If I Started Youtube in 2026, This Is What I’d Do transcript

If I lost my channel with 700,000 subscribers, every video is completely gone and I had to start over. This is exactly what I would do. All right? And I'm not just saying this. I've actually started a couple new channels in the past year. This is exactly what I did do. What I would do, and it's not theoretical. It is actually proven to work. To start off with, I would not pick a niche. Or I would pick a niche. All right.

There's generally two ways you can go with this. With the experience that I have now, I would pick a very targeted niche like I did with this channel where I strictly review saunas and cold plunges, pretty much nothing else. This channel with 20 videos has made over $40,000. I've touched on that before. That one's very targeted. But actually, if I was trying to build a more personal brand over again and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to talk about, what direction I would go with it, which what I generally hear from people starting YouTube, I would actually start making videos.

And I want to show an example of this real quick. Uh, so this is actually one of my students, Noah. He actually started with like self-improvement videos, like exercise, saving money, books, things like that. He privated all those videos now. But he had a video about a year ago pop off about cast iron skillets. That is not what you would expect, right? When you're talking he was actually doing similar stuff to my main channel, talking about habits and things like that.

But he was just making videos about what he was genuinely passionate about and he was getting better at the process of making videos, his video skills. And then he had this video that popped off and he fought it for a while. He just had this one video that popped off and he kept doing other things. Fidgets for men. There was a bunch of other habit videos, but then he decided to double down on what was working. And so he really got into cast iron skillets.

He had another video that popped off, 1.8 million views. And then a lot of his other cast iron skillet ones are now getting hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands of views. And he's been able to find his niche. Uh, if we go to latest here in that cast iron kitchen type of space, this is not where he started his channel. This is not what he originally thought of as this grand master scheme and that's what everybody thinks that they need when they're starting.

Sometimes you just need to talk about what you're generally passionate about. Get good at the skill of making YouTube videos and then see what pops and follow the direction of the pop. Very quick on top of my own example on my main channel of some videos popping off on like minimalism that I didn't really expect and then I became one of the biggest minimalism people uh in my space was my friend David. He started off with like doing stuff about chicken coops and then he had a video pop off about a DIY cold plunge and now he is one of the biggest cold plunge review channels that there are.

Makes great money doing it. And it wasn't what his channel started out with. He was just talking about things he was passionate about getting better at making YouTube videos and then following what worked and allowing that to kind of dictate what direction that he went. And so feel like a lot of people they think they need this master plan, but what you really need is to get good at the skills of making YouTube videos and then experiment with things that you're passionate about.

Don't make a video unless you're okay with talking about that thing for the next like 3 or 4 years. But just talk about all the things that you're passionate about and let YouTube and your audience and and kind of like all that decide what they want to hear, what they value from you. It's not always what you expect. When I started my main channel, I thought I'd be talking about like real estate and stuff like that. And now I never talk about that.

I just followed what worked. And if your goal is to like make money on YouTube, I would highly suggest that. Next up, I would not buy gear and I would try to purposefully be embarrassingly bad. A spoiler alert, you do not need anything to start. You literally don't need anything to start on YouTube. Like if you have a computer so that you can edit, that's better. I personally know people with over a million subscribers on YouTube who edit on their iPhone.

They shoot on their iPhone. Like, you can come up with excuses for anything. Literally, you don't need that. I would start shooting on my iPhone. Actually, like a couple of the videos on this channel that have done really well, a couple of videos on my other channel that have done well, this intro, which is my best performing video in the past like 6 months on my main channel, I shot it on my phone. my friend Tonio who went from zero to I think like half a million subscribers inside of like a year.

It's like half his videos are filmed on a iPhone with like a cheap mic. Like it is not super complex. You can come up with all the excuses in the world. Don't buy gear. Start making videos with what you have and then if you want to upgrade stuff as you're going, as you start making money, whatever, like totally do that. But I would not give myself that excuse. I would just start filming, make bad videos, and just start slightly getting better, getting better, practicing being on camera, practicing talking, practicing, you know, sounding like a real human, practicing film making skills, and just moving stuff around.

And yes, the quality does matter. Like, one highquality video is going to be better than a hundred crappy ones. Like, it's going to be one video that generally is going to change your channel and your life, but you're never going to get to the point of being good enough to make that video if you don't make a 100 crappy ones. So just start making bad purposefully bad stuff. Either it's going to do well or nobody's going to see it.

So it's like a there's no risk really and they're free to make. So like just make bad stuff with what you have and upgrade later. And so why do most people never have that success? Why do they never make money? Their channels never pop up. I think it's a couple things. One, you get stuck in this analysis paralysis. You're watching too many educational videos. You're taking all the courses which can be great. I'm probably any of them are going to work.

I know mine works. Like there's a lot of examples like the people I've talked about here. It works. But if you take the whole course and you never post a video or you post four videos and then you quit, it is not going to work. And so getting stuck in this loop of watching creators sharing things that are working like watching how to grow on YouTube stuff or taking courses or doing whatever or just editing a video over and over and over and over again and not posting and moving on and getting reps in.

That gets a lot of people stuck. Another thing that gets people stuck is they don't listen to that noise. They they get the one video that takes off. They get the one standout and then they don't double down on it. They don't do a follow-up. They don't do a part two. They don't do an extended version. They don't repeat it. You have to listen to what the audience wants and serve them what they want. And sometimes it's not what you want to do.

Like sometimes you don't always want to talk about exactly what the audience wants you to talk about. But as creators, you need to serve those people and eventually as you do more of what they want, they'll get to know you as a person and then they'll follow you to the other things. Like on my main channel, I talked about minimalism and decluttering. Like I was into it for a while, but then I kept talking about it and I kept kind of doing things that I knew would work well and I was still kind of interested in.

And now it's to the point where I can do a video about most things. Like I can do things about finance. I can do things about decluttering. I can do things about side hustles. I can do just personal stories of things that I'm struggling with and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people are going to show up. Took seven years to get there. But because I gained their trust by giving them value on what they were interested in and then they built a relationship with me and now some of them watch me because they had that relationship where they want to see my opinion on things.

They want to see my life updates. They want to see what I'm interested in because I gave them value on what they were interested in. It's kind of like you build this relationship not by being selfish and and just being like, "Hey, life update with 12 subscribers." Nobody cares. But if you do things that they care about long enough and then they watch all those and then you do a life update, now people care about you cuz you gave them value first.

So, like things that work for people with 100,000 subscribers don't work for people with 500 subscribers or 20 subscribers. You need to kind of like start to understand what can work for smaller creators versus bigger creators. And so, this is where I would lean into the unfair advantage of being a new new creator. And this is actually why I've started new channels on new niches that I'm interested in is because the first video on a brand new channel like this one and this one and this one and get tens of thousands of views.

First video, brand new channel, no mention from other things, just organically. And that is because a good video is a good video. It's not always going to work right away, but new channels actually get pushed more by the algorithm. Your first couple videos have a really good chance of getting pushed. And so you can make videos for 6 months and your channel is destroyed. You messed everything up, but you have 500 subscribers, you have 2,000 subscribers.

You don't want to lose that. Start over. Not a big deal. You can start a brand new channel from scratch and it can do amazing right from the get-go if you like screwed up your audience over there or something. So like people get too attached to low numbers. they get attached to they they built something. And if you finally, you know, made 50 videos, it was all over the place, none of them did well, but you got better at making YouTube videos and you're like, "Okay, I realize now that I want to do this specific thing, but the algorithm is all screwed up over here.

Just just start a new channel." New channels have a huge unfair advantage. Like, I think of this dude Sterling. He actually had more subscribers than me at one point. I was at like, you know, 10,000. He was at 15,000 back 7 years ago. And he made really good videos. He totally he could have hundreds of thousands of subscribers right now if he played the YouTube game, but he he doesn't want to apparently. But he had some videos that did really well on minimalism and on coffee and he was getting thousands and sometimes tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views.

But then for whatever reason he quit. He had different life goals. That's totally fine. But now he's coming back on that channel and I don't think these videos can do well that he's posting. Partly because he's not posting what his audience came for. They came for minimalism. They came for coffee and now he's doing kind of vloggy things and they are getting decent views. But I think he's probably going to be capped for a while unless he posts like probably 20 30 of these and kind of resets the algorithm.

I think he might actually have better success starting a new channel than staying with this one where a couple of people are showing up. But since the majority of his audience came for something else, they're just not going to be interested in it. And then when he posts a new video, majority of audience isn't interested in it. Tells the algorithm that it sucks. And now his videos have no chance of success even if they're highquality videos.

And so that's one of the problems of having a super all over theplace channel and not really having direction is if he wants to play the game and he wants to talk about minimalism and coffee, his channel would do well. And if he wants to talk about what he wants to talk about, uh, which is this stuff, which is totally fine. Just don't expect the videos to do well. Doesn't matter the quality of them really. So that's one of the advantages of just like walking away from a 20,000 subscriber channel and starting over.

I'm not saying guaranteed it would work better, but I think almost guaranteed these are going to not work great because he's not playing the YouTube game as it were of working with the algorithm. He's trying to work against it. And it's the same thing if we go back to the frying pans, maybe it's not what he wanted to make the channel about. But now, if he talks about cast iron frying pans and remaking them, it is going to work well, guaranteed.

If he talks about habits now, it is going to fail. It could be the best video ever on a different channel. It could get hundreds of thousands of views if he posts it on this channel. guaranteed it is going to do terrible. And so a lot of times if you screw up your your algorithm too much, I would be okay with starting over, having a clean slate, trying things. If it works out on that channel, you either go with it or sometimes you you're going to have to take time to fight over or start a new channel.

But you don't have to have everything all figured out right from the get- go. You don't have to have this perfect scheme. Try things. If it works, either go with it or just gain that skill of making good YouTube videos and start over. So kind of I wouldn't buy gear. I would just start making as many videos as possible to get good at the skills. And then I would either pick a hyper niche or try to build a personal brand, one of those two, and be okay with if it doesn't work out, just starting over again.

And then I wouldn't take advice from anybody who hasn't done it. A lot of creators who make videos similar to mine who teach like how to grow on YouTube, they only are successful in a channel that teaches other people how to be successful. It's like this loop of like they only talk about how to grow on YouTube, but they've never grown a real channel on how to grow on like that isn't how to grow on YouTube channel. It's like the circular thing.

So like I would find somebody who like knows what they're talking about who has multiple successful channels in different niches and maybe listen to that person. But whoever it is, pick one person and listen to them. Don't try five different things all at the same time. You just get confused. Again, doesn't have to be me. Anybody you pick, but like don't try raw style and hyperedited style and entertainment and education.

And like if you try all these things on the same time, it's nothing's going to work. And four, I would not try to sound like a YouTuber when I started making YouTube videos. I had this like fake radio voice. I was like, "Hey guys, welcome to the thing." And upbeaten all the time. And now I'm just like whatever. I literally don't care. I don't check my hair ahead of time. I don't check the background. You guys saw how like how janky this was setting up.

Like it doesn't matter. Just be a real human being. Try to be awkward. If you have an intrusive thought, just like let it get you ac like like I just be a normal human being. Don't try to be professional. Don't try to like hey whatever guys like just be normal. Number five I would not compete with AI. There's going to be a lot of optimization. There's going to be a lot of like taking things to the extreme. I would go the opposite way and I'm being super raw.

I'm sitting down on a sheepkin rug just rambling my thoughts. I'm not trying to optimize everything. I am not trying to sound professional and have this perfectly structured. I'm just trying to be a real person and I would definitely lean into that, especially if you're starting. Just take the easiest route of just being a real human being. Uh, and don't try to optimize everything. And then six, I would not wait till I'm ready.

The first video I posted on my main channel didn't have a thumbnail. The thumbnail was a screenshot cuz I didn't know what a thumbnail was. It had one edit in it cuz I didn't know you could edit a video before I shot the first one. And I just started making videos. And I figured it out by making videos. I didn't watch tutorials. I figured it out by making videos. I I watch tutorials later. But like, you don't have to wait till you have everything ready. you'd have your niche ready, you have the right camera, you have all this stuff.

Like, I've seen people wait literally 5 plus years and still never start a channel cuz they're waiting for the perfect name. They're waiting for the whatever. This channel you're on right now didn't have a banner until past 20,000 subscribers because a banner doesn't matter and people like, "Oh, I can't post a video if I don't have my banner up." Like, that's literally stupid. Um, so don't wait till you have everything ready.

Just make a video, post it. Make another video, post that. get good at making YouTube videos and then you can just start over and have a successful channel. I'm about to launch my cohort. Uh I teach people all of this. It works. Multiple successful people. I know what I'm doing. I've started multiple channels. So if you want to check it out, you totally can. Um open it a couple times a year. We just lowered the price.

Um if you actually do the stuff, it's worth it. If you don't, don't do it. Um, but like if you actually follow the stuff, like Natasha went from 0 to 15K a month inside of a year by just like following proven stuff. Like it it kind of works. Um, have a good