Why you should start YouTube even if no one watches…

Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. In this video, I would like to talk about why you should consider starting a YouTube channel even if no one watches. And if you happen to be new here, hello.

My name is Ali. I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and author. And I've been making YouTube videos on this channel since 2017.

Talking about the strategies, the books, the ideas, the tools that can help us build a life we love. And for me, the decision that I personally took many years ago to start a YouTube channel was the single most life-changing decision of my entire life. I started out in 2016 making a random crappy YouTube music videos that no one watched.

But through that process, I learned a little bit about what it takes to actually make a YouTube video. And then in 2017, when I saw a business opportunity, I was like, "Oh, I could make videos talking about helping people get into med school, and this could be interesting because they could drive sales to my course. " That was when I really started taking YouTube seriously.

And now I've been doing it consistently. Pretty much every good thing that's happened in my life since 2017, I can like directly boil down to my YouTube channel in one degree or another. And so, in this video, I would like to share my top reasons as to why you should potentially consider starting a YouTube channel even if no one watches.

There are all sorts of reasons I could tell you. I could talk about all of the practical benefits. I could talk about the value of being able to speak on camera, which for the record, I think is very valuable.

I could talk about the value of learning how to edit videos, which even though AI tools are increasingly going to be taking over video editing, if you have the skill yourself, you can then prompt AI tools or use them better. I could make the case that, hey, if you start a YouTube channel at the start, maybe no one watches, but if you stay consistent with it over time, maybe you'll grow, maybe you'll get famous, maybe you'll get rich and all that kind of stuff. But none of that is really the key point.

The key reason, the one that trumps everything else is because of the internal growth. The personal and emotional and spiritual growth you will go through as a result of starting a YouTube channel even if no one watches. The thing is starting a YouTube channel, what it really does on an internal level is that you are taking your ego and you are putting it out outside of your body into the world where it could be attacked.

And that is scary. Maybe scary isn't the word that comes to mind for you, but there's often interesting emotions that come up when we have the audacity to speak to a camera and stick that video on the internet. There are emotions that come up when you simply just hit record on the camera with the intent to put it on the internet.

I could ask you right now, get out your phone and make your first YouTube video and just hit record on your phone. Boom. And some emotions will come up.

It's not the same as being on a Zoom call. Like like on a Zoom call, someone asks you a question, you can just respond. If you're having a conversation in real life, someone asks you a question, you can just respond.

But there's something about the format of speaking to a camera knowing that it might get published that feels confronting in some kind of way. And that is a very good thing. The whole thing around like personal, emotional, spiritual growth involves putting ourselves into uncomfortable situations where we are able to confront the internal demons that guard the gates, as it were.

When you have the audacity to start a YouTube channel, even though no one is watching, and you put your ego out there, you'll feel the fear. You'll feel the you'll feel the judgment. You'll feel the fear of judgment.

You'll be thinking, "Damn, why why does my face look so weird? I couldn't have any of my friends possibly seeing this video cuz that would be embarrassing. What about my work colleagues?

" You know, I'm considered a reasonably competent person at work. But then if people see this shitty video of mine that's like out there on the internet like oh my god like all of these things is a function of taking our ego putting it out there in a basic ass form like making a freaking YouTube video and sticking on the internet. And it's so valuable.

It's so valuable to confront those feelings. It's so valuable to understand that they exist and to try and figure out where they're coming from and to try and do something about them because really a huge part of like personal and emotional and spiritual growth is recognizing that a no one actually cares. B, if they do, it shouldn't really affect you.

C, how the hell do you not care about what other people around you think? How do you like do your own thing? And basically, what all of personal and spiritual growth eventually ends up in is being a being able to transcend the ego.

Being able to do something without the fear of this shell of an identity that we have crafted around ourselves being battered proverbally because someone on the internet left a comment saying that your nose is too big or that you've got a zit on there or like, "Oh, I hate I you know, I don't like your accent or you speak too fast or like you're ugly. " Or like, "Oh my god. " Like we've had various people take my course, the part-time YouTuber academy, link down below if you want to check it out.

Um, we've had several thousand people take that course and lots of them have made only a handful of videos. And one thing a lot of people say is that even though they didn't make it as a YouTuber, which was is probably normally the initial goal when they start something like this, even though they didn't make it as a YouTuber, they are still really glad about the growth that they had on that journey of even just making a few videos. And by the way, if you do happen to start a YouTube channel and you are interested in some sick background music for your videos, then you will want to check out Epidemic Sound, who are very kindly sponsoring this video.

I've been using Epidemic Sound for every single one of my YouTube videos since 2017, since I first started taking videos seriously. I started using Epidemic cuz they were recommended by Peter McKinnon, who was a big inspiration behind this channel and still is. Epidemic Sound has a massive library of over 50,000 songs and 200,000 sound effects.

And all of these are restriction free, so you can use them across any of your projects, including YouTube videos, without any copyright issues. But today I want to talk about something really exciting that they've just launched called Voices, which is going to be super interesting for anyone creating content, including you. So with Voices by Epidemic Sound, you can easily craft the perfect voice over for your content using professional voice artists.

You can also create the perfect voiceover using your own voice. So no re-recording necessary. And this is perfect for your narration or podcasts or ad reads or adding segments to your video if you don't want it to be your voice on certain segments of the video for artistic reasons.

You can even modify the speed of the voice over to match your storytelling needs and to help your content stay consistent even if you don't want to re-record stuff. There's no need to re-record, which is a key benefit related to the capability of recording and using your own voice. Voices is powered by AI, so you can fine-tune the pacing and the language to match any style, which gives you full creative control.

The best part is that Voices is already included in your subscription for both trial and paying commercial plan users with a set of credits provided each month. It's available both online and seamlessly within the Epidemic Sound plugins for Adobe and Da Vinci Resolve. So, it fits right into your workflow on demand anytime, anywhere.

So, if you want to bring your videos to life with professional sound and now professional voiceovers, check out Epidemic Sound using the link below. And when you sign up for a free trial, you will get access to everything, including the new voices feature. So, thank you so much Epidemic Sound for being our source of background music for the last 8 years and also for sponsoring this video.

And let's get back to it. So, one aspect of this is this whole like internal confronting of the ego where you, you know, try and stop caring about what other people think. Another big part of it is that starting a YouTube channel, even when no one is watching, especially if you've never done this sort of video thing before, helps you feel more of a sense of personal agency.

It helps you get more of that feeling of you can actually take something random like the art of making videos and you can figure it out. To quote the title of Marie Folio's wonderful book, everything is figure outable. And the thing is, when we start off as kids, we all have this belief that everything is figure outable.

Like kids don't usually have fear. You'll see kids running around and like doing all the stuff and jumping off of things and etc etc. But usually at some point as we grow older we start to internalize the belief that we cannot figure out new things.

We cannot learn new things. For some people tragically it happens in childhood where like a parent or a caregiver or a teacher tells you that you suck and then you've internalized that for your whole life and then believe you can't do anything. This is how you end up with a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset.

For some people that happens in school or in university or whatever when they realize that like oh you know a teacher says you're bad at maths or bad at languages and you start internalizing that thing. For a lot of us, it actually happens when we're doing our jobs because, you know, we got through school, got through university, started doing jobs, and then we became quite specialized at doing the thing. And we never really tried to branch out of the thing, main thing that we're doing for work because like life gets in the way and stuff.

And so when it comes to thinking like, oh, let me start a new hobby like learning the guitar. Every year more like all these people decide they want to take up a musical instrument. Almost no one sticks through with it because they don't enjoy the experience of being really, really, really bad at something.

Your ego starts to feel a bit threatened that like, no, we're so competent in our job as an accountant and like we don't want to suck at playing the guitar. we don't want to suck on this YouTube thing. We don't we don't want to be bad at anything.

And you can't learn new things without being okay with being bad at doing the thing initially. So why should you start a YouTube channel even if no one watches? It's because you will learn interesting skills in the process of that.

But what is arguably even more important than the skills that you learn is the meta skill that you learn which is the ability to learn new things. I remember back when I used to be a doctor working in the UK's National Health Service. And after about 2 years in my local hospital where I was working, a lot of the senior doctors knew that I had this YouTube channel and I had this business.

And then I think around then was when I made a video talking about how much money I made as a doctor versus a YouTuber. And then that video seemed to go around. So then like I kind of became known as, you know, this this random like junior doctor who's like 26 who walks around in blue scrubs with bright orange trainers and whatever.

This guy is making bank on the internet. And I had a lot of senior doctors come up to me really like encouraging me to do the thing. And it would emerge from pretty much all of these conversations that a lot of these senior doctors they felt like they couldn't learn new things.

They felt like they were so specialized within medicine that had they had all this sunk cost of medical school and then like years if not decades worth of training that even though their heart might not necessarily have been in the thing, what they said was, "Yeah, but I don't think I could do anything else. " I'm not saying that if you're a doctor in your 40s or 50s, suddenly starting a YouTube channel is going to be the answer to all of your dreams and hopes and aspirations. Not what I'm saying at all.

What I'm saying is that starting a YouTube channel, even when no one is watching, with whatever kind of professional background you have, will force you to learn new skills and will therefore teach your brain and your heart and your soul that you are someone who can learn new things. With our YouTuber academy, for example, the average age of our student is 36. We had a guy take the course, his name is Azul.

He's like in his 50s as like a financial planner for old people, basically. And he decided, you know what? I'm going to reinvent myself.

I'm going to try something new. and he started making YouTube videos where he just walks around with his phone talking to the phone and giving financial advice to old people and his channel blew up after about 18 months of doing it. Initially didn't get any traction at all but he kept on doing he kept on making one or two videos a week even switch to daily uploads at one point and because he realized he enjoyed the process and he enjoyed the process of learning the new skills along the way at whatever stage of life you're at.

I personally feel that starting a YouTube channel even when no one is watching just will be a valuable use of your time. I'm not saying you have to make 100 videos. I'm not saying you have to make one video a week.

I'm not saying that the goal is to become rich or to become famous or anything like that. What I'm saying is that just give it a go. If you're watching the video at this point, you know, chances are if you've never thought about starting a YouTube channel, you probably didn't even click on this video.

It's not even relevant to you. But if you're watching the video at this point, I would ask you, what is holding you back? What I hope that this video can be for a handful of people, maybe ideally even more than a handful of people, is the nudge that you need, the permission that you've been waiting for from someone else who allegedly seems to know what they're talking about because they've got like millions of subscribers or whatever.

the the nudge you've been waiting for to actually just make a bet on yourself to trust that you can learn new things and you can give this a go even if it goes nowhere even if no one watches the stuff you will still I promise you will still learn valuable skills you will still find it a useful activity to do for the emotional growth the internal growth the personal growth the spiritual growth for the meta growth of learning that you can learn new skills learning new things is a key part of how we keep our minds healthy it's how we keep our spirit healthy because the spirit and soul or whatever you want to call it has these needs for like growth and so starting a YouTube channel even when no one is watching is a really nice source of growth. And then at this point, people are like, "Okay, but like what would I make videos about? Um, you can make videos about whatever you want.

" Um, we have this thing, our seven video challenge. If you're interested in joining it, it's for complete beginners where we basically give you prompts for your first seven videos. It'll be linked down below.

Um, lots of people have taken it. The idea is that, you know, you pay to join the challenge, but if you make seven videos in 7 months, we give you a whole seven months to make the seven videos, we will refund every penny you've paid. So, basically, it serves as an accountability mechanism which gives you a few easy prompts that you can make videos about.

But even if you don't want to take the challenge, what's a video you can make? Well, a video you can make is why I started a YouTube channel at the age of X or whatever. Why I started a YouTube channel as an accountant.

Why I started even just why I started a YouTube channel. Another video you could make, five lessons I learned in the last 5 years. Another thing you can make uh advice I would give to my 21-year-old self, depending on how old you are, obviously if you you know, whatever.

In fact, if you do decide to make that video, I would love it if you can link it down below in the comments because I would love to have a look at some of these and see what the vibe is. But we don't want to be overthinking this stuff. We we don't want to be trying to approach it like a you know a business planner being like okay my goal is to get a million subscribers.

You know the goal is simply to try it out. The goal is to do the thing. Starting a YouTube channel for a lot of people is a means to an end.

It's like hey if I make YouTube videos then dot dot dot I'll get subscribers and sponsors and money and I'll be able to live a life. It becomes like an instrumental goal, a means to an end. For me, when I started YouTube, my first YouTube videos I make, I think I think were in like 2016.

And I'm really glad it didn't start off as a money-making scheme. Since 2010, I wanted to be a YouTuber cuz I wanted to make music videos. I loved people like Kurt Schneider and Sam Sui and still do.

And I was like, I'm going to make music videos with my friends cuz my friends are good at singing and I can I can learn how to play musical instruments cuz that would be fun and I'd learn new skills and stuff and like this would be cool. And so for 70 six years, I procrastinated every summer holiday. I was like I was saying to my friend Ranka, right, this is the summer we're going to make that music video.

We finally, you know, it's going to happen. We're going to do it. And in 2016, I decided to make some of these music videos.

They're still active on the channel. The goal was never to try and get rich or famous. It was just like it would be cool to be a YouTuber.

And then I made a handful of these music videos. And then I realized no one watches. But I learned the skills of how to make videos.

I learned how to use a camera. And I learned how to edit. Then mid 2017 when I had the idea that like I can use YouTube as a lead generation device for my business that was helping kids kids get into med school.

Suddenly I was like, "Oh, I already know how to make videos cuz I dabbled with these shitty music videos back in the day. So why don't I use the skills that I learned in making videos and now apply it to this business opportunity. I did not start off thinking that there was a business opportunity at the time.

There was none of this content out there about how to make it on YouTube, how to make money, etc. , etc. I think one of the downsides of that content, and I would blame myself partly in fairness, I do try and always say with any of my content for creators, don't try and make money from it.

That that should not be the primary the primary goal. There's all this stuff about how you can make money as a YouTuber, as an influencer and stuff, and I think it gives people the wrong impression. It makes people think that the only reason to do it is for the money.

But actually, there are loads of people who like play the guitar for fun, who make YouTube videos for fun, because the art of creative expression and creative pursuit and like putting yourself out there and like editing a thing, it's like it's like an art project almost. What would it take for you to see it as a bit of a hobby, as a bit of an art project? And maybe if you find yourself enjoying it and you're like, you know what, I can see myself doing this for like 10 years and enjoying the process.

Then we can now start talking about like a business plan and the niche and like target audience and value proposition and all the stuff that we talk about in my course. But you don't need to start out like that. You don't need to start out with that sort of I'm approaching this like a businessman approach.

In fact, I'd recommend you not do that. I'd recommend that your first seven videos are purely for you. They're purely experimental to see if you like the art of making YouTube videos.

It doesn't cost you anything to do seven videos. You don't need gear. You can just use your phone.

You probably have a phone. you have a device that you're watching this on. You can download iMovie for free.

You can download Da Vinci Resolve for free video editing software. You can download Cap Cut. I think it's free on your phone.

It's like you don't even need to edit the video. You could literally just film a video and upload it straight to YouTube straight from the app. You don't even need to do long form video.

You could even do YouTube shorts or Instagram reels or Tik Tok. Just any of these social media type things that involve creating something, having the audacity to put yourself out there cuz like creating a faceless video is like it's fine, but it doesn't give you all the spiritual growth benefits that putting your face out there does. cuz that's really confronting.

If you're like a random person who's never ever ever thought about starting a YouTube channel and you're still at this point in the video, what are you doing here? It's like hopefully maybe I've convinced you. That would that would be interesting.

But like I'm hopefully speaking to you right now because you've been thinking about this and you haven't done it yet. And someone else just like it's okay. Just like give it a go.

Treat it like a hobby. I treat it like a hobby initially. I had no idea that it would it could become like a multi-million dollar business many years down the line.

And had I known that, had I known that the possibility was there, I might not even have started because I would have overthought even more than I already did for the six whole freaking years before I got started, I would have overthought it to the point that I wouldn't have ever taken action. So, that is today's public service announcement. If you've been thinking of starting a YouTube channel, I would recommend you do it.

Even if no one is watching, and I am rooting for you from afar, from here in Hong Kong, and I would love it if you can post a comment down below of like, you know, your link to your channel or link to your video or whatever the thing is if this video has inspired you to take any kind of action at all. And of course, if you would like to dive deeper on this stuff, feel free to check out my course, the Parttime YouTuber Academy, or our seven video challenge if you're a complete beginner. Those will be linked down below.

And if you do, in fact, want a deeper dive on strategies for starting a YouTube channel, this is my ultimate beginner's guide to starting a YouTube channel. It goes over my three-level system, so you can check that out if you'd like. Anyway, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

Bye-bye.