Video Editing - Do I do all my videos myself?

Do I do all my videos myself? So I got a great question from one of my Google+ viewers, love you guys, Danielle, who wrote in to ask, "Hi Evan, do you do your videos yourself or does somebody film you? I will start doing YouTube videos very soon." This is a great question and I've experimented with doing videos for I don't know how many years and it's been a fun learning process and I love helping out and giving back to people who are starting that journey. So I do most of the video stuff myself. When I started, it was all me, because I hate spending money until I'm making money. I didn't want to go out and buy a camera and tripod and microphone and editing software and all this stuff until I knew I was committed to it. Because too many times we launch projects, we invest our dollars into something, and then we get bored of it, we don't stick with it, and you have this expensive equipment kind of sitting around doing nothing. I wanted to make sure that I loved it, I got value from it, it was giving me an ROI, I wanted to keep doing it. Before I invested. So my very first videos were me with a flip camera and, uh, flip camera or my DSLR just kinda sitting on the shelf and filming it myself. I edited it with, uh, what did I edit with? Windows Movie Maker, which is very basic, but it's great, it works. And I stepped up to then using Camtasia afterwards to edit the videos. I was still doing everything myself. I learned it myself. They weren't great. It wasn't a masterpiece. It wasn't anywhere close to what I'm doing now. But they were good, they were enough to get me started. And then I slowly started seeing some results. I started getting some opportunities. I started getting people leaving feedback and comments and giving me compliments. And I got some deals from it. So I said, "OK, I gotta keep doing this. It's working, I love it." And I started increasing my budget as I started making money from it. So I bought better cameras and better cameras and better cameras. And I always went to Costco because they had a 3-month return policy. where other camera stores were like 2 weeks. So it really gave me a chance to test it out. And I went through 3 or 4 Costco cameras until I was stuck on one. It was a Sony Handycam for almost a year. And I liked that one because it had an external microphone jack. So with your videos, one of the— at least with my early ones, one of the common complaints I got was the audio wasn't clear enough because it didn't have a microphone. So I don't know if you can see, I have a microphone on here and that clips into the camera. A lot of the cheaper cameras, there's no jack to plug in a microphone to. Recently, in the past few months, I bought a nicer camera. It's a Canon, it's a $2,000 camera, and I have my mic setup. And I did that again because it was working for me, right? I've invested into making the videos a success, and I've gotten results from it, so I can justify putting more money into it. So my setup as it is right now: I've experimented with being at home, at the office, different places. I like that I'm at home right now. I've got just a blank wall behind me, and I find this is the best setup for me, at least right now. I keep experimenting with it. So let me show you what I do. This is my setup. I'm gonna— I have some mirrors here. This is my setup. So all I've got is the camera, and it's on a tripod, and I flip the screen towards me so I could see myself in the camera and make sure that I'm kind of positioned in the middle. I'll usually start off saying, "Hey, I got this great question from whoever," and then I'll go to my computer and I'll read it. So I've got my computer just set up here. I used to do this off my phone, but now I use a computer. So I've got my computer set up there. This is the question that you asked me here, Danielle, and I've got my microphone for recording some of the other set pieces, but that's not the mic I use day-to-day right now. The microphone is right here. So that's my usual setup, okay? I set up my tripod, put the camera, hook up the mic, press record, say, "Got this question," go to my computer and read the question, then I start answering it. From there, my videos get sent to my video editor Christina, and she adds all the effects. So again, I started doing this myself. I did everything myself, but you know, as I grew with doing more videos, I said, "You know what? My time is better spent recording the videos, not editing the videos," because that's not my passion. So Christina's great at that. She adds the intro, the music, any sound effects, pictures that she brings in and out, and the extra music, and puts the playlist, sets the time, all of that. She then writes to me and says, "Hey Evan, this video is going up at this date, this time," and then I'll write back to you and say, "Video's launching this time." So that's the process I use now, but again, I started with nothing, and that's, that's where you start. Start with whatever you have. You don't need to go and spend a lot of money on everything. You have a laptop? Start with your laptop camera. That's good enough to get things started. Just make sure— quick tip— you don't have light behind you. My first videos, I had a window behind me, and then you couldn't see my face. The content was still pretty good, but people complained that they couldn't see my face. One last note. This is really important. You're gonna hate your first videos. You are going to hate your first videos. You're going to look at it and say, "Ah, that was so bad." No matter how much you prepare, you're still going to hate them. You're going to think they suck. The first ones for me, it may have taken me the whole day to do one video, and I released it and I said, "Ah, that's so bad. I hate that video." You're going to be your own hardest critic. When I look back on those videos, I want to remove them. They're still on my channel, but I want to remove them. Where people still like them, people still get value from them. And the key part here is that you don't let your hatred of your first videos hold you back from keeping going. Just keep going. Go, go, go, go, go. More videos, more videos. It's a muscle, just like everything else. When you ride a bike, you fall, you suck, you get up, you fall, you get up, you fall, and then you get up and then you're okay, and then you can go faster, faster, faster, and then maybe one day you're doing races. That's the process. Your first videos are gonna suck, they're gonna take you a long time. Future videos are gonna get easier, they're gonna get better. You're gonna start to like them. It's taken me— it took me like maybe 800-900 videos before I started actually liking what I was creating. So don't give up. You know what, you have your first video, send it to me. I wanna watch it, I'll give you some feedback. Thank you so much for watching. Believe. For those of you watching Let me know what you think. You know, if you're launching a YouTube channel, maybe put in the comments below. You have questions about videos, leave it below. I can make a video response just like this. And if you like this video, thumbs up, makes me want to do more for you. Click on my face to subscribe to the channel, see more like this, and I'll see you soon.