🧑💻 The 1 Thing Every YouTuber Needs to Know
How to YouTube #23
Hey YouTubers,
Last year, I worked as a YouTube consultant outside my job, and I learned a very interesting lesson from one of my clients.
I want to share that lesson with you because it’s one of the most important things a YouTuber should know. I don’t want to reveal their actual name, so let’s call them Bob.
Bob makes educational videos and has 100,000s of subscribers. But when we met, he was on the content hamster wheel, posting 5-7 videos every week on YouTube. He came to me looking for help trying to increase his average view count on each video.
So, I started talking to Bob about his video production system, and trying to better understand what he could change to improve it.
But one thing started to become clearer the more we spoke.
One of the first questions I ask YouTubers I’m helping is “what do you want?”
If they don’t know what they want, what the point of their channel is or where they’re trying to get to, then they’ve got a much smaller chance of actually getting what they do in fact want. Because every YouTuber, deep down, is doing it for one reason or another.
Knowing what they want also helps me give suggestions for their channel and business, because I know what they’re trying to work towards.
Bob had an established channel, had been in the content game for years, and was an already successful entrepreneur in his 40s.
So when I asked Bob what he wanted, I expected a relatively clear answer.
But he didn’t know…
He said something along the lines of “because I want get more views and keep growing” so I asked why, and he thought for a minute, and with more hesitation said “because I want to get more views and keep growing?"
At our next session, he turned up visibly stressed and overwhelmed. He was still on the hamster wheel of posting 5-7 videos a week, and it was really getting to him. He had a family, and he’d been on this schedule for over a year.
A year.
I felt under pressure to try grow his channel and get him more views, and I was relatively inexperienced at this type of consulting, but I couldn’t resist probing further.
I asked him how much money his business was making and what would happen if he stopped posting videos. He said “oh if I never posted another video I’d be completely fine.”
I also asked him if he enjoyed making that many videos and he said “oh hell no, but if I stop the audience will complain.”
Over time, Bob had created this insane schedule for himself where he has to make a video every single day from scratch (news content) and had forgotten why he was really doing it. On top of that, if he wanted to he could be working less, spending more time with his kids and doing more things that he wanted to be doing.
He’d got caught in a thought cycle of “I guess I have to do this, because I’ve been doing it for so long.” He hadn’t paused to take the time to ask himself why he was doing what he was doing.
Over the following few sessions, I continued asking Bob about his actual desires, and slowly he reduced his output. He got it down to 2 livestreams a week, instead of 5-7 videos.
I know, I’m an incredible consultant. He asked for more views, and I gave him less views and livestreams.
Actually, that’s not quite true. He started chopping up the livestreams into 3-4 videos around 15 minutes long that he can post as normal (this works better in some niches than others). So he actually had more content than before and was getting more views but for about 1/5 of the work, and his loyal audience adapted.
He became less stressed and had more time for his family.
Good stuff Bob.
The Takeaway
Most of you reading don’t have 100,000s of subscribers. But all of you are doing YouTube for a reason.
The clearer you can be on what the real reason is, then the faster you’ll work towards it and the more sustainable your channel will be, because you’ll be aligned with your goals.
You may also realise you’re chasing things that you don’t want. If you don’t take the time to ask yourself what it is you’re after, then you’ll waste time pursuing things that don’t matter in the long run.
This is not an easy question to answer. You’ll probably not be able to narrow it down completely, but the process of doing it will help you figure it out. In particular, the process of returning to the question regularly will also help you consistently point in the right direction.
This way you reduce the likelihood of going down a path you don’t want to go down, and waking up 2, 5, or 10 years later thinking “What have I been chasing on YouTube all this time?”
I personally never feel like I have total clarity, but I know that it’s a constant process of experimentation and reflection.
Let me know if you struggle with this and what your solution is by replying to this email or commenting on the Substack.
Have an epic week making videos!
Tintin 🧑💻
The YouTube Tin
Here are a few more ways I can help you progress:
🍿 My YouTube Channel: Join a whopping 500 other subscribers following my YouTube channel where I share unfiltered content about how to build a YouTube based business (I’m currently pausing uploads whilst working on another project).
🐦 I also write on X posting more tips and behind the scenes content.
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To be read with love, care and retention.