Growing up, I was one of those strange kids who acted like an adult. I mean, sure, I played with kids, but I was my truest self around adults.

When my parents hosted dinner parties, I sat at the table and shared my opinion without missing a beat. When my parents had discussions about our family, I sat like a third partner and weighed in. I was once kicked out of Sunday school because I openly told the teacher that I knew more about the subject matter (to this day, I maintain that I did!).

So, yeah, I acted like an adult and cared about adult things, often times at odds with my parents.

One major place of contention was our front yard. My dad worked three or four jobs at a time, and my mother homeschooled five children, so a manicured lawn was the least of their concerns.

But not mine. I hated that our house was one of the shabbiest on the block.

We couldn't afford a lawn mower, but my dad bought a push mower from a garage sale that he occasionally used. When it started collecting rust, I pulled it to the front yard and heaved my preteen body against the handle to get it to move. Four hours later, we'd have a trim lawn.

When I think back to this experience, I sum up my weird childhood decision to mow the lawn as the following: **I CARED HOW THINGS LOOK. I still do.

So imagine my cringe when I look at my current YouTube channel…all these years later and I think to myself, Do I have the shabbiest house on YouTube street?!?

I've been taking time to rethink and strategize my video creation approach (aka your girl is busting out her video hand mower), and wanted to share insights into a conversation I had with my friend and YouTube guru, Evan Carmichael.

I recently asked him two questions:

1. Should I start a new YouTube channel from scratch? (I started the channel years ago as a photographer, so a lot of my subscribers might not be interested in my new content.); and
2. Should I focus on a specific length of video? (I currently post three YouTube shorts, one video about 12 minutes in length, and one video 45-60 minutes in length per week).

If you click on the most popular videos on my channel, you'll see they have NOTHING to do with what I am doing today…I also took a two year break from creating YouTube videos which stands as one of my biggest business regrets. Ever. I shouldn't have stopped creating and, instead, shifted the momentum to my new business endeavors.

I mean, Y'ALL, this header needs a makeover…

And, lastly, I'll be honest and admit that seeing these stats compared to my old stats are deflating to say the least (hundreds of thousands vs. hundreds). We're pouring SO much time and resources into creating videos and it sometimes feels frustrating to see so little traction.

But I refuse to repeat the same mistake I made in the past: I will not stop making videos (even if the results aren't favorable right now),…but—this time—I'll be regularly assessing my efforts.

Here's notes from my call with Evan…I shared them with my content team, and I'm sharing with them you so we can learn together.

• Don't start a new channel…showing the journey about my pivots can be powerful overtime.
• He said that I should be documenting the struggle of creating high quality content just for a few hundred views…then once the account blows up (his words) we can show proof of consistency.
• He said our thumbnails are disastrous (LOL). Maybe we can use AI to make them more engaging?
• Our first benchmark when it comes to assessing our efforts: What percentage of people are watching past one minute. An editor KPI should be to focus on increasing that number each month.
• We NEED to have a trailer/bumper/preview before all our long form content in order to convince people to keep watching.
• Our YT content should be made assuming every viewer is a new viewer…we must sell people on why to watch and immediately offer a power punch benefit/promise within the first minute.
• Our goal should be to post at least one hour video per week. And BE CONSISTENT. That should be our bare minimum. We can/should create short videos and while they won't move the needle too much for us now, it could be amazing for layering to create long videos around a theme later…BUT that needs to be our commitment.

I'm sharing this for two reasons: 1. I'm documenting the journey; and 2. To encourage you to keep creating…if not for immediate results, then for our future success.

To hand-mowing our lawns,

j*

P.S. I'm posting my podcast videos on YouTube, so if you prefer watching, to listening, you can do so >>HERE<<.