A bit busy on account of it being birthday number 78! Yikes 80 is getting closer! As our friend Mike says ….. “if you ain’t dead …..”

Interested in learning more about storytelling - don't miss this one! Click here Some information from Mike that he wanted to share: 📗Storytelling Bernadette Jiwa - What Great Storytellers Know Bernadette Jiwa - Story Driven Donald Miller - Building A Storybrand Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces (the original book on the hero's journey. It's quite academic and there's loads of stuff on YouTube) Matthew Dicks - Storyworthy ✍️Copywriting Joe Sugarman - The Ad Week Copywriting Handbook (probably the best book on direct response copywriting because Eugene Schwartz's absolute classic is stupidly expensive) David Ogilvy - Ogilvy on Advertising (a masterclass on advertising and a paean to long form copy) More "modern" marketing stirs Chip and Dan Heath - Made to Stick Robert Chialdini - Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion Austen Kleon - Steal like an artist ✅Mike Garner Books: Stories That Matter - The Everyday Stories of Incredible Business Owners How To Show Off - The Beginner's Guide To Telling Your Story Without Being A Dick Some of the best stories: Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude Any of the many novels by Emile Zola Nineteenth century classics like Dickens, The Brontës or Jane Austen (and many more) All the novels of Paul Auster and Elizabeth Strout. At the end of her latest novel, she has a character say "they're just stories". Exactly, but they are also what make us human. One point I forgot to make was about open loops where you leave viewers or readers with a snippet of what's coming in the next video, next email or next story. TV series do this all the time with "coming next on…" It's a variation on what I think was first done on 24 with Jack Bauer saying "Previously on 24…"

YouTube just dropped two major changes affecting every creator's growth strategy. What Changed NEW: Hide Button for End Screens: Viewers can now dismiss all recommendation pop-ups with one click—removing your cards and suggested videos. REMOVED: Watermark Subscribe Button: The hover-subscribe on channel watermarks is gone on desktop. The Opportunity YouTube's testing showed only a 1.5% drop in end screen clicks. But here's the real win: your pinned comments just became 10x more valuable. Less Clutter = More Focus Viewers hiding end screens means they're actually listening to your outro instead of getting distracted by pop-ups. Comments Get More Attention With fewer on-screen distractions, viewers scroll down naturally. Perfect for driving engagement. Quick Action Plan Today: - Strengthen your pinned comment game - Test verbal CTAs in final 30-45 seconds - Simplify end screens to one clear action This Week: - Create "conversation starter" endings - Focus on verbal subscriber asks (watermark button is gone) - A/B test different outro styles This is your chance to get ahead while competitors scramble. Source: https://www.theverge.com/news/784774/youtube-end-screen-videos-hide

Anybody got a cool way of asking viewers to smash the hype button? 🤔

Hmmmm, this appeared in my email this morning. I must admit, I always recommend to others to celebrate those wins, but I never take my own advice 😂 This is a really nice milestone, and it took a lot of hard work to get every single view. Thanking everyone who voted on my thumbnail polls and also the advice given, especially from @Mike Bayer to answer every single comment and build a community and Alexa for building this awesome community.