Growth, Consistency and Direction - My Learnings
Learnings
Last night, I spent most of the night writing for my blog and then going through my old YouTube channel. I started my channel in summer of 2017 and I posted till January 2019. After a year and six months, I was frustrated and set all my videos on the channel to private. I was not seeing much growth and my channel had only gotten 540 subscribers in a year and half.
3 years later, on April of 2022 I started another channel and I hit 500 subscribers a few days ago, after 2 months of consistency. Now, as I went through my old channel last night, I noticed a couple of things.
Even though I had a DSLR camera, my videos had bad lighting
My makeup was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I looked very ashy and in some videos very clownish
My videos did not provide any real value. I basically made videos on whatever I felt like
I was not in a particular niche. I had prank videos, reaction videos, rant videos, trendy videos and the channel was all over the place. It did not have a direction
I was very ‘raz’ and ‘loud’ just because I was trying to be ‘real.’ I was not being my authentic self. You see, I had spoken to another youtuber who was growing quickly during that period and he told me that Nigerians wanted American based Nigerian youtubers to ‘stop forming’ their accent (even if you genuinely didn’t have a thick Nigerian accent). I took that advice and forced myself to be funny in my videos. I even tried to speak pidgin English on camera which was a total disaster (fun fact, I never spoke pidgin English growing up, although I perfectly understand it)
I did not let my channel have organic growth. Most of my subscribers were from a ‘follow for follow’ YouTube group and not people genuinely interested in my content
I was inconsistent and in a year and half I only posted 45 videos. Yet, on my new channel I have 38 videos in 2 months
Growth and Consistency
Suffice to say, after I had accessed my old YouTube channel, I understood why people would not want to follow me. Those videos are not videos I would proudly share to people. The funny thing is that then I thought I was doing a good job and I wanted to blow quickly. I did not want to go through the process, learn from it and grow. I was quite impatient and would jump on trends to have my video go viral. The thing about growth is that if you don’t go through the process and learn from it, you crash as quickly as you rise.
Am I saying that my new channel is perfect? Of course not. I am still receiving constructive criticism from family and friends on how I can do better. I also go back to watch my older videos to know what to improve on. But I am proud to say that I am not repeating any of the 7 mistakes I listed above and I see real organic growth. One thing I also noticed is that I am not desperate to ‘blow’ on my new channel. I am just taking it one step at a time and enjoying the process as I go along. All I do is offer value (new channel is focused on getting admitted into USA/Canada) and try to be better in the next video.
What is my point of writing this? If you had told me in 2017 that I was not doing a good job in my old channel, I would have probably fought you. I thought I was ‘it’ and was really upset that few people were subscribing to me. I was not interested in the growth process or learning from it, but in the results. But how would I reap the fruits of my labor when I never labored? How would I ‘blow’ when I didn’t put in the work? And even if I had ‘blown’ with my old channel, how would I manage the new fame that came with blowing, if I did not take it one step at a time? Knowing who I was those years, I would probably mess my fame up. Especially since I had not passed through the trying and growth period God set up for me in 2020 and 2021.
I wanted to go from 5 - 100, skipping 95 steps. Last night I messaged my brother about my observations and told him how glad I was that the old channel did not grow. 2020 and 2021 was a a period of trial and temptation. But I learned from it and it helped me grow so much. Although it was tough, I am grateful to have gone through that process (I will tell you all the story someday). It made me a better person. The same way clay goes through fire to become a beautiful ceramic.
Dear friend, I honestly hope you enjoyed this newsletter today. I cannot wait to send my next issue. Thank you for reading, and please consider sharing this story so that others can subscribe and join the family!
Would you like to connect with me on other platforms? Click the link to join the growing family https://linktr.ee/justnenye