Matt Steffanina
Appearances
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, one of the things that I realized as I was building my following is that dance content, especially because you're not talking to camera. it's hard to build that relationship. People will be like, oh, I love your dance videos, but they don't really know you. They don't know your personality. And when I started to do tutorials, I love teaching. I love the energy exchange.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
I love helping people. And people could feel that in the tutorials, that it was authentic. And even views were never as good on the tutorial. But what I started to notice is my classes in real life when I would do these tours just started exploding because now I had this relationship with my viewer that was different than you're the good dancer. It was now like you're my mentor.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
But the main thing that I noticed is that the more I shared my story and my vulnerabilities along the way, my failures as well as my successes, the more people engaged with the channel. And so I was really early on showing how bad I was. You know, I was starting out as a 17 year old kid in a small farm town trying to learn how to dance. And, you know, here we are today.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
You're my teacher, you know, and that's why Even though people sometimes are scared to talk on camera, it's so important to talk on camera because you build this bond with your viewer that's just different than any other skill. And so that was really the basis. I started to be the pretty much only teacher, especially in L.A. as a professional dancer.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
I was willing to give away my choreography for free, teach tutorials for free online because I just wanted to build my... with people that had a similar passion. And, you know, I think the biggest lesson from that is in the beginning, you just want to add as much value as possible. Sometimes people gatekeep stuff too early on and it's like, you really want to build that relationship.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
You want to build that rapport with your audience where they're like, This is my guy. He always gives me good tips and things and build, build, build, build, build. And then you're like, and now I'm doing this insane mastermind and I'm going to keep it really close, right? But if too early on, you're like, here's two tips, but if you want more, you got to pay for this and that.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
You flip the rapport building step, you know? So it can be difficult to build that and it can take a lot longer sometimes than people expect it to. But if you can hold true to that
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, it's obviously case by case, depending on what your following is built on. But for most people that have created a successful brand online and created great content, there are people that want to learn how to do the same thing. I have a lot of friends that are photographers and now they're selling their different filters packages. They're selling courses on how to do photography.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And so instead of just showing these beautiful images that they took, they're showing the behind the scenes. Yeah. you know, oh, that looks like a normal mountain range. Like, I don't know how to take a picture that looks like that. And then boom, and then you see the finish, you're like, wow, how did they do that? Right, now I'm interested. I want to buy that guy's course.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And again, dance, photography, entrepreneurship, it doesn't matter. Like mix and match, whatever. vertical you want. It's the concepts and it's understanding what is the thing that you can provide for your audience that they can't get from just a 30 second Instagram post, right? And maybe it's that you give them actual coaching and feedback.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Like in DNCR, that's one of the things implementing is like, Hey, you can learn how to dance at your local studio, but if you want an instructor that's from LA, that's been through the grind and booked jobs and worked with artists and really knows what these agencies are looking for to critique your video, there's only one place you can get that, right? And so that's a really powerful upsell.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And so figuring out what those things are for your audience and providing them is a great hack.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And like you mentioned, it was probably about five or six years of not taking it seriously, posting a video here and there. And then I moved to L.A. and I thought, oh, now I'm in L.A., it's going to get easier. I'm going to get all these jobs. And it wasn't that at all. It's very, very difficult. And so I leaned even heavier into content.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, we definitely all share that in common, right? There's at least one or two places where you're like, do I quit? Is this the wrong idea? For me, one of the biggest ones was about five years into building my first YouTube channel, I got completely shut down for copyright music. This was back in the day.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Now they just, you know, restricted in some territories or they mute the video or whatever. But it used to be if they decided that they didn't want your video up and use music, they just blocked and three strikes, you're out. So one day open up my email and it's like your YouTube channel is banned. Just no appeal. No, nothing.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And I was thinking to myself, like, five years, I probably posted 500 videos and all of this. I'd gotten up to a couple million subscribers at that point. And I decided to start back from zero.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Oh, God. Until... Three or four years later, they changed the rules. And they're like, hey, your old channel. I was like, guys, I think the momentum has died a little bit. So now my main channel, the one with 14 million, is actually the second channel I created. And I have a second channel, which was my original one, which is like three or four million.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
I post like behind the scenes and stuff there. But, you know, that was a really big gut check for do I want to start over? And, you know, I debated it for a few days and I decided, no, I'm going to I'm going to do this and I'm going to go even harder. I'm going to double down on YouTube. And, um, you know, it ended up paying off, but yeah, every, every entrepreneur faces some kind of crazy.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And that's when my audience really exploded about 2014, 15, 16 years.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Business-wise, I would have thought about the business elements sooner. I'm very, very grateful for everything that I've been able to accomplish and experience. But I was talking to you earlier and said, I wish that...
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
five or six years ago, I hadn't been so hung up on the creative side and the LA industry and kind of caught up in all of that and realize how much potential there is to help people on a grand scale and create a real business around this. You know, I ended up doing it with DNCR now, but it took me a while to realize the potential that online content can really
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
tap into a community, like how much power that really has. I think also too, you know, for me, LA was a credible opportunity, but it was also a huge distraction. And coming out to Miami and having some downtime and some time to process things, I find that a lot of ideas have come to me just in having that space.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
So, you know, I wish I had gotten a little less absorbed in the industry and focused on my instincts a bit more.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
I grew up in a small town, you know, and when I moved to L.A., it was very overwhelming, you know, as it is for most people, even if you don't come from a small town. And just in the past, you know, two years, I would say I've really reconnected to regular workouts, meditation, breath work, started this company, Mad Chill, based on that idea that
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
you know, physical work is great, but it has to be balanced with the mental. And going really hard and grinding for your goals is great, but you also have to take care of your mental health. And finding a work-life balance, even if it's really heavy on the work and small on the balance, like, it's still important to maintain that.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, I got to dance for Taylor Swift, a choreographer, Jason Derulo. I was on the Ellen Show, Step Up, So You Think You Can Dance. Pretty much everything I ever dreamed of doing as a dancer. And that's why even today I'm huge on encouraging people to create content. there's no better way to reach an audience in a really, really genuine way than by creating content.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And, you know, like I said in the previous one, I definitely got lost in the LA craziness a bit. And now being able to find that balance has... huge for me. It's so important for just ideating and everything. Take that minute to just meditate in the morning or take a breath work class and like, calm down. It's crazy how many things fall into place.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Oh, man. app.dncr.com. Come on to the DNCR app. I still do free tutorials online on Instagram and on YouTube. So if you want to take something just like quick on YouTube, just look me up. Everything's Matt Stefanina. But the app is great. We're doing live stream classes and we're even doing a lot of dance fitness stuff now because I know there's
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
know everyone's intimidated to dance i was intimidated to start dancing i was like i'm awkward it's embarrassing you know so a lot of the classes are catered to beginners follow along and i'm working on a special class for uh dancing for guys right now too which will be out later this year because i know as a as a guy it's even harder sometimes to get the courage to get on the floor like i was saying earlier the only time you catch me dancing is under the influence
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
That's a great, that's poetic, Rudy.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And back to what you were saying about content. that's even more powerful than the story of, I was just born a dancer. My parents put me in it at two years old, you know? And so often people think that that's something negative, like, oh, I'm not that good. And I'm like, great. Tell people why you're not that good.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
It's the best hook. This used to be me. And I'm like, You know, look at me now, boom. And people are like, how did he do that? So it's like, lean into it. What you think are your weaknesses are often your strengths.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, because these people that we admire have come over to this side. It's like now it's admirable to create your own things. I actually got dropped from my agency and fired from several dance jobs early on because I was a YouTube choreographer.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And that was how looked down upon it was. So now it's crazy to think that there's no dancer in the world that doesn't have videos online and isn't using it as a tool.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, well, it's definitely... a repeatable skill, you know, creating content. A lot of times people say like, oh, it's because you're a dancer and TikTok favors dance videos. Most of my viral content and definitely my connection to the audience has nothing to do with dance.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah. Right. So like what I really lean into is storytelling. My biggest video this past year on YouTube was about me genuinely just telling my story about, like I said, starting in a small farm town, moving to LA, all the failures, the things I got fired from, the struggles. you know, thinking about moving home and giving up and how I overcame it and what I did to reset and find new inspiration.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And that video outperformed all of my dancing videos.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
You know, and so the best skill you can learn if you're starting content or even if you're creating content, you want to improve it is really storytelling. And whether you're a fitness influencer, you're an entrepreneur, you're selling courses, whatever it is that you're doing, if you can create it about your story and why you're creating courses or why you're making fitness content.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Maybe you were bullied as a kid and so you went really hard into fitness. Maybe you couldn't find your passion and then someone helped you and you're paying it forward and helping others, right?
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, because if you don't, admit some of your flaws or shortcomings, how does the audience know to trust you?
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And it's really difficult for especially people that are entrepreneurs and perfectionists to get this. It's hard for me still. I still post videos and I'm like, I don't want to post this. A little post. Right. Cause I know that it's important, but you know, I work with a lot of people like we'll do, I'm sure they're like, no, everything has to look professional and perfect, you know?
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And so it's very counterintuitive, but the way that people consume media now is so different than 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Right. You'd like read a magazine and it's like Jay Z and he's perfect. And he made dollars and like, you never got to see his flaws.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, and as far as actionable advice that I give to a lot of my friends and clients that I'm helping with content is use TikTok as the training ground. TikTok is a really great place to mess up because your friends aren't really on TikTok, your peers aren't on TikTok as much. And if you do a video and it doesn't do well, TikTok doesn't show it to anybody.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
So, like, there's really no downside, right? On Instagram, it's like, well, my friends from high school are here. My person I'm trying to collab with is a lot more pressure.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, I tried it. It's interesting. I don't know that I love it, but, you know, it's cool to see the innovation. But, you know, if you go hard on TikTok and you make three to five videos a day, for two to three weeks and you just say, I'm gonna try doing a review product. I'm gonna talk about my story and I'm gonna do one other thing. I'm gonna do this for two, three weeks.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
You'll have 30, 50 videos. You'll have a lot of data in a short amount of time. And then you can say, okay, these are working. This will work really well. Let me put that on Instagram and YouTube because I actually like that one. These worked, but I'm gonna keep them on TikTok. You start to develop a plan for yourself on how you can really scale this. It's really important upfront to go hard.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
I started on YouTube in 2007, so coming up on 18 years on YouTube.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, so a good example that translates to other sectors too is I was a choreographer in LA and I worked so hard to be a professional dancer, professional choreographer, age, all this stuff, right? The videos that performed the best for me on YouTube in my entire career were my beginner dance classes.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
to like Jason Derulo, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, right? Or like these fun pop songs, easy choreography. And everyone will be like, why are you posting those? Like, that's embarrassing. You're a professional. Like, and I said, 90%, 95% of my audience are beginner dancers. And it's true for advanced stuff for me, for my art and to push myself.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
But like at the end of the day, if I want to teach and I want to impact the world and I want to help the world dance, The best way for me to do it is make dancing relatable, make it accessible, make it fun. That's why I created the DNCR app. You just download it, take a free class and like, boom, you're dancing, right?
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And it's really important, just like you said, with Ty, all of that is like in the beginning, you're mostly marketing to the people who don't know who you are, who don't know what you're talking about. They're not an expert in your field. As you build, you can niche to those more important topics.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
It depends what your goal is and who you're trying to reach, right? For instance, if you want to do long form educational type stuff, you want to do podcasts, you want to do all of that. YouTube is still, in my opinion, the best platform in the world for monetizing, for brands, for creating true educational long form content. Right.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
But if you're like, I want to make these little 15 second skits and, you know, funny stuff or whatever, like TikTok is probably going to be your best platform. Right. So it depends on your goals. For me, the thing that I love about starting on TikTok is I was saying about whooping a lot of content really easy on TikTok. The bar is really low and people love relatability. They love low production.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Yeah, so I started in a smaller town in Virginia. I was bored in high school. Thought I'd pick up dancing. I saw, you know, Usher, Chris Brown, Justin Timberlake. I want to learn that. And there weren't a lot of opportunities. So I found YouTube really early. And I thought, man, like, I could probably learn by posting my videos here. People give me feedback. Maybe I'll meet other dancers.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
So you can just pull it out, literally make a selfie as you're walking down the sidewalk. Here's three tips for like how I did this and this. Right. Post all those and then take the winners and put them on Instagram, put them on YouTube, put them on Facebook.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
No, absolutely not. What you need on YouTube, one, is consistency. Most people will give up because it is hard. But I would say that it's actually in a lot of ways gotten easier because... Even five years ago, before TikTok and the algorithm shift, it was so difficult to reach new people, right? And if you had 1,000 subscribers, the chance of getting a video that did 100K views was almost zero.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
You kind of had to just grind and slowly grow and build. Now you have shorts. Now you have this incredible recommended video algorithm that I get recommended on my page all the time, videos that have 500 views. And I'm like, who is this? Why is YouTube showing me someone with 500 views? I don't even subscribe to their channel. Click it. Pam is a really good video.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
I'm going to subscribe. Right. And that's recent. It didn't used to be like that. So yes, there's more competition now, but if you figure out how to make great content, it will rise to the top and you can grow quicker than ever before on YouTube.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
There's a function now on YouTube where you can tie any short related to a long form. Cool. So what I do is a mixed strategy. I'll do some shorts that are completely standalone and they're just meant to bring in new viewers, bring in subscribers. Those people may or may not convert to the long form, but I'm okay with that. Now do some shorts that are specifically longer form, right?
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
So if I'm telling a story about how I struggled to make money in LA as a dancer, I'm going to do a short that's just the most viral part of that.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
Those are never going to go as viral as the standalone ones, but that way you can take the traffic and kind of move it over as well. Good. The algorithm is getting better, though, for blending the channel.
Living The Red Life
From Terrible Dancer to YouTube Sensation - Matt Steffanina
And so it really just started out as that. And I sort of fell into this viral YouTube thing really early on.