Hacking YouTube

Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business – Jason R. Rich (Entrepreneur Press)

The numbers are gaudy; YouTube, the streaming platform delivers 1 billion minutes of streaming content to more than 1.3 billion active users on a daily basis. That bears repeating; 1 BILLION minutes to 1.3 BILLION users, per day. So how can you as a business owner or entrepreneur tap into that power and influence and grow your business?

The answers come in the form of Jason Rich’s second edition of the Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business. Rich does a nice job of breaking down the nuts and bolts of using YouTube into easy to understand, digestible chunks that you can implement with just the right amount of planning. Yes PLANNING. Just because the numbers have a great allure and you will want to dive right in, I think Rich does the right thing by getting you to develop a strategy and set measurable goals for using YouTube.

I have labeled it running around the room, others have called it the shinny object syndrome; the reality is too many businesses skip the planning phase and try to jump straight to recording something on their IPhone that they can post today and they end up wondering why the stupid YouTube doesn’t work. Forget about becoming a “YouTube Star” and focus on getting the right plan to reach your customer with the right message.

Once you hit that, then it’s time to focus on what is the best vehicle to deliver your YouTube message. Rich delves into a variety of formats that have been successfully used and how to figure out the best fit for you. Then he tackles all those technical things like recording and editing and the hardware that is appropriate for your needs. Despite what you may have heard, it’s not all free! Rich lays out the differences in the hardware and how to best put it to use.

The resource list that Rich provides at the end of book is worth the price of admission; dynamic and covering all of the bases it will prove to be a HUGE time saving hack for cutting down the time from planning to concept to streaming.

All the Action…No Bullsh*t

Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself – Crush The Excuses That Are Holding You Back – Jon Taffer (Portfolio)

Let’s face it, you’re busy…I get it. So when you tell yourself that you don’t have time to read another business book; let me warn you in advance, time or a lack of it, is one of the excuse categories that JonTaffer, producer and host of Paramount Network’s (formerly Spike TV) Bar Rescue program, rails against in his new book, Don’tBullsh*t Yourself – Crush The Excuses That Are Holding You Back.

That is one of the great things about the book, you don’t have to slog through the entire book to get the gist of what Taffer is talking about. He breaks things down into a very actionable format serving up a summary of the problem/excuse categories in a bulleted and shaded list in each chapter, one category pre chapter. Then he provides a bulleted list at the end of each chapter he dubs the Don’t Bullsh*t Yourself Busters.

The categories are easily relatable and you will find yourself shaking your head in agreement, acknowledging that you (and I) have used these xcuses at one point or another in our careers. Fear, knowledge, time, circumstances, ego, and scarcity are things that everyone can relate to…and if you claim otherwise, stop bullsh*ting yourself, you know it’s true.

So what are you waiting for? No excuses…no bullsh*t! If you think you need more, Taffer provides a boatload of real world examples from real people who have overcome these problems/excuses and how they went about tackling them. Often the examples are worse than anything you and I have encountered. These examples tie in well with the to do lists and the steps you can start taking today.