so last week I got an email from YouTube congratulating me on 18 years on YouTube and so I figured today I'll make a video about the eight things I've learned eight principles I now live by that I discovered that I learned from being on YouTube for 18 years but before I get into that I just want to share a bonus one with you that kind of rings true for my experience today dudes and that is don't take it too ser seriously this is the uh this is the second video that I'm shooting for you guys
because the first video which was 30 minutes long chop full of all kinds of great stuff uh didn't come out good there was no sound because there was just a glitch there was a glitch with my microphone and so I instead of getting pissed I just turn the camera back on except this time I'm sitting here in the sun I was just tired of sitting at that table you know in the shade and stuff a little chilly very windy today so I figured I'd sit out here in my backyard get some sunshine while I rap
with you guys and so uh yeah 18 years ago I uploaded my first video last week made 18 years and if you go to my strength Channel which is where I uploaded my first video you'll see a video of me 27 year old me 27 year old Elliot you know I'm 45 years old now and you'll see a video of me flipping tires I shot that video on a on a camera that literally had tape there was like a tape that had put into it so you know that kind of lets you know how Old
Uncle yo is and that I've been around as long as YouTube has been around and so I'll tell you a little bit about my story and then I'm going to go into these eight principles I try to keep it succinct so I uploaded my very first video CU I was in because I wanted to get people to come to my strength camp I was a fitness trainer and I was training people out of the back of my van in in public parks with trash and I got that idea from a guy named Zack evanes who
uh I seen some of his videos he was training athletes in his garage and in in city parks uh with a lot of odd objects you know tires and sandbags and stones and logs and and things like that and I was like you know as a broke personal trainer trying to raise my family building my business I was like [ __ ] I could do that I don't need to build a a whole gym I can just find some trash and train people in the Parks and just like Zack evanes who was my original influence
he's still here on YouTube you can check him out Underground strength coach uh I wanted to I started filming those workouts so I could put them on YouTube so that I can show my clients what we do so my clients would take the videos and they would share it with their friends and they would get more it would help me get more clients so that's why I started YouTube back then there weren't too many guys on YouTube actually back then there was no such thing as YouTubers back then my only thought was I need to
get more members for my gym or more guys to come to my boot camp more guys to come to my strength camp uh it was absolutely not about how to become famous how to you know uh get a million followers or how to go viral none of that [ __ ] even existed none of that [ __ ] was even in my mind I was literally a strength coach trying to fill my programs so uh over the course of the years I discovered a whole lot of things it's been 18 years it's been a wild
roller coaster ride and so I figured today I'll give you guys eight things I learned along the way so uh let's just jump right in number one the and each of these this whole list goes in chronological order so the things that I learned first was like what I discovered early and the things that I discovered last or the the like the eighth one the last one is what I've actually most recently discovered like my most recent discoveries about being here on YouTube and so um and let me just say like if you're thinking about
starting a YouTube channel you're not sure if you have a YouTube channel it's just not doing as well as you want it to do I can 100% honestly say without a doubt that the life that I live today is because of YouTube you know I got a nice house I got a nice house here in the country no neighbors my parents live in a in a house back there that's a part of the property and um it's kind of giving you a look around it like what YouTube created for me in a lot of ways
like I would not have this nice life that I have today you know I'm not an Andrew Tate I don't have Bugattis but I do have what I've always wanted which was a nice piece of property 42 acres and a beautiful place to raise my family and so that's what I got and I know that if you stick with YouTube and you follow some of the principles I'll share with you here today whatever your dream is you can get it too whether it's Bugattis like tape or just a home with a lake like your old
Uncle yo so you can raise your family and live uh a nice life bro so let's jump into number one um man it's been a wild roller coaster ride but it all started with pure ignorance and so the very first uh principle I'm going to share with you is a saying that my mom often says my mom says that God how do she say it God favors fools and babies God favors fools and babies and um she would go on to say you're no baby see you must be a fool and I absolutely 100% was
a fool because I was totally ignorant of what YouTube was all about the when I uploaded my first YouTube video again I was only thinking about getting members for my gym but back then YouTube was just a place where there were uh like silly cat videos and Charlie bit my finger right there really were no Educators on YouTube I was probably one of the first strength coaches on YouTube I definitely was like one of the first strong men on YouTube flipping tires and lifting stones and um I didn't know that becoming an influenc or a
YouTuber or becoming like internet famous was actually a thing and as a result I was totally unconscious I I had no self-consciousness about it and that gave me an advantage a lot of you guys like you grew up watching YouTube and you have a lot of people to compare yourself to and that can be tough dude because now you have expectations you have people to compare yourself to you have goals that are associated with it but I was a fool I didn't know what I was doing and it wasn't until I actually started becoming un
like self-conscious about myself that I started to have problems and I'll get into that later on because uh some of these principles are associated with some of the struggles that I had but principle number one God favors fools and babies stay Stupid stay Stupid don't have high expectations for yourself do it because you love it do it because it's it's supporting some other part of your life like it was helping me build my gym strength camp I wasn't trying to be a YouTuber do it because you like to express yourself you want to share your
wisdom you just want to be an artist don't go into it with high Ambitions and I'm not saying don't be ambitious but the higher your Ambitions the higher your anxiety the more your self-conscious and the worse it's going to be just be cool dude stay Stupid number two YouTube will make any business better and so like I said I was a strength coach trying to fill people uh fill up my my camps and ultimately get guys to come into my warehouse gym but it doesn't matter what business you're in like today the whole thing is
like becoming a uh you know the whole world is whole world wants to be a personal brand and the reason why they're catching on 18 years later that having a personal brand is good is because it doesn't matter what you're selling what your business is if it's a service if it's a product or you're literally just selling you YouTube is and will always be king you know I was around when I watched all these other platforms come out and I tried using a lot of the other Platforms in the beginning you know Facebook Instagram um
you know these are all baby platforms Tic Tac they're all baby platforms and when they came around they were like the newest hottest coolest thing and I hopped on them and I got to tell you that getting on those other platforms was the stupidest thing I ever did because it just divided my attention and I don't know if you're anything like me I do best when I have focused attention and so by thinking about making short form content podcast going on these other platforms I diluted my message I diluted my efforts and it was never
worth it so in the beginning YouTube was what helped me get where I wanted to be and today I've come full circle and YouTube is all faithful dude so YouTube will make any business better it it has and always will be my best lead Source my best customers my best clients my best friends literally my best friends come from YouTube doing things from YouTube so that's number two number three courage and Charisma beats thumbnails and high fancy flashy edits every day so when I started my YouTube channel there like thumbnails weren't a thing like every
video I made my face looked like this all right this is what all the thumbnails look like right because you couldn't choose your own thumbnail so of course you know like people had no other choice but to click when you know you got a stupid looking face because it was all about the title which today it's still all about the title I don't care what anybody says about thumbnails I reached a million subscribers with stupid thumbnails with just just me talking thumbnails just the THB maybe I should make a thumbnail like this now right maybe
this will be my thumbnail it's always a screen capture from my video either I make a thumb a a thumbnail or I just choose one of the ones that YouTube gives me right I don't know what thumbnail I'm going to use for this video but it's damn sure not going to be flashy and fancy because I've discovered they don't work any better um and the same thing with high edits when I started making YouTube videos everybody was creating simple videos and then like Casey neistat came out and it was all downhill from there because now
everybody thought they needed to make like these highly edited very fancy videos in order to get anything and that hasn't been my experience but I started becoming self-conscious when everybody was making making Fancy videos so I hired editors I fir hired cameramen I started making fancier videos and I tell you what those videos that are fancier don't have better views they didn't make me more famous they didn't make me more money than the videos that I'm making just like this just like I'm making for you today and I've come full circle and I think the
market has come full circle because we live in a world where like there's a lot of fake videos AI faceless videos and [ __ ] like that and as AI continues to grow and as AI continues to be like a an intellectual giant the intellect or the Intuition or the deeper aspects of being a human is what going to make these video was what makes your videos powerful people want authenticity we you know people are getting tired of the fancy edits just look at like Sam suck right look at Sam suck look at the guy
from like the Cowboy from the um you know Cowboy Creek video he's literally an old dude just sitting on a rocking chair talking to you I don't even have I don't even know if this is going to have good sound cuz I got a lot of wind blowing right so another thing that's associated with that is understanding that it's you don't work on making better videos work on being a better you be a better you when you're a better you you have more confidence you have more Charisma and it's your energy dude that's one of
the things I tell myself before I make any any video first thing I tell myself before I make a video is Elliot bring them your energy give them your love that's what matters not the edits not the music nothing fancy it's bringing your love bringing your Charis your charismatic courage to the camera so that's number three number four Fame will [ __ ] you up if you're not prepared for it so for me it was kind of crazy like I said I had no intention of becoming a famous YouTuber I didn't know that thing even
existed and you know I kind of lived in slacker Florida at the time and I wasn't around a lot of famous people it's not like I was in New Yorker or California I wasn't prepared for what Fame can do to you what it could do for you I understood real quick cuz I was making more money but what it could do to you I wasn't prepared and it kind of screwed me up and I say that because the first time I discovered I was so you know quote unquote famous was when I took my family
on vacation and we went to like bum [ __ ] Tennessee in the Hala and I went to a movie theater and in the movie theater like these teenage boys were coming up to me asking for My Autograph it was the craziest thing and it was a cool thing it was an interesting thing my family was like floored my kids were like Dad you're famous and I was like yeah I guess so and it made me self-conscious and caused me to make some bad decisions now I I I'm so grateful that God protected me but
if I wasn't protected I know I would have made some stupid decisions and probably ruin my family because you know I'm I'm a little bit crazy and so God did protect me by keeping me sort of sheltered even though I became famous but if you're not prepared for it and you start and you become YouTube famous um just be prepared that like whatever your ego is today it's going to be on 10x mode it's going to be on xgame mode it's going to be exploding so you need either you're going to be you're going to
choose humility or you're going to get humbled and that's all I got to say about that have a plan if you pop off here's the next one so number five don't let the mass psychosis control your content so this comes from a mentor of mine rest in peace Dr Glazier who when I started becoming famous on YouTube I realized that I was also actually very sensitive to negative feedback and I you know I think it as I'm learning more about ADHD because I'm accepting the fact that I have it um I'm reading a lot of
books about it one of the things it says that we're hyper sensitive to criticism and I kind of am like I took it personally when people would say mean things or people would make videos about me that were unflattering and I brought it to Dr Glazer who was my mentor at the time I do bioenergetic analysis with him so we would talk and he told me Elliott you got to understand that you're exposing yourself to the mass psychosis what does that mean like the whole world is living in under an illusion the whole world is
duded all every single one of us there's nobody who's not psychotic and under a [ __ ] delusion it's required to live in society to buy into the delusion and he called it psychosis he said the mass psychosis another mentor of mine said it this way she said you know I was complaining I was like people don't what about people that don't like me I like being liked but I don't like being not liked and so she said to me she said Elliot you got to understand that if you walk walk into a dark cave
where people have been living without light and you go in there and you shine your bright light they're going to want to annihilate you there are certain people that are living in darkness and when they see your light they want to kill you they hate it and I've experienced that kind of hate and I I want you to be prepared for that if you're bringing your light to the world not everyone appreciates the light some people hate the [ __ ] light they are like vampires they've been living in the darkness and if you shine
their light the light they're going to they're going to sh and they're going to shout and they're going to want to kill you so be prepared for that stay true to yourself and your values you need a strong ego that's a part of that one right like don't change your content don't change your message don't change yourself because a few people don't like you you got to stay true to yourself and when I say you got to have a strong ego I'm not saying you know in in the in the narcissistic way I'm saying have
a strong ego like a strong sense of self you have to have a strong enough self of self that you sense of self that you don't let people sway you and change your content there have been seasons in my life where I let that bother me and then I would show up scripted and trying to make better videos or saying what I thought people wanted to hear rather than being myself bad decision MTH psychosis moving on cool so number six treat your channel like your Journal never stop posting videos and so there's a video out
called um the rise and fall of Elliot hul by one of my fans he made it it was it at this point it's about almost 10 years old so it's you know you need to watch the you need to you need to update it right rise and fall and what maybe fall maybe rise again I don't know but the whole thing has been a roller coaster coaster ride and it allowed me when by watching that documentary about me which is kind of crazy somebody made a documentary about me but by watching that documentary about me
I was able to see all the different versions of me and it made me realize that like well first of all I'm I'm a little crazy like multiple personality maybe but the fact is like those were all different stages of me those were all different versions of me those were all actually me and the fact that I can go back and watch those vid videos and see is incredibly enlightening it's amazing to see like I I my family my children my grandchildren will be able to go back and look at different versions of me with
their grandpa was like that great great grandpa yo Elliott was like in 2009 pretty crazy one thing I wish I would have done was post more during My Darkest Hours right that's one thing that that video that documentary about me showed like you guys only get part of the story you guys and up until very recently I I'll be you know the whole thing is there are times where I wanted to hide and when you're hide you're lying by omission and so I look at a lot of my videos and like I wasn't I wasn't
sharing my pain I wasn't I was trying too hard to remain sane I was trying to be strong for everybody all the time in the videos and over the past like year or two I recognized like the power of vulnerability like saying it the way it is and not trying to look stronger than I am and that by sharing my struggles not only does my journal look a lot more authentic but you my my fans my viewers appreciate it because it lets you know that I'm not the pedestal that you put me on is undeserved
I don't belong in a pedestal I'm a dude just like you look at this wind can you see the wind or hear the wind look at that tree really windy day good thing I got this dead cat on cool so uh that was number six number seven your audience is growing with you this is the craziest thing man so I've been on YouTube creating different offers like it's crazy in my first video that was 30 minutes long I talked about all the different businesses I built from YouTube and it's important for you guys to hear
that like I started out with my gym and then I sold a uh a football workout a football DVD of the month I sold lean hybrid muscle ebooks I started doing courses then I started doing events I was doing strength camp workout events I was doing strength camp challenges uh [ __ ] I've done everything I even did a strength camp uh licensing I've done memberships and I've come full surf Circle man and the coolest thing you know I'm going to get into this a little bit deeper with my LA with the last one number
eight but like through all of that you guys have been with me a lot of you guys have been with me since the beginning and I get to hear you guys on my my newest offer which is my favorite offer which is the offer where I get to talk one-on-one with you one-on-one with you and I and I BR dropped my price down significantly I used to charge $1,000 dollar and I was getting like two or three lunches A Day lunch with Elliott I used to call it and it was my favorite thing to do
it was $1,000 and you come down and get to have lunch with me but I moved out to the country and you know my popularity has waned because of a lack of consistency and you got to be consistent um so I decided for 80% off $200 to just get on the phone with my fans and man it's been amazing to actually see how you've grown with me and one of the things that I hear more than anything is Yo Elliot I was 13 when I first watched your videos and now I'm 31 I was a
13-year-old lost kid with no dad and you were like my big brother or father figure and now I'm a dad of my own with three kids a wife and a business and they've grown alongside with me and it's just been the most amazing thing to see and when I get to talk to you and it's just you and me I get to realize who's on the other side of this screen which brings me to number eight man which is YouTube is all about love it's all about relationships it's all about the connection and I know
that might sound crazy but this is a new revelation for me you know a part of the ADHD brain that I have means that if you're out of sight you're out of mind it's hard for me to put like a heartbeat to the numbers on the screen right like your name on the screen like to the avatar on the screen and what I've Rel discovered most recently like the past month I've taken 55 calls from you guys and it's amazing like thank you you guys who have signed up for to do calls with me they've
been so amazing and so many breakthroughs on your side CU I know how to coach I'm a very good guide I'm a very good guide and the breakthroughs that you guys are having are amazing but they have also empowered me they're not enriching me I'm not making a lot of money but they've empowered Me by showing me the impact by just talking to the screen and what's going on with you and me and one of my favorite things to do on these calls is to make new friends I'm making new friends some of you guys
if it's a good fit I give you my phone number and I hope to meet up with you I've been doing Retreats as well I'm doing more Live Events I'm inviting you to my home you could come swim in my lake or you could swim in my pool or we can have a bonfire on the pasture you can do all these cool things but the bottom line is that like on these calls I'm actually seeing the impact that I've been having and I get to go deeper and I'm making friends with you and it wouldn't
have happened if it wasn't for YouTube so that's my condensed version of my eight things I've learned from 18 years on YouTube I hope you enjoyed that dude done
