20,000 subscribers I my mind is blown away and it continues to grow when I got to 20,000 subscribers on this channel I was planning on doing a live stream and two things happened it it happened faster than I imagined and I just as much as I love live streaming wrote a book about it I just I I I just I couldn't do it it's just the timing so I thought okay but I do want to do a video and by the way if we haven't met my name is Kevin Colby and so glad you are here but I want to share about I think I wrote down seven things that I've discovered over going from zero subscribers to where I am now 20,000 and and continuing to grow just subscribers we're not even talking about views and I hope these help you especially if you're over 40 and you're still just thinking about starting YouTube or maybe you've started and you don't feel like it's really doing much I really hope these will help you first up growth is typically slow it is so easy to look at other channels and other creators and maybe see them popping off growing you know they're racking up maybe they don't even have that many videos and and they're just just doing Gang Busters and going wow why am I not growing that's a very typical thing but the reality of it is it takes time it takes time my channel started in January of 2017 and I started with zero subscrib subcribers ironically it was March of that year when my position I was a I was a creative director at a fox station and it was eliminated so it took me a while to uh finally let uh you know God take control and realize that the next chapter of my life was being a solo content creator and eventually YouTube but over time it took quite a while to grow I want to jump ahead in in my timeline to kind of get us into the second point but before I do that I just want to remind you if you're growing that's good growth can can take time it can jump but typically it just takes time the second thing is being open to mentoring and coaching there's a lot of coaches out there I coach I I do one-on-one coaching and Consulting if you're ever interested in that you can find out more either down below or on my website there are a lot of coaches out there that are good and there's a lot that quite honestly I I just don't trust their information but mentors are good as well and I've been very blessed with several mentors in 2020 and it was in April and I can't remember the exact date my channel was sitting at about 411 subscribers so think about this 2017 I start the Channel with zero flash uh flash Jump Ahead to 2020 and I'm at around 4111 videos because I was just posting everything I was I was you know here's a here's a video I did for a client here's a vlog about buying coffee and here's oh here how to use Quick time so it was kind of all over the place my channel got audited and I've I've kind of mentioned this and people said what does that mean it was during video marketing world it was a virtual uh conference and uh I got a message from Scott Simpson he's the CEO he's also a friend and said hey we're going to audit your channel during the conference if you want and it turned out it was Rob Wilson and Travis I don't remember his last name from vid IQ and when they audited what that means is they just kind of went through the channel not the analytics just looking at the channel from an outsider looking in they didn't know me of the channel and I remember them saying well you know you look nice but we have no idea what your channel is about now think about that as somebody coming to my channel just looking at it from the outside in we we had no idea what you're about that was information that it was hard to hear but it was great to hear because from that point on I thought you know what I I love YouTube I love learning on it and producing for it and I need to take this serious and that was in 2020 and so that's why I'm saying me being open to because I first I thought no heck no I don't want I don't want to have my channel audited and embarrassed in front of everybody but it was the best thing guys best thing I ever did because it got me really serious about YouTube and thinking okay if I'm going to do this and help people and grow the channel and make money and all those other things you know I can do it as a hobby but I wanted to do it more as a business um um as part of my business and that's when I really got serious about it and I think it was later that year or actually wasn't too long later I did a video called how to get Final Cut Pro for free because I had switched to Final Cut Pro and people were asking and I saw a lot of people looking for it still to this day it is my biggest video ever because people were looking for it and it answered a question so that's a case of it really really helping me another one is adapt as needed and what I mean by this is you know you can go into YouTube thinking I'm only going to do this and then realize well I don't know maybe I need to do this maybe I need to change how I'm doing maybe it's a lifestyle thing because at one point I was I was thought you know I'm going to upload three times a week I don't know what I was thinking three times a week so I did like two produce videos and a live stream and again I love doing this I could not maintain that schedule for a couple of reasons one and and I've talked about this you know our youngest son has special needs he is our priority and so there were times where it's like yeah I just there's no way there's just no way where I'd have to cancel a live stream or something like that plus just trying to come up with that many ideas to keep it going again I am a solo content creator I shoot my stuff I edit my stuff I do my thumbnails I do my uploading do the optimization I do I do all of that like I imagine a lot of you guys do too I couldn't maintain it so I thought okay what do I need adapt to well I need to just change to I'm G to I'm going to try to publish once a week and that really got me into a rhythm now occasionally I drop two videos and things like that but it was the the ability to adapt to things IID learned to how I was producing that really helped another one is play with different formats and the styles of video YouTube gives you so many ways of producing video you can do what's now called Longs but it's what I call produced videos this is a produced video since I'm not doing it live but it could be anything over a minute to as long as it's going to be you can do shorts um now here's my little disclaimer about shorts I I I don't personally like the vertical format I just don't I did I've done shorts I don't do them anymore well I ever do them again I don't know uh I even took them off my Channel Once and put them back on I didn't delete them I I'm so against deleting but they also offer live streaming uh podcasting has come in and that wasn't a thing until what last year there's Community posts and then youve got other types of things as well under there I guess that's really it though you've got because even under live you can do live shopping but that's still alive so if you think about all the different types of formats but then you've got different styles of a video you can do Vlog um you can do talking head you can do faceless and I and I've seen people ask about doing that because they're afraid of being on camera my recommendation is do it only if your subject matter really demands it and you're you're absolutely positively just freaking out when you go on camera you know I can think of like if you're you're doing a drawing Channel and you want to just focus on the drawing do that or baking I know of some baking channels that just focus on you know it's like what's called a top down shot where you're just shooting down and you just show that most of them have voice over some just music and stuff they're not easier to produce but it's it's a type of video we talk about vlogging top talking head video podcasting is one which I wrote a book on um live streaming which I also wrote a book on these are all different types of videos and shorts and like that there's a friend of mine he goes by gigmaster Steve Andrews and um he does daily videos but he kind of considers his channel a reality Channel you know you could probably look at it and see a little bit more Vlog but the point is is that just don't get locked into a format you may say well Kevin there is no way there's no way I'm ever going to live stream and then you try it one day and think oh I I kind of like live streaming in fact dang I'm pretty good at it being open to playing with the formats there that's huge even the community Tab and I'll be honest I don't use the community tab probably as much as I should um and I'm trying to change that because I think it's just a way to show up so be willing to play with a different formats and just see what works for you and another one is don't give in to what you don't want to do so there was a point in time where like I edit on Final Cut Pro love Final Cut Pro so I was doing some Final Cut Pro videos mention I remember I mentioned my still my biggest video is about Final Cut Pro and I'm very proud of those videos and and they helped but there was a point where somebody told me well you know YouTube thinks you're a Final Cut Pro channel so you really need to lean into that and just do that and I thought I don't but I don't want to be just a Final Cut Pro Channel I didn't want to just limit myself to that now I I've got a couple of friends like the Final Cut bro fantastic Channel you ought to check it out and that's just what he does and it works for him and so that's why I would do other things about you know maybe editing or kind of Branch out into it or start talking about YouTube a as well but there's also you get the friendly advice friendly advice of you need to do this or this and sometimes it's folks that don't have channels have never created and they're just wanting you to do something there's a book called Primal branding uh full disclosure I've tried to read it two or three times I can't get through it but from what I understand it's it's about kind of like building your tribe and knowing as much of what you're for and and what you're against can also relate to your audience so I get a lot of suggestions and ideas via email comments on the videos and sometimes I it's just you know or things I should do and I read it all but I just I take it with a grain of salt so I'm just saying that as you go and grow you're going to get a lot of advice and you're going to get a lot of Temptations do a certain thing even in the YouTube algorithm or in your studio when you're looking in there I don't look at my YouTube Studio analytics probably like you should I you know I'm comfortable with how much I'm in there and because you can get overwhelmed with it and then you can start looking at that going well I've got to start making this type of content and I just I kind of resist it's probably that independent solo part of me I kind of resist YouTube wanting me to do a certain type when I want to do this I want to talk to a certain Community a certain type person whatever and it just goes where it goes and yeah sometimes I just I just create a video because I want to create a video another one is ignore the noise you know sometimes I've just put a video out because I want to get one out of my system I just want to create something and put it out there I don't have any crazy expectations of it at all you know you can get a lot of feedback on that that you don't want but part of the noise is it's kind of it's a little bit bit of several things it's also the people that love just to drop in the comments and just you know give you unsolicited advice that's not very helpful if you know what I mean and and it's coming if you haven't hopefully it won't be much or they just you know they want to criticize everything I mean I've seen video I mean I've already seen comments about you know starting a YouTube channel if you're over 40 and the comments are are you know extremely negative almost like you know whatever it maybe didn't work for that person and so therefore they're wanting everybody to know that they're just wasting their time it's hard sometimes and maybe I should do a whole another video on just trying to kind of get past that but at some point you have to kind of ignore that type of noise when you read those comments you're sometimes maybe they sting but you know I don't you know God defines me you don't I don't let other people Define me because God has defined me so I would I would say that to you get to that point where don't let other people Define you and then there's just a lot of other noise out there too social media and even on YouTube you get there and you're just bombarded with all these videos so at some point you kind of ignore that get in your Zone and just create and don't be afraid to Pivot or even refocus your channel that's what I've done on this um you know I I have a lot of people going wow you know you're you're doing great you know way to Pivot I don't really feel like I pivoted pivot to me is like example you're doing a gardening Channel you talk about gardening gardening gardening and all of a sudden you're talking about photography that's a pivot that's a big pivot you can do small pivots within there maybe you're talking about you know editing and then you kind of get into animation maybe those two go together I refocused I made the conservative effort after a lot of thinking a lot of research and praying that I wanted to to talk more to the over 40 over 50 the community those of you that are like me that were older not old were older and specifically those still about people that want to begin or or maybe you've been going and you're kind of stuck was it a big risk I don't know I don't know uh you know uh what I I'm giddy about is is that I I after I did some research I knew there was a community there I knew there were a lot of people 40 45 50 plus on yoube YouTube specifically and I thought you know what I want to be a part of that Community I want to talk to people like that like me and if young people come along you sound so old I know the young people come along that is fantastic too during your journey you may want to Pivot you may want to refocus your channel I would I would caution you about doing it too soon because as you're starting out and growing YouTube is still trying to figure out about your channel and so they need more dat data to say oh somebody might be interested in this video and this video and this video CU YouTube is all about viewer satisfaction so just be careful about trying to do that too quick look I'm I'm giddy I'm giddy that my channel has continued to to grow and I'm I'm even more excited when I see comments um I've I've never experienced the number of comments that I'm getting now um I try and read every comment I'm really good at that but they're becoming so much it's hard to respond to every comment and that that drives me nuts because again I'm a solo content creator it's just me doing everything I don't have a moderator even when I was doing live streams in fact the only time I had a moderator is I did live streams for a while for streamyard on streamyards channel I did this Co co-host of this show called ask streamyard and we had a moderator because the the the comments were just going so fast I don't know where you are on your journey at all I mean share below and and by the way I love it when people say where they're from like the country don't ever give your address but the country so keep doing that um but you know you can you can keep asking questions and comment I do read them but wherever you are in your creative Journey give yourself Grace and create um it can be hard it can be slow at times but it can be very rewarding and for anybody watching this who says I don't have anything to share with the world I'm going to challenge you there's at least somebody out there who needs you maybe you just haven't met them yet with a video