Hello, it is February 1st, 2025, and I am making a big change in my YouTube channel.
Basically, I started working on this podcast and also my YouTube channel because I was
looking into my career.
It was the summer going into my senior year, and I was trying to figure out what my career
would be.
I didn't want to go into the traditional path, like going to college or any of that stuff.
I wanted to do entrepreneurship because that's always what I've been drawn to ever since
elementary school with the classic lemonade stand.
Me and my sister would buy a bunch of makers, which are machines that would make things.
We would start making donuts and stuff and go to my friend's block party and sell them,
make a bunch of money.
In middle school, I would also go around and sell bags of chips and gummies and applesauce
packets and trade them for hot lunch because I didn't want to buy my own hot lunch.
I've always wanted to do entrepreneurship, but I didn't know what I wanted.
That got me to start reading books on entrepreneurship.
I read books like The Millionaire Fastlane, Unscripted, The E-Myth Revisited.
That brought me to a couple books by Russell Brunson, First One Dot Com Secrets.
It made me think that it kind of alleviated something because I knew that I wanted to
start a business, and so I thought that I would have to learn how to program my own website
because I didn't want to hire anyone.
I didn't want to take any financial risks because I wanted to build a stable career based
off of my own skills.
I was willing to learn how to code, but I wasn't really into it.
I found Dot Com Secrets and I realized that you can literally just use a website that
you can build a website through.
That basically made learning how to code redundant so I could just focus on business.
I remember that summer I was looking for all kinds of things to start.
It got to the point where I was just so antsy to get going that I actually filed my LLC
through this company, like Zen Business.
I filed my LLC for a company about Acne because that was just the idea.
I was looking at my environment.
I was like, what can I do?
I heard someone say, oh, you don't really get that much Acne, even though I did.
I didn't get a lot of Acne, but I did get the occasional pimple.
I didn't have perfect skin, and my back was definitely not perfect either.
I had a lot of back, or I still have a lot of back Acne, but basically I was going to
start a business on Acne.
Thankfully, there was a multiple day period where you were able to change your mind and
change the name.
I quickly changed the name to Ascend Momentum.
How did I come up with that name?
Well, I came up with that name through a lot of brainstorming, but mostly just AI.
This is an AI, chat GBT generated name, basically.
I do not like it.
I never really liked Ascend Momentum.
I never really liked it.
Yeah, I didn't really like that.
I also, around that time, I was reading a book called Expert Secrets, and that gave
me the idea to start the podcast.
Also, I added YouTube as another way to post the podcast episode.
I did start my YouTube channel at that time, and that's what I did.
I never really wanted to do self-improvement stuff, but that was just what I was interested
in.
I started documenting my journey on learning all kinds of ways to improve my life.
I never really wanted to associate with self-improvement because I never really watched, yeah, I did
watch self-improvement videos, but those were not the videos that I would just spend all
my time watching.
My favorite videos were videos made by Will Tennyson, where he would do challenges burning
10,000 calories in a day, walking 100,000 steps in a day.
Over the year, I just kept on developing my craft.
I started with just speaking, and then I started learning how to edit, and then making thumbnails.
I just kept on developing my craft to the point where now I've gotten to the point where
I can actually make an okay video.
If you asked me one month ago, I would have been like, yeah, I'm making pretty good videos.
Yeah, no, that's garbage.
That's a bunch of nonsense.
I was too cocky last month.
I was like, yeah, I'm getting like 500 views every video.
Yeah, no.
500 views is trash, first of all, but also that's just too cocky.
My videos are garbage time.
Only 17% of people watch till the end of my videos, of a 10-minute video.
So that's garbage.
That's not the point.
The point is, over the course of the past year and a half, ever since I started this,
there has been this trend where I kind of never was really doing maybe at times, but
oftentimes I was not really doing what everyone else in the self-improvement niche was doing.
For example, I would make a video, I posted a video on me staring at a wall for 10 hours.
No one does that.
People in the entertainment niche do that.
Not the self-improvement niche.
Self-improvement is all about talking in front of a camera.
And then in recent times, like five months ago, I did 1,000 push-ups in one video, which
was called like Ancient Sorcerer's Guide to Infinite Discipline or something like that.
And then recently, the past couple months, I completely removed all talking head.
So that basically talking head is someone on screen talking to you.
So if their face is showing that they're talking, that's a talking head.
And it's not just like voiceover.
Like right now you're listening to basically a voiceover.
It's just audio.
You're not seeing my face.
But if you saw me talking, if I had the camera on right now, it would be a talking head video.
And I completely stopped that because I didn't really like the vibe around giving advice.
And so there's been this gradual shift away from advice giving in my YouTube channel.
And yes, even in my most recent video, I still was giving advice.
But I've really been focusing on like the transformative aspect.
And that really started to shine through in last month's episode on this podcast, where
I started saying I have one goal, make better and more transformational videos.
And that is still my goal.
But I realized something.
I was watching this video, How to Master the Art of Filmmaking.
And this guy, Dan Mace, he's very good at filmmaking.
And he was sharing a story about this book he read, Stories That Stick.
How there was a study done where they related people who watched a video on just sharing
a bunch of facts about cancer.
And then a second group watched a video about a story.
It was like a, it was a transformative story on cancer.
And guess how many, guess what the difference was in how much money they donated to that
cause.
It was, I don't know the percentage, but it was a significant amount, like maybe 40%
increase in changing behavior in the group that watched the story.
And that's kind of how I see like the advice, the guru, the self-help, self-improvement stuff.
You make all these videos, me, I'm making all these videos, just talking from a camera.
No, yeah, there are stories, but they're just personal stories.
They're not like, they're not like transformative stories in the sense that they're expanding
your worldview.
Yeah, they're expanding their worldview.
And actually, while I'm saying this, before I started making this video, I was actually
playing on just completely bashing the self-improvement stuff.
But while I'm saying it, I realize that there is story in self-improvement videos, but it's
not for me.
Basically, I'm not really into it anymore.
I've completely just, over time, it was a gradual change.
Like if you look at my channel, it's obvious that I gradually started to shift.
And I'm so glad, like this has all been part of my path, especially because I'm glad that
I learned how to make music.
And I'm glad of all the stuff I learned, but it's time to make a change.
And I'm not going to reveal the change because that's not how I operate.
I like taking action and then talking.
So I'm not going to reveal the change, but it'll be evident next month.
I'll reveal it next month.
And that is it.
There's not very much more to talk about.
I just want to make better and more transformational videos.
And I have heard, you know, there's this old belief or mindset that I had of, like, Mr.
Beast's videos are evil.
They're destroying our attention span.
All these videos are evil.
And yeah, I think that a lot of videos on YouTube are just garbage in the sense that
they're just so artificial, so money hungry, not even money hungry, just so artificial that
it's just not beneficial at all to the human.
But I think that a lot of those videos belong to a self improvement niche.
I'm not even going to lie.
But all other niches have that.
It's all across YouTube.
But I would say that Mr. Beast's videos and people who actually put a lot of effort into
their videos do not belong in that category.
These are Mr. Beast's, people say, oh, Mr. Beast's videos are not authentic.
You got to be genuine like Sam Sulek or other of these guys.
And they're completely different people or completely different content styles.
I'm not saying either is better.
What I'm saying is that Mr. Beast, that's his craft.
That's his art.
He is becoming an expert or he is an expert.
He is a master at YouTube.
When you wouldn't go to Picasso or Da Vinci and say, oh, you've got to be more genuine
in your paintings.
Start making real stuff.
No, it's art.
It's a creation.
And that's why I, that's something that I've realized a lot of people and myself included
in the past.
I used to have this mindset where, oh, retention editing.
All these cuts, all these, you're like, there's no point in a single Mr. Beast video where
it's just still for like more than four seconds.
And that, and people hate on that, but that's just the craft.
That's how it works.
People don't hate on like painters, famous painters or famous sculptures for being really
good at their craft.
So why do we hate on YouTubers or filmmakers for being very good at their craft?
I don't know.
Just some thoughts.
This is a very short video because I'm still figuring out.
Like I'm figuring out like my journey.
I realized that it's an ongoing process.
You are never going to have it all figured out.
But also like I'm in a very fragile transition phase where I'm just done with all the advice
stuff.
I would much rather make stories.
That's what I'm going to end it at.
Good evening, Aufs distortes.
Thank you.