an honest talk about my future on social media

This is the direction I'm taking the content for this foreseeable future. I don't know if this will work. For all I know, I'm gonna change my mind next week. Let me know in the comments. Tell me that I'm a loser. It's fantastic.

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today I'm gonna be talking about the future of the channel and what type of content you can expect going forward in the short term. And the reason I say the short term is because this could all change next week. And something that I. When I started creating content six, seven years ago, I promised myself that I would always make content that I enjoyed making. I would never make a video because I felt obligated to, because if I do that, that's what leads to burnout. And you see youtubers all the time that make daily videos, and they do it for a couple years, and then all of a sudden they just leave the platform simply because they get burnt out. And they're doing it not because they're passionate, not because they enjoy it, not because they're trying to accomplish anything other than doing the work of creating content. It's a lot of work. I've been fortunate enough to be able to outsource it in terms of having employees be able to edit. They do a fantastic job. Stephen and Zach are part of the team, and they do a phenomenal job and allow me to literally spend like 1% or 2% of my day actually thinking about creating content. But the bottom line is this. And the reason that I make the content is to help people. And if I want to maximize the impact I have on other people and then maximize the impact I have on other business owners, I have to think about what is going to get the most views. In the past, I've always had to sort of water down what I'd like to talk about, because what I like to talk about, most people don'. Really enjoy watching it. And when I say that, I mean the. The eyeballs. The number of views gets a lot less when you go really niche and you're really deep into business topics instead of staying very general. How to get started does really well on YouTube. Basic tips, how to get more customers. Those are all like, they do really good on YouTube and I could make 100 of them and they do fine. Like how to start a landscape business. How to get to $100,000 in revenue with your landscaping business. How do you get to $500,000 in your landscaping business? All of those I know over the course of Time do really well on YouTube. Never make a single dollar on YouTube because the cost of just creating the content, editing the content and employing people is far, far, far beyond what I'm making on YouTube. So it's never making money. But the content that I make because I want to have an impact, I got to think about where's the views. And I've been really thinking about that a lot recently because I want to maximize the views, not because the vanity metrics. Because if a video gets a thousand views and it's really good in my mind, well, if I can go get that another video to do 20 or 50,000 views, I impact way more people. So it's like, well, I should actually create the content that my audience wants in order to be able to have a greater impact and have a greater number of views. But if I do that, potentially it's gonna lead me to not having the passion about the topics anymore. Cause I'm simply making content that does well on YouTube and appeases the algorithm and that general top, top of the funnel type individuals like to watch. How to get started a Landscaping Business how do you get started with your business to get it off the ground? 1000-002000-00500,000 revenue? Those videos do fantastic. Those are the ones that usually get from me between 10 and 50,000 views over the course of a couple of years on the platform easily. And the thing is this. I have made just about every single piece of content about tips and tricks to start your lawn care business. How I think about lawn care landscaping. And honestly, I've lost my passion for how to get started mowing lawns. I really have. The reason is because not because I'm not passionate about lawn care landscaping. Don't get me wrong. The bottom line is I've said it 100 times and I've so many, so much content. I have over a thousand videos on my channel now that talk about door hangers and yard signs and how to price things and how to raise your prices. Like every single one of those topics, I have five, ten plus videos about those topics. And so really all I'm doing is rehashing and repackaging the same content with a different thumbnail and different title that's going to go after a wider top of the funnel audience. So from here on out. And again, this could change in a week because I'm just creating content I enjoy. And right now what feels right to me is I'm going to create more content about what I'm learning. All right? And I reason I know this is not going to do well on YouTube at the beginning it's not going to do well is because the stuff I'm going through is not top of the funnel. High amount of people watching that content because I'm not getting started. I'm deep, deep, deep into business. And unfortunately a lot of what I deal with every single day I can't share because it is dealing with people's personal lives, their finances, and every single fire that I fight every single day is usually very private to franchisees, to employees, and the list goes on. So it's gonna be very interesting. But this is the direction I'm taking the content for this foreseeable future. And that is I'm gonna try to make it more like this is my day. This is what I'm learning right now. And some of it I'll have to be really vague on because I can't say people's names. I will not say people's names. I will never make sure. I'll make sure. Especially when I'm learning from someone else's mistake. I don't want anyone to know who I'm talking about. So it's a little bit challenging to make it where I can tell stories and of what's happened throughout the day. Cause every single day I truly believe that there's probably five to 10 videos that would be absolute gold business owners that I am trying to figure out problems and solutions for and figure things out. But I can't share the names and therefore it makes it like a very generic story if I tell it. So I'm going to have to try to figure this out. But I feel like I really enjoy sharing what I'm learning. And in the short term it's not going to be mass market. No one's going to really care. But, but, but, but if I can get good at storytelling, I think this could be really interesting. And I think that for people that are trying to follow my footsteps and build multiple locations businesses, build a larger scale home improvement business, that they'll be able to watch my progression and hopefully I'll be the person that's three, five or ten years ahead of them, kind of paving the way for them to get where they need to go. Because I feel like the past five, six years I've just like laid out everything you could possibly think of in terms of tips, tricks, growing a business, hiring, employee stuff, pricing, like everything you can think of. And now I really want to share like the 200 level course, the stuff that I'm going through Organizationals and, you know, we're talking about hundreds of thousand dollars a week in payroll now, like bigger problems, and hopefully present it in a way that people want to listen. And it's more of like, not a vlog, because I can't have a camera follow me around all day. There's too much private stuff now. But what I can do is hopefully improve my ability to share stories in a way that allows you to be interested and kind of follow along with what's going on. So I don't know if this will work. For all I know, I'm going to change my mind next week because that's the beautiful thing about not having sponsors and people that I have to talk to. I'm going to do what I enjoy, what I love to do, and if I keep doing that, I think I'll some value. We're at 40,000 subscribers, and I really, truly believe that there will be a day where just hockey sticks and we will go up to a million in a matter of one year. I believe that. I really do. And I think that right now I am in the first inning of a very long game. I am trying to figure out my voice. I'm trying to figure out how to do storytelling and do it in a way that provides value to you and not just entertainment. I'm not a super entertaining, funny guy. I'm not. I'm pretty boring. I'm pretty level emotionally. So I'm not super charismatic. I'm not super funny. I'm a short, you know, nothing really flashy. So it's hard. Like, get views, the thumbnails and the titles. We try our best, we'll try to do better. But I got. I gotta improve as a communicator and a storyteller because there's plenty of people I have seen and podcasts that I have seen do really well with this type of narrative style, which is what happened today. What am I learning? What's the business doing? And I have to do it in a way that I protect people's privacy and that you all can learn from. So let's see if this works. If you enjoy it, keep watching. If you don't enjoy it, let me know in the comments. Tell me that I'm a loser. It's fantastic. I try to read as many as I possibly can, but recently I haven't been able to get to all of them. I'll be honest. Anyways, I'm Mike Andes. If you enjoy this content, please comment below. If you don't like this kind of content, comment below and we'll see you around the corner. 40,000 subscribers. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate it. I really do. And now we're gonna get to 100,000 very soon and I really believe it'll be a hockey stick growth pattern. And we'll look back at of wandering in the wilderness trying to figure out the voice, what's gonna be the future, how do I reach more people? Not because I need more subscribers, but because I want to help more people and make sure that I have the right thumbnail and the right title that gets them in the door. And it's kind of like the bait on the hook. It gets them in and then I can hook them and hopefully change the way that they run their business, change the way they treat their employees, change the way that they pay their employees with P4P. Like that's what I really care about. So thank you all. We'll see you tomorrow.