5 Signs of Potential in Small YouTube Channels (2025)

have you ever wondered what is it that separates the people that succeed on YouTube from the people that don't quite succeed on YouTube well in this video we're going to be talking about five key signs of potential that you can often see in smaller YouTube channels and so hopefully you can get a sense of how many of these things do you have for your own channel and then how many of these can you apply to your own channel if you want hey friends welcome back to Creator Club the ongoing Series where we explore strategies to

start and grow and monetize your YouTube channel and create a business so that you can get to what I call the three FS which is fun fulfillment and of course final Freedom if we haven't yet met then hello my name is Ali and I've been making YouTube videos on this channel since 2017 and since then I've been documenting every step of my journey from being a broke medical student to working full-time as a doctor to becoming a seven figure entrepreneur to becoming a bestselling author and since 2020 I've also been running an online community called

the part-time YouTuber Academy where over 20,000 students have taken my courses on how to start grow and monetize their YouTube channels and we've had loads of incredible success stories along the way now I'm going to be honest we've had loads of students who've gone through our courses and programs who have succeeded on YouTube but we also have loads of students who've gone through our courses and programs and have failed on YouTube are they've quit or they haven't been consistent or the channels haven't really taken off and one thing I'm always interested in is what is

it that separates these two different groups what are the factors that cause one YouTube channel to succeed and Thrive and help them quit their job or whatever while a similar sort of person sometimes even with similar amounts of knowledge tries to do the same thing but then fails and so that's what I've tried to condense into this video into these five key signs of potential that you can often spot in smaller YouTube channels it's worth bearing in mind that each of these signs is valuable on its own but if you can stack these up it's

like stacking the deck in your favor success on YouTube is probabilistic there are no guarantees but the more of these things your channel has the more likely it is to succeed on YouTube anyway let's dive in okay so for the first sign of potential let's take a look at this YouTube channel this is history meets finance and it's run by a guy called nasal who is actually a student in our accelerator program and there's one question that I want you to think about if you just glance at this for like 3 seconds which is does

this Channel look amateur or does this channel look professional what about Matt Della's channel does this look amateur or professional what about pickup lmes does this channel look amateur or professional what about Chris Williamson who incidentally is also an alumni of the parttime YouTuber Academy does his channel look amateur or professional hopefully you've broadly clocked that all of these channels look pretty professional and a fun thing to do would be to take your YouTube channel assuming you have one and show it to a few people and just ask at first glance does it look amateur

or does it look professional this is a fun thing that I like to do when I'm giving talks about on YouTube when I'm doing live sessions for my YouTuber Academy when I'm giving talks in real life if someone asks a question about hey why isn't my channel growing uh with their permission I'll often like try and share it on the screen and I'll just ask everyone in the chat or people in the audience you know who thinks this is amateur who thinks this is professional and immediately within a millisecond people can tell oh this looks

professional versus uh this kind of looks a bit crap and the key Point here which is the first sign of potential in smaller YouTube channels is how good does the packaging look first impressions on YouTube really count the thumbnail is like a big part of what people see do your thumbnails actually look good do they look professional do they look like it's a video that you would want to watch when you look at a channel like at first glance does this look like something that's well put together you know this is not what channels used

to look like back in 2010 back in 2010 you could just get views on YouTube by just slapping any old video on YouTube not worrying about theum the thumbnail not even sure if thumbnails I think but the game has really changed over time YouTube is increasingly becoming more and more like Netflix viewers are increasingly having more and more of an exp expectation of high quality now high quality doesn't necessarily mean fancy cameras and fancy editing and stuff but just a quality Channel and the packaging of a channel in particular the thumbnails and also the channel

Banner really communicates is this quality or is this kind of a bit amateur and a bit crap and so in terms of a practical tip what I would recommend is that it's worth spending a little bit of time once you've made at least your first let's say seven videos it's worth spending a little bit of time trying to design a cohesive look for your channel one thing I often recommend our students in the YouTuber Academy is to create a channel mood board where you know it's like a Pinterest board or an ocean gallery or whatever

where anytime you see something that catches your eye if it's a channel Banner or a thumbnail or anything like that you save it to that particular board this for example is one of my Pinterest board on thumbnail Styles and whenever I find a good thumbnail I'm like oh that's kind of nice I just save it to this Pinterest board so that I can then get inspiration for the thumbnail designs on my own channel the other thing you can do if you want like a cohesive look for your channel is just go on canva and just

download some free thumbnail design templates now having said all of that and for every point in this video I'm going to put a bit of a warning which is that if if you have a tendency to overthink things please don't let the overthinking about your thumbnails and your channel banner and stuff stop you from actually making the content the most important thing is consistency and one thing I often say to my students in YouTuber Academy because we all have a tendency to overthink because you know perfectionists and people have go quite analytical and whatever it's

like you could spend ages trying to design the perfect thumbnail but especially if you're just starting out which you probably are if you're watching a video like this one especially if you're just starting out the key thing is to just make the videos and once you've decided what your upload schedule is going to be maybe it's once a week maybe it's every other week maybe it's three times a month whatever that thing is that's like the foundational consistency of your channel and then all of the overthinking about the stuff thumbnails Channel design Etc everything we're

going to talk about in this video all of that should stand on the foundation of consistency don't think that like oh my goodness I'm not going to make another video Until I have perfected my thumbnail style you're never going to perfect your thumbnail style it's always going to be something that's always evolving if you look back to any of your favorite YouTubers and you scroll to their oldest videos you can see how shitty their thumbnails look it's just it's just bad and the thumbnail style evolves over time if you look at my thumbnails from back

in the day you can see I was doing music videos and then I was doing travel Vlogs and then I was trying to make an app which completely flopped and failed and like no one ever watched those videos and eventually over a period of years I landed on a thumbnail style and even now we're still experimenting with everything around thumbnails and AB testing things and stuff so the key thing that I would recommend is that yes you want to think about your channel banner and you can probably just get a template from canva to just

whip one up and you want to be thinking about your thumbnails but you don't want to overthink this stuff to the point that you actually don't publish the videos because it's publishing the videos that's going to help you improve especially if you are just starting out or if you're earlier on in your journey if you're looking for more practical tips I have a completely free YouTube growth scorecard this is a completely free online self assessment quiz type thing that me and my team have designed where we looked at like what are the factors that make

YouTube channel succeed and so it's split up into five different parts and it'll ask you a few questions for each one and you essentially rate yourself on how well you're doing each of these different things at the end of it it'll give you a personalized report that will show you which areas you're strong in as it relates to your YouTube channel and Crea a business and which areas you're weak in and it'll also give you a bunch of free resource recommendations to improve specific things that'll be linked down below if you want to check it

out the YouTube growth scorecard all right so we talked about the importance of packaging which is the most important thing when it comes to actually earning The Click because no one's going to watch your video if they don't click on your video first so now because your packaging is good or because you've delivered a reasonable promise in your title and thumbnail let's say someone has clicked on your video and this is where we move on to Point number two all right so key sign of potential in smaller channels number two is how much effort goes

into the first 30 seconds this is sometimes referred to as the hook I personally like to think of it as the promise and as an example let's look at this video from Elizabeth Phillips I think you were taught to memorize things wrong since we first start to speak we begin to get tested on our memory I've sat hundreds of exams memorized tens of pages of scripts for theater learned thousands of new Concepts in four years of medical school and while this all looks effort effortlessly impressive the truth is beneath it all this girl actually has

a terrible memory so Elizabeth is a friend and former team member of mine who is also an alumnist of the parttime YouTuber Academy incidentally in fact funny story about this the first time we ran the first cohort of our YouTuber Academy back in like late 2020 Elizabeth had not yet started a YouTube channel at that point she was working for me as my part-time personal assistant but she was helping out with the operations for this course and she'd been wanting to start a YouTube channel for absolutely ages and then because we were seeing these hundreds

of students who were taking YouTuber Academy for the first time and who were starting their channels and overcoming their emotional obstacles and everything and making the videos all of that was super inspiring to Elizabeth and she was like you know what all these students are starting a YouTube channel why don't I also start a YouTube channel and then her YouTube channel absolutely blew up over time and eventually she left my team to continue doing medicine and her YouTube channel cuz it was just the success at that point but one thing that I've always admired about

Elizabeth's videos is the amount of effort that goes into the first 30 seconds now why do the first 30 seconds matter so much well as a YouTuber if you have looked at any of your retention Cod in your analytics you'll see that they are like a bloop people click on the video and then immediately like 30 40% of the people will just click off because they realize the video is not for them and then you slowly slowly slowly lose viewers over time and so really your first 30 seconds are when the vast majority of people

will actually see the stuff that you've created whereas if you've got a 20-minute long video maybe there's only like I don't know 20% of people 15% of people watching right through to the end so any effort you're putting into like the second half of the video is almost effort that is wasted or at least less leveraged than the effort that you might be putting into the first 30 seconds when someone clicks on a video in those first 30 seconds they want to know is this going to be a good use of time they want to

know is this video actually going to deliver on the promise that has been set with the title and thumbnail and most people aren't thinking this consciously but it's like a subconscious thing it's like is this currently worth my time one thing to remember is that as YouTubers yes the videos we produce are completely free but people are paying for our videos they are not paying with their money but they are paying with something arguably even more valuable which is their time and attention and so viewers just want to know like you want to know when

you watch YouTube videos is this actually going to be worth my time and that is why the first 30 seconds are absolutely crucial here's another example this is a student Han who is currently a student in our accelerator program and this is one of her opening shots imagine waking up tomorrow and noticing something is different you found yourself unusually sensitive to numbers upon arriving at school you're met with a MTH test quickly scanning through the exam you found that all the questions in your head simply make sense and answers just come to you this is

definitely not my experience as I record this this video has 1.4 million views and again if you just see how much effort's gone into the first 30 seconds you can immediately tell okay this is a video that's probably going to be worth watching and so that is one of the Key signs of potential that I always look for in new YouTubers it's always one of the things I encourage people to do as part of my YouTuber Academy and accelerator program spend a lot of time focusing on those first 30 seconds let's say it takes you

I don't know 4 hours to edit a video if you're doing your own editing I would say probably two of those hours should be on the first like minute of the video and probably one of those hours just on the first 30 seconds because those first 30 seconds are disproportionately valuable and disproportionately leveraged in that just more people are going to see those first 30 seconds than are going to watch like the second half of your video all right so let's talk about a practical tip on this front so something that I often struggle with

is overthinking the first 30 seconds I know that the first 30 seconds are really important and I know that my job is to hook the viewer's attention and all that kind of stuff and in the back of my mind I see the retention curve plummeting whenever I'm talking and when I hit record the fact that the first 30 seconds are the first thing that I say means that it's it's it's a very heavy lift even for this video for example it took me like I don't know 10 minutes to actually record the first 30 seconds

because it's just it just feels like such a heavy lift each time it's like oh I really have to think about retention oh go what if people drop off etc etc a lot of overthinking goes into it and a lot of pain at least in my process for making YouTube videos and I know this is true of others as well comes from appreciating the importance of the first 30 seconds so practical tip and this is something that I've been doing for the last like year or or so is that I film the first 30 seconds

at the start and I try not to overthink it because I know that at the end of the video at the end of my filming session I'm going to redo the first 30 seconds sometimes if I'm really overthinking and struggling with analysis paralysis and all that kind of stuff which I still suffer from even though I've been doing this for S years and made over a th videos sometimes if I'm like really struggling and it's you know things are just not coming out I'll just launch straight into it I'll say all right Point number one

is blah blah blah blah blah blah packaging and I'll just go straight into the video knowing that once I've finished filming the video and now I feel good about myself cuz I finished filming the video and I feel like I'm I'm on a bit of a roll and like the the gunk has come out of the system I will film The Hook at the end of the video so this is a practical tip if you struggle with hooks if you find yourself overthinking them you can try filming them at the end of the video session

and if you do that let me know in the comments how you get on oh one final thing while we're here is that I don't like to think of it mentally as I'm hooking the audience's attention cuz hooking sounds a little bit aggressive you know it sounds like I'm a a fisherman trying to hook a fish or whatever instead I like to think of it as a promise what is the promise that I'm making to the audience and promise just feels a bit more chill it feels a bit more nice it doesn't feel like I'm

being all aggressive and salesman and trying to hook their attention it's I'm just making a promise so maybe if you struggle with the word hook a lot of creators talk about hook uh try replacing the word with promise and see if that changes the energy with which you approach the thing okay so at this point we have earned the Click by having good packaging and a decent title in thumbnail people actually clicked on the video we've put our best foot forward in that the first 30 seconds are nice and well edited and are showing the

order that they're about to be delivered on the promise that was created in the title and the thumbnail let's move on to key sign of potential number three and for this I want to show you an example of a Creator called Aman in this video I'm going to break down a four-step formula you can use to guarantee that you get a return offer from any software engineering internship if you follow this equation you will land at that full-time job you've been dreaming about okay so that is a pretty good promise it clearly shows that what

he's about to say in this video is going to be high value given the title and thumbnail my name is Aman I'm a former software engineer andur current career coach in college I landed six high paying software engineering internships and the day I graduated college I started at a six figure software engineering full-time job on this channel I help you land your dream job in Tech on this channel I help you land your dream job in tech and as part of his introduction he's got a bunch of like flexing credentials about hey here's what I

did here's what I did here's why you should listen to me this is great this is key sign of potential number three which is a clear value proposition most channels that succeed have somewhat of a clear value proposition behind them it's obvious who the channel is for and why they should bother watching the thing especially for smaller channels it's you know it's it's very hard to build a YouTube channel from the ground up where you're trying to be everything to everyone if you were trying to create a YouTube channel today and you were trying to

do the variety of content that I do it probably wouldn't work it would you would would need a lot of luck and a lot of other UNR advantages and stuff for that to work but when you have a clear value proposition or a clear Niche for want of a better word it's just obvious it's obvious to viewers what your Channel's about and who it's for and who it's not for and if something is obvious to viewers and they get it the right sort of person is then more likely to watch those sort of videos because

they know that it's the right video for them if you are for example a software engineering graduate and you want to get a high-paying job in Tech Aman's channel is perfect for you if you're not that person you don't give a about am man's Channel because it's not perfect for you the way the YouTube algorithm works is that it picks up on signals from viewers so if a bunch of software engineering students were to click on this video and watch it all the way through and suddenly you know take action and watch more of his

stuff the algorithm would realize that oh people who are this sort of person I.E into software engineering they watch this sort of Channel and so they're going to promote Aman's Channel more to other people who are like that person other software Engineers so having a clear value proposition really helps the audience decide is this the sort of thing I want to watch but crucially it also helps the audience decide is this a sort of Channel I want to subscribe to and also is this a channel that I want to click on the channel page and

explore to see what else they might have now one thing that's a really good signal for the YouTube algorithm is when you can extend someone's watch session YouTube is incentivized in this way because if you keep someone on YouTube for long and they're having a good time with satisfaction and all that YouTube can serve them more ads which is good for the business as a whole and so everything is all in favor of like how do we get someone to watch more and more and more videos and if your channel can be the one that

helps people watch more and more and more videos then it's way more likely to show up on the homepage and in suggested videos and these sort of algorithm features that help channels really take off now in some cases creators will have a value proposition but the that value proposition is just not going to be that clear so like last week I was doing like a live Q&A for our students in the accelerator program and one of our students I'm not going to name names because he might be his channel was a bit all over the

place firstly it looked really amateur everyone could tell it just looked as if the thumbnails were designed in PowerPoint so you know may made some recommendations creating a mood board finding a new thumbnail style Etc but also his value proposition was just not at all obvious like there's something in the world of marketing called the grunt test you know this is often applied to like websites but it also applies to YouTube channels which is that if a caveman were to look at your website or your YouTube channel can they grunt what your Channel or website

is about or what is the thing that you offer this is initely hard to do on a YouTube channel where often people don't have the value proposition written in the channel Banner so you know take a take this with a little bit of a pinch of salt it's really obvious websites but generally when you're watching someone's video you want to get a sense of oh okay this is what this channel is about and in this Creator's instance it just really wasn't obvious at all and so he and I had a bit of a back and

forth of like what do you actually do like what is the point of your YouTube channel who is it for who's getting lots of value out of it and turns out he has a bunch of ridiculously high paying clients who are businesses and he helps them streamline their operations and processes so that their businesses can grow in a way that's more streamlined and more efficient and so this guy's value proposition is I help business owners grow their business how through streamlining processes and operations and I was like great that's perfect that is a fantastic value

proposition we know who it's for business owners and we know what the point is grow your business and we know the vehicle that does that streamlining processes and operations and this was just not obvious anywhere it wasn't obvious in the guy's Banner it wasn't obvious in the titles it wasn't obviously in the thumbnails it wasn't obvious in the intro it just never said that I was like bro if you just said that in your videos you know my name is X I've got 15 years of experience as a business coach and I help business owners

grow their businesses through streamling operations I'd be like great I would subscribe to that channel if you are not a business if you're a doctor or an accountant or a student you would not subscribe to that channel but you wouldn't even ever see that channel because the YouTube algorithm is not going to serve you that channel but for the right sort of person a business owner who wants to make more money while saving time it is an absolutely perfect value proposition and so the guy had a value proposition he just wasn't saying it out loud

and so the thing I generally encourage people to do is State your value proposition out loud say who your channel is for and what it does now again I'm going to give a warning here of like the overthinking warning this is a very long video I tend to ramble on quite a lot about this YouTube stuff cuz I could talk about this forever this is a very long video If you right now are at this point in the video chances are you are a overthinking type person I'm just going to take a bet you're probably

an overthinking type person you're probably quite analytical you're probably very good-looking you're probably very intelligent you probably have a lot of success in your day job or as a student or like whatever the thing is most people who get to this point in these sorts of videos about YouTube seem to be 9 to5 corporate employee type people so I'm going to guess that broadly that is you and I'm going to guess that you have an overthinking problem and when you know the fact you've watched all this you're going to be like oh I have to

overthink my thumbnails now and damn I got to think reallyy hard about my Hooks and now all he's telling me I need to have clear clear value proposition I don't know what the hell my value proposition is going to be I don't even know what my Niche is man this is the thing that's been holding me back from making YouTube videos fuing months or years I just don't know what my Niche is maybe I shouldn't even do YouTube at all like again we we can get into this Quagmire of overthinking again the point I would

make is that starting off just making the videos is the most important thing it's totally okay for your Niche to emerge over time you don't have to have it nailed from day one in our YouTuber Academy we have like a whole 2hour long session that goes into this in detail and gives you a bunch of worksheets and templates and examples but even if you don't want to take the course you can just think about that for yourself who is your target audience and what is the value proposition why should someone care about your YouTube channel

again please don't let this overthinking stop you from actually making the videos but it's something to keep in the back of your mind because generally smaller Channels with a clear value proposition are more likely to grow because it's just more more obvious to the audience and therefore to the algorithm who it's for and who it's not for if it helps around the potential overthinking around this if you take a look at the oldest videos on my channel you'll see that I had no value proposition for for quite a while I started off with music videos

where I wasn't even on camera then I started singing I tried to do a cover of thinking a lad by cheeran and then I started doing travel Vlogs where I was you know doing Vlogs about my elective in Cambodia and Vietnam then I did a series on like how to design an app because I was building an app with a friend of mine which completely flopped and it was only sort of after a few months of doing YouTube videos and learning the ropes that I landed on the value proposition of oh I help people get

into med school and now if you look at my channel you'll notice I don't help people get into med school CU it's been seven years since then and it's okay for your value proposition and your Niche to change over time if we look at Amazon for example Amazon did not start out as the everything store they did not start out selling absolutely everything they started out selling books after they started dominating the market for books they expanded out slightly into like CDs and DVDs and videos and stuff like things that were sort of somewhat book

adjacent or music I can't remember what it was but Amazon did what what people called the land and then expand strategy you land in a particular location in a particular Niche and then over time you can expand that Niche over time it's very difficult right now if you wanted to start a business to be the next Amazon it's probably not going to happen but you could probably build a multi6 or seven figure business by just selling one thing and selling one thing really well and then over time you can slowly expand out the different things

that you offer it's the same thing with a YouTube channel people love the idea of being a nich YouTube channel honestly it's really hard to succeed as a nicheless YouTube channel if you want to make videos about anything and everything then it you know that's a destination that often big YouTubers will get to and even then they could probably grow that I know I could grow my channel more if I just made videos about growing on YouTube or if I just made videos about Finance I just choose not to because I like being a variety

YouTuber and I like doing a lot of different things but I did not start out that way I did not start out trying to be a productivity personal development Health relationships Finance YouTube advice business advice Guru or guide or any I didn't start up with any of that crap I it out screwing around trying to do music videos and travel Vlogs and stuff and realizing oh what I'm good at is helping people get into med school great I did 100 videos about that and then I moved into helping students do better at exams hundreds of

videos around that then I did General productivity hundreds hundreds more videos around that it's a land and expand the niche will evolve over time don't let the overthinking stop you from making the videos but having said that generally what I find for channels that are are on the verge of blowing up or that are in the process of blowing up they do generally have a clear value proposition let's move on to key sign of potential number four and that is unfair advantages now here I'm going to use the example of one of the other former

students of our YouTuber Academy her name is Izzy and she is also my wife incidentally we got married we only got together after she finished my YouTube course so don't worry about that it's not weird but I's Channel started off with doing a bit of like random stuff a video about productivity a video about sleep a couple of music videos but the thing that really made her Channel take off is a video on how she learned Mandarin Chinese in 6 months now that is what I call an unfair Advantage an unfair Advantage is something that

it would be very difficult for someone else to copy or replicate it is very very very difficult to teach yourself Mandarin Chinese at all let alone in 6 months which is an absolute record time to teach yourself the language in and the fact that Izzy did all of that work means that she has what in business would be called a moot a competitive moot around around her YouTube channel for someone else to try and make videos on how to learn Mandarin they've got to learn Mandarin first that is an enormous unfair Advantage unfair meaning that

it would take a lot of effort to try and replicate that or it would be impossible to try and replicate that once I's Channel started to blow up with the Mandarin stuff then all of the other General productivity videos started to work and so that's a good example of the land and expand strategy you start off growing within a particular Niche and then you can slowly expand out from that niche in my case early on in my YouTube Journey my unfair Advantage was that I was a medical student at Cambridge University it's hard to become

a medical student at Cambridge University or so I hear it is an unfair advantage that is difficult for someone else to replicate and so provided that unfair Advantage matches my value proposition you know if I was singing guitar videos my value proposition does not match my own Fair Advantage I'm a medical student at Cambridge I suck at singing I suck at music and I'm trying to make guitar videos it's just not going to work but if I'm a medical student at Cambridge University and I'm teaching people how to become medical students at Cambridge University you've

got a perfect match between the unfair advantage and the value proposition so generally in general again when we look at all the stuff around like what are the factors that cause YouTubers to blow up versus not generally there is some sort of competitive advantage that is underlying their YouTube channel and they are leaning into that competitive Advantage at this point people will often say well what if if I don't have any unfair advantages I would say that like first thing you don't have to have unfair advantages to succeed on YouTube it just makes it more

likely but also you probably do think of the stuff that you've learned over the last 5 years or over the last 2 years or over the last 10 years or over the last one year think of the experiences you've had in your life those experiences are probably not the experiences I've had in my life they're probably not the experiences that Izzy or Aman or Elizabeth or Han or aul or and you know your friends maybe they're probably experiences that are somewhat unique to you you can often find your unfair or competitive advantage within that again

in our YouTuber Academy we have a whole thing a whole like worksheet with like journaling promts and everything around how to figure out your own Fair advantages but one important way to think about this is like what have you invested hours and hours and hours of your life into that other people might not have done one of our other former students her name is Ellie jeene she is a fashion expert she's in invested hundreds thousands of hours of her life into understanding women's fashion and so when she did a YouTube channel breaking down women's fashion

and like she is leaning into that on for Advantage because she already has thousands of hours of experience in that particular field because she was just interested in the topic I have 184 days of Play Time on World of Warcraft the video game it's a bit of an unfair Advantage it's it's nowhere near the thousands of hours that the professional World of Warcraft players have but the fact that I've spent 200 days of my life playing World of Warcraft means that I'd probably be better at making a World of Warcraft Channel than I would a

Minecraft Channel I've spent no time playing Minecraft at all I've also spent hundreds of hours of my time designing websites back from the age of 13 up to the age of 30 wow it's been a while and so if I was starting a brand new YouTube channel something in the web design space teaching people how to do web design would also make sense because I've already got all that experience so the thing I would ask you is what could your competitive Advantage be what is stuff that you have potentially invested large amounts of time that

other people you know might not have invested all that time into and can you lean into that in some way for your YouTube channel because the more of a foundation of experience you are sitting on at least for educational content the more likely that channel is to succeed at least in my experience and also this video is going on super super long but if you're here at this point I imagine you probably want to hear more rather than hear l so apologies if the video is going on too long um one thing I find super

helpful is to also think about what is something that you are surprised that other people find hard often it's hard to figure out what our own strengths are but if you think about what surprises you about other people being weirdly bad at like what might that thing be in my case I'm often surprised that other creators I know and other people I speak to seem to be seem to really struggle with creating an online course and seem to really struggle with the concept of teaching or like getting up on stage and like doing a talk

and doing a presentation I'm like huh that's kind of surprising that other people are bad at that and what I've realized over time is oh I'm just like weirdly good at that thing I can take a concept break it down turn it into a five-step framework Spiel on a video about it for like 60 Minutes do a talk on stage without any prep and that's just it's just my jam it's just what I do but it's really hard for other people so that is a good unfair advantage to lean into what is something about you

you think it's kind of weird that other people are weirdly bad at and that can often give you an indication as to what your unfair Advantage might be all right let's move on to the fifth and final key thing consistency and enjoyment now here I want to use the example of aul aul is one of the students in our accelerator program again links down below if you want to check out any of the stuff aul is a dude in his 60s at least I think he's in his 60s it would be awkward if he's younger

than that so aul please yeah what what Azul is a dude in the 60s who does Financial advice videos for other people who are 50 plus Azul is very very consistent with his channel he's got practically daily uploads and his videos are very low lift he just sort of walks around a park and talks to the camera but the videos don't need to be high lift partly because the niche is not saturated there's not that many people doing content giving Financial advice to people in their 50s and 60s and 70s and so the fact that

aul enjoys the process of making these videos and has been very consistent with it that alone can can often be the thing that makes your channel Stand Out Last Man Standing is a viable strategy the thing that every single successful YouTuber has in common is that they have been consistent in some ways sometimes on and off but generally consistent with their channels the single biggest risk to your own YouTube channel is you quitting and that's why if you can find a way to enjoy the process to make it energizing enjoyable and sustainable you are far

more likely to stick it out for long enough to see the compounding effects of YouTube growth the way to think about it is that essentially every video you put out there it's like planting a seed sewing your seed as it were in your little garden each new video is a new seed some of those seeds depending on the conditions depending on the saw depending on the temperature whatever are going to grow very slowly some of them are not going to grow at all but some of them might become trees and might become very big trees

that can then support you financially or something you get the idea the more of these seeds you put out there the more likely your chances are that any one of these seeds is going to Bloss B into a massive Treehouse that will support you and your family for Generations the question is how do you get all these seeds to happen well you got to enjoy the process people will tell you that discipline is more important than motivation and as long as you're disciplined then you'll be able to succeed I don't know I've never met a

YouTuber who has succeeded who has got there through discipline through like whipping themselves and telling them no I must do this even though I don't feel like it every YouTuber I know who has succeeded and stayed consistent for months to years to the point where it becomes successful has found a way to enjoy the process they're talking about something they enjoy they're doing it in a way that they enjoy they are potentially working with a team that they enjoy when you enjoy the process of building your business building a creative business building whatever you want

it's far more likely to be sustainable and that is what it takes now a couple of tips on this front uh the first thing is that you probably have a job or have had a job at some point that you maybe haven't quite enjoyed which is why you're may be thinking of doing YouTube because you're like oh if this could make money I could potentially one day quit my job and stuff that's you know fortunately the position I'm in I started YouTube not intending to quit my job 3 years later I ended up quitting my

job because I was making like over a million a year from my YouTube channel which is kind of cool but the key thing is you do not want your YouTube channel or your creator business to become another prison you do not want it to become like your 9 to5 where you kind of kind of don't look forward to Mondays you kind of dread doing it you want it to be fun cuz otherwise what the hell is the point you may as well just had a job and be been a lot less stressed right so this

is why this is a big part of why enjoyment is enjoyment of the process is really important what the hell is the point if you're not going to have fun along the way and two practical questions that I asked ask myself very often when it comes to things I'm struggling with with my YouTube channel my creative business managing my team any of that kind of stuff is two things number one what would this look like if it were easy and number two what would this look like if it were fun even have what would this

look like if it were fun as like my wallpaper yeah but finding a way to make the process fun makes the whole thing energizing makes the whole thing sustainable and means that you're not like creating a new prison for yourself okay so if you've gotten to this point in the video chances are you're going to a lot of value out of our YouTuber course we have our YouTuber Academy we have a new course for complete beginners coming out soon depending on when you watch this called YouTuber foundations our seven video challenge we also have our

accelerator program so if you're an established Creator or a business owner looking to use YouTube to drive leads for your business the accelerator program is amazing you get one-on-one support and coaching calls and stuff for my team and basically the idea is that with YouTuber Academy and with our accelerator the goal is to save you time on the Journey of growing a YouTube channel because chances are you value your time and your time is in a way more valuable than your money because you have things to do and time is our most valuable non-renewable resource

so if you've gotten to this point in the video you're probably the sort of person that would get a lot of value from our courses or from or from our accelerator program there'll be links down in the video description if you want to check them out and if for whatever reason you want to see more content from me about growing on YouTube check out this video over here which is a video I did recently about my honest advice for people starting out on YouTube so if you're a beginner in that video I'm going to introduce

you to the 2x two metrics for how to think about motivations around YouTube and a bunch of other Concepts so check out that video thank you so much for watching this absolute Mammoth of a video and I will hopefully see you in the next one bye-bye