Getting Started on YouTube: The Experience
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Getting myself on YouTube has been over 10 years in the making.
From having numerous "series" on my Snapchat, to posting longgg Instagram stories of myself talking, to creating vlogs for TikTok, people have been telling me to get my a** on YouTube since my early teenage days.
But, I always had an excuse why it wasn't the right time. To me, YouTube felt like such a commitment.
I felt like I couldn't officially make the decision to grow an audience on Youtube until I had proven to myself that I had what it takes.
Going into 2024, I was sitting here with a podcast, a blog, a website, social media platforms to promote myself, and I had officially run out of excuses.
I came into the year with the decision to go FULL FORCE. To stop holding myself back in the content I create. I had to admit to myself that I was afraid of getting in front of the camera, in front of my story.
Still, by this point, I had already shown myself how passionate I truly was about changing the global narrative. I knew I was dedicated to using my story to make space for others who struggle to embrace their identity.
If I was truly as dedicated to my cause as I claimed to be, then getting on YouTube had to be one of the first accomplishments I checked off this year. It just had to be.
As we rang in the new year, I knew I was getting my next podcast episode on video.
Then, on Tuesday, January 16th, 2024, only two weeks into the new year, I posted my first video to The Hustle Legacy's YouTube channel.
Here's how the experience went:
Getting Over the Perfectionism
The biggest thing that kept me from wanting to get on YouTube was that I felt like I had to do things absolutely perfectly when I finally made the decision to go for it.
We're talking:
High camera quality
Great editing
Awesome intro and outro
SEO-optimized title and description
No mistakes
All the bells & whistles
The problems with that mindset were that:
No one's incredible their first time around
I let my lack of skills and equipment keep me from ever trying
I knew my first video wasn't going to be as amazing as I had always imagined it to be. Because of that, I never even wanted to try.
Making the decision to finally get on YouTube was really me making the decision to finally get over my perfectionism.
This video wasn't going to be good. It was going to be recorded on my phone, with iMovie editing, and no bells or whistles. Just lots of mistakes.
Everything I would never have wanted my first video to be.
Getting over the perfectionism started with me having to realize that this video wasn't going to be uploaded for the views. This wasn't about getting a ton of comments or gaining a million subscribers.
This first video was just about me getting myself out there.
That's it.
The goal was just to start the channel. As long as I uploaded the video, no matter how imperfect or filled with mistakes, I would have accomplished my goal.
Learning to view it this way made it a lot easier to get my head in the game - to stop making excuses and actually take action towards my very concrete goal of building a presence on YouTube.
In the end, I was proud of the video I created, even though the quality was pretty sh*tty.
I can't deny though, the technical side of things was a big headache.
Learning the Tech
After I made the decision that this would be the year that I get on YouTube, I knew my first video would be recorded on my phone.
By this point, I had already let go of the need to produce the perfect video. All I knew was that my next podcast episode was going to be caught on camera, and the only camera I had to work with was my phone. So, that's what I did.
My first technical problem arose before I even finished recording.
I didn't realize that the last 7 minutes of my video weren't caught in the audio recording of the podcast. I spent days trying to figure out how to extract the audio from the end of the video and implement it into the podcast episode.
I had no luck.
Once I realized I wasn't going to figure it out, I just rerecorded the end of the episode on audio and called it a day.
The fact that the YouTube video and podcast episode don't have the same ending would have eaten away at me before. But, we let go of the perfectionism, and that helped us realize that it wasn't the end of the world if the endings didn't match.
Still, the intro to the episode and video were way too long. Long enough to be cut into its own intro video.
Now, what started off as one video turned into two. I doubled my YouTube content just like that! (Which, I considered a win).
My second technical problem revealed itself once I finished editing all 40 minutes of content.
Turns out, even with the intro cut out, the video was too long to download back onto my phone. This was a problem because I was using my phone to upload to YouTube.
Unless I could figure out how to get this video onto my camera roll, it seemed like I was fresh out of luck.
Another few days went by as I researched and experimented with how to upload this video.
In that time, I thought about the sustainability of building a presence on YouTube:
How much time will recording, editing, and uploading every video take?
Will I have to look into storage solutions for my phone to hold all these videos?
Am I running into these problems because I'm not using a more sophisticated video editor?
Will I need to invest in a new laptop (and other equipment) in order to manage all of these videos?
These questions would have been enough to make me give up in the past. They all once served as evidence that I wasn't truly "ready" to go after this goal.
But, we weren't letting excuses drive our decisions this time around. So, I kept searching until I found a solution to my problem.
Eventually, I was able to get the video on my phone by airdropping the content to my friend's laptop and then airdropping it back to myself (a temporary solution for what will most definitely be a recurring problem).
we figured out the editing. We figured out how to upload. We got ourselves onto YouTube!
But, the technical problems still didn't end there.
I put in all of that work only to find out that the quality of the video significantly reduced once it was compressed for the upload. When watching the videos, you'll see that it's super grainy, washes out my face, and is not the best viewing experience.
But, you know what? Who cares?
WE GOT ON YOUTUBE.
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Leaning into the Process
After uploading my video and officially getting The Hustle Legacy on YouTube, it was time to start thinking about how I would improve the next time around.
Someone once told me that as long as he got 1% better with each episode he produced, he knew he was always improving.
I decided to adopt that approach for my YouTube channel.
Two major things stuck out to me during the process:
The quality of my videos
The hassle of uploading them
These were my two areas of focus when it came to improving my next video.
In order to help myself in either of these areas, we're going to have to invest in some software and equipment. What I realized I don't have to do is invest in the best software and equipment available on the market.
We just need to do enough to make the next video better than the last one. Nothing more, nothing less.
No need to overwhelm ourselves.
In fact, write before uploading this article to my website, I bought myself a cute little starter camera to help improve the quality for your viewing experience! (you're welcome)
That's the thing about leaning into the process.
What that means is accepting that you don't have all of the answers at any given point. You're just allowing the process to take you where you're meant to go.
Speaking as a former extremist, recognizing that you don't have to be all or nothing really took the pressure off.
So, my first YouTube video (and my second one) is kinda sh*tty. So what?
I still got myself on YouTube as one of my first acts of 2024. That accomplishment can never be taken away from me.
Now, I have the rest of the year to watch myself and my platform grow.
How exciting is that?
