How to Grow a YouTube Channel From Nothing in 2024

hey friends welcome back to the channel so if you are looking to start or grow a YouTube channel then you're in the right place because I recently interviewed Izzy cely who is a friend of mine and a YouTuber with over 500,000 subscribers and incidentally one of the most successful alumni of my own course the part-time YouTuber Academy and Izzy's grown her channel to this point with very few videos and very little work and so I asked her a whole bunch of questions about her Journey on YouTube and we go through a bunch of advice for people just getting started but we also go into her fears there was a lot of imposters syndrome around this and struggles cuz you've got 500,000 subscribers and you still struggle with it like that's interesting and the emotional side of being a YouTuber there were some people who did have bad things to say about my YouTube channel they did say hopefully no matter where you are in your journey this will hopefully be useful for you so Izzy welcome to the YouTube channel um you are one of the most successful alumni of the uh the infamous part-time YouTuber Academy and your channel has grown ridiculously fast 0 to 500,000 subscribers in around two years and also you haven't posted that many videos like you've posted maybe a fifth of the of the number of videos that I posted to get to the same amount and so I was thinking in this video you know there's a bunch of people who follow follow my stuff who want to either start or grow a YouTube channel so I was hoping we could talk through some of the tips that we would have in terms of the psychology in terms of the emotions in terms of the Practical tangible actionable tidbits that people can take away to help them grow faster on YouTube how does that sound great that sounds great fantastic um for people who might not know your channel yet would you mind introducing yourself please yeah sure my name is Izzy I am a doctor I graduated from Cambridge actually went to the same medical school and I have a YouTube channel and I sometimes upload videos there sometimes upload videos it's very it's a very humble way of putting um yeah so I talk about personal development language learning health and well-being kind of topics and yeah nice and to what extent has your YouTube channel changed your life it has completely changed my life in every single way imagine able which is kind of bizarre cuz I wasn't expecting that when I started it just over 2 years ago I was approaching it as a bit of an experiment I thought oh I'll just see what happens if I try challenging myself to start a YouTube channel and now here we are 500,000 subscribers later uh it's completely changed my life in terms of like friendships I've met so many interesting creators and connect with cool people all over the world I felt like I can have an impact and share what I want to talk about with other people and they're actually interested to hear what I have to uh and then also financially as well obviously YouTube does give you kind of AdSense and sponsorship opportunities as well so literally like every single aspect of my life has been changed by this decision to start a YouTube channel and at what point did you realize that YouTube could actually be a viable I guess full-time income there was a point about just over a year ago where I so I was working full-time as a doctor so in the UK it's called Foundation year one basically the first year after graduating doctors in the UK aren't actually paid that much um but there was a point in around October last year where the AdSense revenue from my YouTube channel which I was sort of uploading a video to every like two weeks or so or like maybe even once a month exceeded the monthly salary from my full-time job as a doctor and I was like oh my goodness because I would be working maybe 50 hours a week at my day job and spending a couple of hours maybe 4 hours a week on my YouTube channel and this just didn't really make sense to me and I was like oh my gosh the system is broken how is this happening and that's the point where I realized oh this is actually making more money than my full-time gig with just absense so this is ignoring any other like sponsorships or any other ways that you can monetize a YouTube channel cuz I wasn't really trying to monetize it that hard at that point I was just trying to keep making videos um and yeah that was a a big light bulb moment for me nice so I'd love to kind of trace your journey from kind of uh sort of chronologically through time because I think there's some interesting learnings along the way uh a lot of people that watch this channel want to start a YouTube channel when we do community polls and stuff maybe 30% of the audience is I want to start a channel but I haven't started yet and when we dig deeper into that we find that a lot of the reasons why people don't start a Channel at all is because of fear there's some sort of fear that's holding them back uh how did you get over that fear and I guess what was that experience of getting over the fear of starting the channel initially I felt like prior to starting my YouTube channel I actually had a lot of fear around even just posting on Instagram to the 500 followers who are my friends or people I knew from school or uni I I felt a lot of fear around even doing that so actually YouTube was this thing of like okay how can I challenge myself and do the craziest thing that would be the scariest and see if I can do that and I was like okay I'll start a YouTube channel and getting over the fear of starting was a combination of a few things I think the first thing that I had to realize was if I don't try this I'll never know if I could do it and if I could push myself and realistically all the all the fear is in my head and so if I can think of ways to reframe it and embrace it instead of resist it that would help me to actually get going and do this thing so for me that looked like reminding myself that probably no one's going to be watching my videos to start with which was true they only got like a few hundred views maybe for months and months and months my videos would like cap at like maybe 200 views 300 views for most of my videos so I was like okay cool this kind of feels like a safe space where it doesn't really matter if it's embarrassing or if it's if it's bad I can just put something out there and probably no one's going to watch it anyway so that kind of felt like okay that feels safe the second thing was I was reminding myself that actually no one's really going to care if I start a YouTube channel no one's really going to comment on it or or like be negative for no reason and if they do that says more about them than it does about me because I'm the person actually trying to do something I'm I'm giving it a go I'm not hurting anyone I'm just making silly internet videos and so I try to remind myself of those two things and also this whole thing of actually like if if I didn't try this I would never know and that would probably eat me alive a little bit so I love it oh by the way quick thing if you are looking for some specific advice on exactly what to do depending on what stage of the YouTube growth Journey you're at whether you're a beginner or intermediate or Advanced then you should definitely check out my completely free YouTube growth scorecard it's basically a free quiz it will ask you a few questions to get a sense of where you are and then it will give you tailored recommendations based on what your answers are so that'll be linked down below and it's completely free uh what made you decide to join the parttime YouTuber Academy so Ali and I actually knew each other from medical school we went to the same College doing medicine a few years apart and I remember when I was planning on starting my YouTube channel I was like oh yeah like I remember I remember Ali from med school he has a YouTube channel um I'll message him and ask for some tips if I can join this course and I thought okay I'll give it a go and when I looked at what the course was about I was like oh part-time YouTuber Academy perfect I wasn't thinking of it as a full-time gig at that time at all I was thinking oh this is like a a fun little hobby that I could do and fun little challenge for myself maybe I can earn a few pennies or something like that pay for lunch in in like the long run and so I was like okay I'll try this out seems to fit what I'm kind of going forward with this you start off making videos they're not getting that much traction they're getting a couple hundred views but mostly those views are coming from the fact that other people in the YouTuber Academy are sort of watching each other's videos and stuff um when which is another reason you should join the party yeah exactly you get free views uh what was the first video that really took off and why did it take off do you think it was was the video about learning Mandarin I had gone on this little Mandarin Learning Journey for around 6 months or so beforehand where I was intensively self-studying Mandarin and it didn't take off as soon as I posted the video it was kind of a flatline for ages but then gradually gradually I think it was being searched by people and being picked up in search of like how to and Mandarin and slowly gained views until the point where it had this like exponential curve and then suddenly popped off and I think the reason why this one took off was a combination of things firstly it's very searchable so even for a channel which doesn't really have uh many subscribers it could actually be picked up in search gradually over time the second thing was that actually the video was about a topic that not everybody can make a video on so it wasn't overly saturated it was like actually this was a slightly different take to learning Mandarin it is an interesting topic and also lots of people are Keen to do it so in the part-time YouTube academy one thing that you talked about was figuring out what kind of video do people desperately need and actually would give them a lot of value and so people searching for how to learn Mandarin they're like desperate to figure out okay how can I learn Mandarin and this video was answering that question whereas some of my other videos which were like for example about habits I mean there's a lot of stuff out there it's not answering really a specific question and it's easy for anybody to make that kind of video but to make the Mandarin video I had a competitive advantage in that I was actually doing the thing which takes hundreds of hours to actually do it so I I think it's some kind of combination of those things um and people resonated with it and that one took off yeah yeah I think that's a really interesting point what we have seen from like 4,000 plus students in the YouTuber Academy is that one of the biggest predictors of success on YouTube at least in this sort of talking head educational content sort of educational content rather than entertainment content which is completely different one of the biggest predictors of success for educational content is does the person actually have expertise in the thing that they are trying to talk about now you can get this expertise from doing the work yourself like you did the work to learn Mandarin over a 6-month period and put hundreds of hours into it and so now when you make a video about it it's automatically going to be way better than I don't know a video that someone someone makes where they're trying to summarize a book or something because you've got the personal experience and there's something about that that people can just tell that oh my goodness this person has done the work and I think we you see this in like Alex hosi stuff blowing up like he's literally built $100 million businesses it's obvious that he's built $100 million business is and even if he didn't say it the just the way that he talks about it the advice that he gives it's just really obvious that it's coming from deep personal experience and that really resonates with people on YouTube I think the other way of getting that experience is just doing loads and loads and loads of research so for example Johnny Harris does tons and tons of research into his videos he's not leaning into particular expertise advantages well other than the fact that Johnny Harris is a journalist and has been doing it for 20 years you know in in the course we we talk about this idea of proof of work the audience wants to see proof that you have done the work and you can do that by clearly showing that hey I've been on this journey and this is what I applied you can do it by doing loads of reading loads of research but that's one of the ways that you really stand out in a saturated Market but if you'd started out just making videos about five productivity tips how I stay organized with notion it's like hundreds of people are already doing those things MH but the video that went viral was the one about Mandarin y yeah which was a surprise to me as well because when I started the channel I was like oh I'll just try talking about a couple of things I'm interested in and Mandarin was was a bit of a throwaway cuz I like oh this is quite different to all the other videos I've made but I'll just make it anyway because no one's watching my channel anyway so me as well and actually that's another thing I'd say is that early on it is worth experimenting with different kinds of content the kind of videos that you think that you might end up making could be quite different to actually what people actually resonate with so try out a couple of things give it a go for a couple of couple of your interests and couple of topics uh and while you're starting stting out just think of it as an experiment I feel I still feel like I'm experimenting with my YouTube channel um one of the one of the things we often teach on the course is this idea of treating a YouTube channel like a business I wonder for you like so we've got some mutual friends now who for example treat YouTube as a hobby they're not that intentional about it they're doing it for themselves rather than and they're doing it for fun and they're saying I'm going to make the videos that I want to make whereas the people who treat it more like a business bu you know a business is an entity that provides value to others it's not really about you it's about what value you can give to others and it's not really about I want to have fun it's more about how can I add so much value to other people's lives that I'm able to monetize some proportion of that value so I'm curious for you like what are the ways in which you treated YouTube as a business in the early days yeah so early on I was trying to figure out which parts of the process I actually wanted to do versus actually wanted to Outsource and this was something that PT actually helped to inspire me to do in in figuring out what I can Outsource what I can delegate to other people was a really valuable question to have and so fairly early on I decided to Outsource my editing so I was like okay I've edited a couple of my videos I kind of know how the thing works but actually this is taking me a lot of time and I'm not loving it so could I find somebody who does enjoy doing it who is offering their services as a freelancer on like upwork or fiver or phph and see if they could do it for me and so then I put out some ads for that and then started to delegate very very early on I think this was like a couple of months into my YouTube channel uh before it was making any money at all so this was a bit of an investment from my part I remember I was tutoring on I talkie to pay for the editing because I thought okay I can tutor an IT talkie and with two or three hours of tutoring I can pay for somebody to edit a video which would usually take me like eight hours so I was like okay that seems like a good deal I'll do it so I think approaching it from this aspect of like okay what is actually my unique offering to this business what do I do best what do I enjoy and what can I actually delegate to others was a big thing I think the other thing was thinking of it as a thinking of it as an investment so the reason why decided to do this tutoring in order to pay for the editing wasn't because I was purely approaching it just as a hobby I was like okay I want to I want to do this thing sure I'm a bit inconsistent I'm only posting videos every like two weeks maybe every month as long as I keep at that kind of cadence that's fine and so the reason why I was doing that is because I was like okay where is this going to go I'm going to do this for at least a year or two and invest throw this money and time into the well and see what comes out at the end of that so you have been struggling with consistency is the impression that I get absolutely like someone while watching this will be feeling the struggle and they want to sort of relate yeah and I don't struggle with consistency and so they can't relate to me right so but you struggle with consistency so they can totally relate to you why don't you struggle with consistency um have you ever struggled with consistency no not really there have been times recently but it's you know I'm six six and a half years into my channel I can afford to take a break I have enough money like there's all of those factors I think the the thing that was driving me so much in the early days was I need to buy my financial freedom and that when that is the thing it's like what what I'm trying to escape the fate of all these doctors that I see where they're Shackled to a job that they freaking hate and that is such a profound motivator that I'm like of course I've got to stay consistent I've got I've got the opportunity to literally escape the matrix as it were yeah and so when people in our in our Academy would struggle with consistency I wouldn't really really be able to relate to the emotions behind it because for me the why behind it was so strong that I'm I'm Escaping The Matrix obviously escaping before I had language of Escaping The Matrix yeah escaping wage slavery but you struggle with consistency and I suspect like I want to make money and be financially free is less of a core driver for you yeah very much so I think I probably approach it less towards a business end than you so obviously there's a spectrum of like hobby hobby to business I think I'm somewhere in the middle where I want to enjoy making videos I want to enjoy the process and feel like I'm making videos that I'm excited by and I'm not really willing to sacrifice that for Escaping The Matrix completely although I do approach certain elements of it with a kind of business mindset not everything is it's very much this whole creative slash business creative business I guess where there's something in the middle so I think for me I would sometimes get into this cycle where I would feel like oh I should make a video to be consistent cuz everyone says consistency is so important and all of that but then I'd feel like oh I just don't I'm not really feeling it I'm either like tired or like I'm really busy or I feel like uninspired I'm like oh what am I going to talk about anyway and it just didn't feel alive or exciting and so there were times when I'd push through and I'd be like okay Izzy you are going to make a video and I'd make myself make the video but then I'd always feel a bit like worse about my YouTube channel after that and so it was this real struggle of figuring out how can I enjoy making videos while also having some kind of schedule and I think one thing that helped me a lot was changing the focus from output as in how many videos I'm doing per week to the actual input instead and that was actually a big help helper for me and my channel so instead of feeling like okay I have to do one video every single week no matter what it was like okay I just have to dedicate this time to input into my YouTube side Hustle and then see when a video feels ready from that so it felt less tense and less stressful and one thing I've also realized is that the biggest existential risk to my YouTube channel is me not enjoying making videos which is not really what I want I want to kind of enjoy what I'm doing so that's kind of how I think about it does that kind of answer the question yeah I think so um you have a bunch of other friends who struggle with consistency what are some of the struggles that they have as well is it the same idea of like I feel like I'm forcing myself to do this thing and I don't really want to do the thing or what is it I think you're quite unique in that having your motivation was enough to push you to be consistent because a lot of people they they feel like they have the strong why but they don't follow through on it and so what what do you think about you and your approach to YouTube was different to everyone else who says they have a strong why for example I know me or other people but they don't follow through necessarily yeah I mean this is i' I've written a whole book about this it's called uh can you uh pass that over please this I I carry this around everywhere with me um this is literally what my book Feelgood productivity is about like I I think it's it's easy to get into the thing of it's It's either or it's either I enjoy the process or I stay consistent and I found very early on that the way to make anything sustainable is to make sure you're having fun along the way I never had any outcome goals I never cared about subscribe account or Milestones or anything like that the only goal I had was I'm just going to make one video a week and I'm going to try and enjoy the process of doing that I'm going to try and get a little bit better each time mhm so sometimes I'd be trying out new editing to tactics and stuff cuz I was editing my own videos for the first two years and that would give me this dopamine boost of like I'm I'm leveling up leveling up is a thing that drives intrinsic motivation um sometimes I'd kind of do my editing I'd like take my laptop into work and do the editing in like the doctor's common room just for a little bit of a change of scenery when I was a medical student you know going into work was somewhat optional so I joined the wardr in the morning be very specific about what patient I wanted to see and then go into the doctor's mess or in the coffee shop and do the editing there and so just kind of approaching YouTube in the same way that I've approached like my business or my studies which is how do I find a way to make this a little bit more enjoyable knowing that that's the thing that's going to energize me and going to keep it sustainable hm and I'm absolutely addicted to making everything everything a little bit more fun um cuz I yeah I don't believe in the whole like discipline coercion kind of narrative yeah is there anything else that you found found helpful in the early days to sort of get over the I guess the emotional hurdles and staying consistent and and all that kind of stuff yeah another thing I would say is that often we think that everyone's looking at us and there's this thing called the spotlight effect you talk about a bit as well sometimes uh where we think that oh we have a spotlight on our own lives and we think everyone else must be pay just as much scrutiny to us as we to ourselves but actually they're worried about their own lives they're not really worrying about us and that's quite a liberating thought when you realize oh no one's really worrying about what I'm doing that much it's kind of freeing and I can follow my own heart and my own dreams without worrying too much on that point though I I do know that there is the fear like oh what if like there is something somebody who says something bad about my YouTube channel and I can really relate to this fear because I have the exact same worry and actually it was it came true to an extent there were some people who did have bad things to say about my YouTube channel they did say oh my God guess who started a YouTube channel I would hear about this on the gra Vine uh and it would hurt it would feel bad but one thing that I think about in terms of this is that no one who has started a successful YouTube channel will talk badly about a beginner on YouTube they would never they'd be like I remember when I was in your shoes and I remember how hard it was and I respect you for giving it a go and trying to to do this thing putting ourself out there feeling the fear and doing it anyway and so I just remember you know what like actually one of these people who had even talk a bit badly about about me and my YouTube channel they actually had tried to start their own YouTube channel a year before but then they'd given up and then they decided to try to Reign on my parade and so it's this whole thing of most people are either going to be supportive and nice or they won't really car the way they'll be like okay cool you do you and the people who are going to be negative if there are any what they're saying says much more about them than it does about you and you are on a different path to them you have chosen to put yourself out there to try this thing start a new business start a YouTube channel learn a new language anything like this you have decided on a different path and you're following your own dreams so don't let one or two people who might say a few negative things which says more about them than it does about you stop you from doing the things that you want and living the life that you love that's what I would say that was really good that was so good I felt I felt like the I felt like my sort of the the the the strings of my heart being tugged out there with like that that motivational moot motivational Workshop yeah good stuff I honestly feel I feel emotional when I talk about it because it is it is a real struggle that I had early on I think a lot of people do have and that fear around judgment fear of I don't know fear of failure as well or even fear of success you're like oh like what's going to happen if actually this video blows up is it going to reach a million people then I get loads of haters and there are going to be negative comments there are going to be positive ones as well and one thing that I did early on was like I actually trained myself to be extremely equanimous when it came to the YouTube comments so whether there was a negative one or a positive one I'd be like okay I'll just meditate and try to remove all this craving and aversion to the comments but over time I've also realized that that is also in itself a bit of a a crutch in a way because it prevents me from feeling the positive comments deeply and so when I see comments on my channel now I kind of try to approach it instead of being like okay they're just the comments don't worry about the comments I think okay like somebody is showing me genuine appreciation they're saying thank you for this amazing video and I should feel that that's a person that has connected with my video and that's amazing that's just somewhere in the world and they've watched this video of me and taking the time to reach out and let me know that they appreciated it so feeling that as well is so important and also recognizing that negative comments they're usually actually more about the person writing it than about you because if I saw a video that I didn't necessarily love I wouldn't take the time to say something mean to the person for no reason and I don't think you would either person watching this I doubt you would because it's like okay they're doing their thing that's cool they can keep doing their thing so try to sort of what I would say is try to like relax into okay there is going to be all of this response to my videos at some point maybe not super early on but at some point and that's fine it's just all okay as it is and you can just welcome it in that's what I would say nice is that is that enough love that love that um one issue that I still have to this day is when I hit record yeah I I get this sort of feeling of sort of pressure rising up of like sort of feel feels like there's big weight that like it feels like a big kind of push that I have to do to get started with filming filming the videos yeah oh I have that too can you tell me more what are the internal narratives that go on when when you think about or you start filming a video so when I put up little q&as on my Instagram about oh what questions you have about YouTube they often ask how are you confident on camera how can you talk to a camera and come across naturally I think it's really common to feel really tense in front of the camera I definitely did at the start and even to this day there's a sense of like oh I'm performing and presenting to the camera which I'm always trying to negotiate with do you feel like you're doing that right now yes and so the the solution that I have tried to work towards is actually imagining I'm just talking to one person so whether that's initially it was my sister or my mom I just like okay I'm just making a video for for my sister or I'm just making a video for my mom no big deal it's chill I can I can just be me and like relax in front of the camera and it's not like this big old presentation remember that you also have full control in the edit and if you don't like it for whatever reason you can just get rid of it it's fine it's just you're just filming a video but now one thing I think about is this idea of a Target Avatar this is essentially who I imagine I'm talking to so I have this idea of somebody called Bella who is 22 years old just graduated uni kind of like me a few years ago but obviously not doing medicine cuz medicine is a long ass course so some somebody kind of a bit like me who's interested in personal B and they're interested in taking care of their health and wellbeing she wants to level up she wants to learn a language maybe Mandarin and I imagine okay I'm talking to Bella and talking to myself from a few years ago it's almost just like younger sister role and I think for everybody it's going to be different who the target Avatar is but just having this idea of like one person that you can speak directly to and share your personal experiences with is a really powerful way of getting past this feeling of like oh my God I'm talking into this like black whole of this lens like what is going on which is really it feels unnatural because it is unnatural so by having that image in your head of I'm talking to Bella or I'm talking to whoever that is for you can help us to feel more confident and share our message more authentically sick that's good that's a really good strategy um I find I find that whenever I I I do the one person thing it also it also massively helps M yeah um question how did it feel when I I'm ask I'm asking you the feelings you T questions because I feel like when when you were doing the the speak from the heart thing that was like really really powerful um how how did how how did it feel when you started hiring people I remember one time you you you messaged me and I was encouraging you to hire like a head of content or something and you had a lot of like oh no I I I couldn't possibly hire someone because that would mean I'm a business person and I'm not a business but like M there was that yeah what was that experience like for you there was a lot of impostor syndrome around this identity of being a YouTuber or business owner because I felt like oh that couldn't possibly me be me I'm just I'm just Izzy I'm just doing medicine or like medical student or like a I'm just a doctor this is this is me and I think having that actual moment where I was like when I hit 100 Cas of subscribers I remember that day I was like oh I've literally got a silver play button plaque coming in the post I guess I'm kind of a YouTuber and that was the day that I felt like okay now I'm actually a YouTuber and equally with the whole business thing the day that I put out these applications for my head of content was the day that I felt like okay maybe this is actually a real business rather than just me messing around and like doing tutoring on the side to pay for Freelancers and that kind of thing I think it's useful for people to hear that even someone who is on the outside successful on YouTube and your channel has grown sort of ridiculously fast one of the fastest growing channels I have ever come across it's it's very useful for people to hear that even someone who's very successful in YouTube struggles with all of the things that you're talking about struggles with the consistency struggles with worrying what other people will think struggles with negative comments struggles with like hiring people for example your videos are very polished you don't do videos where you just sit and talk to the camera and speak from the heart for like 3 hours at a time and share all your feelings and stuff yeah you maybe might record for 2 hours and that would turn into a 13-minute video which your editor has like chopped the hell out of put loads of b-roll on it's like it's very it's very produced which is similar to mine yeah and so people all people get is like oh my goodness Izzy's got it all together and I really noticed this with my channel um where you know there was this agency called 16th that I really wanted to join back in the day is like you know these other study tubers that I knew like Jade and Ruby and Jack they all part of this agency and it seems like this seemed like this club and I I really wanted to get an invite to the club but no one ever ever reached out to me from and then a few years later I happened to become friends with the founder of the company and I said to him hey man you know I was you know why why why don't you guys reach out to me and he said oh I mean we we wanted to but it seemed like you had it all so together it seemed like you just knew what you were doing and you were just crushing it it seems it seemed like you didn't need us I was like oh wow like the impression that my channel gave in the early days was I had my together yeah but the actual internal reality was all of these kind of issues I mean I didn't struggle with consistency consistency but all of the other issues where I felt like left out you know you know no one's reaching out to me I'm not getting any sponsorships I feel like my Channel's big enough like come on like what's going on and it just looked like I was I was coasting and chilling and so I think this is why I'm so keen on talking about these sort of internal struggles because you know if there's even one person listening to this who has been thinking that they are a dumbass because they're having all these feelings and all these and all these issues hearing someone else that they can possibly relate to who is successful and yet also having all these issues I think is profoundly valuable yeah so I I know to you it feels like a ramble but what feels like a ramble to you can be genuinely life changing advice to other people yeah fair enough well I do have issues I I have here um yeah I do struggle with my YouTube channel it feels like uh every few weeks I have so I've started doing this thing I've always had a strong journaling practice but at some point I realized that I have a lot of feelings around my YouTube channel that were not adequate addressed in just like a personal journal or it was starting to dominate so actually I started a specific Business Journal is what I called it when I decided okay I'm going to embrace this idea that actually it's a business it's like okay my Business Journal I'm going to write about all my feelings about my business loads of limiting beliefs around money and imposter syndrome and like who who you who do I think I am to even say that I'm a YouTuber and I have a YouTube business like what what on Earth is that and so I'd have all these limiting beliefs around that and just try to like consistently challenge those I still struggle with those to this day I don't think I'll ever stop struggling with them I think they just gradually get soothed down over time but they're always going to be there and I think a lot of people do have these limiting beliefs that they struggle with actually what was interesting cuz going to this Tony Robbins event called business Mastery and there he talked a lot about getting into state so basically like getting like hyped up literally get us like dance and like do all this raising our hands up in the air and then while in that state being like okay how do I feel now like how do I feel about committing to certain actions for my business that's actually quite helpful because it gets me out of my head and more into actually this sensation of feeling capable and feeling like actually I can do things and feeling open to just giving things a go that kind of energy so I do find that helpful nice and while we're here would you recommend people is interested in starting a YouTube channel to join the parttime YouTuber Academy sorry bit of a non-sponsored you aren't being paid to say any of this for the record yeah know I'm I'm not being paid to say any of this although you do have an affiliate link I do yeah so put my affiliate link Down Below in your video no maybe not anyway would I recommend it I would 100% recommend it if you are looking for something to save you the confusion I think that was the main thing was that when I was trying to figure out okay how do you start a YouTube channel there's so much noise and so much conflicting advice out there people saying like you need to do that you need to like only focus on your title and thumbnail people saying that like actually like it's all about the content people who are saying that like you need to have loads of primary colors in your thumbnail or have a Mr Beast face in your thumbnail and I was like is this all real and so the part-time YouTuber Academy distilled down a lot of the stuff that was out there because I mean fundamentally all the information is is kind of out there scattered around the internet and with conflicting kind of messages but I kind of distilled it all down and was in one place I was like okay if I just follow this road map this will be a really solid start to my YouTube Journey so I would highly recommend it especially if you're kind of beginner or like earlier on in your YouTube journey I think it's much more relevant then uh and I also actually connected with a few cool creators via the parttime YouTube Academy so actually also started a podcast with them called milliseconds apart for a little bit we've not been very consistent but I think that's a theme for my YouTube channel slightly um and yeah so would highly recommend it so check out the link below if you're interested in part time YouTu that was good completely unrehearsed like genuinely actually unrehearsed so that was was very um what are some of the narratives that go through your mind you you mentioned you had all these limiting beliefs like can you can you give us a flavor of some of them some of the limiting beliefs that I struggle with is like oh this sense of imposter syndrome like who am I to make this video am I the right person to make this video but the thing that I've realized over time is that in fact there's no one else who can make my video other than me if I weren't making my video it just wouldn't exist and it wouldn't be out there and if I even have something to share that would help one person then it's worth actually making that video I think the fact that you're struggling with it today is is even better so what's what's cuz you've got 500,000 subscribers and you still struggle with it like that's interesting also still struggle I mean I still struggle with it as well but I'm curious to hear your thoughts and then I'll share mine what are your thoughts why don't you share your thoughts every time I make a video I think what's the point of making this video and I I literally have a list of things that I read out to myself like affirmations that remind me why I'm doing this these are the things that I I remind myself I don't care about the performance of this video my only goal in making it is to share a message that I think is worth sharing for whoever wants to hear it I intend to integrate my mind heart and soul to share this message in a way that feels authentic and natural mhm I'm not trying to force anything here I'm merely speaking from the heart with the mind to inform structure and content and the soul to remain connected to the purpose behind the video wow that's so cringe am I right I love it I'm going to enjoy myself and treat this process with lightness and ease lightness and ease so sweet when I'm on my death bed I'd give anything to be back here in the present moment doing what I love sharing myself with the world in a way that's enjoyable and energizing when you're on a death bed oh my goodness I'm going to keep that in mind and not treat this process with too much seriousness heaviness or importance M and finally I'm speaking to an individual who really cares what I have to say and who really wants to learn from me to level up their own life I'm in service to that person not to my own ego not to the retention stats not to the algorithm I'm purely in service to the person who has clicked on this video and whose life could be genuinely Changed by what I'm about to say I love that and I literally read this out before filming videos so that it gets me into the right state where I feel less of like oh this has to be this has to get a million views this has to get 100,000 views oh if the view cun goes down the bloody sponsors are going to start reducing our rate and then we've got all these expenses and we're going to be broke homeless and alone and all of this sort of stuff is where the mind can spiral into MH um even for someone like me who on the surface seems to have have their together yeah that's so true I think I've really struggled with metrics as well nice and I I think it's the whole thing of where when you start to see the numbers go up then you start to be a bit obsessed over the numbers and you're like okay this the numbers no longer going up as much as it was going up for oh no is the is the world ending is the YouTube channel going to die is this like the start of the end is this all going to sort of collapse around me and just be nothing because on the YouTube Studio dashboard um I know you you are very familiar with this but there there are these arrows that kind of either point up as a kind of up Green Arrow or like a down gray Arrow depending on how your Channel's performance is relative to its like usual and obviously with something like YouTube it's going to kind of undulate and be this slight wave of okay things going up sometimes are going down that's absolutely fine but having these gray arrows appear on your YouTube Studio feels really bad and literally YouTube in YouTube studio if you have a really well performing video it'll have like fireworks like and sparkles appear if it's like a one out of 10 video which means it's like the best performing video out of the previous 10 videos that you've had and so literally like even the way the studio is designed is to get to you and to feel like you need to make things perform better and I've sometimes found that focusing too much on that is actually really unhealthy and develops this very metric focused mindset when it comes to my YouTube channel rather than a kind of purpose and service focused approach for most of my videos the first thing that I come up with after thinking of the main concept is what I call the heart of the video and this is where I just ramble for a little bit on my keyboard about okay why am I making this video what is the point of this video who is who is this video for and what question am I answering with this video and I'll just write a little bit about this and get a little bit soppy and have a good time and that gives me the sense of connection to the purpose of the video the problem with the metrics is that it kind of takes away from that and it's like okay the video needs to hit 100K views or it needs to do XY Z or if it doesn't do that then the sponsors are going to be unhappy with it I can't make an experimental video because there's a high chance it's going to tank relative well tank is kind of negative language I guess but there's a high chance that not as many people are going to be interested in it because it's a new topic or random thing there is a small chance that actually will do really well or actually I'll love making the video but this obsession with metrics and numbers almost dampens down on this creative spirit and connection with purpose so that is another thing that I continually struggle with and over time it's getting a little bit better as I'm learning to recognize when that pattern is starting a lot of creative friends I've spoken to have had this exact same struggle with metrix I think Matt Della literally made a a chrome plug-in called what goodbye metrix is it yeah something like that yeah like no metric something along those lines where it basically hides all the metrics on YouTube Studio to just let you actually focus on creating something that you love rather than worrying about whether the arrows are green or gray or whether there's fireworks or no fireworks so I guess another thing I would say is try not to worry too much about the metrics going on in the YouTube Studio they are helpful especially some bits of the analytics around like clickthrough rate for thumbnails and titles early on in a videos performance or things like AB testing which kind of use that um use the metrics to inform decisions around thumbnails and titles but other than that try to keep the creative Spirit Alive and find that sense of fun and enjoyment in what you're making to be truly making content that you're really proud of and if you want a practical guide on how to make the content more fun check out my book yeah check out 's book did you guys know that the secret to productivity isn't discipline it's Joy if you want to find out how to find more joy in your work and the things that you're doing and life generally would highly recommend this book it's this whole road map with three sections to it of how to find energy from the work that you're doing whether that's your career or whether that's just a healthy habit you want to do like I know going to the gym three times a week and so yeah highly recommend this Ali's put in so much work and there's so much research and thought that's gone into this book and it's a completely new way of approaching productivity which I feel like is very needed because over the last maybe five or so years there's been this sense of oh you just need discipline or like motivation is a myth I don't personally necessarily feel that way and I think my experiences with my YouTube channel and my business have really clarified that that does not work for me and I think it doesn't work for many people as well so this is a nice middle way where it redefines the relationship we have with productivity so check it out that was really good for someone who's not even read the book that was actually a very solid a very solid sponsored sponsored plug you're so welcome which you're not being paid for for the record yeah where's my money yeah um I'm actually a business owner so I'm going to demand some yeah well let's see like really leaning into that identity uh where can people find more about you and what video should should we link over here you want to do an end screen sales pitch as we as we teaching the course as part of the hives framework yeah okay you can find me over on my YouTube channel and on Instagram or all the other socials at Izzy cely so check me out over there I make videos about personal development language learning if you're learning Mandarin then check out some of my Mandarin learning videos If you enjoyed this video we also did another video over on my channel which you might want to check out I will link it somewhere over here I don't know where it's going to be but it's going to be somewhere on screen where we talk more about YouTube tips and I ask Ali a bit more about his experience with YouTube and what Pro tips he would have for somebody who wants to start a life-changing YouTube channel so check that out if you're interested amazing thanks very much thank you Izzy and we'll see you guys next time thanks bye bye

Channel: Ali Abdaal

Views: 266,310

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali abdal, ali abdaal productivity, ali abdaal, ali abdal, how to grow a youtube channel, how to grow on youtube in 2023, how to grow on youtube, how to grow a youtube channel today, make money on youtube, beginners guide to youtube, beginner youtube, advice for youtubers, what i would do today on youtube, ali abdaal youtube, how to grow a successful youtube channel, how to grow a successful youtube channeloutube in 2023, youtube advice, advice beginner youtubers

Id: MZqCZ_KT-70

Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024