Jenny Hoyos

A garden video got 20M views by adding a why; normal ones get 20K

Jenny's gardening short hit 20 million views while typical gardening videos average ~20,000. The difference was a personal story: ratatouille is her favorite food but too expensive, so she grows a garden for 'infinite ratatouille,' with her mom and grandma helping.

“I told the story of how ratatouille is my favorite food, but it's so expensive to buy it. Technically speaking, I could just make a garden to have infinite ratatouille for life. And it's my, and it's my favorite food, so it just works out. And then also my mom and my grandma were helping me for a portion of the garden. It just interweaves so many things that the people can insert themselves into.”

Steal thisTake a boring topic and bolt on a personal why plus family characters so viewers can insert themselves into it.

Low stakes are the new high stakes

Because audiences are numb to MrBeast-scale spending and $10,000 titles, modest stakes now feel novel and engaging. Jenny argues low-stakes premises read as high-stakes to a desensitized audience.

“Especially like now on YouTube, people are so used to like these high stakes, like seeing $10,000 in a title anymore. People don't even know what that even means because they're seeing people like MrBeast spend a million dollars. So it's like, you know, people are just so numb to these numbers or these stakes where almost these low stakes are high stakes.”

Start hooks with power words, progress the action, foreshadow the end

Jenny's three-part hook rule: open with a power word (free, $0, stole), make the sentence progress the action rather than state a fact, and foreshadow the ending so the hook contains setup, conflict, and resolution in one line.

“Power words are things that. Will instantly hook people that are very strong words such as free, $0, stole, or any like crazy word.”

Steal thisOpen every short with a power word and a verb in motion, not a flat 'this is...' statement.

Jenny averages 80-85% view-vs-swipe; MrBeast reportedly ~75%

On the view-versus-swipe-away metric, Jenny cites 70% as average, 80% as pretty good, and 85%+ as excellent. Her channel averages 80-85%, and she says MrBeast is around 75%.

“Yeah, so I've heard the average is 70, where pretty good for me is 80% plus, and excellent would be 85% plus. But for, for, for my channel, we average around 80-85%, which is not— is very uncommon. Like, I think Beast is like at 75%, so I've heard.”

Jenny's team targets 95%+ retention on shorts

Jenny says good short-form retention is at least 90%, and her team usually aims for 95%+. Shaan notes most creators see something like 15%.

“It depends on the video length, but generally you want to be at at least 90%. My team, we usually go for 95+.”

Rotoscope yourself onto a clean stock backdrop for the first frame

To eliminate visual busyness in the opening frame, Jenny's team cut her out and dropped her onto a clean Google image of a McDonald's with no cars, trees, or clutter, so the first frame looks 'perfect' to the viewer.

“Like, we actually took myself, we rotoscoped myself, and then we found an image of McDonald's on Google that was so much cleaner, that had no cars, the logo was clean, there was no trees, just so it could be perfectly— like, just look perfect for the viewer, if that makes sense.”

Steal thisStrip the background of your first frame to a single clean focal point so nothing competes with the hook.

Foreshadow the payoff with a visible 'mechanism' of progress

Jenny frames foreshadowing as promising an 'Amazon gift card at the end.' The strongest version adds a mechanism the viewer watches advance, like a $10 budget counting down ($8, then $5), so they feel constant progression toward the end.

“Foreshadowing is when you give a viewer the expectation of the end of the video. And the way I've coined it is you basically wanna tell the viewer that there's an Amazon gift card at the end of the video, essentially.”

Steal thisGive viewers a visible counter or budget that ticks down so they can see the video progressing toward its payoff.

The 100M-view secret room: character change drives rewatches

Jenny's 100-million-view short was about building a secret room for $0 to watch YouTube. Her mom yells at her for destroying the house at the start, but by the end the mom claims the secret room as her own, a subtle character change that drove watch-through and rewatches.

“The best storytelling is when there's character development, change in the actual character, where at the beginning of the video, the character started at one point and is now at a new point at the end. So I, I subtly did that in my short that hit 100 million views. So basically I built a secret room with $0 and my goal was to have a secret spot to watch YouTube.”

The 'But/So' method: replace 'and then' with conflict

Borrowed from the South Park creators, this storytelling rule replaces 'and then' transitions with 'but' and 'so' to inject constant conflict. Each beat creates an obstacle that forces the next action, making any narrative more intriguing.

“So for example, I was walking, but then it started raining, so I had to find an umbrella, but I'm in the middle of nowhere and don't know where I am. So I went to pull out my phone, but, uh, my phone is dead. So I started running and you see what I mean? Like the story feels more intriguing cuz you're instantly adding more conflict and you're instantly finding that conflict much easier. By simply saying, but so.”

Steal thisCross out every 'and then' in your script and rewrite the beats with 'but' and 'so' to force conflict.

Peak-end theory: viewers judge the whole video by its ending

Jenny applies peak-end theory: people rate an experience by its ending, so even a video with a weak middle can be remembered as great if it closes with intense emotion. She ends on strong wholesomeness, the funniest moment, or a twist.

“And the way it's called is peak end. There's, there's a theory called peak end theory where essentially you dictate your emotions or feeling or opinion towards something based on the ending.”

Steal thisEnd every video on its single most emotional beat, wholesome, funny, or a twist, because that's what viewers remember.

Label every video by attribute to find what actually drives subscribers

Jenny's team manually tagged every video by attribute (family present, wholesome surprise, malicious prank, mentioned subscribe) and charted subscriber conversions. Wholesome family content doubled conversions but got 10x fewer views, while malicious content got normal conversions at 10x the views, netting 5x more subscribers.

“And doing something like that, we found that I double my conversions when I have my family in the videos, and specifically when I'm making wholesome content where I surprise them, such as like, you know, uh, giving my mom a birthday present, for example, would have twice the amount of subscriber conversions.”

Steal thisTag your back catalog by content attribute and chart it against conversions to find what really grows the channel, not just per-video rates.

Make kid-intriguing content mature enough for adults (the Pixar play)

Jenny's guiding audience principle: target kids since they're the biggest YouTube audience, but make it mature enough that adults watch too, like Pixar appealing to an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old at once. Her solution is kid-centered content that isn't screaming.

“The guiding principle is making content that's intriguing for kids. 'Cause at the end of the day, like, That's the biggest audience on YouTube while making it mature enough for adults to also watch. So, you know, there's a lot of kids' content where people are screaming. It's like, how do I make kids-centered content that isn't screaming and is a little more like natural?”

Social media will kill Hollywood; the middle dies, extremes win

Jenny predicts content will polarize to extremes, very short-form or really long-form (20 minutes plus), with the in-between losing. She also predicts social media will kill Hollywood.

“Exactly. That's genuinely like where I think it's going to go. Yeah. I think, I think social media is going to kill Hollywood, honestly.”