The YouTube Growth Lie No One Talks About

The advice that's supposed to grow your YouTube channel is the exact thing keeping it small, and almost nobody will tell you that. Pew Research Center studied YouTube's most popular channels, the ones with at least a quarter million subscribers, and found that just the top 10% of their videos pulled in 79% of all their views. So even if the biggest channels live and die by a tiny handful of videos, then everything you've been grinding on, the posting schedule, the fancy editing, might be the very reason you're stuck. Let me tell you about a kid from North Carolina named Jimmy Donaldson. He uploaded his first video back in 2012 when he was just 13 years old under the name MrBeast. And for years, almost nothing happened.

What's up, guys? What's up, guys? What's up, guys? When I first started, the videos were horrible, and then they slowly got less and less horrible throughout the years.

He filmed, he edited, he posted, and a handful of people showed up. By 2016, 4 years in, he had around 30,000 subscribers, which sounds like a lot until you remember that he'd been at it since he was a child. Most people would've walked away. Jimmy did the opposite.

I would wake up, work on videos, and then I'd go to bed. That's where I just went hyperdrive. It's definitely where I got really weird with it.

While his friends were out having fun, he locked himself in his room and studied YouTube like his life depended on it. He didn't study how to get lucky. He studied the titles, he studied the thumbnails, he studied the pacing, and above everything else, he studied retention, why people click and why they stay. Then in January 2017, after 5 years of grinding,, he posted a video called "I Counted to 100,000." 100,000. It took him 40 hours to film and it exploded. He didn't stumble into it. He outstudied and outworked everyone. So when his moment showed up, he was ready for it. That growth was not an accident. He earned it with one boring repetition at a time. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking MrBeast is a genius and that you could never be like him. I get it, but here's what most people miss. Jimmy didn't win because he had more time or more money than you. He won because he stopped chasing just views and started mastering the craft of getting picked. You don't need to go viral. You don't need a studio. You need to understand the real game underneath the game, the one we're about to show you. Think about it like it's the edge of a puzzle. Everybody wastes time fumbling with the middle pieces, the gear, the editing, the perfect lighting, when the people who win build the border first, the framework that makes everything else click into place. Because once you see this framework, you can't unsee it, and you'll never make a video the same way again. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time.

Believe.

YouTube isn't a search engine, it's a referral engine. Here's the first thing nobody tells you and it changes everything. You've been treating YouTube like Google. You think someone types in a question, finds your video, and then that's how you grow. So you stuff keywords into your title and you write a long description, you fill in every tag that you can think of. I did the same thing for years too. Then I looked at the data and out of my hundreds of millions of views, only about 8% ever came from search. 8%. The other 92% came from YouTube putting my video in front of people who never went looking for it. That's because YouTube isn't a search engine, it's a referral engine. Its only job is to keep people watching, so it studies what someone just finished watching and asks one question: what should I show this person next so they don't leave? If your video is the answer to that question, then you win. If it's not, then you stay invisible no matter how many keywords you cram in. So stop optimizing for the search box, start earning the suggested spot, the video that pops up next to the big one in your topic. Here's how you actually do it. Go find the most popular video in your topic, the one with millions of views, and look at the sidebar of videos that YouTube suggests next to it. That sidebar is the neighborhood that you want to live in. Your job is to make a video so clearly related and so well packaged that YouTube has no choice but to slot you into that sidebar lineup. You're not creating just in a vacuum anymore. You're building the perfect next watch for an audience that's already glued to their screen. So when you make a video that clearly belongs next to a proven winner, YouTube does the heavy heavy lifting and walks a brand new audience right to you for free on repeat for years. That one shift from how do I get found to what do I deserve to be suggested next to is a difference between just screaming in an empty room and getting handed an audience of warm people who are ready to watch. Your packaging is 70% of the battle. Okay, now that you know the goal is getting suggested, you have to win the click. And this is where most people lose before they even start. Your thumbnail and title are not just decoration or things that you just hope look good. They are 70% of the game. And inside that, I'd say the thumbnail's 70%, the title's 30%. Think about how you watch YouTube. You don't read, you scan. And in a split second, your eyes land on a picture and your brain decides, yes, click or no. So your thumbnail needs a big emotional face zoomed in close, eyes pulling towards the words or the, or the viewer. It needs colors that punch off the screen with high contrast. It needs almost no text, 3 to 7 words at the most, 'cause a cluttered thumbnail is a confusing thumbnail, and confused people don't click, they go somewhere else. Your title then adds to the curiosity that your picture can't show. The two should never repeat each other. The thumbnail shows the emotion and the stakes, and the title opens the loop your brain then has to go and close. That's why people want to click. And here's a simple test that can separate the pros from the amateurs. Shrink your thumbnail down to the size of a postage stamp, and then size it up on the phone, because that's where most people will watch. If you can't tell what the video's about at a single glance, it doesn't stand off the page, then it fails, period. Mm-hmm. One clear face, one clear emotion, one clear idea. A brilliant video with weak packaging dies. A good video with great packaging gets seen by everybody. And I know that might hurt because you pour your soul into the content and it feels backwards to spend so much energy on the COVID but you have to earn the click before anyone can ever experience the value of your video inside. People say don't judge a book by its cover, but we do. Treat your packaging, it's like the front door of your house. Nobody gets to see how beautiful the inside of your house is until they walk through the door. So spend some real time here. Make 10 thumbnails and pick the best one. Write 15 titles for every video and then read them out loud because the one that makes you go, "Ooh, I have to know," is the one that will make a stranger feel the same way. A great title creates a gap between what someone knows and what they want to know. And that gap is uncomfortable that they want to click on it because they have to close the gap. It's not about being shallow or tricking people. This is respecting the fact that the best message in the world means nothing if nobody opens it. So put as much love into the COVID as you do into the content. Into the content. And if you need help putting all this together and understanding which videos are doing amazingly well and which ones need the most work to improve, we have an awesome tool called Brandlytics. You can check it out in the description below that huge creators are using to generate extra millions of views on their channel. The first 60 seconds decide everything. Okay, so they clicked. Incredible. Now you have about 60 seconds to keep them, and this is the make or break moment. The gold standard you're aiming for is 70% retention at 1 minute, meaning 7 out of 10 people who started the video are still there after 1 minute. It's incredibly difficult. But here's the thing to think about: if your intro is weak, up to 70% of your viewers can also drop off in those first few seconds. And once they're gone, YouTube sees that they stopped watching, so they stop recommending your video. So your opening can't be, "Hey guys, welcome back to this channel. Don't forget to smash the like button." That's the sound of the mouse button going to another video. Instead, open the way that I opened this video, or learn the way that Jimmy opened. Start with a powerful opinion, something that hits them emotionally and challenges what they believe. Then tell a quick story that proves that you understand their world. Then move into the value. No throat clearing, no long intros, no fancy B-roll, no asking for anything. Don't recap what the video's about. Drop them into value and make good on the promise so they stay to see if you can continue to deliver. That's an open loop, a question you plant in their mind that only stays answered if they keep watching. Here's a drill that fixes 90% of weak intros. Write your opening, then cut in half, and then cut in half again. Whatever survives is probably where you should have started. You earn the right to keep going by giving them a reason to stay in the first 10 seconds and then the next 10 and then the next. Every line has to pull them to the next line. When you obsess over the first minute, the way you obsess over your thumbnail, your whole channel changes because retention is the engine that tells YouTube your video is worth showing to more people. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just click the link in the description below to go grab it. Thank you. I'll see you there. Steal the proven title, don't invent your own. So here's a tactic that took me too long to learn, and it's one of the fastest ways to grow that exists. Stop trying to be clever and invent brand new title ideas from scratch. Instead, go find what's already working and make your version. So here's how. Pick 5 to 10 channels in your topic. Now go hunt for what we call in Movement Makers growth videos, the videos that got way more views than channel has subscribers. So channel with 4,000 subscribers that has a video with 150,000 views just told you something really valuable. That title, that idea, it's a proven winner. The audience has already voted and said it's awesome. So go to a competitor's channel, click videos, sort by most popular. The ones sitting way above their normal numbers, those are the growth videos, and those— that's your gold mine if you can make a video on that. Keep a swipe file, a simple list of your 20 proven titles in your topic, and then you'll never just sit there at a blank screen wondering, "What content should I make next?" Your job isn't to copy their words, it's to take that proven angle and make the best version of that video that the internet has ever seen. Because when your video matches a title YouTube already knows people love, the algorithm naturally suggests yours to the exact same audience that's watching the original. So we're not guessing anymore. Now, this might feel uncomfortable for creative people because you want your idea to be totally original, but the original ideas are usually the slowest, riskiest way to grow. So don't wait for permission to use what already works. This title is Unique Gift, and what you say in the video is uniquely yours. We're just leveraging a proven title that has already worked. Give your audience that information, do it better than anyone else, and let YouTube carry you to new people. Serve who shows up, not who doesn't. I want to tell you a little bit about my story because I might change how you feel about your view count. I started my channel back in 2008. I was shy and stiff. My first video took me 2 days to do. I had a suit, I had a red tie on, had some hair. My first video got 3 comments in a year, and 2 of them from my mom and my sister. I was so embarrassed by my early stuff that I couldn't watch them back. The first 350 videos. And here's the part that hopefully gives you hope. I posted for 6 straight years and only hit 9,000 subscribers. 6 years! Most people quit in 6 weeks. But I made a decision that saved everything for me. I always focused on who I was serving instead of who I wasn't. So 50 people watched. I didn't cry about the millions who didn't. I got excited because if 50 people showed up in a room to hear you speak, you'd probably be thrilled, right? Then I finally stopped trying to figure it all out. By myself. I learned the real science of YouTube, the hooks, the packaging, retention, and my channel went from 9,000 subscribers to 2 million, now 4 million. The quality leads to the quantity. The more videos you make, the better you get at it, and the better you get at it, the more you're ready for when your moment comes. So don't quit just because you have a small number. Serve the people in front of you like they're the ones who matter because they're the ones that are. And if you just keep thinking about who you are serving instead of who you're not, it gives you so much more motivation to keep going. You're an expert, not a creator. The last shift might be, uh, the biggest one. It's about just who you decide to be because being leads to doing. So most people log on thinking they're a creator chasing subscribers and AdSense checks and brand deals. I would encourage you to think about throwing that identity away. You're not just some creator trying to get famous. You're an expert. You're an entrepreneur. You have a message that can change somebody's life, and YouTube is the most powerful tool ever built to help deliver it. So when you make that switch, Some of the vanity stuff kind of falls away. You stop worrying about the tags because tags are worth zero. And any software agency promising you to grow by optimizing your tags is selling you a scam. You stop spending 6 months and thousands of dollars building a fancy studio that you don't need because quality of thought beats polished B-roll every day of the week. You stop measuring your worth by how many views you get and start measuring it by the number of lives that you're having an impact on, you touch in a meaningful way, and you start running your channel like a business instead of a hobby. So the system that I give you— pick 3 to 5 consistent series, real buckets of content that you make over and over, plus one bucket that's just for testing wild new fun ideas. At the end of every month, look at the watch time and subscriber growth for each series, kill the worst performing ones, and replace it with a fresh experiment. This is what we teach inside our Movie Makers program. That's it. You're not guessing month to month. You're running a machine that gets smarter every 30 days. And one more thing, keep your Shorts on a totally separate channel because the Shorts crowd is a different audience and mixing them— still, people say it's not true, it still is 1,000% true— mixing them will confuse your algorithm and choke real growth on your long-form videos. So if you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. You know something that can help people. That knowledge isn't yours to just sit on. It's a paper airplane that you're meant to throw into the world. And the only way it flies is if you're launching new videos and you're getting a little better each time. So you are not put here to stay safe and stay small. You are put here to serve. And this is how you do it at scale. The one video that changes everything. You don't have to be the next MrBeast. You just have to make one more video than the person who gave up and then get a little better each time. You know, the best time to start understanding this game was years ago. And you know when the second best time is? Right now. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. Now let's learn how regular people are getting 1 million subscribers this year. Over 75,000 channels have over 1 million subscribers, and expecting your first videos to be perfect is the exact reason your channel isn't growing.

And often you'll find for most YouTubers who are actually big and successful on the platform that they spent ages just making crappy videos to learn the art and the science and the skill of actually making videos. And I see so many people these days who have this expectation that like, I want video number 1 to take off. And it's like, video number 1's not gonna take off. Yeah, it was new and it was fun when I was making those videos. First 100 videos or even the first 300 videos, I wasn't thinking about subscribers or like building up an audience. It was mainly just me having fun sharing what I found interesting about those computers and that software to whoever would watch. When I first started, I had this really crappy hand-me-down laptop. I think my brother got it for Christmas and I ended up kind of just like stealing it and using it. I didn't know how to edit, I didn't know how to pace the video, I didn't know how to do anything. I basically had nothing knew nothing, had no money, and just was just like grabbing things like, we're just going to try to make this work.

The regular people hitting 1 million subscribers right now expected to suck at the beginning, but they pressed record anyway.

All you need to do— this applies to people who have not uploaded videos but have dreams of being a YouTuber— is make 100 videos and improve something every time. Do that. And then on your 101st video, we'll start talking like maybe you can get some views. But, you know, your first 100 are going to suck. I implore you to stop watching videos like this. Stop overthinking and just make your first 7 videos. 7 is the magic number. No one starts off being perfect from day one.

My first 2 years was basically me just kind of like roaming around my house trying to find things I already had, using equipment I already had, and just filming it. When you finally let go of being perfect, you'll unlock the courage to just start and begin creating the channel that makes a real difference for—

It took me like 7 years to make my first YouTube video. Because I spent so much time overthinking and thinking I needed the right camera and the right microphone. There's literally no such thing as a perfect video.

13 years ago, when we first started on our YouTube journey, we filmed everything with a MacBook, like literally the webcam from our MacBook, and we edited the videos and uploaded them all using one device. I started my YouTube channel back in 2009. I was incredibly shy, terrified of the camera. My first videos were completely embarrassing. My name is Evan Carmichael. My name is Evan Carmichael. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. My name is Evan Carmichael. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to another edition of Modeling the Masters. I had bad lighting, terrible audio, and I looked like a robot reading the script, but I told myself that I'd rather know and fail than never try at all. So I just kept pressing record. Took me 350 videos, public videos, before I wasn't completely embarrassed to watch myself back. Took me 700 videos until I finally made something that inspired me. I sucked at the beginning, but I accepted it. If I waited to be perfect, I wouldn't have 4 million subscribers today. Look at Jimmy Donaldson, the guy you probably know as MrBeast. Today he's got the biggest YouTube channel in the world, but his first videos were shot in his bedroom on a cheap laptop camera. He was just a regular 13-year-old kid mumbling about video games. His lighting was terrible, his audio was worse, and nobody watched his stuff for years. He didn't wait for a million-dollar budget or fancy studio. He just started making videos and allowed himself to be terrible. He made over 100 awful videos before he even started figuring out how to be good. He accepted that he had to suck before he could succeed. Marques Brownlee runs the biggest tech channel on the internet today, but he started out as a regular high school kid in 2009. He didn't have expensive cameras or a massive studio. His very first videos were shot on a cheap webcam he bought with his allowance. He just pointed the camera at his computer screen and talked about free software. His videos were blurry, boring, and totally imperfect. He made 100 videos before he even reached 100 subscribers, but he kept pressing record anyway. He knew that the only way to get better was to start making bad videos and improve just 1% every single time. So right now you're probably thinking, those stories are great for people who started years ago, right? But now it's too saturated. You might think the algorithm is too smart and there's too much competition for a beginner to even get noticed. That's completely wrong. The algorithm only cares about one thing, and that's how much you connect with your viewer. People are starving for real humans with real problems. And today I'm going to show you exactly how to use your unique story to reach 1 million subscribers. Serve the one person in front of you. It's incredibly easy to look at massive channels and think you need to reach the entire world right away. But trying to please everyone means you end up pleasing nobody at all, right? When you start out, You might only get 50 views on a video. Don't see that as a failure. Imagine 50 people standing in front of your living room right now. That's a packed room. You've got the power to completely change those 50 lives. YouTube hosts over 114 million active channels right now, and they're all competing for 2.7 billion monthly users. You don't stand out by shouting louder than everyone else. You stand out by caring more. If you focus entirely on solving a specific problem for one single viewer, the algorithm will naturally find more people exactly like them. It's called the paradox of specificity. Psychologically, when a person feels truly understood, their brain releases oxytocin. This chemical builds instant trust and deep connection. So stop looking at your analytics dashboard like it's just some scorecard. Look at it like it's a mirror of human behavior. Every single digit is a human. It's a breathing human who gave you their valuable time. When you wake up and grabbing your coffee and you sit down to plan your content, ask yourself one simple question: How can I make one person, in my case, believe in themselves a little bit more today? If you make your video specifically for the past version of yourself who was struggling, you'll never run out of amazing ideas. You know exactly what that person desperately needs to hear. So shift your attention completely away from just the vanity numbers. Put all of your energy into the actual impact that you're making. Focus on the depth of the connection and the width of your audience will naturally follow. But how do you actually start making these videos when you're absolutely terrified of the camera? Give yourself permission to be terrible. So you've got incredible ideas inside your head right now, right? You probably think about them constantly, but you keep waiting for the perfect moment to start. You want the perfect camera, the perfect lighting, the perfect script, the perfect microphone. Perfection is just fear. The absolute truth is that your first video is going to be terrible. You have to expect to suck at the very beginning. It took me, as I said, 350 videos before I wasn't completely embarrassed by my own content, and then 700 videos until I finally inspired myself. I made something that actually was good. I didn't wait for a massive budget or a fancy studio. I just pressed record. If you wait to be perfect, you will wait forever. So taking messy action is the only way to build actual momentum. The science of neuroplasticity shows that your brain literally rewires itself through physical repetition, not through endless planning. So every single time you press record and you talk to the camera, you're building brand new neural pathways. You're turning a terrifying task into a completely normal daily habit. You can't edit a blank page, as they say, right? You can't improve a video that doesn't exist. You need to put out bad content so you can analyze it and figure out how to get 1% better the next time. The most successful creators in the world didn't start out with perfect skills. They just had the courage to be bad in public. So grab your phone right now. Evan Carmichael. Don't buy the expensive gear. Don't build a professional studio. Just sit by a window with good natural light and tell your honest story. Tell people why you started your business. Tell them what you truly believe. Do it today. Stop letting your fear of judgment rob the world of your amazing gifts. And once you finally get past the fear of pressing record, you have to figure out how to stay motivated on the really hard days. Build an environment that forces you to win. So your current environment is perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are today. If you wanna achieve massive things, you have to completely change what you feed into your mind. You wake up every day and the world actively tries to drag you down. You look at your news, you check your emails, and you immediately start feeling anxious. You have to be incredibly intentional about what you consume. I don't watch news. I start my day by watching videos of people who deeply inspire me. I go for a walk, I call it my believe walk. I want Elon Musk and Maya Angelou and Les Brown in my ear every morning. When you surround yourself yourself with greatness, your own problems start to look very small. Studies on emotional contagion prove that you automatically adopt the emotions and mindsets of the people you spend the most time with. Now, if you can't hang out with successful creators in person, you can hang out with them on YouTube. So you need to ruthlessly curate your feed, unsubscribe from the channels that make you feel down and bad about yourself, and follow the creators who force you to level up and think bigger. If you're tracking your habits every day, then add 10 minutes of inspirational video to your morning routine. Just like you track your sleep quality or your daily protein intake, you track your mental diet. Motivation has a half-life. It fades quickly. So you need to inject that belief every day to keep you pushing forward. Set up a physical space and digital space so that success becomes your automatic default setting. Put a quote on the wall if you need to. Change your phone background. Make it absolutely impossible to forget what your mission is. When you design an environment that constantly reminds you of your true potential, taking big action becomes less effortful. But taking action once isn't enough. Fall in love with the daily grind. So you're probably looking for a secret algorithm hack to explode your channel overnight. The real secret is just showing up every day. Consistency is your ultimate competitive advantage this year. Most people get super excited, post 3 videos, see zero results, and quit. They let their temporary lack of results destroy their long-term vision. So hitting 1 million subscribers isn't about going viral one time. It's about building a massive library of value over many years. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. Covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just check the link in the description below to go grab it. I'll see you there. You have to intensely fall in love with the work itself, not just the final reward. If you only care about the money or the subscribers or the fame, you'll completely burn out when it gets hard. So you find a deep purpose in the actual videos that you make. I make my videos, 10,000 videos deep, genuinely because I need them for myself. Even if nobody watches, I'd still make the videos every day. Research on intrinsic motivation shows that people who truly enjoy the work are 3 times more likely to stick with it through difficult times. When you love the daily grind, you become completely unstoppable. So create a strict schedule and stick to it. Decide that you'll post one video a week, No matter what happens, don't negotiate with yourself. Treat your content schedule like it's an important business meeting that you cannot miss ever. The algorithm highly rewards channels that keep viewers on the platform consistently, but more importantly, consistency builds deep trust with your audience and your skillset. If you're making one video a month, you're just never going to get good at the skill, and your audience learns that they can rely on you. Now, once you commit fully to the grind, you have to make sure that you're paying attention to the data that matters. Stop guessing and let the data guide your channel. So right now you're probably spending hours making a video, upload it to YouTube, and just cross your fingers and hope that it gets views. Hope is not a great strategy. The creators hitting a million subscribers right now, they're not just getting lucky. They're making decisions based on real numbers. The biggest mistake you can make is just assuming that you know exactly what your audience wants to click on. Your video could be the absolute best content that you've ever made, but if nobody clicks the thumbnail, your message dies in the dark. This is where you've got to treat your channel like a real business. You need to test your ideas. A 2026 survey found that channels with 10,000 to 100,000 subscribers see an average 22% increase in click-through rates just by running A/B tests on their thumbnails. That means they're uploading multiple thumbnail options for the exact same video and letting the audience decide the winner. Top creators are consistently hitting high click-through rates because they test everything. When you test your titles and thumbnails, you take the emotion of the process. You stop being attached to the design just because it looks pretty to you, and you start looking at what actually stops a person from scrolling and clicking on your video. If your click-through rate is low, YouTube stops showing your video to new people. It's that simple. You've got to capture their attention in a fraction of a second. So use high contrast colors, show clear emotion, remove confusing text that's too hard to read. And once you've got the video up, you look at the audience retention graph. Are people leaving in the first 30 seconds? If they're leaving, your hook didn't match the promise of your thumbnail or wasn't emotional enough. You need to analyze this data every single week and use it to get 1% better on your very next upload. But I know looking at analytics can feel completely overwhelming. YouTube has a ton of data. I love it, but it can feel like you need a math degree just to understand what all the numbers actually mean. That's exactly why I built Brandlytics specifically for you to stop Guessing and Start Dominating on YouTube. You can't rely on luck to grow your channel. And so instead of hoping a thumbnail works, the software gives you the exact data points across 5 metrics so you know exactly what your viewers want. I've designed it because I saw too many creators wasting time and losing momentum. You can plug in your ideas, do a split test, and let the science tell you exactly which one gets more clicks. To learn more, you can check the link in description below. And once you've got the data working for you, you unlock the absolute freedom to focus on what actually matters. Stop hiding your true self from the camera. So you might think you need to act like a loud, high-energy TV host to get views. If you're an introvert like me, you probably don't feel like you belong on YouTube at all. And that's not true. Viewers can instantly spot a fake persona from a mile away. They don't want your polished, fake, perfect anymore. They want real humans with real struggles. Leaning fully into the insecurities you've got is the absolute fastest way to build a massive audience. If you're awkward, be awkward. If you're shy, own it and say you're shy. When you show your flaws, you give other people permission to be themselves too, and it creates an incredibly powerful bond. A famous study on the pratfall effect demonstrates that highly competent people actually become far more likable when they make visible mistakes. So your audience doesn't connect with your victory, victory, victory. They connect with the struggles that you go through. So share the exact times you almost lost your business. Share the moments that you cried on the floor wondering how you'd ever pay for your bills. When you openly share your pain, your purpose becomes more clear. Your viewers, they realize that you actually understand them, that you're like them. They'll stop seeing you as just another talking head and Mr. and Mrs. Perfect and start seeing you as a mentor for them. So you don't have to worry about having everything perfect and scripted. Speak from your head. Speak from your heart. Imagine you're sitting across from your best friend. Yeah. You're at a coffee shop, talk to them. Talk to them naturally. Vulnerability is your absolute greatest superpower. You don't need to hide the messy parts of your journey. You can showcase them. But to truly stand out in a crowded market, you need to be willing to take serious risks. Make bold moves and ignore the haters. Your brain is constantly trying to keep you safe. It's trying to keep you comfortable. Always. It'll give you 100 completely logical reasons why you shouldn't start a YouTube channel. Right? It'll tell you the market is way too saturated this year. It'll tell you you don't have enough free time. You've got millions of other things to do, and you'll have to learn exactly how to ignore that voice. You need to make big decisions with your heart and small ones with your head. If your heart is screaming at you to share your message, you have to deeply trust it. The boldest ideas that come to you, I think, are the ones that you actually— those are the ones you need to act on. Those are the ones you need to execute towards. So don't ask for permission from anybody. Just go and do the actual work. When you start taking the risks, people, they're gonna judge you. Your friends might laugh at your videos. Your coworkers might make some weird comments. Ignore them completely. You're not making your content for them. The people who judge you, they're not the ones paying your bills. They aren't the ones that are off chasing their own greatness. This one is wild. Research on social conformity shows that humans naturally suppress their unique ideas just to avoid social rejection. So you have to aggressively fight the biology that is in you. If you let the opinions of the average people around you dictate your actions, you're going to end up with a completely average life. You will end up like the people that you're talking to. So you need to care more about serving people than the people who are around criticizing you. That's a risk. That's scary. Post a controversial opinion, share the bold idea. The way to hit a million subscribers is to stand out, and you can't stand out by trying to blend in, right? So taking those risks, it creates momentum, and momentum changes everything. Take the first step today. The biggest thing missing right now is just simple momentum. You've got great ideas, but you sit on them for years. You plan your research, you overthink massively. Overthinking is the absolute enemy of everybody's success. You need to drastically shrink the gap between having the idea and taking any kind of physical action. If you want to start a channel, don't spend 3 months studying the algorithm. Just pick up your phone and record a 1-minute video today. That's what I call the 2% difference. It changes everything. Taking one small step immediately creates a powerful psychological shift. It moves you from a state of dreaming into a state of doing. The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological principle stating that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks far better than completed tasks. By just starting the project, your brain will naturally obsess over finishing it. You'll wake up the next day desperately wanting to do more. This is exactly how you build an empire, one video at a time, one single day at a time. Don't look at this massive mountain of a million subscribers in front of you and feel completely overwhelmed. Just look directly at the very next step in front of you. When things get hard, constantly remember why you started. Focus on your most important core value. Think about the people that you're here to serve and why you want to do this channel in the first place. Let that belief drive you forward even when the results are not going to be there yet. You've got absolutely everything you you need to make a massive impact on the world right now. You just have to finally decide to start. Which brings us to the most important realization to make right now. Your time is now. You've got a unique gift that the world desperately needs right now. So stop waiting for the perfect moment and start trusting your own potential and ideas. The only thing standing between you and the life you truly want is the willingness to begin. So step up, share your voice, claim your greatness, make the impact you're looking for. Now let's learn the 100 video rule that builds massive YouTube channels. Your first 100 videos on YouTube are going to be terrible, and that's exactly how it's supposed to be.

All you need to do— this applies to people who have not uploaded videos but have dreams of being a YouTuber— is make 100 videos and improve something every time. Do that. And then on your 101st video, we'll start talking like maybe you can get some views, but you know, your first 100 are gonna suck.

This is what I love about YouTube is you get to see this growth.

Yeah.

You get to see the Super Mario effect in action. You can go back and see the first video. There's a few before that that are even more awkward where it's like, you know, I haven't found my voice. I haven't learned how to like talk to the camera and I freaking love it. I think for any new creator, that's so important. You have to be able to get past the first 10, 100, 200 videos based on your love for it. Success on this platform isn't about your natural talent. It's having the courage to suck until you finally get good.

Your first video is not gonna give views, period. It's not. Your first 10 are not gonna give views. I can very confidently say that. So stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and start uploading.

Failure is the process. Like, if you're not failing, you're not reaching far enough. If you demand perfection from your very first upload, you will paralyze your progress and deny the world the exact message it desperately needs to hear—

yours. There's literally no such thing as a perfect video.

I would be blown away if that me could see me today doing this interview. I'd be like, you're crazy. But that's just incrementally keeping that treadmill on jog. I've just stuck with it. I think it takes practice to make videos, and I think it doesn't hurt to get started with what you have. When I started my channel in 2009, nobody was making educational videos for entrepreneurs. I didn't have any idea what I was doing. My first video got exactly 3 comments in an entire year. One was from my mom, one was from my sister, and one from some random guy who saw my video, and I was so excited that a stranger watched my video, but my videos were terrible. It took me 350 public videos before I could watch my own my own content without being completely embarrassed by my own work, and 700 videos until I finally made something that inspired me. If I quit because my first few videos were bad, I wouldn't have reached the 4-point-whatever million subscribers we have today. Now I know what you're telling yourself right now. You're saying, YouTube has changed, and today you need a $10,000 camera and a massive editing team just to get 10 views. But the truth is, the algorithm doesn't care about your expensive gear. Yeah. YouTube only cares about people clicking and people watching. You can actually beat channels with massive budgets just by using your phone and the right strategy. Let me break down the exact system you need to steal their traffic and build your audience this week. Stop chasing viral views and focus on impact. You're probably focusing on the completely wrong metrics. Over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every every single day. The competition is massive. You look at those numbers and you feel totally overwhelmed. You see that 95% of YouTube videos get fewer than 1,000 views and you just want to give up. You think that if you don't get millions of views, you're failing, but you don't need a million subscribers to make a million dollars. Remember, you're built to serve. You have a specific message that can change the life of the person watching your video. Focus on who you're serving, not who you aren't serving. If your video gets 50 views, that is 50 real human beings who sat down to listen to you. Imagine 50 people in a room listening to your speech, you'd probably be thrilled. Treat your YouTube channel the exact same way. Your goal isn't to please just a robot algorithm. Your goal is to build deep trust with a highly targeted audience. When you change your focus from going viral to making a real impact, the game changes for you. You stop stressing over the vanity numbers and you start caring about the actual humans on the other side of the screen. Master the click and the hook. Now you can have the greatest video in the world, but if nobody clicks, your message dies a slow death in the dark. Your thumbnail and your title equal 80% of your success on this platform. The algorithm looks for high click-through rates. If your thumbnail is confusing or boring, people will scroll right past you. You need to test your thumbnails constantly. If you're interested, we have Brandlytics. It's the most advanced thumbnail and title split testing software in the world that I highly recommend checking out. Keep your design simple. Use high contrast. Don't put too many words in your thumbnail. Your title needs to promise a specific outcome. Don't use vague words. And once they click, your first 60 seconds dictate your retention. The data shows that if you can keep people watching past the first minute, your average view duration will skyrocket. So cut your long intros. Stop talking about yourself. Deliver value immediately. Tell the viewer exactly why they need to keep watching. Give them the most important information right away to hook their attention. If your 1-minute retention stays above 70%, YouTube will push your video out to tons of new people. Steal traffic with growth videos. You're probably wondering, how do you get discovered when nobody knows who you are? The answer is what I call growth videos. You don't want to show up at number 1 for a search term that nobody is looking for. The real secret to rapid channel growth is ranking after other popular videos. You need to model success. So find the biggest creators in your specific industry. Look at the videos that are getting lots of views for them right now. You don't copy their video, but you can model their topic. You make your own version of that successful concept. Add your unique perspective and your specific philosophies, your stories, When someone finishes watching that bigger creator, YouTube will look for the next logical video to play. Because your topic, title are highly related, your growth video has a chance of showing up in the suggested feed. You are legally stealing their traffic. This is how you build an audience fast without waiting for the search algorithm to slowly rank your content. It puts your face right in front of the exact buyers that you are trying to reach. The 100 video rule and unstoppable momentum. Okay, your first videos are going to be terrible. You need to accept this right now. Success on YouTube isn't about your natural talent. It's about having the courage to suck until you finally get good. As I mentioned earlier, it took me 350 videos, public videos, before I could watch my own content without cringing, and another 700 videos to actually inspire myself, right? You're setting your expectations way too high. So commit to the 100 video rule. Your only goal is to upload 100 videos and make each one just 1% better than the last one. The biggest thing you're missing right now is just momentum. You sit around overthinking every single detail. You rewrite your scripts 20 times. You delay your upload because the lighting isn't perfect. Perfectionism is just you being afraid, and that's okay, but stop letting your fear hold you back. Hit publish. Do it again. Build. undeniable momentum. And stop judging your first video against somebody else's 100th. Just get the reps in and the quality will follow naturally over time. Build a business development machine. If you want to monetize your channel without relying on ad revenue, you need to build what I call a business development show. Ad revenue pays pennies when you're small, but you can use your channel as the ultimate networking tool. Create an interview series. Reach out to the top 50 people in your industry who could refer massive amounts of business to you. Invite them on your show to share their story. Nobody's asking them for interviews. They say yes. You get to sit down with them for an hour. You build a genuine relationship. You do a great interview, hopefully, and give them amazing content that they can share too. By simply being a good host and building that trust, they naturally are curious about you and what you do. You could have 200 subscribers and build— 200 subscribers. A 7-figure business just from the relationships you created on your tiny YouTube channel. Inside my Movement Makers program, entrepreneurs use this exact strategy to completely transform their income. Quality of thought over quality of production. People use expensive gear as an excuse to procrastinate. You think you need a massive editing team and a fancy studio? You don't. Quality of thought will always beat quality of production. If you have a message that can genuinely change someone's life. They don't care if you filmed it on your iPhone or in your car. They only care about the value that you provide. Your background visuals and your transition effects won't save a terrible idea. So stop worrying about looking professional, start worrying about being impactful. Share your raw, unfiltered truth. As you get going, there's lots more that you can continue to add, more gear, more analytics, et cetera. But right now, You just need to focus on delivering profound value. You have a unique perspective that the world desperately needs. Your specific experiences have shaped a viewpoint that nobody else has. Lean into that. Let your raw authenticity be the thing that attracts your loyal viewers. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It covers the top lessons from today, gives you space to write your biggest takeaways, and helps you build a simple action plan. It's 100% free. Just check the link description below to go grab it. I'll see you there. Find your purpose in your pain. Now you might be struggling to figure out what your channel should even be about. The answer is already inside you. Your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggled the most with in your life is exactly what you need to help other people through right now. I struggled with being a shy, introverted entrepreneur. I quit on my first business partner. For a day, and then I came back, right? I felt completely isolated. Now I make videos for the 19-year-old version of me who desperately needed someone to believe in him. So look back at your darkest moments. Look at the problems that you conquered. There are millions of people out there right now who are currently trapped in the exact same pain that you escaped. They need your guidance. They need your voice. When you build your content around helping the person you used to be, You'll never run out of motivation. Your channel becomes a mission instead of just a marketing tactic for you. It gives you the endless motivation you need to keep recording videos even when you're exhausted and nobody is watching. It's the reason I've made 10,000+ videos and still wake up and want to make more videos, because I feel like the work that I do actually matters. When you're just chasing a strategy, you're way more likely to burn out. Yeah.

Out.

Model success and copy the rise. When you want to achieve something great, look for people who've already done it, but you must copy their rise, not their result. So you look at massive creators and you try to do what they're doing today. You see them doing huge productions or big giveaways or celebrity guests, and you try to replicate that, and then you fail. You need to look at what they did when they had zero subscribers. What were their daily their early habits before they became famous. How did they title their videos when nobody cared who they were? Study their beginnings. Find out how they got their initial traction. Success leaves clues. You don't need to reinvent the wheel from scratch. Find your heroes, analyze their early strategies, and apply those exact same frameworks to your own channel today. You need to go back to their oldest videos. You can sort their channel by the oldest. Watch the terrible lighting. Look at the bad audio. Look at how they struggled to look at the camera lens. This gives you the confidence to start. You'll realize that every expert that you see was once a complete rookie online. They just started earlier and they refused to quit. And you can do the exact same thing right now, starting today. Stop overthinking and just hit record. So we need to agree to stop letting perfectionism destroy your ability to get your message out. You think you're protecting your brand by waiting until your video is perfect, but you're actually just hiding. You're hiding behind research. You're hiding behind planning. Planning is just procrastination. Hiding. You don't need another course. You don't need another strategy book. You need to hit record. The market will tell you what works and what doesn't work. You can't learn how to ride a bicycle by reading a book about it, right? You have to get on the bike. You have to fall off a little bit. You have to scrape your knee once or twice. YouTube is the exact same way. You have to post bad videos to learn how to make good videos. Yeah. The algorithm rewards consistency. It rewards creators who show up every single week without fail. So make a schedule and stick to it. Treat your upload day, uh, like a sacred commitment to yourself and to the people that you want to help. If you say you're going to upload every Tuesday, then upload every Tuesday. Don't make excuses. Just get the content out there and let the data tell you how to improve. Your environment dictates your success. You'll never achieve massive growth, if you're surrounded by negative people. Your environment has been perfectly designed to keep you exactly where you are right now. So if your friends tell you that YouTube is a waste of time, you'll eventually believe them. If your family laughs at your videos, you'll lose your motivation. You have to protect your mindset. You have to change your environment. If you cannot find supportive people in your physical life, you have to build a digital environment. This is why I watch videos of successful entrepreneurs every single morning on my believe walk. I want Warren Buffett in my ear. I want Steve Jobs in my ear. I want people who have achieved impossible things telling me that I can do it too. You need to flood your brain with positivity and ambition. So subscribe to channels that lift you up and stop watching the news. Stop consuming drama, negativity. Think about your mind like a garden, right? Whatever you plant in that garden will grow. So plant belief, plant courage. And when you change your inputs, you drastically change your outputs. How to handle the haters and trolls. So when you finally start getting views, the haters will arrive. This is a guarantee. Someone will leave a mean comment about your voice. Someone will insult your background. Someone will tell you look like Nicolas Cage. Someone will tell you that your business is a scam. Most creators let one negative comment ruin their entire week. You cannot let strangers dictate your emotional state, right? Haters are often just confused fans. They are projecting their own insecurities onto you. Happy, successful people don't spend their time leaving mean comments on YouTube videos all day. Only hurting people hurt people. So when you see negative comment, feel bad for them. Realize that their life must be in a really terrible place right now. Don't argue with them. Don't try to defend yourself. Just block, delete, move on. Protect your peace. Focus entirely on the people who are thanking you. Focus on the viewers who need your help. The more haters you get, the more it means you're actually making a real impact and reaching a wider audience. Turn your channel into a daily habit. You have to build your channel into your daily routine. Motivation, it has a half-life, right? It wears out. You feel fired up today, but tomorrow you'll wake up tired. You won't want to film. You won't want to edit. If you rely on motivation, your channel will die. So you need discipline. You need to schedule your YouTube time in your calendar, just like the most important doctor's appointment. Block off 2 hours every Thursday morning to film. Block off 3 hours every Friday to edit. Don't let anything interrupt that time. Treat your content like a million-dollar business and it will eventually become one. Treat it like a hobby and it'll only ever cost you money. The most successful creators I know are disciplined. They do the work even when they're exhausted. They do the work when nobody is watching. They do the work when they have zero subscribers because they know—

That's right.

That consistency compounds. The effort you put in today will pay you back 10 times over in the following years. Identify your core value. Every successful channel stands for something specific. You need to figure out your most important core value. For me, that word is belief. Everything I do filters through that one word. When you have total clarity on your core value, creating content becomes incredibly easy. You stop guessing about what to talk about. You just share your truth. If your core value is freedom, then every video you make should help your audience achieve or believe in more freedom. If your core value is resilience, then every video should teach them how to bounce back after failure. Don't try to copy someone else's brand. You will always sound fake. Figure out what matters to you the absolute most. What is the one message you'd share with the world if you only had one day left to live? And build your channel around that single idea. People, they don't subscribe to the topics, they subscribe to people, they subscribe to leaders who have a deep conviction in what they're doing. So stand for something powerful and the right audience will find you automatically. The power of deep analytics. Now you can't grow what you don't measure. You have to look at your data objectively, right? All progress begins with telling the truth. YouTube gives you the most incredible dashboard full of analytics. Most creators only look at their subscriber count and their total views, and that's a massive mistake. You need to look at your click-through rate. It's incredibly important. You need to look at your audience retention curve. Those two things will make or break your channel. You need to see exactly where viewers are rewinding your videos. If you notice that everything drops off at the 3-minute mark, you need to figure out why. Did you start rambling? Did your audio go bad? Did you go off topic? Use that data to fix your mistakes. Even with the most basic of YouTube Studio information, you have everything you need to start to win. So stop guessing. Let the numbers tell you the truth. If a video fails, don't get all emotional about it. Just look at the data, learn the lesson, and get better with your next video. It's a scientific process of making small adjustments until you find the exact formula that you and your audience loves. Monetize before you're ready. You do not need to wait for the YouTube Partner Create a program to make money. Waiting for ad revenue is the slowest path to making money on YouTube. You can start monetizing your channel today with zero subscribers. If you're an entrepreneur, your channel is a top-of-funnel marketing engine for you. You should be driving views to your own products and services. Put a link to your consulting calendar in the description. Offer a free guide, right? We call it a lead magnet, in exchange for their email address. Sell a digital product. If your video solves a specific problem, people will gladly pay you to help them solve it faster. Don't feel guilty about selling. If your product genuinely helps people, then selling is just another form of serving. You are doing your audience a disservice by hiding your solutions. So tell them exactly how they can work with you. Be bold about your business. You are an entrepreneur first and a content creator second. Use the platform to fund your mission and scale your impact to reach even more people. Your true story is your biggest asset. People crave authenticity more than anything right now. They are tired of the fake gurus and perfectly polished lives. Your biggest competitive advantage is simply telling your story. Share the embarrassing failures, talk about the times you almost went bankrupt, reveal the mistakes you made when you were first starting out. When you show your vulnerability, you become more relatable. You build a deep, emotional connection with your viewers that a perfectly scripted corporate video could never achieve. Your audience wants to know that you are a real human being who struggles just like they do. When you stop trying to look perfect all the time and start focusing on actually being real, your channel will experience a massive shift in engagement. People will start leaving long emotional comments because they finally feel seen and understood. So don't hide your scars. Yeah. Your scars are the exact proof that you survived the battle that they're going through right now, and they are the reason people will trust you to lead them. You have the exact blueprint to grow your YouTube and turn your channel into a massive engine for your business. But none of this matters if you don't actually put it out into the world. You have to take the very first step today. Your message matters. Your message matters, and you have an obligation to share your voice. Playing small does not serve the world or the people who desperately need your help, or your family, or your bank account. Don't let another day pass by keeping your story hidden behind fear and overthinking. You have greatness inside of you, so give yourself permission to be great right now. To learn the 3 mistakes that keep you stuck at 0 followers, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. Most beginners on social media won't win. You post a few times, you play it safe, you blend into the crowd. If you look like everyone else, no one will remember you. And if you are easy to ignore, you will be ignored.