Views Never Made a Business Money
Daniel Ro on the rule of thirds, why proof beats opinion, and how the footage already sitting in your phone becomes booked work.
I do not think we should be chasing views. I have been doing content creation for ten plus years, with four hundred plus clients, and the videos that get the most views are almost never the ones that build the business. So before we talk about cameras or AI or anything else, let us start with what actually happens when you put yourself online.
The rule of thirds comes first
As soon as you get into this, remember the rule of thirds. One third of the people are going to hate you for no reason. One third do not care. One third are going to love you and follow you. That is the hardest part of the whole thing, and you just have to accept it.
2:50
One thing I have learned is that people disguise concerns as judgment. They will say they are concerned about you. It is judgment. Some of it is insecurity too, and it is very easy behind a keyboard to just project. That is fine. I am not saying you are not allowed to do that. You just need a way to mitigate it.
People disguise concerns as judgment.
So when you have an opinion, come from your experience. Notice how I introduce myself. Ten plus years as a content creator. That is proof. If somebody leaves a comment saying I am wrong, my reply is the work. I did this with this client, we generated this revenue, and it worked. I hope it works for you. Most people have an opinion. They do not have the proof.
17:03
Before you post an opinion, decide what proof sits under it. Years, clients, results. That is your reply written in advance.
Views are not money
Controversy works. I have a client who posted her opinion on something everyone was already talking about. The video went viral and she is getting followers. That is the point of that type of content. People are already consuming it, the platform keeps feeding them more, and the ones who agree with you follow you. If the goal is followers, that is a tool you can use.
Views are the metric the platforms like, because views keep people on the platform. That is a different goal from yours. If you are a business, views are never going to make you more money.
21:44
I personally do not agree with views. I do not think we should be chasing them.
Long form is the easier start
Start with one platform. The one that is actually for you. And start long form. When I say podcast, that is just a nicer word for it. What I mean is set up a camera and talk for as long as you can about something you like. Five minutes, an hour, two hours. It is easier in a setting where it feels like you are talking to a friend, which is why the mics and the lights and the couch are here. After a few minutes the room disappears.
The reason to start there is the amount of content you get out of one sitting. The full conversation goes to YouTube, and that video stays there forever. People find videos that are six years old and still comment on them. On Instagram and TikTok it gets buried. And inside that same hour you have segments. Whenever you want to address a point, look at the camera. We take that piece and it becomes a reel.
Make the content you would actually sit through. If you would not watch it to the end, cut it down until you would. That is your audience too.
You already have the content
After doing this for so long, I understand that people do have content. It is not that you have nothing. You have a lot of videos and a lot of photos sitting in your phone right now.
37:44
The issue is taking that content, knowing what to do with it, and editing it. That is what I solve for my clients. I take that responsibility out of the equation so they do not have to do it. What you need is the system that makes the process easy enough that you stay consistent posting.
The content is not the problem. Knowing what to do with it is.
AI employees and the editing bottleneck
For content creators, video editing is usually the bottleneck. Editing for ten clients is not the same as editing for one brand, especially when you have your own things on top of it. Now AI is doing the edit and the posting. My goal is to automate my entire business, at least ninety five percent of it. Right now I am at sixty five percent. I call them AI employees. The video editor watches a folder on a hard drive at home. Every hour it checks. If there is nothing, no problem. If there is new footage, it looks at what it is and it edits it.
Most people only use the chat version of these models. There is another version, the agentic tools, and it is the same twenty dollars. In Claude that is co-work. I connected my Gmail, so I can ask it to find the email where a client told me which sound to use on a reel, and it goes and finds it. Over the rainbow, July eighteenth. Instead of texting the client again to ask. I have Sophia, my AI assistant, and Elena, who deals with the business side. My Instagram DMs and my WhatsApp messages come to me as text messages, because I check my text. Voice memos come through transcribed with a short version on top, and the full transcript underneath in case I need it.
There is a testing period with everything you build with these agents. It could take weeks, it could take months. That is what the manual approve setting is for. It comes back and says here is the text I am planning to send, do you want me to send it. Once you trust it, you switch it to automatic.
Pick the one inbox you actually check, and route everything else into it. You do not need fewer messages, you need one place they land.
Open Claude and switch from chat to co-work.
Change the model to Opus, the one for complex tasks, because you are building something.
Say you want to create your own assistant, give it a name, and list what it should handle for you.
Tell it to ask you clarifying questions and guide you step by step.
Build it for yourself first, then sell it
I built the WhatsApp routing because I did not want to open WhatsApp. Then I realised other people have that same problem, so it became a service, the VIP lead runner. Only notify me about the people who matter. I did the same with a client. She has a chatbot named Luna, and we built a tracker with her because she asked for it in a conversation exactly like this one. It tracks her clients in thirty or sixty seconds, and once the patterns are there, it tells them what to do that day.
1:07:25
Photos, and the cost to deliver
For images, ChatGPT does an amazing job. Claude is not even close. But do not start from a blank prompt asking for a photo of a girl who looks like this. Start with a sample. I screenshot a reference, screenshot the style I want it to match, and give it the exact ratio and pixels. And always add the line at the end. Do not change the faces. Keep everything else the same.
For Pops Padel, every image was made that way. No photo shoot, and the courts are not even ready yet. They picked three and those are on Instagram now. One minute fifty six seconds of generating, under five minutes total. Four years ago that was days of work. So my cost to deliver went down and my profit went up.
The client is not asking how it was made. They just want the results.
I made many mistakes across four hundred plus clients, and that is why I have anything to say. So I am not here to tell you to do this because this is the way. I am sharing what I know. Maybe it works for you. Be open. And if you hate me, that is totally fine. I do not check the comments anyway.
01
One third will hate you, one third will not care, one third will follow you. Post anyway.
02
Start long form on one platform, then cut the segments out of it.
03
Build the system for your own problem first. If you have it, someone else has it too.
Your footage is already shot
Two ways to work with me. Rent the space, sit down and talk, and I send you the footage. Or I take the whole thing off your hands, the filming, the editing and the publishing. Tell me which one you need.
Send me a text