In this celebratory video marking his 100th episode and his 33rd birthday, Dan Willis of Millennial Motivator reflects on the key lessons he’s gathered from creating his first 100 YouTube videos and from a decade of entrepreneurship. He emphasizes that success on YouTube hinges on building genuine community rather than chasing virality, and he urges creators to prioritize engagement, comment interaction, and collaborations with channels they admire. Dan stresses the importance of being flexible—regularly tweaking thumbnails, titles, video length, and even format (including live streams)—and advises new creators not to lock themselves into a single style. He highlights the power of cross‑platform promotion, recommending that creators maintain an active presence on at least three social networks to create a virtuous cycle of audience growth. Finally, Dan shares personal life lessons, recounting a turbulent personal history and adopting a “never give up, never surrender” mindset that has guided his entrepreneurial journey. He closes with a call to action for viewers to comment on what they’ve learned from the channel.
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Time to celebrate! 100 videos in. Let's see what we learned. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I am Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. If you're new to the channel, click that subscribe button down there, little bell next to it, you'll get notified when my next video goes live. Today we're talking about the 100 video milestone. That's right, 100 episodes of Millennial Motivator here on this channel. And I gotta say, guys, I am blown away. Only 100 episodes in and we already have almost 2,000 subscribers on the channel. The community's growing, live reviews have started happening, all kinds of amazing stuff. So as I did at all the other thresholds of 25, 50, 75, we're up to 100. I really want to share some insights into what I have learned here on the platform 100 videos in. And as a bonus, today happens to be my birthday, so I'm sitting at 33 years old. So I thought I'd share a little bit of wisdom from my first 33 years on the planet, my first 10 years in business as an entrepreneur, and 100 videos. So all of that great goodies in one video for you guys. Let's go. Okay guys, first big thing that I have learned on this channel is it's not about the videos. It's not about the thumbnails. It's not about the titles. It's about people first and foremost. All that other stuff will come into play, it will. But the number one thing that this platform is about, despite what people may think, it's not about the viral content. It's about the people. It's about engaging with people. Now, are there, are there those channels out there that are all about virality? How big can I make a video go and grow? Yes, definitely. But for the majority of us out there, it's about relationships and community. What do I mean by that? It's about engaging with other people's channels that are similar to yours that you actually enjoy watching on a regular basis. So right now I'm gonna give shoutouts to the channels that I really love to watch personally in my day-to-day. Guys like Philip DeFranco, Peter McKinnon, uh, Sarah Dietschy, Roberto Blake, Derral Eves, Tim Schmoyer, Casey Neistat, Gary Vee, Will Smith, Valuetainment. I can't think of anything else, but there's that, guys. Those channels are the ones that inspired me to do what I'm doing, and vice versa, I hope that I'm able to inspire others to go out and create great content, to bring their entrepreneurial desires into the internet through things that they learn on this platform, start a YouTube channel if they've been humming and hawing about it. The reality is, guys, this is about people, this channel, first and foremost. So if you want to be a YouTuber and you're not big on people, you could really care less about socializing, having communications, having conversations, the reality is this: it's probably not the best platform for you. But if you are open to engaging, talking with people, speaking to their lives, offering solutions, having conversations, having dialogues, replying to comments, looking at other people's channels, talking to other people, learning from other people, this is the place for you and you will have success on this platform. That's the biggest thing I've learned in 100 episodes— community is first. What else have I learned? Okay, the next thing that I've learned in 100 videos is don't set anything in stone for your first 100 videos. Be willing to make changes on the fly. That means your content, your thumbnails, your voice, your tone, your settings. Be willing to make changes. More than ever, as a new creator, as a new channel, you have the flexibility to be what you want to be. Try different things, see what people like, see what engages with people. Oftentimes you look like— you look at a big channel like Casey Neistat, who just made the change from his old vlog-style videos to 368. It's a big change when a massive channel like that makes a shift. Everybody feels it, and it completely changes what that channel is about. As a small channel with very few subscribers, very few likes, especially like this channel, sub-2,000 subscribers, it's not a lot of people. So people here know what to expect from me for the most part, but my content is so different from day to day, people never know what the next video is going to be about. It's going to be similar, it's always going to be me, we're going to have a similar tone of voice, but I've changed up the thumbnails drastically. If you go back and look at the first couple episodes and look at the thumbnails on them My thumbnails change regularly, my titles change regularly, the keywords I target, the length of my videos has changed, everything has changed. Live videos come into play now. There's so much that I've changed over the first 100 videos, and I think that's a key element to the success, is that I'm willing to go out there and play around with things. Oh, what does this do? I'm gonna try this over here. Don't be afraid in your first 100 videos to change it up a bit. Okay, great, you know, you're seeing 30 views a video. Is that what you want though? Do you want 30 or do you want 1,000? Do you want 10,000, you want 50,000. Until you're satisfied with where your level of videos are, change things up. Be willing to make that change. Don't be afraid. I know change can be scary, but don't be afraid. Make that change. Keep moving forward. That being said, I just added live videos onto my channel. That's another big change. Guess what? I'm feeling now that I'm 33, it's time to change the thumbnails up again. We went from this, you know, just generic photo image with a title kind of deal to This, this yellow backdrop that kind of stands out with the, the red overlay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to change it up a bit, see if I can't change the colors up and draw attention in a new way. It's okay to make changes, especially as a small creator. So that's a big thing you got to keep in mind in your first 100 videos on YouTube. The next thing, guys, is in your first 100 videos, if you want to succeed on YouTube, realize the potential that you have in your other social networks, okay? Now, I have recommended from the go, if any of you have attended one of the live sessions that I do on Saturday, that everybody have at minimum 3 social networks attached to their YouTube channel. For me, I use a wide variety of channels because I'm a social media creator. So the reality is I use a ton of different social networks: Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch, Google+. There's all kinds of different social networks that I use to promote this channel. Basically everything that's on that share tab on the bottom, I've got a network on there. What I've seen that's so amazing though is because I've been consistent in sharing this content out into those social networks, I've seen growth and community building on those other platforms as well, which guess what? One feeds the other, right? I create content here, I share it out there, the community grows out there. As the community grows out there, more people come here. That builds this community. And as this— you see how this is going in a circle, right? Community built here helps build community out there. Community being built out there helps build the community down here. It's just this beautiful cycle that you're gonna learn to love, but you have to have those social networks up there, you have to be active on them, and you have to engage in them. So if you can't dedicate the time to those networks, don't do it, but dedicate yourself to 3 networks that you actively use. So if you're an active Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter user, make sure you've got a YouTube channel, Twitter account, Facebook account, and Instagram account that you are working with daily as you put out your content, or 3 to 5 times a week as you put out your content. Make that commitment. You will see great success from consistency in using those networks elsewhere, and then that will bring traffic into your channel, which will grow your awareness here, which will help you grow your awareness out there. All right? So those are the big things as far as what I've learned in the first 100 videos here on YouTube. Now for the bonus. The bonus is what have I learned? What points of wisdom can I give you in my first 10 years as an entrepreneur As well as my first 33 years in life. All right guys, this is where I need to quote Tim Allen. For all of you out there that know Galaxy Quest, you're familiar with it, great. If you're not, go rent it, go watch it. It's a ton of fun, you'll enjoy it, it's a great watch. But in that, Tim Allen's character plays a deadbeat actor who used to be like a Captain Kirk in the movie. But he has a line in the show, never give up, Never surrender. Okay, it sounds like such a cheesy, tacky one-liner, but if I could have one line to describe my outlook after 33 years, it would be never give up, never surrender. Okay guys, I know I haven't shared a lot about my personal story here on the channel because I did want to keep it business focused. Eventually I was going to share a little bit more, but the reality is in 33 years I've been a drug addict, an alcoholic, a high school dropout. I've been I've been a pin monkey, I've been a roofer, I've been a missionary, I've been a McDonald's worker, I've been an entrepreneur, I've been a business consultant, I've been a YouTuber. I've been all kinds of different things. I've buried a daughter, I've almost buried a wife. I've been married for 10 years, all kinds of amazing things in my life. But what I've learned is when your ups are up and your downs are downs, it doesn't matter either way. You never give up, you never surrender. You keep pushing forward. You keep doing the thing that you love, that you know you want to do, that you know you want to be. You head towards it, you push towards it, and you never, never, never let anything stop you from getting where you're going. That is it for today, ladies and gentlemen. Question of the day is, what have you learned from this channel in the first 100 videos? Let me know down in the comments below. If you liked the video, hit that like button, tell a friend, get them in here, get them watching, and I will see you tomorrow with another great video. Goodbye. Take it easy.
