When wildlife TV personality Forrest Galante sat down for his monthly call with YouTube consultant Paddy Galloway, he received some bad news.
No more turtles.
Galante has 2.5 million YouTube Subscribers. He has produced wildlife shows for over a decade, including a documentary series on Animal Planet and a show on the History Channel. He has his own production company. Generally speaking, Galante has a good idea of what his audience wants.
But it was Galloway, a sort of guru of the still-burgeoning YouTube creator economy, who identified that whenever Galante showed turtles in his videos, viewer engagement declined. It was consistent and meaningful.
“Maybe it’s just that turtles are more common and they’re kind of slow and don’t do much,” Galloway said in an interview. “We noticed three or four videos in a row, when Forrest was showing turtles, viewers were just a little disengaged and leaving.”
It’s the kind of idea that many of the most popular YouTube creators, including Jimmy Donaldson, known around the world as MisterBeastand sports designer Jesse Riedel, also known as Jesserpaid Galloway to provide.
With YouTube generating millions, if not billions, of dollars for the most-watched personalities, Galloway has made a name for himself as one of the best of a growing class of YouTube consultants – a true YouTube whisperer.
“I think he’s an absolute genius,” Galante said.
“A super smart guy,” Riedel told CNBC.
“I don’t want to say that Paddy completely changed my life,” said Humphrey Yang, a former financial advisor whose YouTube channel has over 2 million subscribers. “But he certainly helped a lot.”
The media domination of YouTubeYouTube will showcase several of its top creators at New York’s Lincoln Center on Wednesday for its annual advertising showcase, which it calls Brandcast. Like YouTube’s influence in modern media, the event grows in size and prestige each year as YouTube’s audience share grows.
YouTube accounts for 12.7% of all streaming in the United States, according to Nielsen’s latest report, “The Gauge.” report. Netflix is second with 8.4%, followed by Disney with 5%.
Sixty-seven million people consider themselves online content creators, according to a 2025 Goldman Sachs report. That number could reach more than 100 million by 2030, Goldman estimates.
About 10,000 YouTube channels in the United States have more than 1 million subscribers, according to a YouTube spokesperson. For many of these creators, YouTube can be a lucrative full-time job. But to make the business a largely free platform, videos need to generate consistent clicks, preferably in the millions.
With YouTube’s recommendation algorithm constantly evolving, many creators turn to strategists to maintain their success on the platform.
“From scratch [subscribers] at 1 million you don’t need one, but from 1 million to 10 million, or 1 million to 100 million, you definitely need a strategist,” Aniket Mishra, YouTube’s growth strategist, told CNBC.
In recent years, videos best watched on television rather than mobile devices have grown in popularity as YouTube has increasingly taken over connected TV, rivaling subscription streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+.
The creators say that AlphabetThe proprietary platform reacted by favoring longer videos, often exceeding 30 minutes. This change means higher production value and greater investment from creators. It also means the opportunity to earn more money.
Since 2021, YouTube has paid more than 100 billion dollars to creatorsand a growing share of that money is going to those producing content for larger screens, YouTube said. The number of channels earning more than $100,000 from TV screens jumped 45% year over year, the company reported.
Regardless, success on the platform remains a simple task of getting viewers through the door, and these strategists argue that they are best equipped to optimize a creator’s videos.
“The reason people pay us the most is because we’ve been doing it the longest and we have the best success rate,” Galloway said. “Our average increase in views after one year – so, year after year after working with us – is 350%. »
The YouTube WhispererGalloway’s interest in YouTube consulting grew out of personal interest. He started publish YouTube videos in 2006, just a year after the service began, and wanted to understand why certain videos had gone viral so his own could gain popularity, he told CNBC.
Within a few years, Galloway’s search for the ingredients of virality became the subject of his videos. He began creating self-dubbed “YouTube Masterclass” videos such as “How Peter McKinnon Gained 1 Million Subscribers in Less than a Year” and “Here’s How Mr Beast BLEW UP – How He Grow His YouTube Channel.”
YouTube personality Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, arrives for the 36th Annual Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on March 4, 2023.
Michael Tran | Afp | Getty Images
Galloway grew his channel to around 500,000 subscribers and the videos caught Donaldson’s attention. Galloway began working directly for Donaldson, providing him with strategic ideas. Donaldson is now the undisputed king of YouTube with 483 million subscribers.
Galloway worked with Riedel from 2021 until January of this year, encouraging him to move from daily vlogs to larger, conceptual ideas that attracted more viewers.
“He told me, ‘You have to make videos that everyone can enjoy,’” Riedel said. “A lot of my videos were personal joke after personal joke. Right from the intro, if you watched them and didn’t know me or my jokes, you’d be like, ‘What am I watching?'”
After years of stagnating at around 3 million subscribers, Riedel saw his subscriber count begin to skyrocket. Today, Riedel is the largest sports creator on YouTube with over 41 million subscribers.
Content creator Jesser attends a game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on January 15, 2025.
Juan Ocampo | National Basketball Association | Getty Images
Galloway’s secrets often revolve around two simple concepts: the title and the thumbnail image.
“We’ll deliberate on a title — just one title — for about 30 minutes,” said Yang, who has worked with Galloway since early 2022. “Changing a few words in the title can have a huge impact on how the video works.”
Galloway has a team of seven people who analyze what works on YouTube and how to create the best content target to perform well on the platform. He also owns three other companies, including one, Upright Media, which helps with video production and editing.
Galloway’s largest customers communicate daily via Slack with his team to discuss thumbnails and perform detailed video performance diagnostics.
What is the return on investment?At its peak, Galloway said, he had a waiting list of 5,000 people and could only work with about 10 clients at a time.
His services are not cheap.
Paddy Galloway.
Courtesy of Paddy Galloway
Galloway typically charges a flat fee for his work “starting at $15,000 a month,” he said, although rates can go “considerably higher” depending on the project. That price allows customers to get full-time service, “in the weeds with you every day,” he said.
“It was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re paying a lot of money for this unknown factor, will we ever get a return?’ said Galante, about the turtle-light wildlife videos.
Strategist Mishra said he primarily works with business owners who have created YouTube channels around their products or services. He said he charges between $1,500 and $12,000 a month, depending on the amount of work he does, and said the creators who hire him have already figured out the basics on their own and hit a ceiling.
Mishra said his advice is often to study what already works in a certain niche and replicate it.
U.S. wildlife biologist Forrest Galante observes a wild crocodile caught in a motorcycle tire on the Palu River in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, March 11, 2020.
Mohamed Hamzah | Nuphoto | Getty Images
“Copy with taste,” he says. “It’s very important that you have some sort of unique angle, but make sure that the formatting of the videos, the pacing and everything else is similar to an outlier idea that has already proven itself in the niche.”
And while these strategists can’t promise guaranteed subscribers or views, they say their value lies in knowing what the platform rewards.
“What I do is promise you knowledge, and hopefully with enough knowledge, growth will come next,” said Mario Joos, who spent nearly three years as director of retention at MrBeast. “The algorithm will simply reward what people want to watch.”
Although the highest level of counseling services can cost thousands of dollars, an initial call with a YouTube coach can cost as little as $250, Joos said. He described the next level of service as that of a “consultant,” someone who gives advice but doesn’t actually help a creator implement it. This is Joos’ role today, he says.
The bottom rung is pure strategist – a role Joos had when he worked with MrBeast, he said, and the rung Galloway falls into.
“Now it’s not just like you’re telling the creator to execute the knowledge. You’re applying the knowledge,” Joos said. “You leave notes on the videos. You go through the ideation process. And when there are 100 ideas on the table, you look at them, you think about them, and you might even come up with ideas. So that’s what a strategist does. They have expertise.”
Evolving YouTube TrendsFor YouTube’s most popular creators, the platform offers free consultancy-style services, including thumbnail creation advice, guest ideas and video intro suggestions, according to Reed Fernandez, head of strategic partners for YouTube’s top creators since 2021.
Fernandez is one of hundreds of officials across strategic tenants for YouTube around the world who focus on the top 10% of YouTube creators. Fernandez’s specific team works with about 100 creators in the United States, he said. Some of her clients include Brittany Broski, Dude Perfect and Alix Earle.
Brittany Broski at VidCon 2022 in Anaheim, California on June 23, 2022.
David Livingston | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Fernandez’s team typically reaches out to creators it wants to help, based on perceived growth opportunities on the platform, Fernandez said. This makes the partnership beneficial to both YouTube and the individual creator, boosting overall engagement on the site.
“We look for things like: Do we see them growing a lot year over year? We think they’re a big bet and we should try to put all our strength behind them to help them succeed on the platform,” Fernandez said.
Beyond consulting services, YouTube also connects some of these creators to conferences and press conferences to expand their reach and increase awareness.
Fernandez’s team can also offer insider tips on monetization, he said. He used the example of a creator whose videos were consistently just under the 8-minute threshold to qualify for mid-roll ads. Lengthening their videos by just 30 seconds, he told the creator, could make a significant difference in their earnings.
But even with YouTube’s internal support, many creators still turn to external strategists to dig deeper on the technical side.
When a viewer clicks on a YouTube video, watches it, shares it or leaves a comment, YouTube records this as a positive signal of interest. Videos that consistently generate these responses are distributed more widely and shown on the homepage, in recommendations, and in front of new audiences.
Joos said his expertise is specifically in retention, understanding not only whether a video is performing well, but also exactly when viewers stop watching it and why.
YouTube Studio, the back-end dashboard that provides creators with detailed statistics about their content, includes a retention chart that tracks audience decline. YouTube strategists use this data to inform everything from pacing decisions to keeping the viewer engaged until the end of the video.
Gabriel Leblanc-Picard, co-founder of Upload Strategy and former head of ideation at MrBeast, said simplicity is the most reliable formula for success on the platform.
“Tone it down, if a 6-year-old could understand it,” he said. “People don’t want to look at something complicated, even the language you use.”
During his tenure at MrBeast, Leblanc-Picard said he filtered through about 10,000 ideas, constantly looking for concepts that could expand the channel’s audience. A challenge given to him: attract more female viewers to a channel whose fan base he described as being mainly “11-year-old boys”.
His response was to develop a video about being stranded in the woods with an ex-girlfriend.
A video titled “Survive 30 Days Stuck With Your Ex, Win $250,000” was posted in March and has already surpassed 120 million views.
“At the end of the day, you create content for people,” Leblanc-Picard said. “The algorithm will reward what people want to watch.”
