One thing that I realized that I was doing wrong lately is I misinterpreted the number one thing
that differentiates a successful YouTuber and me because what I thought before was that they just
made higher quality videos which was a good interpretation which I think that is still true
but then I went on further and tried to extrapolate what their what makes their
videos higher quality and mine or not and the thing that I decided was their editing so I
decided that their editing was so much better and one type of video that I had in mind in
particularly was the hams of videos of the Jeffrey and Adonis videos those were highly edited very
like dopamine high all that stuff and then another type of video that I had in mind was my mentor
his YouTube channel is super high dopamine high edited videos and they're doing very well so I
decided that editing was a thing that I should be focusing on the most and now I'm realizing that
that's probably not the best thing and let me explain because I've been focusing the entire week
on editing and not really focusing on how to grow and improve as a YouTuber other than just the
editing except for the weekends because the way my schedule works is I basically work on the
YouTube video the new champ the new weekly video that I'm gonna post I start working on it maybe
on Friday or Saturday and I basically spend the whole weekend brainstorming and then I record it
and I have it edited just the raw footage edited by Monday and then Monday is when I actually start
to edit the visuals and the the audio and all that stuff and so I realized that that's probably
not the best because I was only spending maybe an hour per week focusing on my actual recording
abilities because on the weekends I would record seven to nine videos just for practice so I would
sit down one day and just crank out seven videos just to practice only on one day a week so I was
getting one hour per week of practice on my actual recording ability which I was aware that that's
probably not the best and now I'm even more aware of it because I'm realizing that I was flawed in
my thinking that you had to have extremely highly edited videos to have them perform well because I
was looking at some like I was researching different things for example the I recently posted a
YouTube video called how to get jacked as a high school student which I later changed to how to
build an aesthetic body as a high schooler and I realized my mentor told me that he basically
explained why he thinks that that video didn't do as well as my other ones and it was because the
title and the thumbnail was not very good which I agreed because my analytics definitely showed
that I was getting a lot of impressions but I was not getting that much clicks so it was definitely
the title and the thumbnail but so then I had to and then my mentor sent me a video Hamsa's most
popular video is the how to build an aesthetic body no BS guide and I basically copied that thumbnail
but when I was looking at that video I wanted to click on it and watch just like the beginning to
see like what made his video do way better than minded and I realized that his video was terrible
like the editing was terrible but he was just like the way his recording was good like the editing
I mean the editing wasn't terrible but it was not nearly as good as what I thought it had to be to
have a good YouTube video that's what I'm trying to say I thought that you had to have a super
highly saturated highly edited video to be successful on YouTube but he got five million views and it
was basically like a slideshow that he recorded and so then I'm thinking I didn't watch the whole
video so it might be different later on but I watched like the intro like the first 10 seconds
and I'm thinking like this video did super good even without the good editing and so after seeing
that video I kind of just like pushed it aside for a little bit because I couldn't extrapolate a
conclusion right away and then I saw another video did I even see another video oh yeah so and then
the next video that I was working on recording was deleting social media that was the one that as
of recording this it posted this morning and after I finished editing that video I wanted to look up
like other YouTube videos in that same topic and I wanted to see their thumbnails and so I was looking
at the thumbnails and I basically wanted to kind of model my thumbnail off of what the successful
videos of that genre or that topic were doing but then I ended up clicking on one of the videos
and it was literally just him talking there was no there was no editing and when I say no editing I
just mean no visual edits or audio edits it was just him talking now there were cuts like he cut
out pauses and like pride dumb stuff that he said but there was no visual editing and so I'm thinking
to myself after this and then also after the video that I saw like a week before or even like a
couple days before I'm questioning it might even do in the right thing and then I kind of just go
on with my day again and as you and there's one thing that I do every day twice a day I always
sit in silence for 30 minutes two times a day so I always do it in the morning and then I always do
one at night and during this particular day I was I just finished well actually okay let's let's
re-re-coup so I just watched this video and then I go on with my day and then I go to bed whatever
wake up and then yesterday I go on with my day and I'm just doing my normal stuff I didn't watch
any YouTube videos yesterday I just do my normal thing and then I go throughout my day and then
at nighttime during my nighttime silence like solitude session I this epiphany pops up in my
head I'm just laying there in the darkness just sitting still with my thoughts and then out of
the blue I'm like rummaging through my thoughts and just randomly this thing like this phrase pops
up in my mind YouTubers are just excellent storytellers and so I pondered that for a little bit I'm
thinking wait you like the difference between me and a successful YouTuber is the successful
YouTuber is a very good storyteller and I'm just not my storytelling ability or skills is not up to
par yet and so I right away I write it down because I keep my journal I'm basically always near a
journal or a notebook I have a journal right next like right on my desk at all times and then I have
a journal in my room at all times and then I also have a tiny little travel size like handheld
journal that I keep with also like a tiny little pencil that I keep in my gym bag and then I take
that out of my gym bag and go take it with me on a walk every time I go on a walk so I'm always
by a notebook because it's extremely important especially when you're doing this like super
monk mode that I'm doing right now when your life is like there's a there was a word for it I just
read the book called deep work and earlier in that book like in there's two parts the first part is
about like explaining why deep work is good and the second part was all about like strategies and
tactics to follow to cultivate your deep work better and one of the things there was three
different kind of lifestyles that you can live to cultivate your deep work one of them was basically
what I'm doing where you cut out all of the nonsense you cut out social media you cut out
email you cut out everything bad and then you're just left with your thoughts like you're just
thinking all day long so that's why I keep a journal with me all day long because oftentimes
I get epiphanies and like the my conscious my subconscious sends me thoughts and things on
how to move forward and so I'm sitting in the darkness last night and this thought comes to mind
YouTubers are just good storytellers I write that down really quick and it's pitch black so I don't
really know like I'm not good at writing in the darkness and also the thing is that I keep my like
in my journal it I have one of those like string bookmark things that's attached to the journal so
I open it up to the last page I was on and then I just have to remember like where is that where
is there a blank space that I can write on just from memory so I figure out where I can write and
I write down like focus on storytelling YouTubers are great storytellers and then I go to bed and
this morning I wake up and I'm just like I keep thinking about this and I'm thinking like storytelling
and there's so many connections that I made because then I watched a YouTube video on I just looked
up because I wanted to learn how to be a better storyteller and I don't want to watch YouTube
videos to learn how to be a better storyteller because there's this phrase that I always follow
or that I follow it's if you hear something you forget it if you see something you remember it and
if you do something you understand it and when you see or when you hear something that's you
watching a YouTube video like you're just gonna forget about that and then if you see something
you remember it so if you actually read it like and you see it in text then you're gonna remember
it but then if you do something you actually understand it so that's why I don't really like
to watch YouTube videos because you don't really get too much value out of them because you tend
to forget like I don't I barely even remember the one YouTube video that I watched I actually I do
remember it quite well because I was taking notes but it doesn't matter so I watched this YouTube
video because I wanted to look up the best books to I wanted to look up the best books on storytelling
and I just watched the YouTube video the five best storytelling books and I see I just watched the
whole thing through and then in the Google search I like there are two videos by the same person
one of them was the top five books and then the under another video was like the top three lessons
he learned from storytelling so I decided to watch the top three lessons one as well so I
watched the books one and I saw all five books and I quickly wrote them down on my Google docs
where I keep my reading list like future books that I might want to read I wrote it down in the
Google docs and then I picked two of the best ones that I thought were best for me right now
based off of his description and I ordered them they haven't come yet but then I go and watch his
other video the top five like most or there are the three lessons he learned from storytelling and
the three things I took notes and last night I told myself I was gonna remember these like I
watched the video I took notes and the first one was all about basically describing the character
traits of a person so he gave the description of stormtroopers in Star Wars get killed all the
time like you just see them getting mowed down by gunfire all the time and how do you feel when
they die you don't feel anything like they don't make you sad when you die why is that because you
don't know anything about them like they never they're just a faceless suit of armor to us they're
just nothing to us and so when you describe the person and you describe the character traits you
say oh this person Johnny he's very funny he's extremely outgoing and he is the life of the
party he always comes very well dressed and very he always makes everyone feel very happy every time
I'm around him he is making me he just makes me feel extremely blessed to have him as a friend
and then just the other day he was shot in the face and killed so that was just a story but like
you that was just me practicing and you care a lot more that Johnny got killed because I just explained
him I basically said like all these character traits and I basically explained who he is now he
is actually now you can actually visualize what he's like whereas a stormtrooper you can't like
stormtroopers are nothing to us so it doesn't matter if they get shot in the face to us so that
was the first one and then the second one was all about surprise so so I'm walking down the street
and walking my dog and in my community there's a lot of dog walkers there's dogs pretty much every
block I see a dog being walked and then I'm just walking just like every other day normal and going
on this walk and I turn the corner to the next street and then I just see this elephant and I'm
like what I'm in Chicago in a city and there's an elephant and then upon further investigation
I see that the elephant actually has a collar and is attached by a leash and then I just see this
macho shirtless jacked dude walking this elephant and I'm just standing there in awe I'm just like
what is going on am I dreaming or what now obviously that's just a story it didn't actually happen but
that is an example of using surprise as a way to be a better storyteller so this
surprising thing that happened was one the fact that this guy is walking an elephant and upon
reflection of this story I just came up with that story by the way on the spot but upon further
reflection of that story I could have made it more surprising by saying it's in the middle of winter
in Chicago freezing out it's snowing and then that would set the scene and then I could further
say that there's an elephant which would be surprise number one but then surprise number two
is that he's being walked by a jacked dude that's shirtless and the surprise that and then surprise
number three would be like he's shirtless in the middle of winter so that could like the surprise
element is what keeps people going and in the video he actually explained that they're
like people are habitual creatures they're they basically know what's gonna like people
can understand patterns and they can understand what what may happen and when something breaks
the pattern and a surprise happens we like it or maybe I don't know I don't remember what happened
or what he explained after that but basically breaking the pattern is what keeps people interested
into the story like people kind of zone out or click out when you if you if they can understand
the pattern and know what's gonna happen but if there's a surprise then they're there's they stay
attuned to the story and so the third one was actually one part of storytelling that I was
familiar with before and he said change which I learned about this originally in a book called
expert secrets by Russell Brunson and his word for it was called the journey of transformation
it's basically in a story in the beginning of the story people like the person is a certain way
and then by the end of the story this person completely changes and they're on like they
went on this journey of transformation so and every single movie that's been successful
has this journey of transformation every single one star wars avengers like superhero movies
and even just any like any movie any somewhat successful movie has this journey of transformation
and it makes it it basically creates an attachment it helps to create a bond between the storyteller
and the the person hearing the story so those are the three different basically the three
different pieces of storytelling that I learned about and this wasn't my intention when I first
sat down to record this video I actually was gonna record um a completely different video
topic for this episode but I just started talking and now I just went on this whole tangent but I
didn't stop it because I liked where I was going and now what I realized is that this is actually
a good opportunity I've been posting daily podcast episodes on like just posting daily but the thing
is like I said earlier I was recording them in batch like in bulk so I was basically recording
seven or nine episodes on Sunday or Saturday or Friday and then I would just forget about it for
the rest of the week and I wouldn't get any practice for the rest of the week but what I'm
realizing now is that well that's a bad first of all because I'm not getting practice but I have an
opportunity here because now I can completely change the I can actually I still want to have these
this series be practice and one thing that I was thinking about doing was sitting down actually let
me explain so the way this works is I sit down and record the video and then I have to put it into
a software to basically tune the sound and make the sound quality better and then I post it on to the
podcast and that takes quite a bit like it may take anywhere between five minutes to an hour
depending on the length of the video and I do that for every single day and that takes a lot of time
out of my day so I have some options here either stop doing the daily practice or at least stop
uploading the daily practice because in reality I don't really see much benefit to my growth if I'm
wasting a lot of time sitting at my computer waiting for it to load onto the software and just go
through that whole process an hour per video potentially or another thing is I could just
maintain the daily practice and kind of change it up a little bit and just practice my storytelling
every single time which is kind of what I've been doing but really focus on the storytelling
I don't know I'll decide what I want to do I did write down in my journal the other day to
stop doing the daily like stop posting daily practice onto the podcast but still actually
do daily practices I don't know I'll figure it out but that was the story of why that was just
everything that I said I'm gonna end the episode here because I kind of lost track of what I'm trying
to say