Why I Disappeared (What Happened)

all right so it's been almost a year since I've posted on this channel and I felt like I should come on here and share with you what has happened why I stopped posting on this channel um and what's going to be happening in the future uh so just for full context this is probably one of the last videos that I'm going to create um on the platform uh this is not clickbait I think people probably saw this coming for a pretty long time considering that I really haven't posted very much especially in the past couple of years um there's a lot to talk about today you know if you normally come here for information and to learn something this video might not be the one for you it's going to be a bit more on the personal side I'm really making this video for myself and uh I think it'll just be interesting to look back on in 20 years uh but I thought it would be helpful to have some type of closure instead of me just disappearing had some people reach out ask did did you die are you still alive I'm still here I'm doing well um but I just wanted to to to create this here so where should we start um I I think to understand why I stopped creating videos and my thoughts on this we need to go back to why I started on this platform in the first place and this was in 2016 is when I started the channel which is about eight years ago um so look I grew up on YouTube I mean I YouTube was founded in what 2005 I was I was six or seven years old at the time and so I spend most of my life watching YouTube videos so you probably did as well that's probably why you're watching this video right now you spent a lot of time in the platform right and and so spending so much time on the platform uh at some point in 2016 when I was a freshman in college at Penn State um I decided that I'm finally going to start making videos and it's it's not something that I generally wanted to do like I've never been drawn to creating content per se uh it was more so that there was nobody making personal finance content on YouTube in 2016 and I know it's kind of difficult to like think about now because there's so many videos on personal finance and investing um or productivity and all these different topics but it really didn't exist in 2016 I was just talking to Graham Stefan about this when he started his channel around the same time in 2016 um and I think I was in a really lucky position to start that Channel at the time that I did uh and I kind of grew with the niche as the niche grew on this platform um and I remember people saying in 2016 it was too late to start on YouTube and I almost didn't create the channel because I thought it was too late YouTube was too mature of a platform um and looking back on that now it's kind of funny thinking about it it was actually pretty early 2016 um to to create a channel but you know I've I've lived and breathed YouTube for for so long for almost eight years and I've learned a lot over that time period and I think there's a couple of things that I could share about that um but the reason why I started was because I was looking for that content I couldn't find it and I thought someone should create it you know there was a bit of a gap in the market there um and so I started to just create videos and just started pumping them out one after another and one of my favorite things to do in life is is to to build something to to grow something um and so growing a YouTube channel was a really easy like T like tangible quantifiable thing to do was to grow a channel and so I had so much fun doing that you know along the way connected with so many people um and then there were also some byproducts of that as well like making money I never sold any online courses or anything like that on this channel but you know certainly made a decent amount of money from this channel just sort of as a byproduct of sharing ideas and creating content for this platform and I think that was also a really great bonus um to to everything all right so when I was uh 14 or 15 years old I set this goal that I wanted to retire by age 25 um or at least have Financial Freedom by age 25 so that I could do whatever I want for the rest of my life um and I'm not sure why I hit this phase like this this phase of my life at an really early age like most teenagers I think were just having fun and and doing cool things with their friends I was pretty weird um and I don't regret that I mean like that's just how I was so um but yeah I I didn't spend a lot lot of time hanging out with friends I didn't have many friends I was just obsessive over this um and so I guess it has worked out in a sense but I think I have hit that that goal of Financial Freedom by by 25 and so kind of looking over the past 10 years of how I got to that point um and reflecting on that quite a bit so when I was younger what I was trying to do was find a way to have massive value Creation in a very compressed period of time so like let's say that like for example um most people are going to work 40 years in their life say from age 22 to 62 they're going to work about 40 years and I wanted to find a way to compress that into a five or 10 year span of work up front like basically front load it at an early age so then you could then cruise for the rest of your life and hopefully this is making sense uh as I say it aloud here but um and so in order to do that I I realized that there's like a couple of different forms of Leverage that you could use to get to massive value Creation in a in a very compressed period of time and so one of those one of the first ones that I learned was human capital right and so this was uh one of the first businesses that I started with my brother Mike I was 14 he was 16 we started a firewood business he got his driver's license and we'd go around cutting up trees selling firewood and um the first like realization that I could potentially retire at a much earlier age was when I started to hire some of our friends in the firewood business and basically make a spread on their work and you know I'd pay them $8 an hour and they would make us an extra5 or $6 an hour uh profit for basically doing nothing from just hiring them and so making a spread on labor I guess you could say was like one of the first realizations that I had of maybe I can find a way to do this in a much shorter period of time um there's there's other forms of Leverage as well like money for example this is why they say that the the rich stay Rich right or the rich get um and it's it's very true like if you have $10 million in the bank and you're getting 5% interest on that bank account that's $500,000 a year in free money just for having money so um this is why rich people generally stay rich and so uh if you can get to a point of a large sum of money at an early age you could probably cruise on that indefinitely this is why people talk about like the rule of 72 and they talk about the 4% rule you can withdraw 4% per year compound interest you've probably heard a lot of that already so I won't go too into the Weeds on that point um but money is an excellent form of Leverage and so if you can get to it at an earlier point of life uh that can be extremely valuable and I think one of the big epiphanies that I had when I was um going into college when I was about 18 the reason why I started this Channel or one of them was realizing that social media was like the ultimate form of Leverage and maybe I spent too much time watching Gary vaynerchuk uh in my teenage years uh cuz he was always just screaming about content um but it's it's true I mean you can you can spend time talking to one person about an idea or using YouTube you can speak to Millions tens of millions hundreds of millions of people with the same effort that it takes to have one conversation with someone um and I think having that realization is really the reason why I forced myself to just start creating videos and you know that sounds kind of selfish of like one of the reasons why I started but it it's true you know it's because um I realized that there was quite a bit of Leverage there from social media I think I also have really valued having total freedom uh in in my life as well and you know tomorrow if I wanted to I could go fly to Japan and live there for a month and I don't really have many obligations and i' I've kind of crafted my life in in that way um and it's it's good and bad I mean I've always liked to do that have total free uh where I don't have to clock into work tomorrow it's it's really even with the people that work for us it's it's very much automated that's just how I have set everything up in my life so far um and that's something that I value a lot I think at some point I'm going to have to um give up quite a bit of that freedom just as I go through my life and you know start a family and other things that I I will willingly give up a lot of that freedom because it's it's worth it uh to to do that but um you know for examp example I spent a couple years living in my truck that was such a fun experience I'd recommend uh anyone and everyone who is capable of doing that even if it's just for uh a couple of weeks in the summer just go out on some government land live in your car do some camping uh it's just one of the best experiences uh having that freedom of you know waking up tomorrow and just deciding where you're going to go and and that's something that I've always really try to prioritize and try to find a way to get to um but yeah I would definitely recommend it's kind of a sidebar living in your car for some period of time just just because I think it's really fun um and and that really truly is like total freedom all right so I think we should just get into um what happened and why I decided to officially stop creating content on this channel and then what's going to be happening going forward in the future and some of the goals and things that I'm I'm looking forward to um and so there's a handful of reasons why I stopped posting content on this channel uh and the biggest one is because I felt like I had said everything that I needed to say I've made all the videos that I wanted to make and and and and the thoughts that I wanted to share I feel like 95% of those I've already done and so it got to the point where I had to I basically reached the crossroads of do I want to make repetitive content and do I want to create the same type of content regurgitate the same stuff every year um or should I not do that I and you know sure I guess I could find other types of content to create but I really didn't want to and so I look at someone like Dave Ramsey for example which I have a lot of respect for um but he he goes into the office every day for the past 40 years and he says the same thing every day and to me that is not fulfilling personally um and like I said no no no hate towards Dave uh he has some really great advice um but that's not something that like I looked in the mirror and said I I don't want to do that I don't want to to say the same thing every day um and I really don't like repeating myself because it felt like it wouldn't be growth or it wouldn't be as fulfilling to do that and so that was one of the big reasons why I ended the channel and you know people would say well why don't you just make other types of content uh and I didn't want to I wanted to create personal finance content or minimalism or productivity content and the things that I really genuinely wanted to share with you as an audience and so I think there's this this pressure of basically you could call it like the Creator hamster wheel um where there's this pressure to constantly create content and keep people updated and keep it going because if you stop posting there's this fear that you'll kind of fall off or become Obsolete and people will forget about you and so you have to keep stoking the fire continuously and I did that for about seven years I kept posting I really didn't take much time off maybe I took a few weeks off here and there but it was this constant pressure of always needing to post even if I didn't want to and I think a lot of creators and influencers uh can relate to this in in some way um and I really didn't like that that hamster wheel feeling now I'm also a very private person and although I've shared a lot of things over the past seven or so years on this channel I've also kept a lot of things private and I've always tried to do that because I just don't like airing out all of my life online um and so as we went through from 2016 to 2024 each year I wanted to share less and less about my life uh and I think that's just because I'm a very private person um the only reason why I've really had social media in the past few years especially was just because I felt like some obligation to update people on what was happening um in my life and I don't know if that's the right right way to do it and I I think I've I've realized that um I shouldn't be guilted in into feeling like I I have to create content uh I don't even know if that's right to to say that but that's that's just how I feel um and so I think the only other reason why I struggled to to end this Channel or why it took so long to stop creating content was because uh there was also this Factor especially this came from other influencers where you know you don't want to waste the potential of the channel that you've built um and maybe we're getting a little bit into the weeds here but I'm just speaking my mind here um and so there's this idea of you know you've built up this this YouTube channel where I could make a video every week and get a sponsor they could pay a pretty decent amount of money and I could probably you know squeeze a few more million dollars out out of this channel pretty easily by just making videos every week and automating it have a script writer and doing all that and so that was like something that was difficult to to let that go and say you know what I really don't I don't need the money from this either like that's not the reason why I created this Channel I didn't do it to make money um and so I don't need to do that going forward either I don't care if I'm leaving money on the table or potential on the table in any way because it's just not really something that I feel like doing anymore um so so yeah that's that's that's basically what happened that's why I don't post anymore it's just because I genuinely feel like I've said everything that I wanted to say and shared everything that I wanted to share all right so going forward um three goal that I have for the next 5 years uh I just feel like it'd be fun to share these and uh look back on this video when I turn 30 and and and see where we're at so uh goal number one it'd be really great to start a family um have to work on that you know not not very far along there uh still single so need to figure that out um and I think actually from like 18 to 24 I really didn't Focus too much on on dating I was just focused on um other areas of life I think if I had to prioritize from 18 to 24 I would say my priorities were my family uh my businesses and then priority three was like dating or relationships that was from 18 to 24 I think it's probably going to shift quite a bit as I prioritize um starting a family uh at some point hopefully in the next 5 years maybe 10 years I'm not going to rush it because I don't think that's something that you can really uh plan that easily um definitely don't want to rush that uh but yeah that's that's something that I would really love to get to buy age 30 at least to kind of work towards it incrementally uh in in some fashion uh goal number two would be really great to get to $100 million a year from our companies um I don't really share a lot of this but my brother and I have um some companies holding company with some other companies and and uh you know it's it's it's doing okay uh but I would love to really scale that up and grow it more and like I said earlier I really just love growing things and so what I did with my YouTube channel I would love to continue to do with our company and uh that's just something that I want to be able to wake up every day and have something to work towards and that's what I've been doing the past uh year and a half two years with my brother that we've really been trying to scale this um and it's been working quite well uh but yeah $100 million by $100 million per year by ag30 uh is the goal and I honestly think that it's achievable um but yeah we'll see how this video ages of course that's kind of why I'm making this and then uh goal number three would be to just buy a very large farm somewhere in Pennsylvania uh at least 50 acres but hopefully more like 500 Acres this is kind of difficult to come by to get like a really large farm uh there's not that many that come up on the market the ones that I want um and so that's just a goal that I would I would love to get to uh by age 30 as well those are my three goals for the next 5 years all right so I think that is going to wrap up the video um I I sincerely appreciate everyone who has watched this channel over the years whether it was like an apartment tour in 2019 or uh an investing video in 2017 or something more recent on on my Channel about you know phone addiction for example um all those videos were something that I I really hope were helpful to you that you found some value in that's always been my goal um like I said I I didn't really try to monetize this channel I I didn't really try to you know like I didn't squeeze as much juice out of this channel as I probably could have as some people told me to um and I I've I've enjoyed this process uh it's been such an incredible journey for myself and I I appreciate each and every one of you for supporting me so I just want to thank you one last time before I sign off here um I probably won't be making any more content on this channel there's a very rare 5% chance that I will and if I do make any future videos uh it's it's not going to be for the algorithm it's going to be just kind of personal videos maybe a life update every few years but that's probably about it so I think for the most part this channel is is um kind of closing the chapter here so uh I appreciate all of you thank you and uh I guess that's it

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 180,702

Keywords: nate o'brien

Id: bwojg1i9dls

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2024