Projects · Closed Podcast
CLOSED ON YOUTUBE.
what the channel has built, what the numbers say, and where the next growth is.
In ten months Closed with Justin Jacobs has built 36 long-form episodes across three seasons, 166 Shorts, 412,000 views, 9,000 hours watched, and 6,257 subscribers, 911 of them in the last 28 days. Almost every view is bought, and that is useful to know: YouTube advertising delivered 98.9 percent of lifetime long-form views, which means reach is a dial the team controls. So this page reads two different things: how much reach each episode was given, and how well it held the people who arrived. The second one is where the next growth is.
By the numbers
YouTube Studio, read on Sep 1, 2026. Not live numbers; they refresh when we re-pull.
What we found out
The reach is bought, so the reach is controllable.
98.9 percent of lifetime long-form views came from YouTube advertising; 98.4 percent in the last 28 days. Views and views per day tell us where the ad money went. Percent viewed, average view duration and click-through rate tell us what the content did once someone arrived. Both are good news: one is a budget decision, the other is already strong on the episodes that got the least of it.
Reach grew 13x. Retention is the next dial.
A typical Season 1 episode drew 21 views a day and held 12.6 percent of its runtime. A typical Season 3 episode drew 274 views a day and held 4.8 percent. Across promoted episodes the two move against each other (rank correlation -0.64). The show has proven it can buy attention at scale; the next step is pointing that reach at the episodes that keep it.
The team episodes hold attention best. That is untapped budget.
HPM team guests: median 21.8 percent viewed and 7 minutes 30 seconds of watch time per view, on 49 views a day. Carrier and partner guests: median 5.1 percent viewed and 2 minutes 23 seconds, on 318 views a day. One caution: no team episode ran in the high-spend months, so part of this gap may be the era, not the format. A matched test settles it.
Named-guest titles pull the click.
Titles that name the guest post the best click-through rate (3.3 percent) and the best retention (12.6 percent viewed). Question titles post the lowest click-through rate (1.9 percent) even though they carry the most views, which again means budget, not pull. The winning title pattern is already in the catalog.
Length is not the problem.
Watch time per view barely changes with episode length (rank correlation 0.07). A 45-minute episode and a 15-minute episode hold a viewer for about the same number of minutes. The long-form format is sound. The work is in the first 30 seconds, where the best intros already hold 62 to 66 percent of viewers.
Subscribers are arriving off-page. Finding the door is the next win.
Studio attributes 7,019 subscribers gained over the channel's life, but the per-episode figures across all 36 long-form videos add up to roughly 120. Most subscribers arrive through something other than an episode watch page, most likely the ad unit or the channel page. Studio's subscription-source view did not render in this pull, so it is the first read for the next one.
The board
Click any episode to see its thumbnail and the full stat set.
Lanes group episodes by views per day since publish, which on this channel means how much ad reach each one was given. The card's second stat line is the part the budget cannot buy: how much of the episode people watched.
Published inside the last 14 days, still in its first ad flight
Top fifth by views per day: 243 or more
Between 71 and 243 views per day
Between 23 and 71 views per day
Bottom fifth by views per day: under 23
No ad spend. Organic baseline: 21 to 28 lifetime views each
By format
Four kinds of episode: Justin alone, HPM team members, working producers and agency owners, and carrier or partner guests. Each card ranks its episodes by percent viewed, best first.
Shorts
166 Shorts, mostly unpromoted. The median Short has 114 views; 26 have passed 1,000. Shorts are the one surface on this channel that shows what the content does without a budget behind it, which makes them the cheapest test bench the show has.
- 1This Owner's Obsession with Customers Went TOO FAR (In the Best Way) #shorts #restaurantlife #insane3,700
- 2What You Love Doing Shifted—And That's Actually Good #success #personalgrowth1,400
- 3That one mistake that loses deals #salestruth #clientgame1,400
- 4The Switching Game Agents Play #agents #storytime #drama1,300
- 5The Brutal Truth - Call Centers Outgunning Agents With This One Trick #competition #shorts1,300
- 6Planning Beats Grinding Every Single Time #businessmindset #success1,100
- 7My Mom Taught Me Empathy and It Changed Everything #family #kindness1,100
- 8Protein Chips Vs Regular Chips The Difference Shocked Me #comparison #health1,100
- 9The Sales Trick Nobody Talks About #sales #mindset #psychology1,000
- 10The Problem-First Approach That Wins Every Time #salestraining #conversion1,000
Recommendations
Every move below names the number that proves it worked. Three groups: the YouTube channel itself, the social channels that feed it, and the plumbing that makes both measurable.
YouTube: content and strategy
The channel already has reach. These moves point it at the episodes that hold people, and make more of those.
Put a retention gate in front of the budget.
Every new episode gets a small, capped pilot flight. A written percent-viewed floor decides whether it scales, and the scaling rule weights retention first, click-through second. A day-30 recheck pauses any flight that drifts under the floor. Proof: the median percent viewed on promoted episodes climbing from 5.9 percent toward the 12 to 18 percent Seasons 1 and 2 held.
Re-promote what already holds attention.
Michael Pope, Liz Caballero and Daniel Franco each held more than 28 percent of their runtime. Run two of them against two partner episodes with matched budgets in the same window. Proof: the format gap either survives the fair test (act on it) or collapses (it was the era). Either answer is worth having.
Title by name. Open on the peak.
Put the guest's name in every new title and re-promotion, the pattern that already wins the click at 3.3 percent. Cut the ad creative to open on the episode's retention peak instead of a cold intro. Proof: click-through on new flights at or above 3.3 percent; 30-second hold on the ad unit above the current 41 to 66 percent range.
Book more of what works.
HPM team guests hold attention about three times longer than partner guests, and working producers hold it longer too. Season 4's reverse-interview format already leans this way with Sergio Diaz, Brenda Powell and Umar Khan. Keep partner guests in the mix for reach and relationships, and let the data pick the ones that also retain.
Keep the length. Win the first 30 seconds.
Watch time per view does not fall with runtime, so the long form stays. Intro hold ranges from 33 to 66 percent at the half-minute mark; the top intros (She Walked Away From $100K, FMO Exposed, 4 Years of Nothing) are the models to study. Proof: intro hold above 60 percent on every new episode.
Everything else
Instrumentation and hygiene, so the next version of this page can say more than this one.
Find the subscriber door first.
Open Studio's Subscription source view by hand, or take the Advanced-mode CSV export. If most of the 7,019 subscribers came from the ad unit, the retention gate becomes the first move; if they came from watch pages, re-promotion does. Proof: a stated split of subscribers gained by source on this page.
Tag every link, isolate every flight.
UTM-tag every YouTube link posted off-platform, and give each episode its own ad campaign so spend per episode reads straight off the account. Proof: a per-episode spend column on this page next to views per day.
Re-pull monthly and keep the date on the page.
The report folder carries the re-pull procedure, the parsers and the generator; a refresh is a short session. Every number on this page carries its pull date. Proof: a new snapshot each month with the same lanes, so trend lines start to exist.
Tell the wins.
6,257 subscribers, 9,000 hours watched, 911 new subscribers in a month, and a 42-minute episode that holds viewers for twelve minutes on average are proof points the recruiting story can use today, with the channel as the source. Proof: the Closed channel cited on the recruiting page and in agent outreach with numbers that trace back here.
Timeline
- Nov 5, 2025Channel analytics begin. Lifetime numbers on this page start here.
- Dec 4, 2025Season 1 lands on YouTube: three episodes on one day, ten more by mid January.
- Jan 21, 2026Season 2 opens with Michael Pope. HPM team and outside producers join Justin.
- May 20, 2026Season 3 opens with Luis Vasquez. Still the most-viewed episode on the channel.
- Aug 27, 2026Season 3 closes with Joshua Zarandona: 9,000 views in five days, the highest views per day on the channel.
- NextSeason 4 is in production: reverse-interview format, three episodes drafted, none on YouTube yet.