In this March 1, 2017 vlog, Matt Ragland reflects on completing a 28‑day daily‑video challenge filmed at Revelator Coffee in Chattanooga. He outlines four key lessons that enabled him to ship a video each day: (1) keep the process simple, (2) secure buy‑in from essential people—especially his wife Morgan, whose enthusiasm provided motivation, (3) establish a repeatable structure/workflow for each episode, and (4) maintain a running list of topic ideas to draw from when inspiration wanes. He shows his idea list and explains how it kept production moving despite uneven quality. Looking ahead, Matt announces a shift from daily to weekly vlogs in March, allowing more time for higher‑quality sketchnote tutorials, deeper dives into his ConvertKit onboarding process, and discussions about remote work, fatherhood, and creative entrepreneurship. He invites viewers to subscribe, submit questions for future Q&A episodes, and follow his journey balancing tech work, family life, and creative output. He also mentions a friend, vlogger Charli, as a source of perspective on moving away from daily vlogging.
Chapters
Afternoon. Getting out, going to a coffee shop. Is there a better time really to go to a coffee shop than when it's raining? Debatable. These are amazing, by the way. Hey, what's up everyone? Matt here. Hope you're having a great day. It is day number 28. It is February 28th, 2017, and I'm here at Revelator Coffee in Chattanooga, Tennessee, right downtown. Let me show you the place real quick. Just a bright, airy, like beautiful space. I'm really happy to be here. The coffee is great. A cheers to me. I will cheers myself for 28 videos in 28 days. Completed the challenge. The midday entrepreneur cheers. I'm really proud of myself. I gotta tell you that because I've tried to do some of these challenges before, like I'm gonna do a sketchnote every day. I'm gonna write a blog post every day. I'm gonna do this every day. I'm gonna do a push-up every day. Whatever it might be. But this one I did. And I was thinking about what I learned in doing this because it's not— you know, I've failed before doing things like this. And so what was it about a video every day that I was able to accomplish. And there are a few things that I pulled out of it. Just kind of thinking over the past few days, knowing that I was going to hit this, knowing that I was close, and kind of feeling the energy, feeling the momentum. There are a couple of things to take away. I kept it really simple. Okay? That was probably the first and biggest thing. Kept it really simple. Number 2, since there are other people involved, I got those other people on board almost accidentally. They almost got themselves on board. The biggest one for for me is my wife. Sometimes when I've been doing these kind of things in the past, then it doesn't really connect with her. Maybe she doesn't really see the point. Maybe I haven't been clear enough. But for this, she really enjoyed watching the videos. Like, it would involve our son. It would involve her. It was like just what I was doing throughout the day. It was almost a way that we still communicated that she could watch. Because we've loved doing videos of our son, and that was really the catalyst for me starting this. And after about weekend, she was like, "Hey, I really enjoy watching your videos." And she enjoys my work, like outside of like work work, but my creative kind of entrepreneurial work. But it's very rarely has she said, and especially this quickly, like, "Hey, I've really enjoyed reading these blog posts. Hey, I really enjoy looking at your sketchnotes." Like, she does, but for her to be vocal about it that soon, that's when I knew I had buy-in for her. For her because a lot of times this is me getting up early, this is me staying up late, this is, you know, maybe less time, a little bit less time that we're together. And so keeping it simple, having Morgan on board, both of those were, were critical to me being able to do this. This third thing was that I did put together a structure, and I just talked about that with workflows and structure in the last video. Check it out. It'd be number 26. This is how I put things together. So kind of knowing that I had a structure in place of I'm going to do an intro, I'm going to do some time-lapse, I'm going to like have a, you know, a kind of a chat like this, whether it's Facebook Live or just a straight walkthrough of maybe doing some shots as I walked through the park or up and down the street or even in Publix where I shared kind of the theme of the video. All right? So, let's go back again. Keep it simple, get necessary people on board, and number 3, have some kind of structure. And knowing that I could follow that kept me in line. The 4th thing that I learned and kept me going on this was, for any blogger, for anyone who's consistently putting out content, having a list of ideas, having a structure, having topics that you can just pull from, because sometimes we get up and it's time to ship something, but we may not particularly have like the inspiration or the idea for that time. Let me step away for just a second and grab my list so I can show you. Okay, you watch me, watch me go the whole way. I'm not going anywhere. Okay, thanks. Come on back with me. Mm-hmm. Slow pan. So let me show you this. This is what I was looking for, these videos. In fact, I didn't even do like half of these, so you're not really going to be able to see this very well because the screen's flipped because it's in selfie mode. But if you want to, I'm going to screenshot this and flip it around for you, and I'll share it somewhere so that you can watch it. So you can see it, but I went through, you know, whenever I was like, oh, what am I going to talk about today? Go to the list and just start talking about it. Just start writing about it. It's not going to be— may not be pretty, it may not be the best thing, but you're shipping something. And every single day, like, it feels so good to say, even after just a month, say I ship something every day this month, and for 28 days I put out 28 videos and They weren't all great, they weren't all perfect, very few were. I maybe felt good about half a dozen of these videos. But they all went out and I got some great feedback. I want to say, so those were the main things that I learned. Okay, let's loop back in. There were 4 things. Number 1, keep it simple, keep it easy. Get necessary people on board. For me, it was my wife. Number 3, have a structure in place. And number 4, have like a schedule of topics so that when you don't feel, when you don't feel as inspired, go to that right there and just start, just start cranking. Whether you're writing, whether you're podcasting, whether you are creating videos like this, just keep shipping. Get something out there. That being said, okay, what's next for this? Because I'm gonna keep doing videos. I've enjoyed it too much. I've gotten too much good feedback. When you kind of hit on something, I want to keep going with it. Now, does that mean I'll do a daily vlog in March? No, not in March. There are a couple of things that I also learned that I didn't feel like my quality was super high for a, you know, a good chunk of the videos. That wasn't the point. The point was to ship. But now I want to spend— I only have a certain amount of time each day to really focus on these. And so the quality of the content and what I wanted to really teach, I didn't really have the time for. And so I want to do some more, you know, some better sketchnote tutorial videos. I want to talk more about our onboarding process for ConvertKit. I want to do a little bit more with that. And so by giving myself more time, in March what I'm going to do is a weekly vlog. I haven't decided which day yet, but I'm going to do a weekly vlog so that I can spend more time putting together a higher quality shot. So I've done things like the quick and dirty method, and now I want to try putting some more time into it, still day by day, to creating a more polished video and see how those work instead. Okay? So that's what I'm looking at in March. It's going to be a weekly vlog, and it's going to be a lot more specific about a particular topic, and it's going to be a lot better with the editing, I hope. Okay, so I'm really thankful that you've been watching these, whether it's on Facebook or on YouTube. Please go subscribe to the channel because I'm going to be sharing a lot there, as I've already mentioned, and it's probably going to be one of the best places to continually stay stay up with me to learn about working in tech, you know, thinking creatively, remote work, balancing work and being a husband and being a father, how all that, how I've been kind of fitting all of those things together, you know, sometimes well, sometimes not well. And I'm going to talk about all that. I really hope that you can join me in those. And I really, again, I really appreciate you watching. If there's anything you want to know, I'm going to start doing Q&A episodes also. If there's anything you want to know about vlogging or blogging or being a dad or working remote or getting into tech, all of those are fair game. Really anything is. I'd love to hear from you and get some questions. So thanks again. This is going to go up on YouTube tonight for video number 28 on February 28th. Thanks again and Can't wait till next time. Bye. Feels really good to have completed this 28-day challenge of a video for every day. Feels really good. I was talking with my friend Charli, who's an amazing vlogger, you should definitely check her channel out, about some of my concerns about not doing a daily vlog anymore. My concern is that part of the reason I've been able to do this is that I have kind of the push of every day you ship. And there's been some downsides to that which I hope to reconcile with a weekly vlog, but I'm afraid I'll lose some of the drive.
