Jay Hail's Small YouTube channel helped his local business make over a million dollars in the past year alone. But how does a channel with under 400 subscribers and an average count of 255 views per video bring in that kind of money? I sat down with Jay to get to the bottom of it, and in this video, you're going to discover Jay's secret to easy client generation without going viral, the incredibly simple video format he swears by, and I even convinced him to share his proven mirror strategy that he uses to turn just a handful of views into big-time revenue. But like all success stories, this one started with some pretty big challenges. So Jay, what did it look like for you when you were trying to fill your gym with clients before you got started on YouTube? I've been running gyms now for about 13-14 years. When I started my first business and even the second business, you know, you could put a website up and people would search and find that website. At the beginning, we were doing like Google

AdWords as well. Which you know, we'd say, Hey, search for personal trainers in the area, and then they'd find us. Over the last, I don't know, seven years or so, that's changed quite a bit. And what was your close rate when you actually got those people on the phone? Local search was pretty good. It was probably about 60% or so. It's just that there'd be very few people, you know. It would be a couple of people a week at most. When we started doing paid ads, that close rate dropped to like 20% or below because you're, you know, they were sort of cold traffic. As the paid ad started to get more and more expensive, it went from like $5 a lead to like $40 a lead over the course of several years. Unfortunately, that's a super common story. Paid ads have been steadily rising to the point where they're pretty much out of reach for the average small business. Jay knew something had to change. So what made you decide to give YouTube a try? I just

started to see people that I knew that were generating clients from video, like either Instagram short videos or YouTube videos, and I started to also realize, Wes, that I was buying stuff from people based on video because I'd watch their videos and they'd be like, Oh, they seem like they know what they're doing, and I would buy, you know, two, three $5,000 courses just based on watching people's videos without a call at all. And so it sort of clicked, you know, it took me a little while and it clicked, it's like, Oh, maybe I should be one of those people. Like, if it works on me, it can work for me, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So in those early days, Jay found that the consult calls that he took with referrals and people who found him through search were way easier to close than the ones he got from paid ads, but his problem was volume. He couldn't really get consistent referrals and organic search traffic to his website and on the phone enough to run a sustainable business. That's when

he had a pretty brilliant idea. We get people's attention via paid ads so that gets us the most eyeballs. And then what I try to do is send them through to watch our videos to kind of warm them up so that when we do get on a sales call with them, they have a clear idea of what we do, why we do it, what we stand for, and whether this is going to be a good fit for them. In other words, Jay figured that he could get the volume he needed from Paid ads, then use video to warm them up so they were just as likely to convert as his referral and search traffic. But how did he actually put these videos in front of them? Before we get to the exact funnel he created, including his proven mirror strategy, let's look at the types of videos that Jay's used, including the video format that's been working the best at increasing his close rates. So the first thing we did was create a video that just kind of explained what it's like to be a member here, you know.

and how we're different. And it's it was kind of a sales video, like a commercial, but the problem with videos like that is people don't want to watch commercials. You know what do want is to learn something that they can use, and maybe even pick up on what you can do for them along the way. So, picking up on that, Jay pivoted to more general, here's how to do a deadlift type videos, but to be honest, those were a dime a dozen on YouTube. But when we started sitting down and actually having conversations about what we do and why we do it, for example, like why we think that most people undereat on protein, we found that there was a lot less people doing that kind of stuff, and that type of video that didn't just show the how, but the why behind it, those really hit home and gave people a little glimpse into what it would be like to work with them. So, I stocked your channel a little bit before this, and it looks like you're doing a lot of these.

know long-form podcast-style videos. Yeah, so the podcast, the long-form, is the thing that warms people up the best for actually working with us. So, how did that format come about, and why do you think it's working so well? There's a couple reasons. Number one is we were having all these great stories of people getting results that I just wanted to share, and it wasn't good enough to just do like a testimonial video. I wanted to dig in, 'cause the clients, they don't always know how to sort of frame the stuff, so I would dig in and ask the questions and frame it for them. Not to mention Jay wanted to feature more than just himself in his videos. After all, clients wouldn't just be working with him, but his trainers were pretty nervous about being on camera, and their awkwardness showed, and I just found it was a lot easier to have a conversation than for them to stare at the camera and say, You know, here's how much protein you should eat. And so, we started having the

conversation, and it just kind of flowed a lot easier. Then the third reason: once I started playing around with shorts, I found that we would get more traction on a short where somebody was wearing a headphone and talking into a mic than we would if somebody was talking straight to the camera. So Jay had stumbled on the video format that worked best for him, his team, and his clients. But remember, he's not getting a ton of views on YouTube. So how the heck do numbers like these translate into numbers like these? That's where Jay's mirror strategy comes in. They'll click apply now, and it will ask them to fill out an application. At the end of the application, we'll ask them to book a call. The calls are usually a day or two in the future. Right between the time they apply and the time they get the call, one of our team members will look at their application and say, Hey, you remind us of this person. So if we have, for example, a mom who's in her mid-40s, then we'll send her a video that talks

about like how to handle menopause right. Or if I have a man who's in his mid-30s, I'm going to send him a video about like what to do if you feel like you're too late in life. I know that if I have a male that is like me, he's going to want to see me on the video. I know that if I have a female who's like one of our coaches, they're going to want to see her in the video. So I try to send the videos to them that are specific to the problem that they have. So we always try to send them something. So then we will have the sales call and we make them an offer. And if they don't sign up, then we give them 24 hours to take advantage of a discount that we give them on the call. And during those 24 hours, we will send them usually one to three more videos of people like them that are getting the results that they want to get. So rather than just relying on YouTube as the top of funnel way of

being found Jay skirted around the system by drawing on his library of videos that he already has on YouTube. And then emailing them directly to his leads as a primer for the sales conversation. And what did that do to your close rates? Our sales calls used to be 45 minutes and sometimes longer where we'd do a bunch of, you know, objection handling or whatever. Now we've actually flipped it. As we started to implement more video, we realized that we would spend the 45 minutes and people would tell us at the end, like, yeah, I was going to sign up no matter what you said. It was like, oh, okay, maybe maybe we don't need to spend all of this time. And so the more we've kind of done this, the more likely that people are to show up. And the more likely they are to sign up. And so what we're doing in the 15-minute call is now just filtering people that maybe got there by mistake. And then we're just talking about logistics and details in terms of our conversion rates.

when we started doing paid ads and tracking the conversion rates, we were somewhere around 17 to 21% of the people who showed up for the call. We put video and all this stuff in place, and our conversion rate went up to about 50%. We've got a waiting list out now, you know, about four to six weeks in advance, and we're doing a lot less sales calls than we used to. We actually have less clients than we did back when we were doing 40 grand a month. We have probably 20-30% less clients, but they're getting better results, and you know, we're, we're just, we're able to deliver a better product now. I don't even think we've really scratched the surface of what's possible with video, but we're more in the sort of 90 to 100K a month range. So if you're concentrating on fewer clients but you've more than doubled your revenue, it sounds like you've been able to like raise your prices by quite a bit, absolutely. What was interesting is

before we started doing all of this, we were just like every other gym. Once we started doing more video, people stopped comparing us to other gyms like we were not the same because nobody else is doing anything like this. And because it's so different, we're able to charge more and do something that is seen as completely different. And if you had people in your local area finding you organically through YouTube who ended up then becoming clients, yeah, absolutely. In fact, when you fill out the application, it says, Where did you find us? And it's probably once a month or so, people will say that they found us via YouTube. And if they find our video, then they'll go down the rabbit hole of watching our videos. And then they'll reach out and call us. It just goes to show you that you don't have to reach millions of people to make YouTube work for your business, right? Do you ever still get caught up in trying to go viral? I struggle a little bit with this idea that my videos should compete with, you know, the Andrew Huberman's of the world.

right, like all of the YouTube sort of influencers. I think like, Oh man, you know, I want to have a million followers. But the truth is, I will be more profitable as a business if I just focus on the people that are in front of me and solving their problems. So, answering questions specifically about how to lift weights as a menopausal woman is going to resonate with my audience more than trying to be this sort of bodybuilding, you know, YouTube influencer and accessing millions of people. But that's just one way of getting clients through YouTube. So, if you want to make YouTube your main client generator so you don't even have to do any other type of marketing at all, I want to share my entire YouTube marketing Playbook with you. This is the exact way that I've built my business to over $600,000 a year, and it's 100% repeatable too. So, click right here to see how I did it so you can just steal the blueprint. It works. Click here, and I'll see you there.

How He Makes $1M/Year Without Going Viral (Genius Strategy)

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