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00:00:01
I felt like I was taking a step backward
653 Plays6 months ago
In today's episode, I talk about why I think it was so hard for me to make the decision to reduce my workload for YouTube content, even though, looking at that decision now, it was a really good one!
If you'd like a bit more context, I talked about the decision more in this video on my main channel.
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Transcript
Kevin's YouTube Schedule Change
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello my friend and friends and welcome to my podcast General Musings. My name is Kevin and today I'm going to be talking about content creation a little bit because you might have seen my YouTube video this week where I announced I'm changing my schedule and I'll put a link to that in the description because I don't want to repeat what I said in that video where I talked about sort of okay I've been doing two videos a week for a long time now and I'm going down to one basically because I don't have the time to be able to keep it up.
00:00:24
Speaker
And my thinking was like, I thought about doing this like a year ago, and I didn't. And instead of doing it, instead of reducing my workload down and doing one video a week, I've been looking at all the different ways that I can continue doing two until now, once I've realized all of those different things while they helped were not enough. But why, why was I so stuck on staying at two videos a week? And that, I think, was because I felt like it was a backward step.
00:00:54
Speaker
I don't think it actually is. Now that I've done it, it's not a backward step. But there is that thought in the back of my mind that if I made this, I'm going backward. Because when I was running my YouTube channel as a part-time thing and it was a sort of a hobby project that turned into a side gig that turned into whatever and then eventually became my full-time job.
00:01:16
Speaker
Until it became my full-time job, I was doing one video a week and I was working full-time and doing everything else and then when I went full-time with it, I went up to two and so going back down to one video a week in my mind was like taking that step back to what I was doing before and that almost feels like a failure because if I could do one video a week while I was working at a full-time job
00:01:41
Speaker
How can I not do more than that now that I'm doing this full time?
YouTube's Role in Business Growth
00:01:47
Speaker
And again, looking back now, I don't think it's a failure at all on my part. I've sort of realized that in retrospect. And I don't think it's taking a backward step because what I've sort of realized is, and I think part of it's because I grew this entire thing and everything I'm doing up from scratch. I started a YouTube channel. That's what I did. And I just started making videos.
00:02:11
Speaker
And so while the business has expanded from just being YouTube videos, you know, with my courses and a few other things that I'm doing, I always see the business as my YouTube channel. In my head, the business is my YouTube channel and then there's other parts of it.
00:02:28
Speaker
But the thing is, the YouTube channel is sort of my gateway to growing my business. But it's not the business. And just like before, when YouTube was my side gig and I was working full-time, my full-time income was my primary income. And YouTube had become this nice little bonus on the side. Because you do make some money from YouTube, but you do not make as much money as you might think.
00:02:52
Speaker
And so it became this thing where it was just like this nice little bonus on the side. And then when I decided to transition to full time, I wasn't transitioning to full time content creation because of the income I was making from YouTube. I was able to make that transition because of the income I was making from courses that I'd created along the way. And despite that, I still saw YouTube as the business. But looking at it, I should be still seeing YouTube almost. It's an integral part of the business.
00:03:21
Speaker
But I should still be seeing it as sort of a smallish part of it, especially now that it's done the job of building an audience, right? I have 900,000 subscribers over there, which is absolutely insane. I'm coming up on like 100,000 people on my newsletter. I have an established audience. And so if I'm just looking at YouTube as a tool to build that audience,
00:03:42
Speaker
it's there i need to maintain that i need to continue reaching new people because you know you have nine hundred thousand subscribers they do not all watch your videos i'm subscribed to tons of channels i don't watch anymore but i sort of have established myself i've established my channel and i've been neglecting the other parts of my business that are the parts that literally enable me to do this as a business right
00:04:04
Speaker
which is crazy so like my courses have been being not ignored because I'm always working on them but I never have enough time to work on them because I always had this pressure of I have to keep the schedule of two videos a week and it was this ridiculous thing that I had in my head that I just had got into my head
00:04:21
Speaker
And I think that still comes down to how I started my channel because when I started my channel, one of the things and commitments I made was one video a week because I'm very, very, very good at starting things and stopping things and
Consistency and Longevity on YouTube
00:04:35
Speaker
pick up a new hobby. I try it. It's fun. I keep doing it for a little while and then I move on to something else. There's very few things that I pick up and I stick with and it just keeps on going for I think it's seven years now that I've been doing YouTube videos.
00:04:46
Speaker
And I strongly believe one of the reasons is the commitment I made early on to doing one video a week. And along the time, I definitely had missed some videos. I didn't do one video a week forever, but almost, you know, I missed a couple of weeks here and there just because I didn't have time or whatever it was. But I always then got back on the bandwagon and kept on going. And I think if I didn't have that schedule, there's no way I would have actually kept doing it for as long as I've been doing it.
00:05:12
Speaker
So I think that's part of when I got up to 2, I was just so stuck on, I have that schedule, I have to maintain that schedule, I have to keep that schedule, and as I said also that it would feel like making a backward step if I dropped down the amount of content I was making.
Focusing on New Projects Beyond YouTube
00:05:26
Speaker
I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, but I've realized I've been ignoring the parts of my business that I need to be spending more time on, and the only way I can actually do that is to
00:05:35
Speaker
You know put you make YouTube less of a priority and just by switching it from two videos a week to one video a week and Rearranging my schedule. It's made me feel so much better. I'm already way ahead I have so much content ready to go which makes me very excited and very happy because now I can actually focus on the other things and I've
00:05:53
Speaker
put together a ton of lessons for beyond css and there's actually like i see the light at the end of the tunnel for that course now which is a huge relief it's been a stress on me for a long time there's still some work that needs to go into that last module to finish it off but i have a whole bunch of lessons that are written and like the video is drafted so i just need to get around to editing all of that which i can do this week that's coming up because
00:06:15
Speaker
I have over a month of YouTube stuff that's already finished after rearranging my schedule. And yeah, I'm feeling so much better about things. But the main thing, again, I wanted to talk about was just this idea that sometimes, I guess it's easy to get stuck in what we're doing rather than seeing, you have to take a step back, I think, sometimes.
Reevaluating Commitments and Reducing Burdens
00:06:35
Speaker
And it's kind of funny that I'm only realizing this after I've already made this decision of why I was so stuck on it and also how I should have done it a lot earlier.
00:06:44
Speaker
But I'm also really happy that I finally got around to it and I'm not so stuck on having to maintain that schedule that I sort of had stuck in my head. If ever you're stuck in a situation where you're feeling like there's just too much going on, look to see because maybe there is that thing that you can cut out that you feel like you can't cut or reduce or whatever it is that actually could easily be removed.
00:07:04
Speaker
I guess even though it can feel really really important and like something that you can never stop. Maybe I'm the only one in that seat right now but maybe somebody listening just needs to hear that to like reevaluate things or whatever it is. So hopefully you know that can resonate with at least a few people listening to this. And yeah with that thank you very much for listening and until next time don't forget to make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome.