Intro

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a small channel, and you want to grow on YouTube, but you aren’t, and you don’t know why. You’ve optimized your settings, tried every retention strategy and editing trick, listened to every YouTuber interview and podcast, and yet, you still aren’t seeing results. Why?Most people will tell you there’s no secret formula to success on YouTube. They’ll say you just need to be consistent, make better videos, find your niche, or wait for the algorithm to discover you. Despite how prevalent this advice is, it’s simply wrong. Emma Chamberlain grew her channel to over 10 million subscribers while posting inconsistently, spending little to no money on production, and editing her videos extremely minimally, often using nothing more than hard cuts. Ryan Trahan has completely changed his niche four separate times on the same channel and still amassed over 20 million subscribers. And Mark Rober has built an audience of more than 70 million subscribers while uploading only about 12 videos per year.I’ve generated tens of millions of views across my channels, learned to average millions of views per video, and spoken with countless creators, many of whom are at the top of their niche with hundreds of millions of views and millions of subscribers. From all of this, combined with thousands of hours of experience over many years, I’ve identified the pattern and developed a formula that explains all success on YouTube. Yes, you read that correctly.Instead of giving you the same recycled advice you’ve heard a thousand times, I’m going to give you something no one else will: the root formula behind every successful video on YouTube. Not a tip. Not a trick. Not “make better videos” or “change your thumbnail.” I mean the underlying force that determines whether the algorithm pushes your video to millions or buries it. This is the formula top creators use without realizing it. It’s why their videos explode and yours don’t. And once you understand it, everything else you’ve learned about YouTube will finally make sense. Why your channel isn’t growing. Why you don’t get views. Why some videos take off while others go nowhere. This formula is the foundation of the system I’ve built, and I’m going to give it to you for free, right here, so you can finally see what’s been holding your channel back and what actually needs to change if you want to grow.

I’ve made videos that were better than the last in every obvious way and still watched them flop. I’ve seen other small channels suddenly explode with hundreds of thousands or even millions of views while making content that didn’t seem any better than mine. Over time, I started to feel like all the advice I kept hearing only worked for bigger creators. Because I was doing what everyone said to do, and it still wasn’t working. And when a video did perform well, it almost made things worse, because I had no idea why it worked. So I did what most creators do. I started obsessing over analytics, click-through rate, retention, and average view duration, trying to force answers out of numbers that didn’t seem to line up. I watched some videos succeed with worse metrics while others that looked perfect on paper went nowhere. Nothing made sense. This all led me to the question that changed everything:If it isn’t editing, analytics, consistency, or even “making good videos”… then what actually drives success on YouTube?Before going any further, it’s important to be clear about what isn’t the problem. You aren’t lazy. You aren’t stupid. You aren’t unlucky. You aren’t broken. And it isn’t that you aren’t trying hard enough. The real problem is that YouTube is broken. There is a nearly unlimited amount of YouTube advice available, but almost no reliable way to tell what actually matters, what can be ignored, and what is simply wrong. For every hundred pieces of advice you hear, most are irrelevant or misleading, a handful are actively harmful, and maybe one is actually useful. That means to apply a single real insight, you’re forced to test dozens of tips, tricks, and strategies. And even when something does work, you still don’t know which change caused the result, or why it worked, making it almost impossible to repeat or build on that success. That’s why so many creators feel stuck even when they’re doing everything they’ve been told is right.And this is where things get uncomfortable, but also clarifying. Because if effort isn’t the issue… and consistency isn’t the issue… and analytics aren’t the issue… then there has to be something deeper driving which videos succeed and which ones disappear. That’s what we need to understand next.

The Framework

This is the framework that drives all success on YouTube. Why some channels blow up while others stay buried. Why some videos get no views and others get millions. At the deepest level, YouTube is not complicated. It does not reward effort. It does not reward consistency. It does not reward editing quality, niche selection, or how badly you want it. It rewards interest. That’s the single force behind every click, every minute watched, and every video that gets pushed to more people.YouTube doesn’t think like a creator. It thinks like a viewer. Every time someone opens YouTube, the platform has one problem to solve: Which video is this person most likely to click on, watch and enjoy? If a viewer doesn’t click, nothing happens. If they click but don’t watch, the video stops spreading. If they watch but aren’t satisfied, YouTube learns not to recommend it again. All of that behavior comes down to one thing: Did this video hold the viewer’s interest? That’s it. Not because YouTube is hiding a secret. Not because the algorithm is mysterious. But because YouTube can only react to what humans do. And humans only do things they’re interested in.Interest is not vague. It’s not subjective. And it’s not luck. At a basic level, your brain is constantly asking: Is this worth my time? You click on a video when your brain expects a reward. You keep watching when that reward feels likely or is being delivered. You leave the moment something else seems more rewarding. So interest is simply this:Interest = Expected Reward − Perceived CostIf the reward feels high and the cost feels low, you’re interested. If not, you scroll. That one calculation explains clicks, watch time, retention, viewer satisfaction and why videos live or die. Now here’s the part that actually matters for creators. There are two factors that create interest:Relevance × Novelty = InterestRelevance answers one question: Does this matter to me? If the viewer doesn’t recognize themselves, their desires, their fears, or their curiosity in your idea, they won’t care, no matter how well it’s edited. Novelty answers the next question: Will I actually get what I want from this? Once something feels relevant, the brain looks for evidence that a reward is actually coming. Something new. Something different. A twist. A contradiction. A mystery. A reason this isn’t just another version of the same video. If either relevance or novelty is weak, interest collapses. If both are strong, everything else gets easier. This is why so many creators work hard and still fail. They’re optimizing effort after interest instead of engineering interest before they ever hit record. And once you understand this, YouTube stops feeling random. You don’t need to guess what the algorithm wants. You need to understand what people want. Because interest is the driving force behind everything.

At this point, the framework should make sense. But understanding something isn’t the same as knowing it’s true. If this really is how YouTube works, it should show up in the real world, in how the platform is designed and in how the creators who consistently succeed actually think and operate. So let’s test it against reality.When you listen to the people who have actually built and led YouTube’s recommendation systems, one thing becomes very clear: the platform is not designed to evaluate creators, it’s designed to serve viewers. Todd Beaupré, who led YouTube’s recommendations team, has explained that the system is not about pushing videos out. It’s about pulling the right video for each individual viewer. The goal, as he’s described it, is answering a single question: “What will make this viewer happy today?” That framing matters. Because it means YouTube is not judging your effort, your consistency, or how polished your edit is. It’s judging whether your video creates genuine interest for a real human being in a specific moment. At the executive level, this same idea shows up again and again. Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki consistently emphasized watch time and satisfaction, not because those metrics are magical, but because sustained attention is how YouTube keeps viewers engaged and coming back. Different roles. Different language. Same underlying idea: YouTube reacts to interest. Without interest, there is no click. Without a click, there is no watch time. And without watch time and satisfaction, nothing else can even be measured.Now look at the creators who dominate the platform. MrBeast has repeated this so many times it borders on obsession: ideas matter more than execution. You can polish a video endlessly, but if the idea doesn’t create curiosity, desire, or urgency, the video never had a chance. Execution amplifies interest, it does not create it. Paddy Galloway puts it even more bluntly: “If the idea is boring, everything else is pointless. Derral Eves, who works closely with MrBeast and wrote The YouTube Formula, teaches that growth comes from aligning with what an audience already wants while delivering it in a way they haven’t seen before. In other words: relevance and novelty. ” Different creators. Different styles. Same priority before everything else: make the idea irresistible.Here’s where this stops being about individual opinions. When you zoom out across YouTube, the same pattern holds in wildly different niches. Mark Rober uploads only a handful of times per year and builds videos around curiosity and anticipation. Ryan Trahan has changed niches multiple times on the same channel and still succeeds by making each idea feel worth clicking and watching. The surface details change. The upload schedules change. The editing styles change. But the videos that win all share one thing in common: they create interest before anything else happens.If interest really is the driving force, it should show up in completely different kinds of videos, not just highly produced ones. So let’s look at two videos that could not be more different on the surface, yet reached nearly the same level of success.The first video is titled “An old mans advice.” It cost nothing to make. It was filmed by one person in minutes. No script. No edits. Poor camera and audio quality. And as of writing this, it has around 31 million views. On the surface, there’s no production value to point to. But the interest is immediately clear. It’s relevant because it features the most recognizable thing to a human being: another human face, in a familiar, everyday setting. The low-quality webcam and casual environment make it feel real and relatable. It’s novel because the subject is an elderly man using modern technology, speaking directly to a younger audience. His age implies experience and perspective. His serious expression creates anticipation that what he’s about to say matters, that there’s a meaningful reward coming.Now compare that to a completely different video: “I Made the World’s Largest Pizza (132 Feet)” This video likely took months of planning, a large team, and a huge budget to pull off. It’s highly edited, fast-paced, fully optimized in every conceivable way, and it also has around 31 million views. Again, the interest is obvious. It’s relevant because it’s built around things everyone recognizes: pizza, a pizza cutter, and a person. And it’s novel because those familiar elements have a twist put on them. The pizza is impossibly large. The slicer is massive. The “world’s largest” framing signals a once-in-a-lifetime experience you can’t find anywhere else.Two videos. One highly engineered. One completely spontaneous. One expensive. One free. One polished. One raw. Same result. Not because of editing. Not because of budget. Not because of effort. Because both videos create strong interest by combining relevance with novelty. That’s the pattern.This is the easiest way to see it for yourself. When creators optimize surface-level tactics, editing tricks, pacing hacks, consistency rules, results vary wildly. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t. And when it does, it’s hard to repeat. But when creators consistently optimize interest at the idea level, results become predictable. Not guaranteed, but understandable. That’s the difference between a tip and a principle.When YouTube engineers, executives, consultants, and the most successful creators on the platform all describe the same mechanism, from completely different perspectives, it stops being coincidence. It stops being opinion. It stops being a theory. It becomes a pattern. And that pattern points to one underlying force driving everything you’ve seen so far: Interest. The question now isn’t whether this framework is real. It’s whether you can apply it correctly, and consistently, to your own ideas. And that’s what we need to look at next.

Exercise

So, let’s make this real. I’m not going to ask you to come up with a new idea, or change your editing, or fix your thumbnails. Instead, I want you to take one idea you already have. Something you were planning to make next, or something sitting in your notes right now. We’re not creating anything yet. We’re just going to evaluate it through the framework. Remember: interest comes from relevance and novelty. Relevance is why this matters to the viewer. Novelty is why they should believe they’ll actually get what they want. Nothing else matters until those two things are clear.So take that idea and ask yourself:
Who is this for, specifically? And what do they already care about here?
If I’m honest, would someone click this because it connects to a real desire, fear, or curiosity they already have?
What is the clear twist?
What makes this not just another version of the same video they’ve already seen?
If I had to explain this idea in one sentence to a stranger, would it be obvious why it’s interesting? Or does it rely on editing, pacing, or “trust me, it gets good later”?Ignore how much work you plan to put in. Ignore how proud you are of the effort. Just judge the idea itself. For most creators, this is where something uncomfortable happens. You realize the idea isn’t as clear as you thought. Or it’s relevant, but not novel. Or it’s novel, but no one actually cares. That’s not a failure, that’s the point. This is what it feels like to evaluate interest honestly.Now stop there. Don’t try to fix it yet. Don’t rewrite the whole idea. Just notice what’s weak, and what’s missing. Because understanding what’s wrong is very different from being able to fix it consistently. This is also why a lot of your past videos didn’t perform the way you hoped. This exact framework is what I use with creators to break down underperforming videos and upcoming ideas side by side. Understanding the formula is step one. Applying it correctly, over and over again, is the hard part.And that’s what leads to the bigger shift most creators never make.

Next Steps

Up until now, most of your decisions on YouTube probably looked something like this. You focused on editing. You worried about analytics. You stressed about consistency and upload schedule. You tweaked thumbnails and titles endlessly. You optimized your settings. You followed surface-level advice. You tried to do everything you were told mattered. And when something worked, you didn’t really know why. When something failed, you didn’t know what to fix. So you kept moving, faster and faster, without ever being sure you were moving in the right direction. That’s the real problem. It’s not that you weren’t working hard. It’s that you were optimizing after the wrong thing.Once you see interest as the driver, the entire game changes. Instead of asking: “How do I edit this better?” “How do I improve retention?” “How often should I upload?” Everything collapses into a single question: Is this actually interesting? Now, when a video underperforms, it’s no longer mysterious. You can trace it back. You can see whether it was irrelevant, unoriginal, or unclear. When a video performs well, you’re no longer guessing. You can identify why it worked, and replicate that logic intentionally instead of hoping lightning strikes twice. Advice stops being noise. You don’t blindly follow tips anymore. You can tell which ones matter, which ones don’t, and, most importantly, why. That’s the shift. You stop reacting. You start evaluating.This is where the compass matters. You have to carry this with you throughout your entire YouTube journey, like a compass that points you in the right direction. Without it, no matter how fast you’re moving, you’re leaving whether you’re getting closer to your destination or further away entirely up to chance. You can upload more, edit better, work harder and still be heading the wrong way. Look at the compass once and throw it away, and you’ll slowly drift off course with no way to know which direction to turn to get back on track. Interest is that compass. It doesn’t tell you how fast to go. It tells you which direction to move in.And this is the part most creators never reach. Because this isn’t a shortcut. It isn’t a trick you apply once and forget. And it isn’t for people who want guarantees without understanding. This is for creators who want to think clearly. Who want to understand what actually drives growth. And who are willing to build everything else on top of that foundation. Once you see YouTube this way, you can’t unsee it. The question now isn’t whether this matters. It’s what you do with it.

At this point, you understand the framework. You know what actually drives views. You know why so much advice felt random. And you know why working harder on the wrong things never fixed the problem. But there’s an important difference between understanding this and applying it correctly. Interest isn’t mechanical. It’s judgment-based. It’s easy to convince yourself an idea is interesting when you’re emotionally attached to it. It’s easy to rationalize weak concepts after you’ve already invested time and money. And the feedback loop is slow, you often don’t find out you were wrong until weeks later, after you’ve already paid the cost.That’s where working with someone else actually matters. Not because the framework is complicated but because developing the judgment to apply it well can take years. Right now, the way I help creators bridge that gap is through one-on-one consulting. This isn’t a course. It isn’t a library of tactics. And it isn’t surface-level optimization. What you’re really getting is access to my thinking, my judgment, intuition, and experience, applied directly to your channel.The focus is on the highest-leverage parts of YouTube:Evaluating ideas before you spend weeks executing them
Understanding why past videos worked or failed
Improving packaging, intros and videos
Filtering advice so you know what actually matters, and whyMy role isn’t just to give feedback. It’s to act as a second brain. A forcing function. A guiding hand that dramatically increases your odds of making the right decisions, consistently. That’s why this tends to matter most for creators who are already serious, usually channels that are established, generating income, and trying to scale predictably instead of guessing.What changes first isn’t always views. Clarity comes first. Confidence in ideas comes next. Then execution becomes easier, often with less effort, not more. If you’re uploading regularly, the impact can show up externally within the next few videos. If not, the internal shift happens almost immediately, and the results compound as you apply it. This isn’t about moving faster. It’s about moving in the right direction.That said, this isn’t for everyone. It’s not for people looking for shortcuts. It’s not for people who want guarantees without responsibility. It’s not for people who aren’t willing to question their own assumptions. And it’s not for people who aren’t in a position to invest time, attention, and money into getting this right. I’m selective on purpose, not to be exclusive, but because this only works when both sides are serious.If you apply, I’ll personally review it. If it looks like a good fit, we’ll do a short call to align expectations and decide whether it actually makes sense to work together. If it doesn’t, that’s completely fine. I offer this because I genuinely believe this way of thinking about YouTube changes everything, and because I know how much time creators waste before they ever see it clearly.If you want to apply this framework with real feedback, judgment, and guidance, and dramatically increase your odds of consistent growth, you can apply using the link below.If you’d rather take this and work through it on your own, that’s a valid choice too. Either way, you now understand what actually drives success on YouTube. The underlying force behind every video that wins or disappears. What you do with that understanding is up to you.