The ONLY Way To Build A Cult Audience On YouTube In 2026

**JD** (0:00)
We did a 30-minute call, that's all it was. And then he had one video that hit 500,000 views. He said, I am extremely excited because only two months after taking your advice, I'm about to have a long-form video across 500,000 views.

**Richard** (0:10)
Meet JD, one of the top YouTube strategists in the world and the lead strategist at 1of10.

**JD** (0:15)
One-mill view video actually comes from a phrase that I like to say a lot, which is, do it first, do it better, or do it bigger.

**Richard** (0:21)
He's mastered the science of creating the best idea, title, and thumbnail for any video.

**JD** (0:26)
So his name's Logan Nathanson. One of the first videos we did together was, I tested every ninja product. And this video got over 300,000 views, and had a 70x outlier.

**Richard** (0:35)
Led the strategy on channels with over 20 million subscribers, and is one of the smartest minds in YouTube.

**JD** (0:41)
So since working with Christina, you can see here where I started working with her, and where she is now. You can see the views of taking a crazy uptick.

**Richard** (0:48)
He's even created viral thumbnail formats that have gotten millions of views, and dozens of other channels have now copied.

**JD** (0:54)
We were the first person to do the Japanese rule in the niche.

**Richard** (0:57)
Today, he's walking through his entire strategy and ideation process step by step, so that you can blow up your channel too. What's up JD? Welcome to the 1of10 Podcast, the number one podcast for creators wanting to grow on YouTube.

**JD** (1:10)
How's it going? It's good to be here.

**Richard** (1:11)
For those who don't know, JD is one of the top strategists in the world. He works at 1of10 and has had killer win streak again and again and again. And today, he's sharing all his secrets on how he gets those idea styles on thumbnails that blow up on YouTube.
My first question is, when you're working with a creator, what's the first thing you look into to help him blow up?

**JD** (1:33)
Well, the first thing I want to ask the creator is, what's the goal?
The main thing that you're going to do with YouTube is make videos for a reason, right? Otherwise, you're just kind of straying in the abyss of not knowing what to do. So you want to make content that is going to get you towards that end goal.
Each video may have its own individual goal, but you've got to make sure that it's going to get you to that end horizon that you're trying to reach. So a really good example of this is a client I started working with. He's in the kitchen gadget space, so he reviews all of these gadgets. He's got a really, really big Instagram, so he gets a lot of sponsors sending him products. But what he really wanted to do was create content that grew his personal brand. And the videos that he was making were getting views. Like, he was doing videos that were getting maybe 20, 30, 40K views, but they weren't getting him to that end goal that he wanted to grow that personal brand. So the first thing I did was ask him, well, what is the goal? He answered, personal brand. So these videos that I was looking at him creating were getting maybe 30K views, but then the next one would get 1K views. And he was really reliant on the gadget itself that he was reviewing. So his name is Logan Nathanson.
And I started working with him a couple of months back. And one of the first videos we did together was I tested every Ninja product. So we're tying in his brand of he's the guy that reviews products to also this one now that's a much broader video, but it's like I did this, right? Instead of a lot of videos that he had, which was, you know, watch this before you buy this product. It was all based around the product. And this video got over 300,000 views.
And right now, it's sitting at a 70x outlier. So more recently, we've been doing more videos which are trying to tie in himself with this review style video. So one of them that we did more recently was I tested a fake Ninja Crispy. And obviously, this ties in to the review style as well, but it's also I did something. And there's going to be the interest there of like, what's the narrative behind it? Rather than just, is it good? Is it bad? It's like, how does it compare to the real one? And there's really good data behind fake products and knockoff products. Like, people have done videos of, I tested a fake iPhone and things like that. So, looking at all that data, we knew that this video was going to have a good interest. But we ended up using the 1of10 thumbnail generator because we wanted to create the same style of thumbnail that these other channels had did for other products. So, with the right prompting, we just gone through and fed it images of what the actual products look like, and then also played with the colors. So, we want to get good color contrast, right? Like, real vs. fake, there's going to be green text vs. red text. We just give the thumbnail generator that, and then also fed it the pictures of the products themselves, so that we have one on the left, one on the right.