Ian Garlic: How top clients vet you on YouTube (Episode 19)

Your next big client is already checking you out. You just can’t see them.

Before they sign up, book a call, or reach out, high-value buyers do their homework. They search your name plus “reviews” or “legit.” They watch your YouTube videos on a Sunday night. They check out your About page.

They don’t like, comment, or subscribe — so none of it shows up in your funnel.

That’s the invisible pipeline. And most businesses aren’t built for it.

In this episode of Data Beats Opinion, SegMetrics founder Keith Perhac talks with Ian Garlic, founder of Video Case Story, who helps attorneys, coaches, and other experts land bigger clients with YouTube. They dig into why time with your client is a better metric than views, the videos you need everywhere buyers check you out, why simple, repeated content beats clever content, and how to treat YouTube like your website as AI reshapes search.

If you sell a high-value service and your videos feel like they’re disappearing into the void, this one’s for you.

Watch the full episode →

Meet Ian Garlic

Ian Garlic is the founder of Video Case Story, where he helps experts and trusted authorities — from attorneys and dentists to clients like Gino Wickman — land bigger clients using YouTube. His approach starts with customer stories, then turns them into videos that show prospects exactly how you work and why you’re different, placed everywhere buyers go to check you out.

Connect with Ian on LinkedIn or at Video Case Story.

Show Notes

[00:00] Meet Ian Garlic
[02:28] How AI is changing video and search
[04:06] Why search is moving to YouTube and Reddit
[08:17] Time with your client is the number one metric
[08:55] The two minute malpractice study
[09:58] Curation is the new trust
[12:26] Optimizing for views you don’t want
[14:58] Where to start with video
[16:50] The biggest video mistakes experts make
[18:00] Why simple, repeated content wins
[22:34] How repetition affects AI search
[25:42] The fish in the barrel strategy
[27:52] Reviewing the SegMetrics search results
[31:31] Deconstructing a webinar for YouTube
[32:53] Do you need visuals or B-roll?
[34:45] Why AI design all looks the same
[36:28] Keith’s AI data analysis fail
[38:16] Treat YouTube like your website
[42:48] Running high intent ads to videos
[44:30] Ad costs and generic AI content
[48:25] Where to find Ian Garlic

About Data Beats Opinion

Data Beats Opinion is SegMetrics’ monthly podcast exploring what’s actually working in growth and marketing today. Host Keith Perhac, founder of SegMetrics, sits down with domain experts to uncover practical strategies you can implement — not just theory.

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Transcript: Ian Garlic – Ep 19

Every marketer knows they should be doing more video. So they start a YouTube channel, they post some content, and they wait, and nothing happens. So they post some more. Still nothing. And eventually they just kind of give up.

They’re convinced that video just doesn’t work for their kind of business. But what if the problem isn’t the video? What if it’s that you’re optimizing for the wrong audience entirely? You’re chasing views from people who will never buy, while the clients who would pay you are quietly poking around YouTube on Sunday night looking for someone they can trust.

In this episode of Data Beats Opinion, we’re talking with Ian Garlic, founder of Video Case Story, who has built video strategies for attorneys, coaches, and some of the biggest names in online business. We’re digging into why the invisible pipeline is more powerful than any funnel you’ve ever built, the two-minute data point that explains why your best customers find you before they even reach out, and why, in a world flooded with AI-generated slop, showing up as a real human on video might be the highest-leverage marketing move left. Let’s start the show.

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Keith: Ian, thank you so much for joining us. We had some good conversation before we hit record, so keep that good conversation rolling, man.

Ian Garlic: We always do. We always have awesome conversations. It’s like, we might as well just record ‘em all.

Keith: Yeah, exactly. Well, last time we got on the phone for something — I don’t remember what — it was just a quick, like, 10-minute call. We were on the phone for like an hour and a half, just talking about all this stuff. It just does not stop. So, excited to have you. For people who don’t know, give me the ten-second pitch, ya?

Ian Garlic: We help experts, you know, trusted authorities, land big clients. From attorneys to dentists to — you know, Gino Wickman’s one of our clients — land big clients using video, YouTube, what I call the invisible pipeline, which, you know, is scary to people, and pre-sold clients, because we get those videos in front of them. And the thing I always say is, we’re optimizing for the number one metric, which is time with your client. And so for an expert, that’s what they have to be doing: getting more and more and more.

Now, I think all the stuff you do is really important, and that comes secondary, because if you can’t get in front of them with the right message… That’s what we help people do, is find the message.

Keith: Exactly.

Ian Garlic: And we start by collecting customer stories and listening to your customer, ‘cause they have all the answers. So that’s why we’re called videocasestory.com.

Keith: Awesome. Very cool. Yeah, and we jumped right into this. So we were talking about how AI is changing video, how AI is changing search, how AI is changing discoverability, even, with some of this stuff. Do you find that AI has come in and kind of devalued or unvalued… How do you think that’s playing out right now in the world, right?

Ian Garlic: I mean, well, it has definitely increased the value of video. You know, YouTube is a big source of a lot of the data for ChatGPT, et cetera, so that’s important. But also, YouTube has metrics that those AIs look at, like views. It can see the number of views; it can see percent viewed. If it gets into the API, it gets percent viewed. Likes, comments, all that stuff. And then ranking in Google too. And so it’s definitely changed. Video’s become more important. And I also think another thing that people are seeing — and I’ve talked to website companies too — is that pure website visits are way down.

Keith: Oh yeah. Oh…

Ian Garlic: Because AI’s kind of taking that away. But people still wanna see you, hear you, and they’d rather go someplace familiar, like YouTube, or other platforms now.

And then if you talk about time on site, you know, YouTube’s time is actually going up while everything else is going down. People are spending more time on YouTube. So I think there’s this massive, massive shift because of AI, and video, yeah, is more important.

Keith: I think it’s fascinating, because one of the things that SparkToro is talking about right now is zero-click marketing, and this idea that your homepage is not just your homepage anymore. It’s really all of these places that you are. And like you’re saying, people search for a solution, or even they search for your brand name — the number one things that come up are gonna be AI and video. A lot of the top, before-the-fold search results now are YouTube, and people are going to YouTube. YouTube and Reddit are now the two largest search engines for solution-based searches, right? That I’m looking for a problem to solve, which is mind-blowing, right?

Ian Garlic: Yeah, it’s—

Keith: Exactly right. That’s where people are going for this information now.

Ian Garlic: Well, you know, and I’ll put a — I’ve got a free asset. I’ll give it to your audience. videocasestory.com — we’ll make it /keith. I’ve got a calculator, and it’s got the list of all the places that we try… because I always say it’s YouTube, ‘cause YouTube ranks, right? You should have YouTube; you should be driving YouTube.

And there’s like 40 different places. And also we have this whole list of searches that people do when they’re investigating you. And, you know, so few people optimize for that — that fish — when they’re ready to buy from you. They do all these crazy funnels, and then they don’t think about the searches or all the other places, like you were saying, that people were going to.

And it’s so important to think that way. You have to think about how the buying process has massively changed over the past 15 years, and then in the past two years it’s even more massively changed, and we’ve moved away from this whole Yellow Pages philosophy. Like, I have a problem, let me go look up the solution, the person for the problem. And people are still optimizing for that. And — this is just a side note — everyone’s calling it answer engine optimization. I’m like, no, it’s problem solving. And like you were saying, solution — it solves problems. It knows problems before you know you have them.

Keith: Yeah, it’s interesting, because it’s not that… people are saying, oh, search is going away. No — I think search is getting more powerful. It’s happening more because we have more targeted… What’s going away is the old-school SEO, where you can game the system in that way. You can still game the system through AEO and stuff like that. But the old idea of, I’m gonna have these blog articles that rank high, and then people are gonna come and do all this stuff — that’s going away.

But the idea that we’re searching for the solution… And it’s interesting that you phrase it this way, because when we get into our head about what our customers are doing and we try to think about it that way, we put ourselves into this fake way of searching, and [think] people are asking these questions on AI, and then they’re going straight to our site, and then they’re gonna buy. And that’s not happening. The first part’s happening. Like, I just did some research for some hosting. It’s super geeky, dumb, nothing to do with work. But I tried to find something, right? And the first thing I did is go into AI and say, okay, what are my options, right? What do I got there? I said, B, B, B, B, B, B. Okay. So then I go to YouTube, and I’m like, okay, let’s look at some of the options that were put up there. And then YouTube’s suggesting other things. I’m looking at those, and then I narrow it down to like two or three, right?

Then I go to those websites, and I’m looking at those websites and going through the feature list. At no point did I go to any of their SEO-marketed pages. But I was going through their feature list. It’s like, here’s what I need to do to be able to do this. It wasn’t, I landed on the page and signed up. I’m doing my deep research. I’m a qualified lead at that point. [I’m doing] my deep research to see if this is the product I want and it overcomes my problems and objections.

Ian Garlic: Exactly. It’s: how does this work, right? And FAQs. And also, do I like the company? You know, the About Us page is still important. People are going to it. It’s like, well, where is this company? Who are these people? Is it gonna be around in a few years?

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, and what builds that trust more, I think, than a website is video. It’s the actual customer talking, and… yeah.

Ian Garlic: Well, the reason I say the number one metric is time is twofold. First of all, it’s the mere exposure effect, which I also call the Oprah effect. It’s like, the more we see someone’s face, hear their voice, the more we trust them. It’s ingrained in humans. And it’s weird, ‘cause it affects me, and I know it.

Like, I watch my clients’ videos, and I’m like, I feel like I see them all the time. And then I see them, and I’m all friendly, and I’m like, oh yeah, they don’t see me.

Keith: They don’t know who I am yet.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. And, you know, this is why I hear from all of our clients, they’re like, people just come in. If they watch our YouTube video, they just come in like I’m their best friend, and [an] authority. And so that’s a big one. But also — this is interesting, ‘cause I love Malcolm Gladwell — a long time ago, he wrote about the biggest differentiator between doctors that get malpractice lawsuits and doctors that don’t.

Do you know what it is? I gave you a hint.

Keith: [Time] to the client, to the patient.

Ian Garlic: Time with patient. So it’s time with patient. It’s not quality of care, it’s not their education. It is time with patient. Now, here’s the interesting thing. I looked up the study, ‘cause I like to confirm my data. And guess what the time difference was?

Keith: I’m gonna say five to 10x.

Ian Garlic: Two minutes.

Keith: What?

Ian Garlic: 13.2 minutes to 15. The doctors that don’t get sued spent 15 minutes on average with their patients. The doctors that do get sued, 13 minutes on average.

Keith: That’s crazy.

Ian Garlic: It’s crazy. So it’s this powerful effect, and that’s why we want to optimize for it. And like you said, I think in the world of AI… I think social media is gonna be kind of dying, because it’s like bots talking to bots. And—

Keith: I think… I really do. I felt this with Amazon, and I think it’s going to be exacerbated by AI video and AI comments and all these bots and stuff. But I really feel like Amazon’s just filled with junk right now. It’s just complete junk. We bought a flashlight, and my wife sends me this thing, and it was this cheap Chinese thing that was being sold for a lot of money, right? I’m like, this is obviously a Chinese knockoff. Let’s go look. And so what I did is I went to Wirecutter; I went to all these places. I went to places that I trust to give me that information. And so I believe that curation is the new trust factor, right?

Ian Garlic: Yes.

Keith: [We still] need social media and stuff, but it’s not going to be the fire hose that social media was. It’s going to be people building trust communities within that. And it’s always going to be — and I hate to use the words “parasocial relationship,” ‘cause it makes it sound so horrible — but it’s people trusting people, watching someone, like you’re saying, over and over again, building that trust.

And that’s where social media and business growth and stuff, I think, will stay. But the general fire hose of, “Hey, here’s a random bot on social media,” is just gonna [crosstalk] it all. Yeah.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. No, I agree completely. I mean, we still have to have the online communities. I think those are gonna massively grow. But your usual feed stuff…

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: I mean, I know I’m on LinkedIn less and less and less, because it’s like, oh my God, this is just all AI stuff I’m seeing.

Keith: It’s bad. I think LinkedIn and Twitter comments are the two places where thoughts go to die, really. Although I just signed up for Bluesky. I’m a little bit [late to] the party, but it’s just as bad. And it’s like you really have to curate. I mean, going back to the curation thing, you really have to curate who you’re listening to and build off of trust signals there.

‘Cause I don’t know if people have ever logged into YouTube without… or gone to YouTube in incognito mode, when you don’t have anything. Have you seen the videos that are on there? It’s horrible.

Ian Garlic: It is horrible.

Keith: It’s… yeah.

Ian Garlic: But that’s the problem with YouTube, though, ‘cause YouTube is optimizing, obviously, for total views. But we were talking about before — so many people are going down that path for their business, when really they only want a thousand people. And you’re optimizing for all the people you don’t want.

Keith: Right.

Ian Garlic: And you end up making MrBeast-style content for your law firm.

Keith: Yeah. And I mean, it’s like traffic back in the day, right? You always wanted more traffic because that’s gonna turn into leads, and that’s just not how it works. And like you’re saying, same with video. You know, I watch a lot of what I’d call just end-user content, right? Podcasts, entertainment content on YouTube, right? They have like a million views, 3 million views, and they were released a month ago, right? And I was looking at marketing videos. So what were the top-ranked marketing videos on YouTube?

Other than this one obviously bot-farm thing, Russell Brunson has the number one marketing video on YouTube. [It’s from] eight years ago, and it’s half a million views.

Ian Garlic: Wow. Yeah.

Keith: That’s it. But those are the right half million people. And if your video’s getting a thousand views and those are the right thousand people, that’s much more valuable than spreading out to everyone on the internet.

Ian Garlic: Well, yeah. And it’s actually… I’ve had a few people on that are — I hate to use this word — but, like, targeting newbies. Like, how to make your first thousand dollars online. And that skews my channel, ‘cause it gets the most views. And so, like, the lowest common denominator. And you look at Alex Hormozi — he’s super smart, but most of his stuff is targeting the person like, “If I wanted to make $10,000 this year, this is what I would do.” And I’m like, man, if I only made $10,000, my wife would kill me.

Keith: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Ian Garlic: So yeah, it’s really interesting. And so many people are like, well, I want the likes and comments. But also, the bigger the client you have, the more they’re just gonna show up, and they’re not gonna comment.

I mean, I’ve had people watching my YouTube videos for five years all of a sudden buy something, and they’re like, “I’ve been watching for five years.” I’m like—

Keith: I don’t see a single comment or a…

Ian Garlic: No.

Keith: …or…

Ian Garlic: No. Yeah, it’s really interesting. But I mean, yeah, I think it’s so important that people look at the whole part of what they’re doing, and they can’t just be funnel-focused anymore.

Keith: But how… so I wanna dig into that a little bit. When someone is starting out — so let’s say I don’t have any video presence, I don’t have any of the user videos, the customer videos, anything — how do you then start in that? Or maybe I do have videos, but they’re not doing well, right? How would I go about starting that? How do I start this new channel of video, other than what I think a lot of people feel, which is, I’m doing all this video and just posting it into the void?

Ian Garlic: Yes. So I’m assuming that you’re… are you talking about someone that has an existing business?

Keith: Yeah. Existing business trying to go with a new channel.

Ian Garlic: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, the number one thing — and this is the number one problem I see with existing businesses and YouTube channels — is: show how you work and show your results. If you do those two things… that’s why case stories work. And you don’t have to just collect your clients — you should listen to your clients, you should interview them — but show how you work and what it means to work with you.

That’s the number one thing. ‘Cause I go to so many channels, and they’re like, “Analyze my channel.” I’m like, I can’t tell exactly what you do on your YouTube channel. You have all these videos. They’re like, “Well, this video has 20,000 views.” I’m like, yeah, but it doesn’t say how I can work with you.

Keith: Right.

Ian Garlic: I know that seems so obvious, but so few people do that. They’re afraid to be… and I’m not saying make a commercial. I’m saying, this is what I do. You know, like, “Hey, when you sign up for SegMetrics, your ultimate result is to double your results from your ads. And this is exactly how we do it,” right? “And I’m gonna show you: when you sign up, this is what we do. And when you talk to us, this is what you do. And when you join our email list, this is what’s gonna happen.”

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: And then all the questions that they have around buying it, ‘cause they’re buying questions — yeah, get all those filled out and finished.

Keith: Do you think that people get in their head too much when they’re doing this video? Or do you think it’s fear of… I think so. But what’s the biggest hurdle you think that people have?

Ian Garlic: So either they want to get too technical and talk about their technical piece — and I’m like, big clients don’t want to know exactly how the software works, right? They wanna know how it works for them. That’s the one side of it.

The other side of it is a lot of people go and start making commercials, and I’m like, no one wants to watch a commercial on YouTube. I know you see a lot of commercials on YouTube — they’re doing it wrong. Yeah, I mean, those are the two big ones. And just overthinking it, and not talking to the person’s problems, right?

And really understanding their problems and how you solve their problems. Because no one wants another software; no one wants another video. They want to be an authority. They want to land clients. They wanna make sure their ad spend isn’t being blown through the roof in the wrong places.

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: You know, we have to always talk about those problems.

Keith: This is one thing that I realized — God, it’s only been about a year, a year and a half ago — that whenever we did a presentation or this type of content, we always tried to be very… right? We tried to bring something that no one had heard before, or something very exciting, very expert-level, and it never landed.

And we gave this talk at Craft + Commerce, which is Kit’s conference, and it was just, for us, baseline, right? It was how you look at a funnel, break it up, and then look at the metrics of each of those things that you just broke up, right? And SegMetrics. And it was the highest-ranked workshop at the event. We did it again at MicroConf — again, highest-ranked workshop at the event. And I’m like, this is stuff that I’ve been talking about for years. I consider this just basic. But it’s not, because we’re in this all day.

Ian Garlic: All day.

Keith: [Like] your clients, we’re in this all freaking day. We’re thinking high-level thoughts about this, but everyone’s not at that level. Everyone wants to know, okay, what are the things I need to do to get results? [Not] the most esoteric thing that I’ve seen today.

Ian Garlic: No, I mean, Tony Robbins is a great example of it, because if you listen to some of his stuff — the forward-facing stuff — he just repeats the same stuff over and over and over and over again. But people need to hear it again. Like you said, they’re not doing it all day.

They need to be reminded of it, and the simplest stuff… and keeping it simple works. Because I have the tendency to do it too, ‘cause I’m deep in this. I wanna talk about YouTube SEO and AEO and trust signals and blah, blah, blah. And if someone gets me going on that, I can see them go, “Oh my God, I didn’t mean to ask that.”

But it’s so true. If you do it properly, where it’s accessible to them and they feel transformed, you can win. And I think, you know, taking that presentation now and breaking it up into two, three videos where it’s really easy is a great thing for you to do. And repeat it. Yeah.

Keith: Yeah. You mentioned Tony Robbins. I was talking to Ramit Sethi — same thing. He’s like, at some point you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re gonna be repeating yourself over and over and over again for the rest of your life. And you know what? That’s what being a teacher is all about.

I was a teacher for three years. I taught English in Japan. It’s the same thing. I had the same lesson every single day for three years. And it’s like, yeah, I have my lesson plan. I go to six different schools. I’m teaching that same lesson at six different schools. Rinse and repeat. Go again. Start the new year. Do the same thing over again. That’s just your life. And you’re going to do that or you’re not, but that’s what you need to do.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. And that’s why I think versions of that stuff on your YouTube channel, versions of that stuff in your YouTube videos, where you’re repeating the idea over and over and over and over again to people… and then when they get indoctrinated and they’re in your community, now you can go deep, and they love that. But going deep to… yeah, I agree 100%.

Keith: Yeah, I was talking to Aaron Francis. He’s big in the PHP community. I don’t think anyone listening to this podcast [knows] who he is, but he was talking about essentially a four-to-one or five-to-one strategy, where he does four or five general posts — kind of top-of-funnel, “Hey, I’m saying the same thing,” or “Here’s the news,” general-interest stuff — and then for every four or five of those, he does one super in-depth, geeky, “Hey, here’s a deep dive,” to get people who are ready to go to the next level more into his ecosystem. So there’s [a lot] of stuff on top that’s essentially, I’m saying the same thing, I’m doing the blah, blah, blah. And then there’s that piece of content that’s like, okay, now you’re ready to come in deep. And essentially [it’s] warming a qualified lead, right? Same thing we’ve always been doing; just the format’s different.

Ian Garlic: Yep. Yep. Exactly. And that’s another thing to think about too. A lot of [it is] the fundamentals. Like, I tell people our whole Core Four YouTube video strategy is a deconstructed webinar, and it’s a lot of the same stuff over and over again. But you get better at it, right?

You get better at saying it. A lot of our clients — you know, we’ve made tons of videos, and they just get better and better at saying it.

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: What’s really interesting right now is the repetition is actually affecting AI, and AI search. ‘Cause the more [it] sees this stuff in different places, the more AI goes, “Oh, you’re the expert in this.”

Like, I was just looking up what AI thought about me in a certain vertical. And it’s like, “Well, you talk about many other verticals. These people talk about this vertical only, in places.” So that repetition is actually important now to AI search.

Keith: Oh, very much so. It’s interesting, because AI search is essentially SEO 10 years ago, I feel, where it loves listicles, it loves repeated content, it loves all this stuff that we used to do that Google now punishes us for, ‘cause [of] the algorithm. But the AI doesn’t really have an algorithm, right? In the way that we think about it.

I was looking at a new partnership platform, and I was like, “Hey, recommend some stuff.” And it recommended this. It was like, “You really need to use this. This is the best thing out there.” And I go to look at their webpage, and they have their customer’s name spelled wrong. They have typos every[where]. I’m like, what is this? And I pushed back to AI. I was like, “Why did you recommend this site? It looks horrible.” And it’s like, “Oh, they’re just really good at AEO.” It said they’ve been posting all this stuff that AI really likes, “and so I put it at the top of my list.” Yeah—

Ian Garlic: Wow.

Keith: [They were] constantly putting out content that was saying the same thing, that was focusing on that, and just bringing… yeah. And then AI was like, “Oh, they’re an expert in their field,” ‘cause no [crosstalk] this. Like—

Ian Garlic: Oh my God. Yeah, it’s—

Keith: They had all this video, they had all this text, they had all this stuff, they had all these testimonials. Yeah, it was crazy.

Ian Garlic: That’s interesting. Yeah, the case studies — the volume of case studies is a big deal there. So yeah, it’s super interesting how it’s going.

Keith: Yeah, and YouTube is one of the big sources for AI knowledge right now. You’re looking at things like, okay, what are the… because also Google is auto-transcribing all of your videos, and so that all gets fed into the AI. So you have a case study with someone big, or you have multiple case studies all saying similar things.

They’re going to be pushing into the AI, and now that’s huge. Because it’s a much larger trust signal for AI than it is just to have something on the website, because it’s video, and video is always ranked higher. [It] is ranked higher. These things are ranked higher than just standard website stuff.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. Yeah. I’m interested to see what goes on with Reddit, because it feels like it’s so hackable.

Keith: It is so hackable. Oh my God. Yes, I’m in a bunch of marketing subreddits, and I think that every single post and 90% of the comments are AI at this point.

Ian Garlic: Yeah.

Keith: ‘Cause marketers are gonna try to game the marketing system, right? So those are the subreddits that they’re focusing on, and it’s so… yeah.

Ian Garlic: Marketers ruin everything.

Keith: Yeah. We really do. I mean, it’s our lot in life. If there’s money to be had, we’ll make it. Yeah, I wanna talk about something you had mentioned on kind of the intake, and what we were talking about with this kind of YouTube and the fish-in-the-barrel strategy. What is that? How does that work?

Ian Garlic: Well, I mean, I’ve been doing it almost since the dawn of time — a version of it. And it was interesting: I talked to a client, and not only his clients… I’m like, I feel like I see him all the time, because I see his videos pop up, and I talk to him like every 18 months.

You know, we made this original fish in the barrel. So we do the Core Four videos. You get them ranking and put ‘em in different places. It’s been eight years, and he’s like, it all just works. It’s exactly what you said. And so basically it’s owning the time from someone when someone discovers who you are and they’re thinking about you and working with you. All the places that they go, having videos there that are converting videos, like I talked about: how to work with you, the Trusted Path video, your Why Us — I call it the Why Us and not the About Us, ‘cause if I tell people “About Us,” they just blab their story, and I’m like, no. It’s: why are you different?

Keith: Right.

Ian Garlic: Your converting questions: what are the questions that someone asks when they’re buying from you? And your case stories, your customer stories, and having those surrounding people. Those videos surrounding… ads, they’re going down, because we talked about time with website.

Time watching the videos… you know, when you got close to that hosting thing, you started watching longer content, right? You’ll nibble, nibble, nibble, and as you get closer to the buy, you’re gonna watch 10, 15, 20 minutes. This is your opportunity to really optimize for this. And so many people are trying to get the lead and not optimizing for what they call the fish in the barrel. There’s the people there that are swimming around your business, and the bigger clients… like, we’ve had other agencies — we’ve had people landing $100,000 clients because they optimized for that.

So, like — let me… can I share my screen?

So you see here, “SegMetrics reviews.” Second thing, right? Is owning this, right? And this is a great place to have videos ranking — YouTube videos ranking — ‘cause you get ‘em over to your channel. This is someone else’s video. You should have yours ranking, right? Say, like, “Is it legit?”

Keith: Is it…

Ian Garlic: This is a big one. I didn’t know.

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: “Legit” is a big term that people put in. And obviously the AI searches — this is where you wanna be influencing that. You know, I’d probably try and push this Trustpilot thing down. But [it’s] another place to own videos, right? And then, you know, your name too.

‘Cause you’re going around and you’re speaking, so people… you’re gonna be, like, having case stories, having your About Us page, how to work with you here now. And then going to SegMetrics, right? This is another thing I’m doing, is optimizing for… actually, it doesn’t share all the…

There we go. Lemme see if that changes. Optimizing for what you can’t see, but tabs. Another thing I’m doing is, ‘cause people have 20 tabs open, I wanna optimize for all the searches. And so what I’m doing is putting more YouTube videos, embedding them, and having them open up instead of having them play on the website.

But, you know, definitely I would have here an About Us page. I like the use cases, but we did a study with Leadpages a long time ago, and Resources was actually not clicked. And so… but having a Process tab—

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: —having a Process tab: how does it work? How do I get set up on this? About — like, your story? ‘Cause, I mean, you have a ton of personality, and people wanna buy from a person.

Keith: [Funny] that you mentioned that, ‘cause we used to have a Why SegMetrics front and center, and we kind of buried it in the use cases section right now.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. I would look at your heat map, because I learned all this from heat [maps]. You know, at one point we had like 300 websites that we hosted, and we had heat maps on all of them. The About Us was the second most used page. Great place to put a YouTube video, ‘cause now they’re gonna spend some time with you…

Keith: Right.

Ian Garlic: …[on that] page.

All those searches that I put on your LinkedIn — you should have a YouTube video, because you can open up the LinkedIn, [the] YouTube video will open up. Again, you’re owning more searches, right? Because they’re gonna look this up. I would have your LinkedIn ranking for this too. But that’s the fish in the barrel.

There’s like 20 different places. When you go through that calculator — go to videocasestory.com/keith — it’ll show you all the different places. And if your average client value is $10,000, and you get one extra client a year from each of these places — like 20 places over the course of four years — that’s $800,000 return on investment.

And so that’s that fish-in-the-barrel strategy. It seems really obvious, but people don’t take it seriously.

Keith: I think people don’t take it seriously because they don’t see immediate results, right? And that’s what I have seen across people that we’ve worked with in the past as well, where they’re like, “Oh, I did this thing for a month and I didn’t get a million dollars. I’m just gonna cut it,” right? And it’s like you’re saying — it’s wider. It’s about stacking those bricks, and like, okay, people are gonna find one of these things at some point, and the more you have, the more chances… it’s increasing your luck surface.

Ian Garlic: Yes. I love that. Yeah.

Keith: Yeah. There was a phrase you used that I really want to pull back on. Oh, what was the name of the fricking phrase? I’m gonna have to go back to the recording once this is live. It was such a good… oh, that’s what it was: deconstructing a webinar. I love that idea. Because I think all of us, as marketers, with all this stuff that we’re doing, we understand the webinar…

Ian Garlic: Mm-hmm.

Keith: …the webinar format. And the idea to deconstruct — it’s like, okay, we’re just gonna chop this thing up, and this is our social content strategy — works so well. I think that really rings true with a lot of people.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. Well, because the bigger the client, the less that sale’s gonna happen during the workday, right? If you’re a coach or a consultant targeting the C-suite, they’re not watching your YouTube videos at noon on a workday, because they’re working.

Keith: Right.

Ian Garlic: But at eight o’clock on Sundays, they’ll poke around, right?

And at night, poke around and watch a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. And this is where you want to have repeated the various versions, the various things that you’re talking about. So when they poke around, eventually they get [it]. And then you just drive ‘em down, so you’re connecting the videos. So they do see the whole webinar, but it’s asynchronous.

Keith: Yeah. Do you find that… I know this is getting into the nitty-gritty—

Ian Garlic: I love it.

Keith: —‘cause [I do a] lot of video now. I love video. I love talking into the camera. One of the things I hate doing, though, is, oh, I gotta show the slides now, and I gotta do the demo video and all this stuff. Do you find that people respond better when there are visuals in addition to the talking head? Or do you see that even just a plain talking head is valuable?

Ian Garlic: We try and add B-roll to everything. I mean, you still need to entertain them a little bit, ‘cause people are looking off left and right, and you want to grab their attention. So I do find visuals [help]. I’m going deeper into it. It is interesting, though, because…

I’ll give you the link to this, but I was doing slides for all these FAQs, and I’m like, “Hey, here’s 20 FAQs. Make me slides for it.” And I built this slide generator, and it started to answer the slides, and it gave all incorrect answers. But they seemed right.

Keith: Right.

Ian Garlic: Right. And I’m like, “Where did you get this from? Did you use my content?” Like, “I used some of your content, and then I just kind of made it up too.” So you gotta be careful with the visuals if you’re not an expert. But I do think… yeah, it’s so easy now. There’s so much you can do with Claude and stuff to make really good visuals.

I think you should take the time to do it. I do think, though, if it’s too AI, it is affecting LinkedIn and the search. I think it’s doing some scans. I know it does scans for the AI watermarks when you upload it.

Keith: Interesting.

Ian Garlic: Yeah, so I’d be careful with AI-generated stuff. Especially… I think YouTube’s gonna start segmenting it out too.

Keith: I think they’ve already started, for fully AI [videos].

Ian Garlic: Yep.

Keith: I think they watermark that, and they’re like, nope, push that stuff down. That’s interesting, though. I think that’s part of the backlash we’re going to see, because… it was interesting. So, you know, Claude released Claude Design, and people [are] building websites out of it. They all look exactly the same.

Ian Garlic: All exactly the same.

Keith: [Every] effing thing. You can instantly tell a Claude [site]. It’s like when Bootstrap came out, and then Tailwind. All the sites look exactly the same for about, I don’t know, maybe a year or two years or something, until people figure out how to make them not look the same.

But I’m looking, and anything that’s, especially, oranges, or that weird marker-underline thing, I’m like, yeah, that’s just AI. [You made] this in 10 [minutes].

Ian Garlic: And the same fonts. And I’ve tried using it. I’m like, “Don’t use those AI fonts.” And it sneaks ‘em in. And I’m like, what are you doing?

Keith: I actually thought it was better before they had Claude Design — and that’s getting into a huge rabbit hole. But, ‘cause I use Claude Code every day. We use it for marketing, we use it for everything, to help improve what we’re doing and to get better ideas and to bring all this stuff out. But when you just toss something in and it’s like, make it… it [comes] out like shit.

Ian Garlic: No, no. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone needs a… I had a client — hopefully he doesn’t listen to this — but he’s like, “I had AI make me a marketing plan.” And then I looked at him… and it basically was a sycophantic, like, “I know you like these words, so I’m gonna put these words up here.”

Keith: Yep.

Ian Garlic: Yeah, it’s bad.

Keith: No, I’ve been curious. I tried the make-a-marketing-plan thing. It’s middling advice, right? It’s the standard, like, post on social, write blog posts. It’s like, yeah, I know, I know. The other thing I tried was with data. And this is my… right now. I’ve never trusted Claude with data, but I decided to try it. I uploaded 800 of our most recent trials, and I was like, “I wanna do an onboarding analysis. How long are people taking to connect their stuff? How long are they taking to get to our major touch points?” I just want to see time differences and all this stuff, and find some insights.

And it made some really pretty graphs. Looks awesome. It’s clickable. It’s so cool. It’s the most awesome thing. And I looked at one of the numbers, like, huh, that’s a weird number, 43. That does not sound like a number that should exist there. “Hey Claude, what’s this number?” And it’s like, “Oh, you uploaded 800 records. I just used the first five.”

Ian Garlic: Oh my God.

Keith: I was like, “You did what? You did what?” So… it never told us. It never looked at that. And it gave us a nice total. It said, “Yeah, 800 records, that’s how many you uploaded. But I only looked at five for the actual analysis.”

Ian Garlic: I know. I always have to be like, “Did you use all the skills?” “No, I kind of guessed based on the skills.” I’m like, oh my God. Yeah, you have to… there’s so much—

Keith: Did it get lazy halfway through and start browsing Reddit? Like, what’s going on here, man?

Ian Garlic: It’s kind of like a semi-lazy, super-smart employee. Like, you’re really smart when you do the stuff, but—

Keith: You are the laziest person I know.

Ian Garlic: “I’m gonna lie to you authoritatively.”

Keith: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, they’re just so good at it. [It] just wants to please us, right?

Ian Garlic: Yeah. Yeah.

Keith: So, man, what do you feel is next for video, and how we present ourselves, and building that relationship? Do you think it’s different than it was six months ago, with how AI and search and everything has changed? Or do you feel like it’s still the same thing, and it’s always gonna be that same bread-and-butter kind of stuff?

Ian Garlic: The big difference I see is — while we said, you know, you shouldn’t worry about the metrics — videos rank more with more views. And I think running ads to the videos to get views is affecting AI. I think more so than ever, you have to treat YouTube like your website. And it’s an argument I have with a lot of my clients.

Like, “I don’t wanna send people to YouTube, ‘cause there’s other people on there, and they’ll go other places.” I’m like, there’s not one single person watching this right now that has only one tab open. I mean, Keith, I don’t know — like, my mom doesn’t watch my podcast.

I dunno if you’re like… but there’s not one single person watching like that. So I think sending more people to YouTube as your website is probably one of the most important things you can do. But besides that, no, I think, yeah, avoiding AI. Don’t let AI write the scripts for you.

Keith: Right. It’s interesting, because I feel I’ve heard that a lot too. It’s like, “Oh, but my competitor’s on YouTube.” It’s like, are they bigger than you? Because if they’re bigger than you, then you’re taking their audience; you’re building on the work they did for your audience. Are you bigger than them? Then it doesn’t matter, right?

For me, you know, we were talking about people trusting people and that community, and one of the benefits, I think, around that is when you watch a bunch of, let’s say, online course videos, right? And people…

Ian Garlic: Mm-hmm.

Keith: …that. And you just watched this one person, and now this new person — your client — starts popping up, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting too.”

And that would not have been there [if] they weren’t already watching this. So you’re kind of getting… and maybe I’m completely off track on this, but I feel like with the YouTube recommendation engine, you get into other people’s audiences to a degree, because when you finish one video, they’re recommending other ones that are like it.

Ian Garlic: 100%. I mean, when you send traffic to YouTube, YouTube knows who’s going to that video. And if you’re making… I think, you know, the quality of the videos — and by quality I mean content — ‘cause everyone’s like, “How do you rank a YouTube video?” ‘cause we have them ranking. But you need to understand… it’s so much more intention.

Keith: Mm-hmm.

Ian Garlic: [Who’s] watching it, and when [they’re] watching it, and how you’re driving traffic there, than ever before. Because the opportunity’s there. And I think that’s the thing: it’s amplified, not changed.

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: Because, yeah, like you said, if you’re sending people there and they watch two minutes of your video, three minutes of your video, which is half of it, they’re gonna start recommending that video to other people that are in the same situation, that have the same problems, ‘cause they want more people to watch that video.

Keith: Right. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s all YouTube wants: for people to watch more video and to never leave the site. So the more that they can promote content… And it’s interesting, because even Google search — there was a study done by SparkToro that, I believe, it’s 54%, or maybe it’s 70%.

It’s a huge number. A huge number of Google searches never leave a Google property, meaning that they’re going into Gemini, they’re going into YouTube, they’re going into all these places that Google still owns, as part of that search. Interesting. Google’s whole thing is they want to keep you — and all these social platforms, they want to keep you right there, watching as much content as humanly possible. And if that means recommending someone else who you want to get in there, then it’s a great play.

Ian Garlic: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Keith: So I wanna touch on something, ‘cause you had talked about doing ads to the YouTube videos. Do you find that ads or boosted videos are better? Because I know a lot of people are just like, every video I put up, I put $100, $200 just to boost it.

Ian Garlic: No.

Keith: Do you… or how do you—

Ian Garlic: I do high-intent keyword ads.

Keith: Okay.

Ian Garlic: I mean, it’s the second most used search engine, and it has Google’s data. Why not send people looking for that problem to your video?

Keith: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

Ian Garlic: And it’s funny, because we have clients in sensitive areas, and one of my clients — his neighbor is like, “Oh, I saw your YouTube video on my TV.” And he’s like, “Oh…” He’s like, “You did something bad.”

Keith: [You must] have been searching for that.

Ian Garlic: Yeah, exactly. He’s like, “You searched for something, and you’re in trouble.”

Keith: Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Garlic: But yeah, I think, ‘cause you don’t want just viewers — you want some intent, right?

Keith: Yeah.

Ian Garlic: And we have one running right now for an agency, with high, high, high-intent keywords, and they’re at .003 cents a view with 80% view time, ‘cause the intent’s there. And this is what’s really good about it: because the intent’s there and you get the view time, Google and YouTube will actually start ranking the videos for you.

Keith: Mm, mm, mm.

Ian Garlic: So yeah, it works.

Keith: That’s a brave new world. And it’s interesting, because, you know, traditional ads are really having a hard time. Cost is going up. Retargeting’s more expensive than cold ads at this point, which is insanity.

Ian Garlic: That’s crazy.

Keith: Yeah. I know some people are doing really well on it, but a lot of people are just like… especially in the B2B space, anything that’s going after any sort of prosumer or business level, the ad price is just insane.

It’s just so much money at this point. It’s like, okay, we’re looking to get ROI in six months, not a week like it used to be, right? Or God forbid you try to have a self-liquidating offer at this point, right? So it’s fascinating.

Ian Garlic: I think a lot of those people relied too much on it automatically doing it for them, and so they didn’t spend enough time really understanding the content that they made. You know, I’m in a couple of mastermind groups with amazing copywriters from back in the day that did, you know, millions of dollars of direct mail.

And they had to spend the time nailing it down, because you didn’t have a second chance with it. And now, with Facebook ads, it’s like, “Oh, I should put up more garbage.”

Keith: This is the thing that gets to me. I’ve gone to a couple of marketing conferences recently where I feel like they’ve lost the lead a little bit, because they keep saying, “Oh, we’re just going to have all this AI stuff out there. AI is doing all my ads.” And so everything’s generic, right?

Ian Garlic: Yep.

Keith: [They’re] like, “Well, we’re just pushing it to more people.” I’m like, there’s a lot of people in the world, right? [But] especially when you’re a high-level coach, or you’re a high-level creator, or you’re trying to sell something that’s not 10 bucks, there is a limit to the number of people. Some of our ads get a hundred thousand impressions, half a million impressions, a million impressions. That’s a lot of people.

Ian Garlic: Yes.

Keith: [If] we keep [going], what is the damage to our brand to push out schlock? We’re just thinking that there’s always new people that are going to convert.

Ian Garlic: Yeah. Well, and if you think about it, AI — like we’re talking about the websites, right? It doesn’t make new stuff up. It makes up stuff, but it’s not original. And so it is just bringing in what it sees out there and what might be working. So we have it in this death spiral of everything looking the same.

And I think that’s the opportunity: to not be doing it, and do something completely different, and what works, like you said, and make it not look AI. ‘Cause here’s the thing: just because the ad didn’t work, like you said, doesn’t mean it didn’t do damage to your brand.

And when I see AI over and over and over again, I’m like, you’re getting lazy, and you’re insulting me.

Keith: Yeah, I feel the same way when I see — especially on LinkedIn posts, right? I’m scrolling LinkedIn and I see the same cookie-cutter posts and the same AI-generated images. Because it’s fascinating. I feel it’s kinda like the IKEA effect, right? The first time you see this come out, you’re like, “Holy crap. I just put in a prompt and this thing came back, and this is awesome-looking.” And then you don’t realize, as you’re scrolling LinkedIn, that it looks like every other post out there, and you’re like, “Wait a minute. What I thought looked so fricking cool is just this cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf thing.” And as soon as you realize that that’s AI, then your value of those posts and that content just drops like a rock.

Ian Garlic: Yep. Yep. Yeah. And you feel insulted.

Keith: Yeah. You really do. You really do. You’re like, come on, you didn’t spend the time to come up with an original idea here. You’re just pushing stuff into the void.

Ian Garlic: Exactly.

Keith: Ian, awesome, man. I always love talking to you. It’s so great.

Ian Garlic: It is fun.

Keith: You have so much good stuff to talk about. Where can people find you? What should they come to you for?

Ian Garlic: videocasestory.com. Like I said, videocasestory.com/keith. I’ll have the fish in the barrel… analyze it. I mean, it’s probably the most… if you have a high-ticket, high-value service, it is probably the most important thing you can do, and no one does it.

You can go there, and then also follow me on YouTube. You know, look up Ian Garlic — I’m the only one out there. And if you wanna connect with me on LinkedIn, tell me you saw me here, and whatever I can do to help, let me know.

Keith: Awesome, man. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ian Garlic: Thank you.

Keith: As always, and see you then.