The TRUTH about YouTube and Entrepreneurship... you aren't alone

When I typically decide to sit down and shoot a YouTube video, there is a clear strategy. Every single video that I have has a strategy. This video does not. I'm throwing strategy out the window because there is a message, there is a topic, there is a conversation that I need to have with you because I think it's really important. I don't think many people actually realize how those of us that you may look to on YouTube as like an inspiration or business owners as mentors or somebody you want to be, like, struggle with things just like you do. Surprisingly enough, after working with many business owners who are making well over a million dollars every single year and really working with their teams, we all have the same problems, whether we're making a million dollars or whether we're struggling to hit our first 1k month. So this is what led me to wanting to do today's video. I want to sit down here and literally talk with you one on one, to let you know you aren't alone. Whether you're trying to get started and grow on YouTube or whether you're trying to figure out how to grow your business. We have so much in common, and I want to point these things out to you so that you can see what you are dealing with. Doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. We're all dealing with these things. So I want to first talk about the struggles I have here on YouTube and make sure you save the second part of this video, because I'm also going to be diving into the struggles and the pain points that I have in my own business and what I see with those successful business owners, those entrepreneurs that, you know are making a million dollars a year. So you're going to want to stick around for this whole video because I promise it's going to be worth it. The thing with YouTube is there are so many YouTube courses out there, and we are kind of geared or taught to sell these courses in a specific way, in a way that makes you think that our course is going to be the answer to your prayers or our course has the secret that you need. You just need to get into it. And. And unfortunately, that is kind of, for me, a slimy marketing tactic. And absolutely, I've gone down that route, and I've done that, too. But the more that I dive into business and the more I see where I started in kind of my journey, I realized I don't want to be that person. I don't want to sell, like, my secret to YouTube success. Because here is the secret. There is no secret. And if There is a YouTube course or a YouTube coach or a YouTube program out there that promises you they have the secret run. Because what I've learned in the past six years of being on YouTube and working with many business owners, many YouTube hobbyists, and publishing over 60 videos a month on YouTube. I've worked with channels behind the scene that started at zero and grew to tens of thousands of subscribers. I've worked with channels that started with a few hundred subscribers who are now hitting seventy thousand, a hundred thousand subscribers. And I've actually worked with channels that had over a million subscribers and their analytics all looked the same and the strategy we implemented and told them to implement were all the same. And it had zero to do with keyword research and ranking on YouTube. What it all came down to, the secret to success here on YouTube is creating good content. All YouTube wants, all the analytics are going to show you is how you can create good content. Because YouTube wants to push videos to people that a they're actually going to click on. Because why would YouTube waste valuable real estate on the homepage in search or in suggested just because you have the right keywords, they want to make sure those videos that they are putting out to people are actually getting clicked on. Because YouTube makes the money when people watch the videos and YouTube makes more money the longer people watch your videos. Again, the whole secret to YouTube success is you've got to get the click on your video and you've got to create content that people, people will watch. It's pretty simple. And while yes, that seems totally simple, I 100% overthink my YouTube strategy like all the time. In fact, I did an entire video about it. I totally get into my head about my content. I absolutely have imposter syndrome. When I sit down to record or plan my videos thinking who am I to even talk about this? I get disappointed and I think I'm a total failure if I don't grow my channel. Yes, I'm less than 50,000 subscribers and some people would say, oh, you're not an authority fan. Bigger. But then I look at what am I doing on the back end and I am building this business that allows me to work 25 to 30 hours a week, take my kids to school, pick them up, be able to have off when they are sick and who cares if I don't have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. I've got this business side and so being on YouTube can be a total mind mess up. I won't say you know, the mind f but you really Want to be looking at YouTube in a way that doesn't get you to spiral. And I'm not the only one. My clients that I work with, my members inside a video strategy academy that I work with, we all have this cycle of wondering, why aren't my videos good enough? Why aren't I getting clicks? Do I need to totally burn down my channel and start over? Because I'm going to tell you, there are times where I think, why am I even doing YouTube? I'm just going to quit YouTube. Like, life would be so much easier if I just stop doing YouTube. But then I sleep on it and I wake up in the morning thinking, wow, hi. I love creating these YouTube videos. I love being able to have this conversation with you. I love being able to be open and transparent with you. Because this is what I wish I had when I got started back in 2015, that I didn't get sucked into spending money on courses and programs and coaches that promised me a secret or promised me, like, they had the solution. And I love talking with you in the comments and seeing so many of you returning video after video, leaving amazing comments. Thank you. That's what keeps me going. It's not about the strategy. It's not how well my YouTube content is going. It's about you that is watching. And sometimes I have to take a step back, like I said, and sleep on it and stop getting frustrated over the numbers, stop getting frustrated over the growth, stop getting frustrated over thinking about what other people think of me, and just focus on I'm actually getting to do something that I love. I'm not going to that job that I quit New Year's Eve 2015, where I literally felt when I pulled into the parking lot, like my soul was being sucked from me. I actually enjoy getting up to work. In fact, I'm working on a holiday right now while the kids are doing things downstairs, because I want to create this YouTube video. And we had a sick kit earlier this week, so schedules needed to be shuffled. But I really enjoy doing this and following that whole transparency thing. I'm gonna tell you, no matter how much you plan a video, if you're planning for a video to go big, most of the time us that are on YouTube don't know what video YouTube is gonna pick up and skyrocket. We don't even know if it will die at the beginning, and then it'll get up months later down the road. What we do is just focus on creating good content that you will like. There are probably times where we know A video that will probably do well for our channel based on historical data. But there's not like some secret or some code that we're going into YouTube in figuring out how we're going to go viral. But when it comes down to YouTube content, if you aren't growing, if you're struggling with even getting started, if you're, you know, worried about putting a video out, think about why you are doing it because you're not missing out on some secret. There is no secret out there. I want that to be loud and clear. All of us YouTube educators that I've worked with, channels that I work with, with over a million subscribers, we all have these same doubts and fears and imposter syndromes. But what we do is we maybe take a beat, take a pause, reevaluate, like, why are we doing this? And we get back and we try to create better videos that next time clear here. No secret to YouTube success. No like fast track, no hacks, no like hidden information about YouTube. Let's talk about business ownership, business owners and entrepreneurs. Because I know from experience, I saw people online that look like they were crushing it with business and having amazing launches and making so much money every single month. And I thought, dang, if I only had it figured out like them, if I only could have a 6 figure launch, if I only could be making 10k a month, then I know I made it big. But here's the thing. All of us business owners, all of us entrepreneurs, whether we've hit a six figure number, whether we are hitting consistent income, there are still things that we struggle with inside of our business. There are still things we critique ourselves about. There are still things that we are trying to work on that we don't think we have figured out. And I'm going to tell you this from my experience, I'm going to tell you this from working with clients who are making half a million to a million dollars a year. And I'm going to tell you this from talking to people in my mastermind that are all, I believe, much more successful than I am. Because I took this leap of faith back in 2020 to join a mastermind, which we'll talk about here in a second, full of peers that I believed were at the point I wanted to be in. So as I jumped into that mastermind, I literally felt like I was the smallest person in the room. And that's what I wanted it to be. I wanted to be learning from these amazing business owners. And while absolutely they're crushing it, making revenue, they have the same fears that I, they struggle with the same things that I do. And it's not something special to me, and it's not something like I'm doing wrong. It's a part of business ownership and it's a part of being an entrepreneur. We are all dealing with imposter syndrome. We are all dealing with shiny object or squirrel syndrome. We are all riding this ups and downs roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship. In fact, just this week, we have a business plan moving forward in the second part of this year. And I told one of my team members, like, you know, that business plan that we had, like, I think I maybe want to go back to what we were doing before instead of doing this thing we're thinking about doing now. Because the way we're taking my business moving forward is brand new and I am absolutely and feeling imposter syndrome as we move to this next stage of my business. And I know if I just go back over here, like, I know I've done this and I know this can work and, and I feel comfortable there. But if I want to grow and if I want to be able to help you all the way that I love helping you, I have to get out of this shell of being comfortable and do this new thing, even though it's scary as crap. And I know many of you probably feel that way. You're comfortable where you are right now. And you know if you want to hit that next goal, you unfortunately have to get uncomfortable. And we are all there. We all hit those stages. And I want you to know moving into those new stages, getting uncomfortable can be messy. Last year when we grew our agency 300% in a matter of a month or two, it got messy and I'm not proud of it. We brought on two new team members which I want 100% take responsibility for not supporting them the way I should have, not providing them the training and the feedback that I should have. We took on too many clients at once and ended up losing a client because of it. Because the team that I had was so overworked and so swamped and didn't know what they should be doing. And that really took a hit on me. In fact, the end of 2021, I was in this total funk the rest of the year because I had lost a client. That was the first time I had ever lost a client because I didn't plan accordingly. I tried something new and it didn't work out. But I was able to take a step back and look at, okay, here's what we did wrong. And I started putting plans in place to make sure that didn't happen again. It caused me to force the time to work on the things that I was avoiding, like SOPs and training and templates and processes that I was avoiding because we were doing well on a small scale. But when we went to that next step, everything just exploded. And the thing is, after speaking with my friends in my mastermind, this happens to everybody. Having an unexpected growth like that, usually that's what's going to happen, is going to get messy. But the part about entrepreneurship that nobody talks about is that messy piece and that piece about powering through and figuring out, okay, this exploded. I'm not a failure. This was just something new. And I need to figure out how to make this new thing now work with my business model. I need to figure out what we did wrong and how to correct it. We're going to have those great days where we feel like we are crushing it. Like, we close our laptop in the afternoon, we're like, yes, like I am killing it this month. And then the next day, you may check your inbox, There may be a refund request. And that totally can cause you to spiral. To think, my course isn't good. Who am I to say that I can sell this? They're not getting results. What am I doing? I need to hide. And you want to just burn your business down. But I'm telling you this from experience in talking to other people. This is normal, totally normal. Don't burn your business down. Take a second, reflect, you know, if it helps the brain dump. I love brain dumping. Like writing all my ideas on it. And I like waiting a day. Usually after sleeping, my emotions can get adjusted properly and I can look at this more objectively. I really felt the need to share this all with you because in the past two years, running a business, an online business, has been rough. And I've seen so many of my online business friends, people who had businesses before me, actually close up shop and start working for somebody else because it is hard. And that's just statistically true because according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, about 20% of businesses, small businesses, fail within the first year. By the end of that fifth year, more than 50% of those businesses still left have failed. And after 10 years, only one third of all those businesses have still survived. Because it's hard. Not saying it's impossible. Okay. You just need to realize there is no secret. I think that's like the whole theme of this video. There is no secret. There is tactics. And strategies. But you've got to do the work. You've got to figure out what works for you. You cannot just copy and paste somebody's process into your process. You can look at it, you can learn from it, but you have to make it work for your business model, your life and your target audience. So after saying all this, what is my best advice to you right now? If you are feeling that hardship, if you are struggling, the best thing that I did, as I said, was join a Mastermind. That's when I realized I had a community full of people that I could lean on, that I could ask questions to, that I could realize that I'm not alone. And I was lucky enough to find a mastermind where everybody is super transparent and willing to share a lot. And honestly, I'm not sure I would have made it through 2021 and that spiral in my agency last summer without having those people in my mastermind to fall back on, having my coach to talk to about it. But I know many of us aren't ready for a mastermind or we can't afford it. And so I want you to know, reach out to me if you need to. Always know down below in the comments. I am having conversations with you if you have a question, if you need support, if you want to talk about something, let's talk down in the comments because that is totally free and that's where we can get started. It wasn't that long ago that I was very much in that beginner stage with a one year old and a newborn and I wished I had somebody that I could reach out to and talk to like this instead of doing it all by myself. And I don't ever want to forget that time because I never want to position myself or market myself as the answer to your business prayers because I am not, not nobody is the answer to your business prayers. And I want that to really set in for you because I don't want you to ever invest in somebody that says they are going to answer your business prayers. Okay? Because one person cannot do that. So have I totally gone off the rails here or does this connect with you? Does this resonate with you? Like I said, I wanted to really just share something personal. It's very hard for me, coming from a business background and then working in the federal government for so long to kind of let my professional walls down and be personal and transparent with you. So that's why I forced myself to really create this video and break out of my strategy to create this video for you. Because I made a promise to myself a few years ago that I would never make this journey look easy to everybody, because, good grief, I know it's not, and that needs to be clear. It is absolutely doable, but it's a lot of work, and I just want to be open and honest about that. Like I said, if you want to chat about this, if you want to ask me questions, if you want to have a conversation, go down into the comments. I'm going to be down there chatting with you for the next couple of days after this video goes live. So do not hesitate. Like I said, I don't want you to feel alone. I don't want you to be on this roller coaster by yourself. So reach out and let's chat in the comments.