Speaker 1: I have never seen anyone talk about an approach to YouTube like this. This is how I used the skills I gained during my PhD and my research and applied them to YouTube. Now the first thing is I needed an outcome, I needed like something to explore and I had some rules for myself. So this came off the back of sort of a failed startup, I'm leaving academia and I was like what kind of life do I want to lead? So I really wanted three things. The first thing I wanted was location independence. So I wanted to be able to work from anywhere in the world. Here we are, there's that and there's the world. Ooh, nice world. There we are, you get it. So I wanted to be able to work from anywhere in the world because I wanted to travel. The second thing I really wanted was I didn't want to exchange my time for money. I didn't want to be on the clock and then get money because I'd work a certain number of hours. And then I also, the third thing I wanted is I wanted to obviously earn enough so that I would earn more than I did as a researcher. So those were my sort of like key experimental outcomes that I wanted to achieve. And that's how I thought about it. So then I was looking at the options available to me and YouTube, creating content online and that sort of stuff was really the way forward. So I decided to go all in on YouTube. this is the thing is that at this time I really didn't realize how hard this all would be but trust me when I say that it's been well worth the effort and you'll see how much effort that was in a minute. So once I had sort of like my intended outcomes from my research project, that's how I approached it, I needed to get a sense of the field and this was where my like literature review of YouTube came in. So the first thing I did is I went out and I looked at of creators and I was like, I wonder what sort of content they're creating. I wonder how they're getting success. And it started to really worry me, mainly because I could not pick up on any real reason why some people were successful and some people weren't. And that was very, very scary to me. But that was an important thing to notice because ultimately what I learned was that there was so much noise out there online, whether you were blogging, whether or not you were doing YouTube content creation stuff, whether or not you're on social media, that really, there was no way to determine who was gonna be successful or not. I saw creators who were doing amazing stuff with very, very few views. I saw creators who really just were lucky and were handed an audience, and I was like, how do I make sure that I increase, essentially, my ability for luck to find me? That was really what I needed to find. And then after reverse engineering a load of successful channels and non-successful channels, I realized that it really wasn't up to me to decide what channel would be successful or not. I needed the universe to decide. And that's very much like research. You have a plan and you think, I'll do this. But ultimately, sometimes your luck is not in the right basket and it just won't work. But sometimes you try this really, really crazy idea and the luck just finds you and you are successful with that idea, just like in research. So I decided the only way that I thought YouTube would be able to find me is by starting a load of channels. So I started five channels, right? And on these five channels, I would post one video a week. And I would do that until one of them sort of took off. Now, the one thing I learned about YouTube and all of the online creator stuff is that this does not happen like you have time and success. and you feel like this is sort of like you put in a certain amount of effort and then you get success. Oh, yeah, I'll do a happy face for success. There we go, that's way better. All right, so you put in effort, so time and effort, and you expect it like this, where you put in, you know, you create a video and you get a little bit of success. You create 10 videos and you get more success. You create 100 videos and you get more success. That is not how it works. In my experience, and I think from the stuff that I saw, it's actually much more like this, where things tick along and all of a sudden it goes off. And so I had to create five channels which really didn't do very well for ages and waiting for one of them to hit this inflection point. And to be honest with you, most of the channels that I saw did this for years and never really went anywhere. So I had to make sure that my process was able to kind of like withstand potentially many years of it going nowhere fast. But that didn't stop me because I decided to have five channels and so go and find them. I'd be interested to know if you know what other channels I started with about five years ago and I was waiting to see which one took off. Now, I'm not looking for two times the amount of views. I'm not even looking for like three or four times the amount of views. I'm looking for many multiples. I'm looking for, you know, orders of magnitude different compared to some of them. So I'll give you an idea. One of them got to about 10,000 subs, which I was very happy with. One of them got to 4,000 subs. One of them got them to 200 subs. And then all of a sudden, one of them was probably like 50 subs or something really bad. But this was after posting on them for months. I reckon for six months to a year, I was doing one video on each a week. And so then all of a sudden, this channel, the Andrew Stapleton channel, it took off. And all of a sudden, I was looking at, I don't know, let's say 60,000 subs at some point. And I was like, okay, that's the indication I need. I don't need something to be just like a little bit better. I need it to look like it's hit this inflection point. And so of the five channels I started, after about six months, I only chose three of them to continue with, and it was these three. And I was like, okay, to make sure that I had enough luck, I should continue with these three until one of them really, really took off. You see that these are still relatively close together in terms of YouTube subscriber counts, and so I was looking for the one that was really gonna take off. And the only way I could find out which one was gonna work was by putting in the effort. I produced so many videos, and I've got loads of dead channels now behind me, but that's just what research is like. You come up with an idea, you try it, you trial it for a bit, and then you're just looking for that kind of unfair return from the universe, where you put in a certain amount of effort, but you get loads in return, and then you go, okay, this is what I'm doubling down on. And it took two or maybe three years to decide that the Andrew Stapleton, this channel here, was the one that I was gonna continue on and focus all of my efforts. But I feel like now, even with this approach, I was still very, very lucky. I had increased my chances of luck finding me, but I hadn't sort of like guaranteed success by any means. But because I had a sense of the uncertainty of YouTube and the noisiness around it. You know, someone who has got no subscribers can produce some amazing content, but for some reason their channel just doesn't go off. So the one thing I learned in all of this is you do not get to decide what channel will be successful. The world, the universe, the underserved audience that you don't yet know exists needs to dictate which channel is going to work. And so, all that said, that is where I ended up. So I ended up with this inflection point and then I was doubling down on one. So after going from five channels, I went down to three and then after about another six months to a year of publishing equally on those channels, I went down to one channel. And that was because that one channel was giving me orders of magnitude better results than everything I'd done before. And you've got to be able to let go of the stuff that isn't working or to regularly, I think in research and even in life, We try to make the things that aren't doing well work better when in fact we should just be doubling down on the things that work. So I'm always looking for what 20% of the effort is giving me 80% of the results. And that's what this channel did. But I had to make sure luck found me and I could only do that by planting a load of different seeds and keeping an eye on which one the universe and the world valued more based on views, based on subs, and also based on, I guess, the revenue that each one was generating. So, the 80-20 principle is still something I use today, but today I'm starting to think about YouTube in a different way, and that is because I started to play the YouTube game about six months ago, where I was just trying to create content that would spike views, and the problem is, once you don't produce a video, that returns to a very low viewer sort of like baseline. So you're always relying on that next video to increase your revenue, which is important if this is now your job, and also your view count. And I was starting to get sort of, you know, cyclic depression where I was like, yes, this video has done well. Oh, that video didn't do so well. Oh, this is doing really well. And I was just sort of like completely attached to my results as a YouTube content creator. So now, I am focused on what 20% is getting me my 80% of my results, and it's the helpful content. It's answering specific questions on YouTube, around academic topics that is really giving me the biggest return on my effort. And so that is where this channel, I think, will focus its efforts, which is being genuinely helpful. And I think when you're genuinely helping people, then only good things can come from it. But remember, it took me a long time to settle on the fact that, you know, I will talk about academic and PhD advice on YouTube. I could have been another person if for some reason the universe and the timing and the luck found a different channel. But this is what I'm talking about today. And luckily, you know, I've got a lot of experience working in academia and working with PhD students that I can provide, or I feel like I can provide a lot of value. But yeah, I'd never seen anyone talk about that approach to YouTube before. And I was sort of like reflecting on it. and I was like, this is exactly how I approach any research topic, and that is, get a sense of the field, what can you control, what can't you control, how can you increase the amount of luck that's gonna come your way, come up with a hypothesis, and say, if I work on, you know, in this case, five YouTube channels over a certain amount of time, they'll have an uneven response to my effort, and I'm looking for the one that takes off. And really, that was it. It took a lot of effort, it took a lot of courage, and it took a lot of many sleepless nights worrying if one of them would take off. I'm still very fortunate that one did, and I think if you were to try to do this today, maybe not one of them would. I don't know, that's what luck is all about. It's just a game of chance. But I think now if you're helping people online, and YouTube is a place where I go to learn loads of stuff, then that can't be a bad place to start your YouTube adventure. but yep, I'd never heard anyone talk about their approach to YouTube that looked like this. So let me know in the comments what you think. If you want more stuff from me, remember to go check out my newsletter at andrewstepton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description. When you sign up, you'll get five emails over two weeks, everything from the tools I've used, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract, and more. It's exclusive content, not available anywhere else, so go check it out. And also, go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got my eBooks, I've got my courses, and everything over there is to make sure that you succeed in academia. All right then, I'll see you in the next video.