A franchisee with a phone is outranking your YouTube channel

⏳ Read time: ~5 minutes

It's been a while since my last edition. Here's where I've been.

I spoke at two conferences: the Jim's Pool Care conference at Splash, and the Jim's Test and Tag conference.

Both talks covered one shift. AI search is changing how customers pick a local business.

What I showed both rooms:

The more proof of your work sits online, the stronger your case with Google and AI search.

The gap between franchisees doing this and franchisees ignoring it keeps growing.

At both events, I did bulk interviews between sessions.

If you're a franchisor, film interviews at every conference you attend.

People are relaxed and in a good mood.

The setting looks great on camera. And the interviews are easy to run.

The course is the reason for this week's story.

One of our Jim's Mowing franchisees filmed 13 videos on his phone.

Search our brand name on YouTube, and he sits second.

One spot below the channel we fund.

Below is what his videos cost him, what they returned, and why most brand teams would have shut him down in week one.

Watch my full interview with Jordan here.

I teach social media at every new franchisee training intake.

100 to 120 people sit in the room every three weeks. I tell them to film their work and put the videos on YouTube.

Most nod. Almost nobody goes home and films.

Jordan Rogerson went home to Hobart and filmed.

He started a channel called JordansMowing in June.

He documents his run week by week, from day one. He had 13 videos up when we recorded, all filmed on his phone.

His first week profit and loss video has passed 215,000 views.

Type Jim's Mowing into YouTube today. Our channel comes up first.

Jordan comes up second.

My cousins text me about him.

I walked into a boardroom in Sydney for a consult and someone brought up his videos before I did.

Head office made none of this.

10 to 15 hours: total time per video

8 to 9 hours: the edit alone

5 hours: one thumbnail and title, still unfinished the night we spoke

$0: camera gear, beyond the phone in his pocket

35 to 40%: viewer retention in the first few days of a video

$350 to $450: AdSense per video, Australian dollars

6 to 7: work enquiries by email within three weeks

30 to 40%: share of his early work coming from the channel

He started his run in winter on purpose, when the phone rings least.

The channel filled the gap.

A full turfing job landed from YouTube the week we recorded.

Jordan's titles are negative. One thumbnail showed him 50 grand down.

Watch the video and the story is positive. He has spent money. The run is growing.

The thumbnail earns the click. The video earns the trust.

His positive titles perform worse.

He has run both and checked the numbers.

I see the same pattern on our side.

Post the first one from a corporate account and I have a franchisor on the phone inside the hour.

Jordan posts the same story and nobody blinks.

The gap between his channel and yours is not budget. Not talent. Permission.

I will never make the mum video. No brand will.

Prospects watch a group of franchisees bantering on a job and want in.

Camaraderie is the hardest thing to fake and the cheapest thing to film.

Jordan has approached tool brands for sponsorship.

One ghosted him. Another asked for his stats and went quiet.

Those brands pay for ads to reach mowing operators and their customers.

A franchisee with 215,000 views on one video would cost them a mower.

A franchisee with an audience costs less than a media buy.

His viewers trust him more than your ads.

Your equipment suppliers have not worked this out yet. Neither have most franchisors.

Thirteen videos, filmed on a phone, put a franchisee in the second result for our brand name on YouTube.

Our budget bought result one.

A franchisee with no budget earned result two.

I get asked how we stop franchisees from posting the wrong thing.

We don't try.

Our rule on franchisee content fits in one line.

Go for it. If something goes wrong, we deal with the problem then.

Nobody at head office signed off on Jordan's titles.

I found out about his channel when people started messaging me the profit and loss video.

Some franchisors in the network struggled with the negative titles at first.

Trust me, I had a lot of convincing to do, which is basically 60% of my role, which is political.

When a franchisee posts something good, we cut the best clip for the main Jim's Mowing accounts and tag them back.

No approval queue. No brand manual. A phone and permission.

If a franchisee posted the full truth about their first year tonight, would your team share the video or ask them to take it down?

My full conversation with Jordan Rogerson is live.

We cover the thumbnails, the editing hours, the leads, the sponsorship approaches, and what he would say to a franchisor sitting on the fence about franchisee content.

His channel is JordansMowing on YouTube.

Watch three of his videos before you decide your network won't do the same.

Joel

PS. Jordan spends five hours on a thumbnail and nothing on camera gear. Most brands do the opposite.

I helped grow Jim's Group from 3,709 to 5,800+ franchisees with content. Not agencies.

One hour on the right problem changes your franchise growth. Leads going cold, building a video library, getting franchisees on camera. You pick.

$400 AUD for 60 minutes.

I run workshops and talks for franchisor teams, marketing teams and franchisee events. Reply with what you need.