Tomás Castaño M Email me

Tomás Castaño. Video editor, storyteller, writer. I make engaging videos people want to watch.

I was part of the team behind two channels that grew from zero to 700,000 subscribers.

1,300+ videos edited116M viewsZero paid ads Watch the reel
Tomás Castaño, in a yellow beanie and a red plaid shirt Scroll to play

One minute of my work

Every cut here answers one question: will they keep watching? Ads, interviews, vlogs and a sales video, from the last five months.

Six years. Two channels. Zero to 739K.

  • 116.4Mviews on both channels during my six years on the team
  • 20.8Mhours of watch time
  • +739Knew subscribers, every one of them organic
  • 752Mthumbnail impressions on YouTube

Source: YouTube Studio for the George Gammon and Rebel Capitalist channels, June 2019 to June 2025.

Sponsor ads built to feel like the show

Most sponsor reads look like a pause in the video. Mine look like part of it. Every claim the host makes gets its number, its chart or its product on screen, for Interactive Brokers, Mint Mobile and Monetary Metals on Jeff Snider's channel.

The latest: a five-minute sales video for a live finance eventI wrote the 45-shot storyboard, generated the story scenes and the score with AI, and built the lower thirds, headlines and charts myself. One editor carried the whole production.
Mint MobileA sponsor read made concrete: the plan, the price and the phone on screen as he names them.
Monetary MetalsThat week's gold headline, the price chart and the yield, every figure taken from a real source.
Interactive BrokersThe broker's own numbers do the selling: 175 markets, 29 currencies, the borrowing rate on screen as he says it.

The first thirty seconds

Three seconds to stop the scroll. Five to make a promise. Thirty to prove the video is worth staying for. I work on every one of those seconds.

Why those three: TikTok asks for the point in the first 3 seconds, YouTube shows the skip button on an ad at 5, and YouTube Studio scores an intro at 30.

From the blogHow I build a hook

Four recent hooks and two story beats I'm proud of.

Keep scrolling. Each one plays as it reaches the middle.

Jeff Snider with Jeff BoothThe guest speaks first. Then the camera chases the debt line up the chart while the words land one at a time.0:28
The headline montageThe host fires off the news at full speed, so every real headline hits on its own word. Built in code with Claude, timed to the waveform.0:15
Josh Lessard, ArubaA vlog intro built on the footage itself: the beach, the people, one number on screen, then the title card.0:21
Josh Lessard, the basement story as a comicHe told a story that had no footage. A vlog can be fun, so the story became a comic and the comic became the b-roll.0:40
Trixy Castro, the illustrated doubleWe agreed on a character drawn in a few basic lines. Whenever she tells a story from her life, the drawing appears and acts it out.0:27
Nick BartoloOne man at a desk, so the type carries the argument: what a founder loses after the sale, figure by figure.0:28

Don't take my word for it.

“Tomás is an editor who keeps up with the latest technology and knows how to use AI tools to his advantage, optimizing his workflow to deliver clean, dynamic work. His innovative character has left behind resources my team still uses today. All of that, added to his human quality, makes him an excellent addition to any team he joins.”

Daniela Espinosa, head of editing for George Gammon

“You improved the whole editing style in our team. Almost all the editors are now working with amazing animations.”

Saad Elsewaky, head of production at Content Cartel

And from my current team's Slack

Moises Oliveros CEO

Love the pacing on it, kept me engaged throughout, looks great to me

Sourish Editor

I really love the carousel style.
Can you please ask it to generate a PDF with all the prompts and guidelines you've given it, so I can use the same thing on my Claude?

Italo Editor

@The Colombian Guy That's amazing, the sound effects are perfect

Lucas Duarte Creative

Fire, I really appreciate your work, dude

Saad Elsewaky Head of production

You are a real hero. Please, let's make our next production call about this

How I build an edit, in the order I do it

Clean first. Then give it chapters.

Silences, ums, throat clears and stray noises come out before anything else, so the conversation flows from the first minute.

Then every chapter opens with a title card and a new music bed. The viewer feels the video moving forward and stops checking the clock.

HookOneTwoThreeFour

A title card and a new bed at every boundary.

If they say it, show it.

Six years of cutting macro finance taught me this. A news story gets its headline on screen. A number gets its chart. A place gets its map.

People follow a hard idea when they can see it, so nothing is mentioned without being shown.

They name a place. I show the map.

No footage? Make the image.

When the story exists and the pictures don't, I build them, with AI and whatever technique fits the person telling it.

A young vlogger's basement flood became a comic, because a vlog can be fun. A finance educator got a character drawn in a few plain lines, because that's what we agreed suited her.

Promise it early. Pay it late.

Once the whole cut exists, I go back for the hook. An hour-long interview has peaks. I look first for the one people are searching for right now, cut it to twenty or thirty seconds and dress it with music, sound, color, headlines and data.

And I take that peak from the second half on purpose. The viewer stays through the interview waiting for the promise I made in the first seconds.

0:0030:001:00:00

The peak sits past the middle. The hook borrows it.

What I do with one podcast

One recording

becomes 24 pieces of content.

  1. First, the full episode

    Cleaned, in chapters, with graphics and a hook.

  2. Then, five mid-form cuts

    Each with its own argument and title.

  3. Then, twelve vertical shorts

    Captioned word by word for Reels, Shorts and TikTok.

  4. Then, three carousels

    The ideas that never fit in a clip, slide by slide.

  5. Then, three articles

    So the episode keeps showing up on Google.

Your week of publishing, from one recording

Three or four pieces go out every day. Nothing is posted twice.

  1. Monday
    Full episodeShortShort
  2. Tuesday
    Mid-form cutShortArticle
  3. Wednesday
    Mid-form cutShortShortCarousel
  4. Thursday
    Mid-form cutShortArticle
  5. Friday
    Mid-form cutShortShortCarousel
  6. Saturday
    Mid-form cutShortArticle
  7. Sunday
    ShortShortShortCarousel

You record once a week. I deliver all 24 pieces within a week of the recording, enough to publish three or four a day, every day. Every piece points to the others, and one person keeps the voice consistent from the video to the article.

From the blogHow to repurpose one podcast

Carousels, written and designed from the video

A long video holds ideas that never fit in a clip. I pull the argument from the transcript, write every slide, check every number against its source and design it in the client's brand. Four clients, four different looks.

teocotidiana.org
The home page of teocotidiana.org, scrolling from the masthead through the latest articles to the books

I write every week, on a site I built.

teocotidiana.org went live in August 2026. I designed it, coded it with Claude and publish on it every week: long articles written to rank on Google, a weekly newsletter with its own sign-up flow, and an Instagram carousel that sends readers to each piece.

  • 81articles published in ten weeks
  • 154Kwords, every one of them mine
  • 43KInstagram followers feeding the site
  • 201podcast episodes before it

An editor who writes knows what the video is trying to say before the first cut.

Visit teocotidiana.org

I start with what people are searching for.

It is the same question behind a hook and behind an article: what is someone typing into the search bar today? I choose the topic from that, write the title as the question they ask, and then make the piece that deserves the click.

  • 7.7%click-through rate on Google: 879 clicks from 11,360 impressions in the site's first ten weeks
  • 12K to 43KInstagram followers in 2026, with captions written so Google can read them too
  • 479different Google searches that already lead to my site

From the blogHow I write a title people search for

teocotidiana.org on GoogleClicks per week since the day the domain went live
Aug 31Nov 8

879 clicks and 11,360 impressions in ten weeks, from a domain that did not exist in August. Source: Google Search Console.

Fourteen years on one timeline

Today first. Keep scrolling and the playhead moves back in time. Or pick a clip.

Agency
Client
My own brand
Nonprofit
Film and books

1.7 million views in 90 days, on my own account.

TeoCotidiana is where I test every idea before it reaches a client. I write, shoot, cut, caption and publish each piece myself. It's in Spanish because that's who I write for; the client work on this page is in English.

teocotidiana43K followers
The feedCarousels and reels I design, write and schedule.
Followers, 2026 12,000
Jan
12K
Nov
43K
The growthFrom 12K to 43K followers this year, without ads.
The videoShot at my desk, then cut with archive, inserts and captions.

I edit with Claude. The judgment stays with me.

Claude reads the transcript, finds every repeated line and builds the sequence inside Premiere. I watch every cut. When an AI-built chart came back showing a drop from 12% to 6% that nobody in the interview had said, I caught it, because I check every figure against the source.

I taught that workflow to the agency's editors in a 49-minute class, live on my own project. The slides below are mine.

From the blogWhat works with Claude and Premiere

From the recording: "Without Claude, these animations would take you more than a week. On a normal interview it is a day and a half to two days."
Slide 1: The edit starts with the voice Slide 2: When do I cut? Slide 3: Why this image? Slide 4: What is the image doing? Slide 5: The visual language changes Slide 6: From idea to motion Slide 7: Find, verify, animate Slide 8: Find, verify, animate, in five steps Slide 9: Review, refine, perfect Slide 10: Deliver the story

Ten slides. Scroll sideways.

What your team gets

Editing

Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, CapCut and Descript. Long-form interviews, vertical clips, ads and VSLs, vlogs, multicam, audio cleanup and mixing.

Storytelling

Hooks, chapter structure, retention editing, scripts, and an image for every story that had no footage.

Writing

Articles, newsletters, scripts and captions. Author of one published book, with a second in progress, and Spanish-edition editor of a New York Times bestseller.

Search and growth

Topics chosen by search demand, YouTube SEO, thumbnails with A/B testing, Search Console and YouTube Studio.

Motion and design

Charts, maps, headlines and captions rendered in code with Remotion. After Effects, Photoshop, Adobe Express, Canva.

AI-assisted editing

Claude connected to Premiere, AI-generated scenes and music, transcript-based cutting, and a frame-by-frame check before anything ships.