one year ago I decided to start posting on YouTube regularly and I thought it was about time that I made a video about my journey to 200 subscribers currently today I'm sitting at 178 subscribers and it's taken me this long to get there I know that for a lot of people that number isn't massive but for me it's huge and that number continues to grow every day but why is it that I do what I do why do I even bother posting these videos on YouTube what are the mistakes I've made and the lessons I've
learned along the way and what am I hoping to achieve aieve on YouTube in 2024 and 2025 so I grew up as an only child and I was always a naturally introverted person this made me very camera shy and I never felt comfortable having my photo taken or speaking on camera I always felt like my voice sounded stupid or my hair was in the wrong position or I looked ugly and I always believed that people were going to laugh at me this made me incredibly awkward when I was caught on camera and as a naturally
anxious person this made makes me very stiff so that my muscles tense up and then my body movements are unnatural and my smile is unnatural and I I just come across like somebody who looks really goofy and really dumb so when I decided that I wanted to grow a business that was based on content creation or social media I always shied away from video and I actually decided to build a Blog instead I focused my efforts on SEO because I could hide behind the laptop and write my articles anonymously and nobody nobody would ever pin
that work to me and nobody would ever see my face that meant that people would not be able to criticize me I found a lot of success in the blogging space and was able to scale that business to really great Revenue but I never truly felt fulfilled because there was this nagging feeling in my head that I had so much to share and so much content that I wanted to put out in the world and I also knew that I was running away from my fears rather than facing them ahead on and I didn't want
to be afraid of the camera for my whole life so one year ago I started to post videos on YouTube and to be honest they're not very good quality and I was terrified of being on the camera I didn't know what to say I was awkward I didn't know how to use the camera properly I didn't know how to edit but I just did it anyway I pushed through this was never about getting famous this is about pushing outside of my comfort zone and challenging myself to be in the public Spotlight and gain the skills
of looking at the camera and being able to articulate my thoughts so that people understand me and it's been one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done with my life but that's not to say that it hasn't also been one of the most challenging when I first started out I spent hours and hours watching videos on how to do retention editing how to write a script what kind of content that I should deliver and what happened well the majority of my first videos flopped I was getting 50 views on a video which is
extremely frustrating when you put 15 to 20 hours of work into something but I believed that I had something great to share and I wanted to trust the process so I kept posting one video every week for the first 6 months and saw excellent progression my videos went from 50 views to 500 to 1,000 views per video as I improved my ability to speak to the camera and create thumbnails that people would actually want to click on and come up with content ideas that people want to see but there is a catch here because during
that first 6 months as I started to iterate and improve over time I actually lost my connection to why I was doing this in the first place I found myself looking for Content ideas that I wasn't really interested in but I knew would get views and I started creating thumbnails that I didn't enjoy making and scripts that I didn't enjoy writing and suddenly I was spending 20 hours a week on a YouTube video that was becoming a chore I was just in it for the clicks I wasn't in it for the joy and one thing
I've learned in life is that if you really don't enjoy doing something then it's very rarely sustainable and I wasn't able to sustain making YouTube videos anymore I got burned out I got really busy at work and that became a perfect excuse to stop making them and I fell off the wagon and that led to a 4mon break from YouTube at the beginning of this year where I was able to re-evaluate why I actually started this channel in the first place but 1 month ago I came back to this Channel and started creating videos again
in this new style where I want to help you improve your mindset and off the back of that see massive change in your life because there was a time where I was stuck not being able to speak to the camera not being able to start a business not having any money and I know there's a lot of people out there who resonate with that and I want to help you to get out of the rut that you're in and that's what you're going to see from my videos moving forward from now so make sure you
subscribe so that you can catch all of them when they're released so the plan moving forward for 2024 and Beyond is to post content that I'm really passionate about making because I want to have an impact on the world and change the lives of the people that watch this so they can get out of a rut and live the best version of themselves and I do that to help people as opposed to getting clicks and getting views so I'm going to double down on making YouTube content and make this the primary platform that I focus
my time and energy on and not let it succumb to the busyness from the outside that pushes it out of the way so if you're a new YouTuber out there and you really want to get started and you're struggling to make videos then simply start understand that your first videos are going to be terrible you're going to be awkward speaking to the camera the quality of the editing is not going to be good because you probably don't have a big budget and you probably don't have a really expensive camera but you don't actually need any
of that because the quality of your message and the emotion that you put into the video is what grabs the viewer and captures their attention and makes them take in your message so that they apply it to their own life and see changes this is a about helping people change not about helping yourself to get more views if you just keep showing up week after week and sharing a message that you believe is important then the quality will naturally improve over time the biggest mistake that I made when first getting started was that I watched
a load of YouTube videos online from gurus telling me that I needed to spend hours and hours on making my thumbnail and editing the video and creating different title ideas but what I actually needed to do was refine speaking to the camera perfect giving my message and create content that I actually enjoyed creating so that I was able to show up to the camera every week without it being a chore because if this is a chore for you then it's not going to be done consistently I promise you that Embrace imperfect editing don't worry about
adding loads of motion effects just show up and do what you want to do another piece of advice that you'll hear is that you need to pick a very narrow Niche and focus on that from day one but my experience has been that my Niche has slowly found me because until I started actually making the videos then I didn't understand what I enjoyed making what I didn't enjoy making and this comes back to what I was saying a minute ago where if you don't enjoy making the videos You'll never show up week after week so
you need to find a niche that you really enjoy delivering stop worrying about the competition stop worrying about where the money or where the attention is just start putting out what you eny enjoy putting out try different topics try different styles of videos see what resonates with your audience see what resonates with you and then find that perfect combination that allows you to be successful another issue that I ran into and that you likely have as well is stressing about the equipment that you need to make the videos yes in an ideal world you would
have the the perfect camera with the amazing lens and the shore microphone that cost $600 but to be honest the cameras on iPhones are pretty amazing right now I'm filming this video that you're watching on an iPhone 11 and that's more than good enough to be able to transmit the message that I want to to the viewer and in terms of microphone I'm using this microphone here which cost me a whole $100 which to be honest I thought was pretty expensive for a Laval microphone but this does the job perfectly well and with editing tools
like Premier Pro then it's very easy for you to improve the quality of the audio in fact to be honest in this day and age I think a lot of people who have these really expensive microps are probably just doing it as a flex because it looks expensive on camera the other big challenge that I've had since starting a YouTube channel one year ago was balancing that with my family life because when you spend 20 hours making a video and if you're like me you're running a business you're already working 40 hours per week or
more then that's taking up a big chunk of time out of my life and I was suddenly finding myself rushing to get a video out on time on a Saturday day when I should be spending time with my family understand that yes content creation is important and you need to prioritize a YouTube channel but that can't be at the expense of the rest of your life and if you find yourself rushing to get videos out against a deadline because you're busy and you're feeling guilty because you're sacrificing time with your family then the quality of
that video is not going to be very good anyway so this is about finding a regular Cadence that works for you and if that's not once a week then that's okay because once every two weeks may be just as effective if it work for your lifestyle but to know that I'm not an expert I've faced all of those challenges along the way to get to where I am and I'm sharing them with you today so that you don't need to make the same mistakes you can learn from all of the mistakes that I made that
I've shared with you today but no that you're also going to make a bunch of mistakes on your own and it's going to be frustrating and you're going to put hours and hours into videos that flop but if you persist then you will eventually see results not just in terms of subscribers but in terms of how you feel about yourself how confident you are in front of the camera and how well you're able to articulate your thoughts because this is about more than just YouTube this is about growing as a person this is about learning
a skill which will allow you to give better presentations to speak to people better during Zoom meetings to feel confident when you're at that family event and people get the cameras out to take photos my goal with this channel is to just surpass 200 subscribers first of all and to keep growing this Channel and my own personal development goals I hope this video inspires you to pick up the camera and post the videos that you need to post in order to start your own journey and I would love to hear from you in the comments
about how things are going for you and I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to this channel because that allows me to learn what kind of content people resonate with and to give me an indication that I should share my experiences like this
