I've heard time and time again that the niche of self-improvement on YouTube is
extremely crowded, it's an extremely crowded market and it's impossible to
get into. It's impossible to break into. But to be honest, I do not care. I don't
care at all. Like people told Hamza that and guess what? He made it. And so I want
to basically walk you through everything that I'm doing to become a
self-improvement YouTuber. So over the... sorry. To start, let's go back a couple
months to the towards the end of summer when I started a podcast. This was the
first really action that I started to take to really hone or to really
practice my skills and to start to become a self-improvement YouTuber. I
started a podcast and I was posting daily. Eventually after 15 days I made it
to daily one-hour episodes. So I was posting daily for one-hour episode. So
I was getting one hour practice every single day. And this was the first major
step to becoming a self-improvement YouTuber because this allowed me to
practice actually speaking and getting... translating my thoughts into words and
translating it effectively. And so I was doing this every single day for practice.
And then after a while I realized I was plateauing. So then I... the next step was
to improve the quality because I was improving the quality through quantity.
But after a while I plateaued. So the quality was plateauing as well. So then
the next step was to start editing the podcast. And this really didn't... well
actually no. Let's go back. Then I switched to only recording once a week.
And this definitely helped because then I was able to really focus on all the
different aspects like editing and also planning out, scripting out. And I realized
quickly that scripting was not for me. I did not like scripting the videos. I would
rather just get the extra practice of learning how to actually communicate
effectively into a camera so I can translate into a real world... into a
real-world scenario. And so at this point I'm... I switched to
podcasting once a week. But then I realized that there's no discoverability on
the podcast. So then I switched to YouTube. And on YouTube I was posting... I am
posting once a week. And let's rewind before I get into this. I also want to
talk. Around maybe episode 80 I started posting... so after I got to episode 80 on
the podcast I started posting three TikToks every single day. Short-form
TikToks. And so now I was getting practice in the long-form one-hour content
as well as short-form less-than-a-minute content. So I was practicing two
different skills. Short-form content and long-form content. And then after maybe
20 to 30 days of this or 40 I don't know... of this I completely stopped. I
unlisted everything from my YouTube channel and started fresh and really
focused on three things. Recording, idea generation, and thumbnail and edits.
That's four things. So I was... I was focusing on recording and idea
generation. Those were my two biggest things. So to do that I went back to
posting daily one... okay not daily one hour but daily episodes on the podcast
just for practice. This is one of them. This is practice number 26 I believe. So
over the past 26 days I've been posting daily on the podcast just
practicing my recording ability. Because I realized after I stopped doing the
daily one hours I still wanted to practice my recording skills so I
continued doing daily posts. So this is helping improve my daily recording or
my... this is helping improve my recording skill which is the number one skill for
YouTube. And then the next thing... the next biggest skill that I realized I needed
to improve was idea generation. Because you can have an amazing recording, amazing
editing, amazing thumbnail but if the idea is bad then it sucks. Like the video
is not gonna go well. And so that's why idea generation, like having good video
ideas, is the second best skill, second most important skill for YouTube. And
this my philosophy may change over time but right now this is what I believe to
be true. Idea generation and recording are the two most important skills for
YouTube. And so for the idea generation I literally just sit in my room, set a
timer for 20 minutes, and literally just jot down any thought that I have of the
best YouTube titles possible. YouTube video, self-improvement YouTube video
titles possible. And then after at the end of that I like star the best ones
and then I quickly sketch the like a thumbnail because coming up with great
thumbnail concepts I quickly learned is very important as well. So that actually
the three most important skills is recording, idea generation, and then
great thumbnail and also great title. So great title and thumbnail. And so that
that's what I'm doing. I basically take the best ones and then jot down a quick
thumbnail sketch. And then what I just recently did today which I really
enjoyed and I really thought was beneficial was instead of just sitting in
my room, I but actually before I say this let me let me say over the past
couple days I have been doing a daily one-hour walk and this helps like clear
my mind, get rid of brain fog. But then today was the first day that I actually
had set the intention for my walk. The goal for my walk was to come up with a
structure for a future video, a future video which may have already posted by
the time this gets scheduled. Maybe not, I don't know. It's gonna be all about how
to build a physique in high school. And so that future video I wanted to kind of
map out and structure out all the key elements that I want in it. So that was
my goal for the walk but since I had an hour-long walk that only took like 10
minutes, I had other things I wanted to get done. So I brainstormed seven new
video ideas and I actually came up with eight instead of seven. So video titles
so I actually started brainstorming the video ideas on my walk which actually
they were flowing out like crazy and that was very good. And I came up with eight
ideas over the course of 50 minutes which doesn't sound like a lot but that's
good in my opinion. And then on that same walk at the end of brainstorming all
the ideas I literally just jot down all of the thumbnails. So if you're watching
on YouTube, this is the notebook that I brought. It's like literally a pocket size.
It's like this. It's literally smarter than my hands and I'm not sure if you'll
be able to see. Yep, right there. Here's some of my sketches for these past and
actually you'll be able to see these in real time. You'll be able to see the final
thumbnails of these. Actually I didn't sketch out the thumbnail for this video.
This was the only one but if you go to yesterday's episode it's gonna be called
or it was it's gonna be called how to heal your mind after high school.
This is like the thumbnail sketch that I came up with for that one so you can
you can see how it came out but that's pretty much what I'm doing to become a
YouTuber and well actually I completely ignored the editing and thumbnail part.
So another thing that I'm doing is I fast every single day until 10 a.m. so I
wake up at 4 a.m. and I fast until actually by the time I actually eat it's
probably around 11 o'clock so I fast until 11 o'clock every single day and I'm
not sure if it's very sustainable because I've definitely lost a lot of pounds
but the thing is that it's extremely it's helping me a lot because I go outside
or I go work out in the morning I do my weights and then and then right after
that I come home and come into the basement and just edit. I literally just
edit or make thumbnails that's that's what I do in the morning and then in the
afternoon working session after the walk I record or finish editing or whatever
needs to be done at that day I get done but I only recording the afternoons
because I don't want to record at like six in the morning when everyone else is
asleep but that's pretty much what I'm doing to become a actually no it's not
even all yet so I'm actually gonna show you I'm gonna pick up my webcam I'm gonna
show you right here let me turn off the light real quick sorry this video if
you're listening to on the podcast you should probably go watch it on the
YouTube channel James Radzinski because I'm showing on the video in that corner
it's in construction right now but my dad is painting it and then eventually I'm
gonna move my desk over and put up blackout curtains and have it completely
isolated and that's gonna turn into my office so that's basically my plan for
like my new workspace because right now I'm kind of just in the basement with a
curtain behind me like I can lift this up and you can see like behind but I'm
just in the basement which is fine it's definitely worked for the time being but
I'm gonna be working over there and it's gonna be way more isolated and I'm gonna
set up a couch in the corner and put a tripod in front of it so I can have a
different background a better background so look out for those in the next month
maybe hopefully it'll be done by like by February I don't know it depends on how
long it takes to to buy all the blackout curtains and all that stuff but
that's what I'm doing to become a self-improvement YouTuber.