You can't connect the dots looking forward.
You can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots
will somehow connect in your future.
That was a quote by Steve Jobs.
And it's something I've been thinking about lately
because it is April 3rd, 2024.
And I have been going through a lot of changes lately.
I've changed directions a lot in my business model.
So the last time you saw me was March.
And I only had 109 subscribers.
Now I only have 122.
So I'm not doing that great.
I only gained 13 subs,
which is still up from the previous gain of nine subs.
But I understand now that all the dots
are connecting because when I first started
really going all in on the YouTube channel,
I was making podcast videos
and I realized that I wasn't gonna grow off of them
because there is no discoverability feature.
You have to actually market your podcast.
And so that's why I realized that I gotta start a YouTube,
actually start posting on YouTube.
And I remember I went on a vacation
and I had a huge epiphany.
Make videos I would actually wanna watch.
And so that's when I started editing
and I started really learning how to edit videos
and then make thumbnails.
And for maybe one or two months
after I graduated January and February,
I remember I just really focused on that.
And I was spending like three hours a day maybe editing videos,
making thumbnails, probably less than that to be honest.
And I'm sorry if you can hear me shivering.
I'm really cold and I'll get to that in a little bit.
But the reason why, or in the beginning in January and February,
I was really starting to take YouTube seriously
and make the best edits possible.
Learn, I was really learning how to edit
and learning how to make thumbnails.
And then I shifted to actually making myself better,
making my storytelling better,
trying to find my voice more
and finding more stories that I can tell.
And then that's pretty much what I did.
I stopped editing and I stopped making thumbnails
and I pretty much just went all in on practicing
my storytelling.
I did like 80 practice sessions.
And then after that, I did like 50 practice bulk sessions
of an hour each.
And all of that was great.
All of that was amazing,
except I was only working on one aspect
of the YouTube business at a time.
So I started off with learning how to edit.
And then I learned how to make thumbnails.
And then I learned how to actually speak and storytell.
And I was only doing them one at a time.
There was never really a point
where I was really applying them all, all in.
And another reason for that was
because I don't think that I really knew
what direction I was going in.
Because the reason why I started all of this
was because last summer I was getting into entrepreneurship.
And I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I didn't know what business I wanted to start.
And I tried to find all kinds of different things.
I looked for different ideas and problems,
but nothing really inspired me.
And I wasn't really passionate about anything.
And I knew I wanted to find my passion.
So that's why I read a book called Expert Secrets.
And in that book, the author Russell Brunson said
that you should just document your journey.
You should just start a show.
Document your journey.
So that's what I did.
And I didn't know what I was gonna document.
So I just figured I'll document what I like.
I didn't really know I was passionate about it,
but I was just, I just liked self-improvement.
So I'd started a podcast and started documenting
my self-improvement journey.
And then after that, I just kept finding my voice
and going deeper and deeper into it.
And then eventually I realized,
oh, I gotta start the YouTube channel,
start focusing on that.
And then I had my dream customer at that point,
which was my past self,
more specifically my past self when I was in junior year.
And that worked great for a little bit.
I was finding my voice, but then there was a moment.
There was a period of time when I was doing
those bulk practice sessions of doing three hours a day
of recording practice, literally for probably 20 to 25 days
straight, I just came downstairs and practiced
my recording into a camera for three hours straight.
While I was doing that, there was a shift,
probably two or three weeks in,
where I stopped talking to my dream customer.
I stopped talking to my past self.
And I started talking to somebody else.
And I noticed it at first.
And I kept on saying, no, no, stop, stop.
I kept on telling myself not to talk to that person.
But it's something that I realized that
as I've been on my YouTube journey,
this is really the person that I've hoped
would see my videos for a long time.
This was really who I was passionate about talking to.
And this other person is,
I have a very specific customer avatar for this person now.
It's a 35 year old father who is overweight,
addicted to video games, addicted to TV,
and addicted to junk food.
Just pretty much a victim of the modern lifestyle
that most Americans lead.
That's my dream customer.
And so while I was doing all of those practice sessions,
still finding my voice.
If you speak into a camera for three hours a day
for an entire month, you will find your voice.
And I had been speaking into a camera for the past eight months,
but that session, that grind of an entire month
of talking into a camera,
I definitely found my, I went way deeper
into finding my voice.
And I still have more work to do.
And I will find my voice deeper and deeper,
but I definitely realized that I'm not really passionate
about talking with my past self.
What I really, who I really want to hear my message
is 35 year old dad who is a victim of the modern lifestyle.
And that is a huge step forward
because there's this book called Blue Ocean Strategy.
And I just started reading it yesterday.
And to be honest, I'm not really reading.
I'm just kind of like dipping my toes into the water
because I'm reading a different book.
And I wanted to see what the Blue Ocean Strategy
is about because I heard about it
in a book called Expert Secret, which I mentioned earlier.
And Russell Brunson basically said
that the Blue Ocean Strategy is to create
uncontested market space.
So what I was doing before was I was trying to serve
my past self and I was making YouTube videos
for my past self, but there are hundreds
of other YouTubers just like me
who are making videos for the same person
because there's this guy named Hamza.
And he is basically the category king
in the self improvement space targeting younger men.
Like men, like guys from ages maybe 10 to 25,
targeting that demographic of people.
He's the category king and he is basically the big guy.
He's like the main dude.
And then he is teaching a lot of people
how to do what he did and actually make
self improvement videos for your past self.
And so there's a lot of people who are making
self improvement videos for the same person,
at which I was included in that group of people.
So I was basically just fighting in a sea,
a red ocean basically.
That's what the Blue Ocean strategy is called.
When you're in a bunch of competitive market space,
when you're competing against hundreds of other people,
hundreds of other sharks in the water,
competing for scraps because the big guy,
the category king in this case Hamza,
he's taken up all of this, all the fish
and then all of you other 100 self improvement YouTubers,
they're all fighting for scraps.
And so that's why I was not gonna be able to succeed in that.
Cause historically speaking,
you cannot dethrone a category king.
And what the Blue Ocean strategy is all about
is basically creating an unconsensitive market space.
And that's all I knew.
That's all that I learned from expert secrets.
And then after I made the shift to focusing on
my real dream customer, which is 35 year old
father, after I made that shift last night,
I read the first chapter of the Blue Ocean strategy
and there was a story about the circus market.
So pretty much there was two category kings
in the circus market and they were basically competing
and driving each other down to the lowest prices.
And it is not good until this other company
just sprung out of nowhere and they created new market space
by serving a different audience.
Instead of serving the normal circus people,
they served theater goers.
And so they basically combined the circus and theater go
and the theater into this new live entertainment source.
And I realized that that's kind of what I'm doing.
I'm basically doing the same thing,
making self-improvement videos,
but I'm sending them to a different person.
So it's this whole new, unconsensitive market space.
Same product, different customer.
And it's a very underserved customer
because I have not really seen anyone
who's making videos for this person,
or at least in the style that I'm making them.
And that's basically the new direction I'm going in.
I actually have a direction.
And I was rereading this book, my favorite book,
Reality Transurfing.
I was rereading it, I'm halfway through it right now.
And there's this chapter called Goals and Doors.
It's basically where you find your goal,
your innermost goal, your true passion,
your purpose, basically.
And I've read it twice.
This is the third time that I'm reading it.
And the first time I read it was about a year ago.
And I remember reading that part,
just not really having any clue.
Kind of feeling a little lost
because I didn't know what my goal was.
And then the second time I read it,
last summer, eight months ago,
still feeling a little lost,
but I had a little bit more direction,
but I was still kind of bumped.
And then just the other day,
I was reading Goals and Doors,
and I was ecstatic.
I was hype because I found my true goal, my true purpose.
And that's an awesome feeling to have
because over the past couple,
after over the past week or two,
I've been put in the work
because the most work that I've done
in one single day over the past 10 months is three hours.
And I just recently upped that to three hours
like a month ago, or two months ago,
I don't know.
But now I've been putting in like six, seven, eight hours a day.
And that's all deep work.
I don't waste time going on email or anything.
It's like six hours a day of editing,
six hours a day of creating thumbnails,
six hours a day of all of that stuff.
And that's the direction I'm going in.
Now that I know my purpose,
now that I know my dream customer,
now that I actually know the true direction,
now that I kind of know what I'm doing,
what I wanna do, I'm going all in now
because the first thing that I said
in this podcast episode was the quote
from Steve Jobs about connecting the dots.
I learned thumbnail creation,
I learned how to record,
I learned how to edit.
Now I'm putting it all together
and doing daily uploads
because I realized that my dream customer
probably wants edited videos to stay entertained.
And then it would be best
if they were less than five minutes.
So that's my deal.
You basically, what I'm doing is posting daily uploads
of videos less than five minutes long.
They're edited and yeah, that's it.
And pretty much, yesterday I had an epiphany.
Yesterday was my rest day and I had an epiphany
where I only have to, I don't have to master all of YouTube.
I just have to master one video structure
because there was, there's a guy that I mentioned earlier,
Hamza, he is basically teaching how to be a YouTuber.
That's one of the things he's teaching.
And one thing he recommended was
that you should basically just make all of your videos,
kind of like a Netflix season.
So make them all the same structure.
So start it with the same thing.
Like basically follow the same structure.
So for example, my structure that I do
is I instantly confirm the title
while talking to the viewer on an individual level.
And then after that, I go into like a story
or I go into something.
And then after that, I go into a plan of action.
And then after that, I basically end it
with a closing called action
of me basically saying something kind of,
I don't know if Smurkey's the right word,
but kind of it basically makes the person feel good
or laugh or end it on a good note basically.
For example, one time I was talking about
how you can use laziness to your advantage.
And then I ended the video off by saying,
so be lazy, something strange
that you wouldn't hear someone say, but that's what I did.
And that's kind of like the call, that's the final video.
And the reason why you're supposed to do this,
the reason why you're supposed to make all of the videos,
the same structure is so that people can binge watch them,
literally just watch them over and over,
just watch your entire channel's worth of videos.
And that's another reason why I'm doing daily uploads
because I have all the time in the world.
I have zero responsibilities, zero obligations.
I don't have to go to school, I don't have to go to work.
So it would be stupid if I didn't spend
many hours every day working on this.
It'd be stupid.
And that's exactly what I was doing
for the past couple months.
However, the reason why I am not mad at myself
for not putting it in like eight hours, 10 hours of work
is because I would not be where I am right now
if I didn't do that.
And let me explain because in order to find your purpose,
your true passion, you have to live
a very quiet lifestyle.
For the past 10 months,
I have been living in extremely simple lifestyle.
Ever since I got rid of my bed,
I really started going all in on finding,
not necessarily finding my purpose,
but going all in on just simplifying my life.
So I'll tell you exactly what I did.
I got rid of my bed, got rid of everything in my room
and started sleeping on the floor, empty room,
sleeping on the floor and then for a good three months
straight, maybe four months,
all I would do is I would wake up, read
and then I would meditate for 45 minutes.
I would play, I would have headphones,
turn the lights off, I would be in pitch black in my room
because I have blackout curtains.
Put headphones on for this meditation noise thing.
And then I would just meditate for 45 minutes.
And then that after that, I would go to school
and I would come home or actually I would go to the gym,
come home, eat and then I would meditate for 45 minutes again.
So by this point, I had been meditating for an hour and a half
and then I would come downstairs
and record a one hour long podcast.
That's me finding my voice, finding my passion,
figuring out what I'm interested in.
And then I would do my nighttime routine
and meditate for 45 minutes again.
So I'd meditate for over two hours every single day
and record a one hour podcast episode.
That's pretty much all I did.
Meditate, read, school, meditate, podcast, meditate, bed.
That's it.
That was the life that I led for many months
and it takes a long time to find your purpose,
find your true calling.
And now I found it.
Now I have figured out what I want to do,
who I want to serve.
I have this whole plan in my head of this dream,
or I kind of not a whole plan,
but I have a vision of the near future
of what I'm supposed to do.
And that is why I'm going all in on working
because I know my direction now.
Now meditation is probably a waste of time.
At least two hours of meditation is definitely a waste of time.
I still do like a five minute meditation before I eat
because I really think it's valuable,
but it's a waste of time if I was to still go on
an hour long walk, because that's what I did.
I would do the three hours meditation
and then I would also go on an hour long walk.
And I would also sit in my room in silence for 45 minutes,
literally just sit there,
stare at a wall in darkness multiple times a day.
Like this, I'm not kidding.
That's what it takes to find your purpose.
And after 10 months of that, I finally found it.
So now I can stop all that stuff.
Now I'm in grind mode.
Now I'm in the season of just putting out as much content
as possible, just go all in on the business.
And I'm excited because I have like seven videos
scheduled already right now.
So I'm one week ahead.
So I'm basically posting daily episodes.
And it takes a long time.
It takes probably an hour of editing per minute
of content that I produce.
So if it's a four hour or a four minute episode,
it takes four hours to make.
And that's also like thumbnails, recording all that.
And I'm getting quicker, faster at it too.
And a lot of days, I've been making two episodes a day
because I'm trying to get a week ahead.
But that's why I'm going all in.
Pretty much now my days look like this.
I wake up and the first thing I do is I sprint downstairs,
not sprint, but I just go downstairs straight away
and do a quick edit, like 30 minute work session
while my breath stinks.
And it's not fun, but I heard Hamza,
like I mentioned earlier, he has this video that
I've watched probably four times by now.
And it's a 30 minute video of his routine
that he followed to get to $100,000 a month.
And so I basically have been following that exactly.
And then I come upstairs and eat at around eight o'clock
in the morning.
Oh yeah, but I wake up before 3.30 in the morning.
And I come downstairs and then work.
And then I come up at eight o'clock and then eat.
And then I do a quick workout.
My mom bought me some kettle bells,
so I don't have to go to the gym anymore.
So I could just get a quick workout really quick
and then get back to work.
And then around one to 1.30, I come upstairs again
and eat and then I just read for the rest of the night.
Literally just read for two to three hours every single night.
And that's basically the routine I follow.
That's where I'm headed.
I'm just grinding now.
I'm just grinding.
There's a guy, Mr. Beast, the most famous YouTuber
on the planet.
He's got like 300 million subscribers.
And I looked at one of his earlier videos,
the videos of before he blew up, before he got famous,
when he was pretty much in the same position I am,
when he's this high school student
trying to figure things out,
trying to work on YouTube.
And he basically was posting daily.
So that's why I'm doing daily.
I gotta work to do.
And I have, last month, over the past month,
I only gained 13 subscribers.
However, I was only posting one video per week.
So I only posted four videos.
Now, it's April 3rd,
and I have posted three videos so far in all of April.
So, here's my goal.
200 subscribers by May.
I will have posted 30 videos at least.
So 200 subs.
That means that I have to gain 78 subscribers,
which is a massive increase
from the 13 subs I gained last month.
But now I know my direction.
I'm going all in.
And that's another thing.
What was that say?
Oh yeah.
That's another thing.
The reason why I know this is working
is because literally the first video that I posted,
talking to my new dream customer,
my new dream audience, 35 year old father,
I got this super long, elaborate story
from this father who commented.
And that's how I know it's real,
because this guy, he's my exact dream customer.
In fact, I literally wrote down his story in my journal,
and I wrote it down on a piece of paper
so I can remind myself who I'm serving.
Because that guy is my dream customer.
And I never got a comment like that before.
I never got a comment like that
when I was serving my past self.
Why?
Because people are already serving my past self.
People are already,
there are hundreds of self improvement YouTubers
making videos for that 15 year old guy.
But there's no one making videos for the 35 year old father
who's the victim of the modern lifestyle.
So that's why I'm very confident moving forward.
And I've gone through lots of different pivots,
lots of different changes,
where I thought that I was gonna be all in,
but I ended up changing directions,
which is very possible in the future.
I could change directions.
But for now, I think that this is what I'm doing.