Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I Put All My Eggs in One Basket”.
I’M 16 and do more robotics techie videos on YouTube in the early days of LTT. How did you stay motivated and how long in the future, would you say, YouTube would still be a feasible career needing to eat is a pretty good motivator. I think we’re also all pretty determined to like make this thing work yeah I was – I mean I’ve talked about this in the past before, but one of the major motivators for me was just that I was tired of working with people that I didn’t um. I didn’t enjoy working with whether it was reporting to people who, I didn’t think deserved their positions, so I didn’t think were very smart or whether it was having to collaborate with people who were obvious nepotism, hires and had no valuable skills to bring to the table Whatsoever, you know I wanted a company that was not built like that, and the only way to get that is to start my own and the only way to get it and be sure it won’t go away. Is to start my own fair enough yeah, and so I just really needed this thing to work um you know Yvonne and I also just generally bet really heavily on it, and so you know, especially once we acquired the Langley house, I mean it’s it’s funny to Look back at it now, but we thought we were buying at the peak like yeah, the the highest conceivable.
You know, housing pricing ends up. We got a stellar deal or whatever, but we didn’t know that at the time, so we thought we were basically putting everything. We had into this company um and we just really needed it to succeed, and then there were multiple phases where we kind of did the same thing again. When we bought the office, we thought the same thing that we were buying at the peak and it couldn’t possibly go any higher. So we we thought we were completely betting, the farm and we needed this to succeed or like going back to our jobs. There was no possible way we were paying this office mortgage that wasn’t happening right, so yeah eating major motivating factor.
As for how long in the future did, I think YouTube would still be a feasible career. I’Ll tell you this. We started linustechtips.com the Forum before we actually launched Linus Media Group, the company and linustechtips.com, maybe not main reason, but at least half of its main reason for existing is in case YouTube. Just decides you know what forget about this channel anymore. We didn’t have a contact at YouTube at that time. We didn’t.
We didn’t know that they would continue to take the Creator Community seriously. We didn’t know if they would, just you know, cut your AdSense payment or or maybe you get three strikes out of nowhere or take it or take it away entirely like we didn’t know what the plan was for the platform right, we’re just guessing um. So at the time no, I would I would I would take every deal. I would make every video thinking this could be the last one and I don’t think that really changed until you know three four five years in really I mean even now, it still feels sketchy because of like just dealing with algorithmic throws all the time.
I don’t know it’s it’s a very unsettling industry to work in it just is yeah. That’S a good point. Luke was telling me he had some meetings with some creators that um were. I don’t know if bewildered’s the right word, but just um taken it back when he talked about how stressed we get about algorithmic changes or about um.
You know whether just the fear we have for our survival and they’re like well. I thought you’re past that point and it’s like, I think everybody anybody ever gets past that point. That’S the thing about um like exponential decay. Right is no matter how high you start.
Everyone ends up at zero, but there’s a near infinite graveyard of extremely massive Italian, successful, very talented creators and channels, and all that kind of stuff that were household names on YouTube that are effectively just gone, that are in a lot of cases, still making content. They won’t see them in your recommendation feels like nothing can really happen to anyone really, and I I’ve seen Channels with with millions of subscribers that get hundreds of views. It’S like oh man and in some cases in some cases they change the content and it’s just not working anymore. In some cases they didn’t change the content and that’s contributing to it, not working anymore and in other cases I’m looking at it going.
I can’t really tell the difference um, you know the point is not to to name and shame no, but this person in particular did like a a series. Um or wait. Is this it’s the right one um.
I think I know it when you’re talking. Oh here we go here. We go this one, this one yeah um. Let me just make sure, because I don’t want to um yeah yeah ugh. I don’t know, but basically you might not name it yeah yeah. There was a creator that was doing real, amazing and then just kind of completely fell off the map. I’M talking like her top video has over 50 million views 11 years ago and there’s multiple videos here, with 10 million views and more doing challenges and stuff, and then just you know she she’s talked about this. I think if I’m remembering correctly she’s talked about how it felt like she just disappeared overnight. Algorithmically and again, this is a Channel with millions of subscribers.
Nobody, nobody is, nobody is safe. Yeah um! Let me just see yeah, oh okay. Yes, okay, it’s GloZell um. So she did an interview talking about how she went broke, uh shared some advice for young creators and um yeah being yeah.
This is this is great, being broke with millions of subscribers. She shares her story of hardship, yeah yeah, it’s uh. It’S a really.
It’S a really interesting fall right because it it’s not the type of content that I consume, so I’m not really qualified to evaluate whether you know she changed or or didn’t change or what what the problem was that caused this precipitous decline in viewership, but no one’s! No one’s safe, that’s that’s the whole point um! So we’re we just need to. We need to keep Reinventing, we need to keep pushing and we can never take our foot off the gas, because if we do, we die it’s uh. I I often use shark analogies internally. Stop swimming die, yeah yeah like actually, though .