Transcription
A mistake that a lot of people make is they focus a lot of their attention on having the right thumbnail or title or script for their YouTube videos, and they believe that that's what's preventing them from succeeding on YouTube. And even though those strategies and tactics are great, I personally feel like if you don't have the right mindset to handle the pressures of being a YouTuber, none of that stuff matters.
This is part one of my six-part series where I'm going to share the entire behind-the-scenes of how I bring my videos to life, which will include a lot of the tutorials and tactics. But personally, I feel like none of those videos are actually going to match if you don't have the right mindset when you're approaching YouTube and content creation in general. And how I know this is, even though I have 800,000 subscribers and I've been doing YouTube for over 5 years, I still burnt out and I had to leave the platform for an entire year, and I almost didn't come back.
And so, in this video, I really want to share some of the mindset shifts that I wish I knew sooner before starting YouTube, and also the ones that I'm glad that I know today because without them, I probably wouldn't be making videos anymore.
The first lesson I want to share is not putting so much pressure on yourself to be immediately great at something, and to also be open and willing to have a bad idea. For instance, when I took a break from YouTube, I felt a lot of pressure to come back and to make sure that every video was going to get the same amount of views that I used to get before. It almost felt like the pressure was even worse because I had built a reputation for myself, and I felt like if my videos don't perform, then that creates more opportunity for people to criticize my decision and make me feel bad about myself.
This also applies to people who are starting out on YouTube as well, where you don't want your videos to flop to the point where you would rather not post at all because you not posting anything actually makes you feel safer because you don't get any evidence that people don't like your videos or that you're not getting enough views. Versus if you actually posted the video, there's a slight chance that it might not perform, and to put yourself in that position to see that seems more painful. But what you don't realize is that this is actually self-sabotage, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where, in your mind, you desperately want to succeed on YouTube, but your actions are causing you not to make videos, which then means that you're not going to succeed on YouTube anyway.
And I remember that I was constantly chasing perfection, even when I came back to YouTube. And I spent more time behind the scenes tweaking my ideas, tweaking my scripts, looking at what my competitors are doing, refilming the same video over and over again to make sure it was optimized for retention because I was still holding on to perfection. I almost felt like I spent more time working on the videos than actually posting the videos.
And it wasn't until I stumbled upon this creator, Hines, where he talked about how to get unstuck creatively, and there was one thing that he said that really spoke to me and gave me permission to finally just film videos, even if I don't think it's perfect. And it's when he said that you need to be willing to have a bad idea. And a lot of times, we get stuck because we're holding on to perfection, wanting every single idea of ours to be a banger, to go viral, to get a lot of views. But the moment that you take away that pressure and you accept the fact that not every single idea that you have is going to be good, you then remove a lot of the hurdles that are preventing you from filming it, from editing it, and actually publishing it.
And what I've learned through my six years of experience being on YouTube is that it's actually not perfection that creates growth for your channel, it's momentum. And there's something that I learned from reading one of my favorite books for creatives, The Artist's Way. Julia Cameron writes that it is impossible to get better at something while also looking good at the same time. And so, if you want to improve at anything, you need to be willing to look bad. But more importantly, when you are open to looking bad, that's when you actually get the chance at being good.
And this all leads to my second point, which is you need to create space for your nervous system to get used to doing something new. So, let's say you're filming videos for the first time, or maybe you haven't filmed videos in a long time. Regardless of what camp you sit on, you're still doing something that you perceive as challenging. And what your nervous system will do is, when something is challenging or something feels foreign and new, it's going to do everything it takes to protect you from what your nervous system perceives as harm.
And so, it's actually really normal when you're doing something new or something challenging that you give up halfway. For example, when I came back to YouTube, I thought that I was going to be able to film videos super easy because I've done it for 5 years, I should have no problem making videos. But what I found is that I could only get as far as coming up with the video ideas, and then suddenly I would feel exhausted. Or let's say I would get as far as putting on my makeup, and then suddenly I would just shut down and not want to film videos. Or maybe I would turn on the camera and I would say my first few lines, and then I would shut down again and not be able to film.
The thing with that is that each time is an attempt for me to try something new, and yet my nervous system is holding me back because it's trying to protect me. The worst thing that I can do in that moment is think to myself, "Oh, I must not be cut out for this," or "I'm not good enough," or "I should just give up now." When you do that, you're actually taking the opportunity away for your nervous system to normalize that feeling of doing that task.
What you should be doing instead is celebrating yourself, or even taking those steps. So, for me, it would look like celebrating the fact that I even put on my makeup today, and just leave it at that. And then the next day or next week, I try again, and I might even get even farther than I did the previous time I tried. I do this enough times, and suddenly I'm able to film an entire video, I'm able to edit it, I'm able to post it, I'm able to celebrate that it's posted. That's what happens when you actually create space and you allow time for your nervous system to get used to doing new things.
The worst thing that you can do in those moments is telling yourself the story that you're not good enough, and then self-sabotaging your progress.
I wish I knew sooner that just because your idea doesn't currently exist doesn't necessarily mean that that idea is bad. It just means that you haven't created it yet. Before, I would spend a lot of time validating my content ideas. I would be on YouTube, search up exactly what I want to create, and if nobody's created it, I would just assume, "Oh, this topic's probably not good, it's probably not going to perform." So what I would do instead is I would just create something that someone else had already created because it makes me feel safe, and makes me feel secure, and it makes me feel certain that that video is going to do well.
And sometimes that is a necessary evil when you are first starting out on YouTube and you're not confident in your own ideas. But what you're creating in the long term is you're actually becoming a follower and not necessarily a leader in the space. At the same time, if you keep doing that approach and you never allow yourself to test the unique ideas that you have, even if no one else has done it yet, then you're never creating evidence for yourself that your ideas are valid and that people actually like them. Because it's either something that they've never heard of before, hence why it doesn't already exist yet, or it's something that they've always felt, but they've never seen anyone else talk about it.
The truth is is that when you are trying to be authentic and you're trying to be yourself on YouTube or on any type of platform, you're naturally never going to find a one-to-one exact replica of you. That's the whole point of authenticity. When you are authentic and when you are truly being yourself, you're telling your unique stories, your unique viewpoints, you're not going to find anyone that's like you because you are unique. And so when you go on the search bar and you search for the unique idea that you have or the thought that you have, and nothing comes up, and then you decide not to pursue that idea because no one else has done it, that is the total opposite of authentic and being yourself online.
And personally for me, the easiest videos to film are the ones where you are being yourself. The hardest videos to film are the ones where you're being someone you're not. And in this six-part YouTube series, when I talk about filming and my filming process, I'm going to show you the techniques I use to bring out my authentic essence. But for now, just know that being yourself online is one of the hardest things to do, but it's also one of the easiest things to do once you feel comfortable with yourself and you feel safe to be seen with your ideas.
Another thing that I'd like to preface in order to take the pressure off is, I feel like we think that uniqueness is supposed to look like a certain way. Uniqueness means that nobody else has done it before, and so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be original. But the truth is is uniqueness is not necessarily how original something is, it's how you make people feel. That unique feeling that they feel when they watch your content and they're like, "Oh my goodness, I feel seen," and "I don't feel this often when I watch other creators' videos." To me, that is what makes a content piece unique, is how you make someone feel.
There is a difference between a creator who's just regurgitating content, saying the same things that everyone else is saying, not telling personal stories, not really sharing what they've personally been through to back up what they're saying, versus a creator who you can tell is speaking from experience, who you can tell is speaking from the heart, who is injecting personal stories, who is injecting their own sense of humor, their own editing style. To me, that is what makes a unique piece of content. These two creators could be talking about the exact same thing, but the feeling that you get from watching both of these videos could be entirely different. One feeling is, "Okay, I feel like I've seen this video before." And the other feeling is, "Oh my goodness, I feel emotionally connected to this person that's creating the video."
And so, I say this all as a reminder, especially if you are a newer YouTuber, that yes, you could research your way into the frameworks and the tactics and copy what other people are doing. But if you aren't actually making videos that you're passionate about, that you feel connected to, filming is always going to be challenging, editing is always going to be challenging. You're making this journey harder than it is, and you're also not going to be building a following that actually likes you for you.
And what I have found to be the most exhausting about being a content creator is when you are performing for the internet and you're building a following of people that only like you when you're pretending to be someone else, versus building an emotionally connected audience that like you for being you.
Try to attach your definition of success to something that you can actually control. So, a mistake that I used to make, and sometimes I still make, and I have to be in a conscious effort to not do that, is I would attach my sense of worth and whether or not my channel is progressing based on how many views I get or subscribers that I get. But the truth is is that I literally cannot control whether or not someone clicks on my video, watches it, and subscribes. I can try my best to get the best title or thumbnail, but ultimately, it's out of my control.
And so, before, I used to set a lot of metric-based goals, such as getting more views, comments, subscribers, watch time, all of those things. And I would always feel like, because every week I would look at it, and I would feel defeated whenever it didn't hit my version of what success should look like. And that really impacted the way that I felt day-to-day creating videos and doing YouTube. It just was bad juju energy.
But now, I've really learned to tie my success and my progress on things that I can control. And so now, instead of setting metric-based goals, I set a lot of creative goals, and I feel a lot of fulfillment and I feel a lot of progress whenever I feel like I've achieved that creative goal.
So, here are some examples of creative goals that I've set for myself that I feel is more within my control. Number one, am I able to focus on speaking authentically to the camera rather than feeling like I'm in presenter mode and I'm performing? Or maybe a goal of mine is to film a video and not follow a script? Or maybe let's try to create a video where I haven't done any research on whether my competitors have done it yet or not? These are all goals that can help you grow as a creative and feel more connected to the work that you're actually doing, and it's a lot more of an empowering process rather than setting goals and tying your worth to things that are beyond your control, like views, likes, comments, and subscribers.
Now, are those things important? Sure. But at the end of the day, even if I gave you all the tactics and strategies to get 2 million views on your video, there is still going to be so many people that aren't going to get 2 million views. And the reason why is because we cannot control the algorithm. We can try to optimize our videos, but at the end of the day, it is not a guarantee that your video is always going to get a lot of views, a lot of clicks, a lot of subscribers.
And so, for you to tie your self-worth, to tie your happiness, to things that nobody can control, you are really setting yourself up for a lot of anxiety and a lot of pressure that is absolutely not necessary and not needed. Whereas if you can feel like you're growing and attaching yourself to things that are within your control, such as setting creative goals, then it makes the journey of being a YouTuber a lot more rewarding.
Third thing that I wish I knew sooner, and that is to not over-glorify the strategies and tactics of growing a YouTube channel, and instead focusing on the inner work. And I know this sounds really fluffy, but bear with me. There is a podcast interview that Chris Do was on, and he talked about how the best personal brand strategy is to go to therapy, and I completely agree with him. And the reason why is because we grow up with these stories and beliefs that then create behaviors that keep us stuck in business, in life, in romance, in all of these things. YouTube is no exception to that.
And the moment that you can at least bring awareness to these patterns and these behaviors and these stories that you have, the sooner that you're going to be able to unblock and actually be able to maybe even film videos faster, or feel more confident with posting, or not care what people think. And I think those are the things that are really important to develop as a content creator because if you do not work on those softer skills, then it's really easy to self-sabotage, to not feel so great when making videos, to burn yourself out, to do things for the wrong reason.
Now, to give you a personal example, one thing that I struggle with is people-pleasing, and I never really knew the extent of how bad my people-pleasing was until it came up for me in YouTube and in business, to the point where I actually burnt out. I had to dissolve my multiple seven-figure business because all of my people-pleasing had caught up to me, and I realized that my whole life and my whole persona on YouTube is fake. It's a total performance. And the reason why is because I was so desperate to succeed on YouTube that I was willing to please everyone and anyone. And so, if people wanted certain videos from me, I would mold myself to be whoever they needed to to create those videos in order to get more views.
And that worked for the first few years, but after 5 years of performing and being someone I'm not because I want to be liked by others, I then started to realize how out of integrity I really was. And I was also burning myself out, not only because I was doing so many videos, but it was me doing so many videos that I didn't even like. And over time, when you wear that mask for so long, it can be extremely exhausting.
And so, knowing what I know now, I really wish that more creators prioritized doing the inner work to gain awareness of these self-sabotaging behaviors because if they did, they would maybe have more awareness of what truly makes them happy and what is enough for them. Because a common trap that a lot of creators and business owners fall into is they never know what's enough, and so then they keep chasing for more and more and more and more until there's nothing left to give. And that is why there's so many creators on the platform, despite having so many views, despite having so many subscribers, they have to quit and give up anyway because they are so unhappy.
Work on your life. I think a mistake that a lot of creators make, including myself, is we dedicate so much of our lives to making videos instead of actually living the lives that will be our videos. And so, what I mean by this is, I basically made my hobby or what I really liked, my passion, into my job. And I think a lot of YouTubers do that. This was likely your passion, your hobby, or your dream, and the funny thing is that you make it your job and you spend so much time on it that you stop living your life. You stop hanging out with your friends, you stop having actual hobbies, you stop journaling, you stop working out, you stop actually being a healthy human being.
And so, what ends up happening over time is you do this long enough, and you suddenly have no ideas for your YouTube channel. You are creatively burnt out, you're stuck. You look at your Notion dashboard, and you literally do not know what to make videos on. And that's because you spend so much time pouring into your channel, looking at what everyone else is doing, that you suddenly forget who you even are, and you suddenly lose inspiration and you lose passion.
Your best ideas are likely not going to come from watching another creator. Your best idea is likely going to come because of the life that you're living and the experiences that you're accumulating. People are honestly so addicted to creating content that they're not living the life that's going to become their content. There's literally inspiration everywhere if you look for it. And I think the biggest mistake that I made is I just spent so much time on my channel instead of pouring into myself as an individual. And now that I actually have better balance, I'm able to pour into my channel in ways where I'm sharing perspectives that I didn't have before. And this is all because I now acknowledge that me having a healthy personal life leads to having better content.
The next shift that I had to make was, I needed to stop thinking like an amateur and to think like an investor instead. So, what does it look like to think like an amateur as a YouTuber? It's when you're thinking about your channel video by video. Versus when you think like an investor, you can see the bigger picture of not just your channel, but also your personal brand, and how long you want to be creating content for.
I feel like a lot of amateurs feel like they can't take a break because they feel like if they miss one upload, then the algorithm is going to punish them and their entire career is over. Now, it might seem true in the short term when you're looking at your videos week to week or month to month, but if you actually take a step back and you look at your career in a five-year time span, you missing a couple of uploads is not going to be the end of the world. It's just like stock trading. When you are looking at a stock and you're zooming in on the month view, it may look like that stock isn't performing well, but when you zoom out and look at the all-time growth, you're seeing that on average, this stock is going up and it's a good investment.
And I wish more creators thought about their channels in that way because if you are someone who is thinking like an amateur, you think that you can't take a break, you treat your upload schedule as something that you can never deviate from. What ends up happening is you're going to burn out and you're going to run out of ideas anyway, and you're going to end up having to quit and take an even bigger break or never come back to YouTube at all because you've been so burnt by trying to follow these self-imposed rules that you've created for yourself because you were thinking like an amateur.
What I wish more creators would step into sooner is thinking like an investor and realizing that in the long term, you taking micro-breaks, taking care of yourself, is actually going to lead to better video ideas and more energy to even film content, and you're going to make far more progress and stay in the industry for longer because you have invested in yourself and you have poured into your health.
Something that I often did in the past was, if I felt like I was going to potentially miss an upload, I would then cram all weekend in order to get it done to meet my upload schedule because I didn't want to disappoint everyone. And also, I was telling myself the story that if I miss an upload, I'm going to lose all my subscribers, I'm not going to get views anymore, my channel's going to take a hit. But the truth is, that was never true.
Now, if it's a choice between me cramming on a Friday night versus just taking the weekend to rest and then review the video the following week and miss an upload, I now will always choose the latter option because what ends up happening is the video ends up being a video I'm proud of, rather than a video that I crammed. And the thing is is that when I cram for a video and when I neglect myself and I sacrifice my weekends and I sacrifice my sleep for this one video, my next video becomes even worse because I then accumulate so much sleep debt and I accumulate all of this stress in my body. And so, over time, each video becomes harder and harder and harder. Versus if I just decide, you know what, I'm going to miss this week's upload and rather I'm going to pour into myself, get good sleep, hang out with my friends, and actually just take a breather from this. Every single time, my next video is always better, and more importantly, it's something that I'm actually proud of, and I feel like I'm creating videos at a more sustainable pace.
Another thing about thinking like an amateur is when you're looking at your strategy video by video, rather than thinking like an investor and zooming out on your personal brand and figuring out what exactly you want to be known for. When you think like an amateur, you are more likely to choose video topics based on what's trending and what you think is going to go viral and get you a lot of views. And in the short term, that's going to make you feel good and validated. But in the long term, you're sabotaging your personal brand because what you end up doing is you attract a bunch of people who end up wanting things that you don't even like. And so your entire channel then becomes a performance, and you attract a tribe of people who don't actually like you for your interests and your passions, and you almost create a golden cage for yourself.
And so, what I would encourage a lot of creators to do is really think like an investor. Think about your personal brand in the long term. And if you are tempted of doing a viral video or trendy video, ask yourself, if that truly went viral and suddenly you woke up with 1 million new subscribers that want that exact topic from you all the time, would you be willing to sacrifice your creative integrity for that? That is one thing I wish more creators thought about when they're thinking about their content plan.
Now, at this point of the video, I really hope that by sharing these mindset shifts, it's going to allow you to be more mentally prepared to handle all of the upcoming videos that I have in my YouTube series. Specifically, my next one is going to be all about how I find video ideas for YouTube, how I script them, and how I organize them.
At the end of the day, the most important thing I want you to know is that you can follow someone else's tactic, strategy, or framework, but you have to recognize that YouTube success is not one size fits all. And there's actually a lot of factors that contribute to whether or not someone is successful, but more importantly, happy on YouTube. And I hope by you watching this video, it gives you a good perspective on some of the non-tangible things that you can do in order to make this journey a lot more enjoyable.
That being said, I appreciate you for watching this video. Make sure you turn on your notifications so you don't miss the upcoming videos on the YouTube series, and I will see you in my next one. Bye guys, and take care.