social media is gonna kill Hollywood. Honestly.

So let me ask you about you now. So you uh You're obsessed. Is that fair to say? Yes, I'm I have a very obsessive personality. It's scary. Do you get obsessed about other things? Is this the first thing you've become obsessive about? Or did you like get obsessed with some video game before that? I I'm obsessed with I get obsessed with everything. It's it's a problem. It's a problem or it's a benefit. It's it's it's both. It's both, yeah.

And what is your What's your goal with this? Like I guess you know, I uh uh people ask me this all the time. They're like So when people get like a vo like a million views or ten million views, do do they get money from that? Is that the Is it are you getting rich off this? Is that the goal with this? Um you're eighteen. What do you what do you want out of this? What's your goal?

Yeah, so I'm basically living to fulfill my childhood dreams. So as funny as it sounds, like I started my YouTube channel when I was eight years old. Like I I am literally living the dream. And like I just wanna keep like Achieving my childhood goals, which is like

It's kinda cringe probably to say, but like Quite frankly, like that that that is the goal. And Ideally like Honestly, like I really do want to inspire people. To

Understand the value of money and to not be so spoiled. Because you know, when I was a kid, I didn't understand the value of money and I would always ask my family for things and you know, like my parents being nice, like they would give me these things. And it's like it wasn't until I got older when I realized, like, oh my gosh, like they're working so hard to make money. And I would be asking For these things like that's not right. I don't know. Like and I I you wouldn't even need it and I wanna inspire people to to like live a happy, fun life. without needing that much money, which is why like my content is centered around having fun.

On a low budget. See, that's interesting'cause I thought you were saying I want to inspire people 'Cause I'm gonna I wanna be the biggest YouTuber and I'm gonna inspire people who you know that you can make it as a YouTuber and blah blah blah. What you said was very different, though. You were like

The your s your thing that you do in these videos is about having great experience is either, you know, giving a a great gift or having a f creating a front project. Or eating your favorite food. But without

having to spend a ton of money, being more resourceful, being more handy, being being more sort of self reliant versus you know money reliant. And um That's kind of cool. I didn't realize that that was your goal. I'm I'm glad you I'm glad you told me that. That makes me kind of think about what you're doing in a different perspective. And I think it could be a lot bigger. If that's the perspective versus I want to be the biggest star I can be. Totally. And it's it's kind of tough, though, because I'm I'm gonna be completely transparent. Like I genuinely want to be.

the next Mr. Beast. Like I wanna be the female Mr. B. over a hundred million subscribers. But I still want to stay true to that message. Which is gonna be kinda tough.

As it's like, you know, Mr. V spends a lot of money to be where he is. Can I do that without? I don't know. Ha ha Right. Well that's the whole that's the your premise. That's your whole thing. So um all right, that's that's kind of amazing. Jenny, thanks for doing this. Thanks for coming on.

Uh, where should people find you and what's the what's the shout out? What do you want it what do you want people to do from here? If you wanna work directly with me, feel free to email team at jennyhoyos.com. We can have a one hour consultation call together. And I will Review your your videos, your business, you know, let's let's blow up on social media. Love it. Thank you, Jenny. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, no, I this is so much fun. I love this. Thank you so much for having me.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off On a road less travel never looking back

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.