“The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it.” – Kalpana Chawla
Hello everyone – it’s been well over a year since my last post! There’s a lot of adventure nad a lot of lessons to cover in this one for sure.
But first how did I get here?
On 04/04/22 I had a mastermind with friends and said that at some point in 2022, I will make a Youtube channel to see where it leads me.
The reason being is that I learnt in 2021 that when you get an idea, and follow it, it will eventually lead you to the ‘promised land’. Or another way to put it is that if you choose to push through the chaos, eventually you will gain clarity. Which is what happened to me in 2021; I had no idea what to do with my life so I decided I needed to start with something, so I decided to look into buying precious metals as an investment… which lead me to bitcoin… which lead me to exploring youtube, property investing and ebay only to narrow down and focus on property until I got my first investment!
So in 2022 after the whole property investing arc, I decided to start my official Youtube channel to see where it will take me. So the purpose of this blog post is to cover my journey so far!
Why Youtube?
There are a variety of reasons I decided to start a Youtube.
The creative/soul reasons:
1) I enjoyed blogging and sharing my learnings and lessons along the way, so I thought naturally doing video content would be the next logical step up
2) I want to be like Jordan Peterson. Someone who has such a big influence and impact on the world. It would be cool if I could make a positive dent in the world before I leave, just like JP.
3) I believe I have a unique perspective, mixing philosophy, spirituality, psychology and self-development which people will enjoy listening to which can help them get… a shift in perspective!
The entrepreneurial reasons:
1) If I put my Rich Dad Poor Dad hat on, I perceive each piece of content, each video, as an ASSET which will pay me in ad revenue. Also, Youtube videos will be out there FOREVER, so as long as people keep watching, I keep getting paid
2) Compounding effect – I like to play games with SCALE, with potential for COMPOUNDING and EXPONENTIAL growth. This is how the rich play.
3) Andrew Carnegie worked at a steel mill and was one of the highest paid men of his time, taking home a million in the late 1800s or early 1900s I believe which is crazy! He was not the most skilled or knowledgeable in his industry… no… there were a lot more people much better than him in that area. The reason he was the highest paid was because of his ability to DEAL WITH AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. Influencing people is a TOP TIER SKILL which an entrepreneur needs, and that’s what I want to develop.
Here’s how I presented it in my mastermind…
Goals
I set some goals for the year. My first milestone goal being to reach 1000 subs… then my goal after that which was to reach 100,000 subs!
The Come Up
My initial game plan:
– See what topics work first and whatever topic pops off, then I will go with that and follow the momentum. So my first bunch of videos on different things and see what people will like… I tried:
o Finance
o Entrepreneurship
o Cars
o Books
o Philosophy/Spirituality/Self Improvement
Luckily, the first video to ‘pop off’ was of the Philosophy/Spirituality/Self Improvement genre, which was my favourite and what I was hoping for!
So after a couple videos an anomaly happened and one of my videos got favoured by the algorithm! My Youtube channel got expoenential growth for this period of time, peaking at 22,000 views in ONE day!
This was amazing because I hit the 1000 subs mark and got monetized
And it proved my initial theory of how powerful playing in a game where exponential growth is a possibility.
But… a weird thing happened.
I was ANXIOUS AF from the growth. I felt like an imposter… and it also made me really scared, rewatching my vid over and over asking “did I say the right thing…?”, etc.
I made this video with 0 subs and now there were hundreds of thousands watching…
It made me question also how am I supposed to keep this up in the future to have all these eyes on me? What if I say the wrong thing in the future and everyone’s watching??
This is not what I thought “success” would feel like… :\
This affected my next few videos and I felt unnatural and I guess it just took a while to get used to.
I think one of the biggest things for this is because it was such a ‘sudden shift in realities.’
One day I have 10 subs, a month later I have thousands.
And I’m not trying to sound ungrateful… far from it.
Success comes from change. And change is uncomfortable.
So I continued on my journey and kept making videos.
The Journey
The real journey started after the come up…
But it was all ‘downhill’ after that one video took off.
I made video after video… with some videos taking over 50 hours to produce… only for the video to flop and not get great results…
This was very discouraging.
It took me a while to realise that I was in the part of the journey where I’m facing the trials and tribulations. Where the entrepreneur or hero gets tested through a series of failures.
The question you ask yourself as an aspiring entrepreneur:
“How long are you willing to sprint when the distance is unknown?”
– Lewis Caralla
Trials and Errors
Here’s what I tried:
– I tried making different styles of videos, more ‘vlog’ type ones sharing the journey… didn’t go too well
– I invested into an extra camera and mic for a podcast setup… this was by far the most time consuming, probably 100+ hours………. for 300 views hahaha
– I made 20+ shorts… took me a 40+ hours overall. I thought making shorts with a lot of cool b-roll would get a lot of attention. But I think my B-rolls were crap, didn’t really get attention and averaged at 50 views per short LOL. Big fail.
– I tried making a discord community – pretty successful… but VERY time consuming and takes up a lot of my energy… Now its sorta died haha – I need to try find a way to build it in a way where people engage with others without my input… I think this is the mark of a true leader. Also tried starting a challenge where people can join in on
– Tried giving people freebies – habit tracker
– Tried promoting coaching calls… but didn’t know how to promote or systemise it. Missed one call because of my terrible system
My Biggest Failures
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but rather, that which is most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin
Ok I’ma be real here… Here’s the fun stuff…
My BIGGEST FAILURE throughout the past year was my INABILITY TO DO HARD AND HONEST REFLECTIONS ON WHERE I CAN IMPROVE, AND THEN ITERATE.
So dumb. If you’re out at sea, you need to keep looking at your navigation tools to know whether or not you need to course correct, or do other things to make sure you’re headed the right way.
In a similar way, THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO DO, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE TRYING TO BUILD A BUSINESS.
Wtf was I thinking…
I think this is the reason why I was such a potato;
“Success Breed Complacency. Complacency Breeds Failure. Only The Paranoid Survive.” – Andy Grove
So after ‘blowing up’ I got overconfident. I thought I could just make anything, with any random thumbnail, and get good views and engagement in my videos.
Oh how wrong, how very wrong I was.
So somehow my video which popped off actually nailed a lot of the criteria for a good video.
But for some reason I didn’t recreate it.
Why?
– In choosing quantity over quality, some vids were very mediocre
– I did not do hard self reflection to see how to improve
– I didn’t reflect on what was working or study why my video popped of. I got overconfident and thought maybe a low effort vid can pop off too.
– I was not being ‘engaging’ enough or putting my lessons or stories in my video in a way where the viewer can relate… then obviously it will get lower engagement and people will click off.
My biggest lesson is this:
“Success Breed Complacency. Complacency Breeds Failure. Only The Paranoid Survive.” – Andy Grove
If I was paranoid, if I acted like there was a gun to my head and if my next video didn’t blow up then the gun would go off, then I would 100% put in a lot more effort and really try to make the video as perfect as possible from my current level of consciousness, which I believe in a long enough time horizon will inevitably lead to success.
But I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t improving. I wasn’t iterating. I wasn’t adapting.
And so I bring up the quote again;
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but rather, that which is most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin
Why is a company such as Toyota so successful?
Because they have embedded this philosophy of continuous improvement and adaptation towards their survival in the business world…
Othe creators, such as Thomas Frank, have an insane SYSTEM to analyse his content. His walkthrough through his notion template shows him really SCRUTINISING every single element in his videos, what worked and what didn’t, to see how he can iterate moving forward.
Another failure is this;
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear
So upon studying other creators, I realised that they have a SYSTEM in place to CAPTURE, NURTURE AND GROW their ideas. A SYTEM for CREATIVITY.
I knew this quote from ages ago… that’s why I have a system for my working out and diet…
But why tf did I not apply it to every other aspect in my life, especially my entrepreneurial endeavours?
What ended up happening is that my CREATIVITY had no way of being captured… sometimes I’ll write a cool idea down and I’ll forget about it.
The point im trying to make is that this is all a process… and I should have a SYSTEM to ensure that all my ideas are captured and when I want to grow an idea I need a system in place, like a process, to ensure it ticks all these boxes.
It’s like McDonalds… All the ingredients go through a SYSTEM OF PROCESSES to become a burger… and they’re so good at this that you can go anywhere in the world and know what your burger will taste like … what your experience will be like. 100% consistency. And so too is it the same with your PERSONAL BRAND… your CONTENT.
It needs a system through which a HIGH LEVEL OF QUALITY can be ensured for each piece of content I put out there.
Are you scared of the truth?
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ― Carl Jung
People like to stay the same because change is painful.
Why is change painful?
Change is painful because you have to let go of an old part of yourself to make way for the new.
Letting go of an old part of yourself requires radical honesty and facing your own inadequacies, human frailties, faults and errors.
It’s no wonder I stayed stagnant for almost an entire year.
I’ve been too afraid to self-reflect. I’ve been too afraid to change.
I was too afraid to look at the navigation system to see where it was headed. Lucky I did now, because my ship was heading nowhere.
Some hard and painful lessons here lol. A lot of regret for not self reflecting enough.
Check it out – months of stagnantion.
Mainly cos I was afraid of the truth lol.
Lessons
FAIL FAST, ITERATE FASTER
The entrepreneurial journey is full of trials and errors, twists and turns, and you’re going to FAIL A LOT.
I failed a lot and didn’t reflect. Without reflection, you continue the cycle you’re in. I was trapped in the cycle of failure.
If you self reflect, you can break the pattern by changing your actions and behaviours.
Breaking the patterns you’re currently in is the only way to reaching a life different to what you have now.
PERSUASIVE CONTENT
This relates to an idea from Brian Eno, who is a famous music producer. He has this idea of gardener vs. sculptor.
A sculptor has something to work with, and chips away at the marble to get to the final product.
A gardener has a seed, and has to nurture and grow it to the final product.
The creative process is more like a seed… the greatest art I believe is birthed from an idea and seeing where the idea takes you.
This is precisely what makes Jordan Peterson’s lectures so interesting. He has an idea of his topic, but does not have any notes, and he nurtures and follow the idea while speaking out loud; the audience is engaged and captivated, they feel like they’re on a journey seeing the growth or the direction of a single idea and seeing it flourish in real time.
Then so too, I believe, the best persuasive content is written in this way; it’s like a journey.
There’s this psychological phenomena where people are more willing to accept an idea if they believe it was them which came to that conclusion. If your content just states hard facts, it’s like getting lectured; and no one likes being told what to think and what to believe. But if it’s like a story, if theres a train of thought leading to an idea through which the audience can resonate, then that’s where the power of persuasiveness lies because they resonate with the train of thought and are more willing to accept the idea.
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOUTUBE
The only reason I set the goal for 100,000 subscribers is because I thought that it meant I would get ad revenue equivalent to a full time job..
While that is plausible, I’ve learnt that from a business standpoint, reliance upon youtube ad revenue for my entrepreneurial survival was silly.
I spoke to a mate of mine who’s a Youtuber and upon blowing up and getting 1M+ views total, I congratulated him and asked how much ad revenue he’s getting cos it must’ve been a lot.
He laughed and said “I haven’t checked, I haven’t even put in my bank details to receive the money, IDGAF about ad revenue, all I care about is the business side of things. The ad revenue should not be the main focus, it should just be the cherry on top.”
This really shifted my perspective.
I realised that I was being silly to think I could rely on ad revenue…
Reasons being:
– Youtube can be inconsistent – relies a lot on algorithm
– Many big youtubers not making too much money
– ‘All eggs in one basket’ relying only on Youtube for my income… what if my YT channel gets shut down? what then? what if they change the algorithm and it destroys my momentum? what if i get demonetized???
Upon studying other ‘Youtube entrepreneurs’, I came to realise that Youtube is just ONE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM which is a PART OF THEIR FUNNEL which DRIVES CUSTOMERS TO THEIR WEBSITE OR PRODUCT.
Wow! How wrong I was about my perception of Youtube and business hahaha.
Anyway, I’m applying these lessons now. And it’s funny to see that now when I think about it, it makes TOTAL SESNSE. But hindsight is 20/20.
My incompetency can be summarised by the following quote from Dan Koe:
“Do what you love but study psychology, marketing, and sales so you don’t become a starving artist.” – Dan Koe
Conclusion
If you have a goal and don’t achieve it, you have two options.
1) You can change the goal.
2) You can change yourself.
When our ancestors looked up at the night sky, they saw a mysterious set of dots scattered across the sky.
At some point, they learnt to read the stars, studied their patterns, connected the dots, and it helped them navigate through many unknowns, such as anticipating seasons, or gaining a sense of direction.
I see failures as the same thing. Whenever you gather a large enough amount of failures, these aren’t such a bad thing. This is your dataset, these are your stars in the sky, if you can learn to analyse them, just like our ancestors studied the stars, then we can see patterns, learn from our mistakes, and once again gain a sense of direction so we can move forward towards where we want to go.
In the next blog post I’ll be talking about my plans to really monetise my Youtube outside of ad revenue so I can continue doing what I like doing and survive financially while doing it .
Thanks for reading and till next time!
