On 'Quitting' YouTube

All right .

So in the past couple of weeks and months , there's been a lot of youtubers quitting a lot of youtuber .

A lot of OG creators from people who've been doing it .

89 , 1012 , 15 years legends and people who we all are familiar with , who've been around youtube for a long time retiring or leaving or cutting back or whatever you want to call it .

And yeah , I've noticed and a lot of you guys have , have asked me for my thoughts or to chime in .

Not that this isn't one of those videos .

I'm not , I'm not doing that , but I do have my own situation .

I've been at this a long time and uh so I figured I'd throw in my two cents .

Figured I would chime in .

So , first of all , this thing that we're doing here , this is a dream job .

No question about it .

Like we cannot forget that .

I think there's a stat , I've , I've referenced it before .

But what you ask Children of the 20 tens and 2020 is what they want to be when they grow up .

And they , the most popular answer is youtuber .

They want to be youtubers when they grow up .

That and that didn't exist 20 years ago .

They all wanted to be other things , firefighters , movie stars .

Now , I'm sure a lot of this is they just wanna be famous or this is the new version of , you know , Hollywood famous .

And they don't really understand all that comes with this .

That's totally normal .

But the point is it's a very sought after job and that's something we all have to acknowledge .

But as Tom Scott put it so eloquently , a dream job is still a job .

I can't keep this up .

This is my dream job and I have a lot of fun doing it .

I know I'm incredibly lucky , but a dream job is still a job and it's a job that keeps getting bigger and more complicated and I am so tired .

So I , I've watched all these youtubers , uh videos of , of talking about what they're doing , they're retiring and they're not all actually just straight up leaving .

If you actually watch their videos .

Let's be honest , a lot of them are cutting back a little bit or taking a break or changing things up in a way .

But it , it feels like they're sort of retiring , the main thing that we know them for .

But pretty much all these videos have something in common .

So I'm going to use an analogy to sort of , I like analogies .

I've said this before .

I'm gonna use one to explain sort of how it feels in my head .

So the way I explain , because I get asked all the time , what do you recommend for someone who wants to be a youtuber ?

And I liken it to being a professional athlete , pick a sport , pick whatever sport you want .

Basketball .

For example , there is one thing to actually do the , the sport just for fun , to go to the park , to play basketball , for free to go to the gym with your friends to play basketball .

You can do that as much as you want .

But there is a certain level of hard work , dedication , strategy and talent .

And let's be honest luck that is involved in being able to turn that hobby , that passion into a job to actually become a full time professional basketball player .

That that is a very sought after job and a very small number of people who actually get to do that .

And so if you really want to turn the passion into the job , you have to be willing to put in a ton of hours and to be , and to be totally happy playing a ton of basketball in the park for free , playing a ton of basketball in the gym and working on the skills for free , not getting paid a dime .

And that may possibly lead to you being able to turn it into a job and you have to be able to be very comfortable doing it for free .

For a long time .

Even if you don't make a dime , that's , that's the same thing as being a professional athlete .

That's totally true about being a professional creator .

Now , I still think all that's true and I still like using that analogy , but I think there's one thing wrong with that analogy or , I guess one thing missing from that analogy , which is that creative jobs don't scale like regular jobs .

It's just not quite the same .

So what I mean by that is take the youtube video creator career , for example , when you first start , you are just being creative .

Like that's the , that's the whole job you are making stuff and that's the fun .

So you get to have all kinds of crazy creative ideas , you're getting better and better at making the thing .

You get to have a , a new idea , be inspired by something over here , new things and just coming up with all these fun , different ways to make something .

And that is what we fall in love with at the beginning .

Now , what might happen is at a certain point , you , you get your first opportunity to do some larger new thing and it's super cool that that door has been opened because of all the creative work you're putting in .

And so it's very tempting and exciting .

And so you , you need to sort of scale up a little bit to be able to address said new opportunities .

And so you do that and it's awesome and it's a , an advancement clearly .

But now you're spending time on that scaling up and less time on the being creative thing .

So , like here's a basic example , you're , you're , let's say you're a video creator , you're doing your thing , you're getting creative , you're writing , editing , shooting , doing all the fun , creative stuff and uh then you're making some adsense revenue as well .

So it's a hobby that's making some money .

Great .

A brand comes along and they offer this super awesome unique opportunity to go shoot a video that you would like to make in some crazy fun , unique location and they'll fly you out and give you that access to be able to make this awesome thing sick .

Yeah , that's , that's an advancement and that's something that's unlocked by the creative things you've been doing and so you do it and , but you know , in that process , you now also have to manage the communications with the brand .

That's the inbox stuff you're doing invoicing and then all , now it's the accounting and the taxes that come with that and the negotiation in between and the travel just a little bit of extra work and it doesn't seem like a big deal , but that is some more time spent doing something that isn't being creative when the job is still supposed to be the being creative part .

You see what I mean ?

Does that make sense ?

There are , there are all types of examples of this all over the creative world , pick any genre , whether it's working with a brand or doing some new opportunity , something somewhere that comes from you being creative .

Another very common example is I have creative friends all the time that ask , oh , I'd like to hire a team to help with some of this stuff .

And that also feels like a natural progression .

You're doing so much of this work that you should have some help .

You should have a team to help you do that and you do get the help .

But now a lot more of your time is actually spent managing those people and that team , which is taking away from the actual being creative part .

So the point is creative jobs don't scale quite like regular jobs .

And this is the thing that I see in a lot of other channels and creators and a lot of the videos I'm watching , which is the more you scale up to address these awesome new opportunities and level up , the less of your job is the original thing that we fell in love with , which is being creative .

So how do you avoid that ?

I don't know , I don't have the answers .

I don't think anybody has the answers .

That's also part of the fun of this job as it is relatively new and it didn't exist that long ago .

So there is no playbook to step one , step two , step three .

Here's how to become a professional video creator in said genre on youtube .

That's you can try to find playbooks like that , but they won't always work that you just , there is no answer yet .

Now , I've been very lucky to , I still enjoy , I enjoy a lot of the other parts of the process as well .

And I , I started again with the fun of making videos and learning to use a camera and use a lens and use lighting and microphones and all kinds of fun , things like that .

But also the rest of the process process are intriguing to me as well .

So it's fun .

I got lucky in that way .

Um But I guess the only real advice that actually makes sense and I'm not good at giving advice to these ogs .

But um I guess it's more like advice to my former self or another version of me .

But it's just to do to be very , very deliberate about keeping the original goal and the , the creativity part at the core of everything that you're doing because it gets really easy to get distracted .

And uh kind of like that fourth grader who filled out the survey who said I wanna be a youtuber , it's easy to get distracted by the thought of the scale and the money and the fame and the , the fun that seems like it comes with this with no effort .

But um if you do fall into the trap of chasing algorithmic changes or chasing the views or the , or the waves of things that happen on youtube .

It , it is definitely , uh it , it's like a carrot on a string .

It's never ending .

Like we've all seen the Mr Beast application of lots of youtube channels .

No offense , Jimmy , I love you , Jimmy , but there are a lot of other channels that , that look at what Jimmy is doing as a end goal for themselves .

And so they figure , ok , if I do what Jimmy's doing , if I follow his blueprint , I will be the Mr Beast of insert genre here .

And actually they're right , they will be , but they don't realize all the the other things that come with that it's like a treadmill .

It's like a treadmill .

That's , that's another analogy for you and the skill of being a video creator in this world where if you want it to be a job , you have to keep going and keep moving forward and keep making things and sharing things .

The skill is finding what speed on the treadmill actually works for you .

Is it a slow walk ?

Is it a light jog ?

Is it a video every this often ?

Is it scattered videos ?

Is it one video every month , every six months ?

That is a real skill and a challenge to find what actually works that satisfies both the external goals of growing your thing and the internal goals of flexing the creative muscle .

Sorry , I'm getting , this is getting philosophical .

But you've seen , have you seen the , the daft punk music video from , I guess after the last album .

But for Infinity repeating where the A I characters like walking , walking , walking , it walks slowly a little bit faster , a little bit faster .

And the whole time it's , it's a fine pace .

But the second it tries to start accelerating very quickly towards the end of the video , it just like falls apart and it's , it's too much .

That's what burnout looks like .

So in my world , if you've watched tech youtube videos , for example , which I guess if you're here , you have that looks like you cannot make every tech video .

At least I can't , maybe you can , but I can't review every single phone that comes out .

I just recently we had the Galaxy S 24 stuff come out and the one plus 12 is around the corner and the , the , the find seven ultra is also , I , I can't review all three phones at once .

I'm only one person , so I gotta pick one .

I can't dive in and try to satisfy the algorithm every single time .

I just can't .

So even me today , I am trying to pick the right speed on the treadmill that works for everything that I and my team want to do .

And it's challenging and I'm not saying that the people who are retiring or cutting back haven't done that .

But I do think we're all sort of realizing you can't run on the treadmill forever .

As , as viewers , I'm watching Tom Scott and Matt Pat .

I'm like , y I , I get it .

They're getting off the treadmill , but I'll leave you with one more analogy .

Um , and that is for those , uh , who are still in the camp of , I would like to go all in on this .

I would like to , to get help and scale up and have a team .

So , the last analogy I'll leave you with and I've , I've told this on other people's channels , but I don't think I've ever actually said it on this channel .

Um Is the octopus analogy .

Sorry , my computer over here just went to sleep with my mic cable plugged in the octopus analogy being a creator on youtube .

If that's what we want to talk about is just like being an octopus , meaning you get creative and you start making videos and you have all this fun with the platform .

You are doing several different full time jobs all at once .

You are a full time writer , you are also a full time cinematographer .

You're behind the camera , you're a lot of times in front of the camera , you're a lot of times a full time editor , you're also managing the inbox .

You're also doing the invoicing , working with brands , there's taxes , the financial accounting and also just the pr relationships and management and all that content strategy .

That's a bunch of different hats .

That's like an octopus with eight arms doing eight different things all at once .

So my only advice is when getting help and this makes perfect fundamental sense .

But sometimes you have to hear it out loud .

You wanna get someone who's better at the thing that you're not good at than you .

But also you wanna find things that you specifically want to cut off .

So if you're not good at graphic design and you want the thumbnails to be great , maybe that's a perfect arm to cut off and hand to someone else and then they can do that task 500 times better than you ever could .

I certainly learned that .

I recommend that just cut off the arms of the , the taxes .

Boom , you can hire an accountant , you can work with people who can help you with that and that's cutting off an arm and handing it to someone who can do much better , but you can't cut off every arm .

And this is another weird part of the analogy .

But fun fact , a lot of octo octopi , octopuses , octopi .

Anyway , they have three hearts weird .

I know .

Uh but they can't cut those out .

They have some core functions that always stay with them .

And if you are a creator in some way , there is a part of the game , there is something that you fell in love with at the beginning , it's really worth figuring out what that is and just keeping that , just keeping that and it's gonna be different for every creator .

Maybe for you , it's the cinematography or the editing or the writing or the content strategy , whatever it is , there's gonna be parts of it and there may be several parts that you gotta keep .

You don't cut that off .

And that's , that's my octopus analogy for learning to be a creator since there is no playbook .

I'm just putting this out there .

Learn what those three hearts are as early and deliberately as you can .

And hopefully you can run on the treadmill with other people who control the other legs is a crazy analogy now .

But I think you get the idea .

Long story short .

I don't think we've seen the end of Big youtubers who've been doing it for a long time retiring or cutting back or whatever .

I just think we're seeing them finding their hearts .

I think they're , you know , Matt Pat's still doing behind the scenes stuff on his channel .

Tom Scott , still doing his podcast , watch the other videos and you'll see them sort of delineating between the outside and the inside internal motivation .

And that's , that's why I think it's important .

So that's , that's my two cents .

And I just wanted , wanted to get out there for this video .

That's all I , that's all I wrote down .

That's all I wanna say .

If you ever get to live the dream , be very deliberate about it .

It is a weird video .

Ok ?

We'll see if I put this up .

Thanks for watching .

Catch you guys .

The next one .

Peace .