AdSense Is Just Icing on the Cake

"AdSense is just icing on the cake." That's what Derral Eves told me, and coming from the guy behind 144 billion-plus YouTube views, it hits different.

Derral executive produced The Chosen — the most crowdfunded TV show in history, with 828 million viewers — helped Mr. Beast grow from 4 million subscribers to the biggest YouTuber on the planet, and runs 13 businesses with his wife from a small town in Utah.

I had him on the podcast, and we didn't talk about thumbnails or algorithm hacks. We talked about what it actually looks like to build a real business underneath an audience. Here are five things that stuck with me.

1. Your viewers are not your community

Derral thinks about audiences in three layers: viewers, fans, and community. Most creators stop at viewers. Maybe they pick up some fans. Almost nobody builds the community layer — and that's the only layer that can sustain itself without you constantly feeding it.

His process for every new project: lock himself in an Airbnb for two or three days to figure out who they're actually talking to, what they stand for, and how to move people through the journey from viewer to fan to community member. Then he builds the monetization around each stage.

I see this with the creators I coach. They'll have 20,000 subscribers and wonder why nobody's buying. It's because they've been talking to viewers for years and never built the bridge to anything deeper. The content brings people in; the system moves them forward. Without both, you have an audience and no business.

2. If the content isn't good, no community strategy will save it

Derral was blunt about this. When he talks about The Chosen's community — hundreds of thousands of people promoting the show like it's their own — he's quick to point out that none of it would work if the show were mediocre.

You can't build a community around "meh." The content has to speak for itself first. Then the community strategy amplifies it.

I've made this mistake coaching creators. Someone comes in wanting to launch a community, and my first question is: is your content good enough that people would genuinely recommend it to a friend right now? If the answer isn't an immediate yes, we've got work to do before we add a community layer.

3. Selling isn't a money grab — it's an invitation

This was my favorite part of the conversation. I asked Derral how he got 16,000 people to invest in The Chosen through equity crowdfunding — and to feel like they were gaining something by paying.

He told me that when he was 10, he watched The Empire Strikes Back and fell in love. All he wanted was the Star Wars t-shirt. When he finally got one, he didn't take it off for two weeks — his mom had to practically wrestle it off him to wash it.

He didn't buy a shirt. He bought the feeling of being part of something.

Then he said something I keep coming back to: if asking your audience for money feels like a money grab, it'll be cold and callous. But if it's an invitation to go deeper with you — to belong to something they already care about — people will spend money on things they love. They will.

Most creators I work with aren't charging too much, and they're not offering the wrong thing. They're framing the ask as a transaction instead of an invitation. That's the difference between "buy my membership" and "come be part of this with us."

4. People focus on what they want, not what they're willing to give

Derral shared a story about his son that I keep thinking about. In their family, kids can't just buy a phone — they have to earn one by learning piano, specifically by playing 18 hymns proficiently.

His son didn't want a phone. He wanted to build a computer. So Derral walked him through the same goal-setting process he uses with coaching clients: Why do you want this? What's going to stop you? What will you do when something tries to stop you?

The kid wrote his plan and taped it next to the piano. His goal was to finish by December. He finished in August — fastest in the family.

Here's what Derral said after: "People focus on what they want, not what they're willing to give." That applies directly to the creators I work with. Everyone wants 1,000 members. Nobody wants to talk about the 90 days of disciplined campaigns, email sequences, and uncomfortable selling it takes to get there. The goal isn't the hard part. Knowing what you're willing to give up is.

5. You can do this from anywhere — you just have to decide

Derral turned down job offers from big agencies in LA and Chicago right out of school. He'd just become a father and wanted to raise his kids near family in southern Utah, so he started his own thing — a local agency he grew through referrals until he had clients in Australia, Canada, and Switzerland.

When YouTube emerged, he sold off his entire client base and started over with one person, because he saw where things were going.

The thing that stayed with me: "If you can wake up every day and be excited about what you're doing, I think you're winning, regardless of what money you're getting."

The full conversation goes deeper than I can fit here — his cascading goal-setting system, how The Chosen's crowdfunding investors saw 300x returns, and why he believes consistency is the only creative strategy that compounds. Listen to the episode.