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YouTube Creators Hub
Three 100K+ YouTube Channels, One System: Inside Zealand's Creator Machine
00:35:28
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- [00:00]
A
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's conversation on the Creators Hub podcast. I am joined today by another wonderful guest. As always, I'm joined today by Zeland, who is or was a professional sports broadcaster who started streaming My Football Manager, which is a video game for fun. In College. An FM website offered control of their 200 subscriber YouTube channel. He took it over and started making football manager guides. And by fm, we're referring to the game Football Manager. He fell in love with YouTube and has since reached 100,000 subscribers on not one, not two, but three different YouTube channels, branching out into gaming and soccer alike. As we're recording this episode last night, unfortunately the US Got eliminated from the World cup and obviously it was something all of us as Americans were really angry, amped up about. So I hate that we're having to do that kind of now, but that's just part of it. His main YouTube channel is Zealand Dun YouTube. So Z E A L a N D O N Y t now has 423,000 subscribers. Over 800 videos uploaded. Zeland, how are you doing today?
- [01:16]
B
I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. A little tired, a little hungover after the US game, emotionally and physically, but definitely happy to be here. And as, as I'm sure most of the people listening to this always like, happy to talk about YouTube stuff.
- [01:30]
A
Absolutely. Well, I'm just going to dive right into it. You've obviously have a wide breadth of knowledge growing multiple channels to over the 100,000 benchmark and subscribers. Your main channel is doing really well. Can you talk about the origin story? We mentioned it briefly there in the intro, but how did your YouTube journey start?
- [01:53]
B
Well, it was, I think it's. It's a story that I used to kind of be ashamed of because I feel like a lot of great creators or people that go out and really do stuff usually have some standalone story, but hopefully this will let other people know that you can kind of follow this path too. And it'll, it'll be good and it can work out and take you where you want to go. And that I, I was streaming Football manager to like, you know, an average of 10 viewers for probably two years. It was just a hobby. And I found this guy called Harris Heller on YouTube and he was this. Yeah, one of those, like, guru guys, like, how do you grow your stream? Right. And I'm, I'm normally pretty averse to that sort of advice. I don't like taking advice from people, to be honest. And I just got, I started watching these videos. And I went, you know what? I've been doing this for two years, so maybe I should listen to this guy. And one of the things that he kept repeating was, you have to make content on other platforms to grow your stream, right? So this all kind of happened by accident. And then right after I was watching those YouTube videos, and I mean, these are the classic, like, 50 tips to grow your stream type YouTube videos. I got a message from these guys that ran that football manager website, and they went, yeah, we have this dormant channel. It was to me and 10 other guys. We have this dormant channel. 200 subscribers, hadn't been posted on in 10 years. And I. It was right about that same time. And I went, you know what? I could do this. I'm gonna make. I'm gonna make YouTube videos. That's gonna be my other. My other thing. And I had just started to try to do it on this other channel that, honestly, I probably couldn't even find anymore. I'd made three or four YouTube videos. The worst YouTube videos you've ever seen. And I went, okay, I'm. I'm. I'm gonna do this. And I went. And I just looked at other people that did tutorials, and I watched their videos, and I just took notes, like, how. How am I gonna. How am I gonna make. I don't know how to make a tutorial. I didn't watch a ton of YouTube growing up, and so I just took notes like, okay, this is what a tutorial looks like. Like, this is what I'm gonna have to do. And I started just pumping out tutorials. I made my own thumbnails. I did all my own, you know, editing. There wasn't any apparatus that got handed to me to. To help with that. And I just attacked those tutorials and tried to make them, you know, the most engaging, best thing that I could think of based off other stuff that I saw. But it all started because I was trying to grow my. My. My stream. So it's really bizarre that I, like. YouTube has just become my. My number one passion at this point, obviously. But I was. I was just trying to get more viewers on my stream. And it seemed like YouTube was a. Was a good. Was a good avenue for that.
- [04:28]
A
I love that. What's your full kind of creator ecosystem now? As far as I know, you probably stream on Twitch because you are in the video game space. So just explain kind of top, top down, like, what are you doing as far as other platforms and how does YouTube fit in?
- [04:43]
B
Right? YouTube. I always refer to YouTube as the engine room. It's, it's the main, it's the main thing. It's the, it's the, the final stop, really. I, I have the main YouTube channel, which is where we have made, you know, for the last four or five years, kind of premier football manager content. And we're, we're working on, we have some very fun videos around the World cup, like me walking all the way to the stadium in New York and stuff, which the first time we'd scheduled this podcast was actually accidentally during my walk to the stadium, which I did end up completing, by the way. So I have these three YouTube channels. One is Zealand Live, which is edited versions of the streams in an episodic way. So that's something that we've kind of pioneered really aggressively in the, in the football manager space. Just because of the way the game is played. You usually play one save over a very long time. So I figured it would be easier for people to keep up with the streams if they could watch episodes to catch up instead of having to watch five hours every time they missed one stream. And the third channel is a pure commentary channel called Zealandism, which was there for like thumbnail and title experimentation, but his kind of caught fire because that is, that is a method of, or, or a type of YouTube video that people seem to really enjoy flicking on, you know, when they're having lunch as part of their daily routine. It's two videos a day of me sitting here talking like, I'm like I'm talking now. So those are the three things that are, that are the main focus. And then we have the stream, which I always look at is. That's like my break on the day. I just love playing football manager. I love playing video games in general. So I'll fire the stream up for four hours. Stream about four days a week. And that, that's kind of my break from all the other stuff. And then we've started posting short form content as well. And this is something that's actually entirely separate. We do like skits, funny, funny little skits that revolve around the world of soccer. And that's on Instagram and TikTok. And so that's something that I think, you know, short form really gets you in front of new audiences. And I can lean into all of my content kind of has a tinge of comedy to it. And so I try to lean into that with those skits. And we've had, we've had a couple of takeoff recently, which has been nice.
- [06:49]
A
Do you Think it's possible to start a gaming channel right now in 2026 and grow, I mean, back when you started, obviously multiple years ago, what does the gaming space look like on YouTube? Because I'm, I'm not in the space myself. So what exactly can you talk about? Whether you believe it's possible to do that in the current state, and if so, what would you do if you were starting over?
- [07:13]
B
You know, content creation as a concept has existed long enough in the social media era that I think I can pretty safely say that everybody looks at it the moment they're looking at it and goes, oh, well, it's impossible to do that now because when I started making YouTube videos, which was late 2019, that was what people were saying. They were going, oh, well, you know, if you were, if you're going to make. It is a, is a gaming channel or just even in the football manager space, you're too late. There isn't an avenue for you to do that. It's not going to work. It's not going to make sense. But I think it is. People do not always watch the same thing. Whatever people are watching, it gets old. You don't watch the same sitcom over and over and over again. You watch that sitcom and then you go to the next one, maybe you go back and watch some of your favorite old videos again. But if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards. And so there are a ton of great ideas out there. There's a ton of, I mean, you know, in, in the, in the Minecraft world, there's the like, Hunters video concept that just blew the entire world up and was getting hundreds of millions of views. There are a bunch of great ideas nobody's come up with yet. Videos that nobody's made. And they don't take a ton of money. They don't take, you know, I think that's something that the Mr. Beastification of YouTube has damaged people's brains a little bit as they look at it. And they go, I need to give away a million dollars to make a great YouTube video. That helps. But you don't need that. There are great YouTube videos out there all the time that cost $0 to make, that some dude edited in, you know, his basement that people just really enjoy watching. If you go into it with a fresh eye and try to make something great, you will eventually make something great. That's. That, that's just always my opinion. I think you absolutely can do it because people told me that I couldn't back when I started.
- [09:03]
A
You Mentioned adding comedy into your content. How important is it that you have a differentiator? Because you are right, that you know, it is completely possible right now. If you find out, you know, what makes you different than the other folks that are doing the same thing. So not necessarily just in the gaming space, but just on YouTube in general. How important is it that you find your voice and you don't try to just be copy and paste of everything else that's out there?
- [09:29]
B
I think something that's really helped me over the past year is it's very easy to get lost in the science of YouTube. That science is growing. I've certainly gotten lost in it. You know, where my thumbnails, you know, they start moving more and more towards that, like Mr. Beast's, you know, where it's just overly polished and over. Because you're studying all of this stuff and you're trying to get it, but everybody's got something that makes them special, that makes them interesting. I have always been able to get people to laugh. I am not the best football manager player at all. I'm not, not top five, not top hundred. I went to the Football Manager World cup, which was like this big competition. I couldn't touch those guys. They were so much better than me. It's not even funny. But people watched my tutorials just because I made it fun. I just leaned into that and I lost that. I think shortform is a really good example for me because for a year or two years, I spammed out these videos every single day because I thought it was a good idea where I would talk about interesting stories in the world of soccer. And it just, every day it would be, you know, me sat here right in front of the camera and I just go, something crazy happened in Mongolia, right? But that was something that I think, you know, everybody could do. And I wasn't uniquely well equipped to do it, right? It was there. There are people that are more buried in the minutiae of the sport that would be better than at that than I am. But then I, I, I, I, I came back and I think this is always so important in this profession, in this world. I zoomed out and I went, okay, what am I doing? What am, what am I? Actually? Instead of just putting my head down and just cooking and working like, what, what, what am I doing? What do I want to do? And I went, let's just, let's just be funny. Let's make something stupid that makes me laugh. And I made this video where I pretended that I was Reading the script to Curacao about, like, how their World cup was gonna go, right? And who was in their group. And it's the stupidest, like, 30 second video with like undertaker music in the background. Just really goofy and just 6 million views, you know, and you're like, oh, okay, like, I zoomed out and got authentic with myself about what, what would I want to watch, what would I want to do? What do I feel like I can do? Well, so I think it's not necessarily about finding that one thing that's going to differentiate you, because then you can get lost in the science again. That is important. But you need to find the one thing that you feel like you can contribute to the world, that you can. The one thing that's additive, that you're giving, and then that will become your unique thing. Because everybody's got their weird obsessions. Everybody's got their weird thing that they just absolutely love to do. Do it and show why you think it's so interesting to everybody else.
- [12:18]
A
Yeah, a few things to kind of bounce off what you just said. One thing that's really been interesting and fun for me to watch over the past few weeks as the World cup is obviously in the forefront of everyone's mind. Soccer fans, or not football, whatever you want to call it, right here in the States, we call it soccer or whatever. I'm sure there's people getting angry that are listening, but with that said, there's these two guys, I don't know if they're brothers or not, but they would take the really amazing calls from the announcers of these games and they would impose themselves mouthing the words. And this guy was so animated and he was so funny and it was just. It took off. And I looked at his, his. His account and. And he really hadn't blown up before then, so he kind of found his thing. There's another one. My wife and I had triplets in December of last year. And I, I love being funny. I love making people laugh. And so I decided to do kind of like a dad commentary thing as we were getting the kids ready for taking their pictures. We have five kids, total triplets. You could imagine the chaos. And I did kind of like this sports commentary, radio voice on top of it. Something that, you know, as a voice actor, it's been just kind of natural to me in the video, you know, ten tens of millions of views right across all the platforms. I just, I realized then that as you said, the authenticity. People are looking for things. If you find what yours is.
- [13:39]
B
Yeah. This is, this is the next wave, I'm telling you, the next wave of great creators. And I think this is where the commentary channel has come in handy. That commentary channel's doing 3 million views in the last 28 days. The thumbnails are images. I pull off a Google search and the titles are the dumbest things you've ever seen. It like the title will just be Disaster or like the Baligan Situation. That's just the title of the video, but it's authentic. I think the next thing around the corner is we're getting like, if you look at YouTube, I don't know, if you guys do this, it's a great idea to do it. Go on YouTube without an account, look at what gets served to people that don't already have their preferences, like logged with Google's algorithms. It's interesting, very interesting. It's a lot of AI. It's a lot of really polished thumbnails because a lot of people think they're Jimmy or Miss. Like they're not, right? Like, you know, you, you, if you copy something one for one, you can never be as good as that thing. It's always going to be derivative. And so like, I think the next big wave, and I think it's kind of already started, is this authentic move because everything is so clean and overproduced and sanitized at this point. That authenticity now feels refreshing in the same way that that felt cool back when everybody else was just sitting there doing let's plays.
- [15:02]
A
I interrupt the conversation just for a few seconds to remind you that we have a ton of different offerings for creators. Everything from one on one private coaching with me, 30 YouTube channel reviews and audits where I take a look at your channel and tell you where I think you should be spending your time to efficiently grow your channel. And we have the Mastermind group, which five to ten bucks gets you in. You get access to weekly exclusive podcast recordings, our Discord forums, the Mastermind calls, alongside of the pop out calls that are hosted by our members. So if you're looking for a place to just grow and get to know other creators and bounce ideas off of them, that's the place to do it. And then lastly, I want to mention my email newsletter, the Entrepreneurs Minute. It's free. I'm not going to spam you with a bunch of different emails. Every Friday I talk about what I'm doing to grow my business and further my personal brand. And if you'd like to take a look at the links mentioned on this show and previous episodes we have a running spreadsheet called the Entrepreneurs Toolbox. All of that linked down below. All right, with that said, back to the show. Absolutely. I could not agree more. There was a guy who, his channel, huge. Now I believe it's called Wrangler School. It's an old guy who sat down in front of a camera with like a pipe and just started talking about like old man stuff. But now he's like one of the biggest creators out there. I completely agree with you. Let's now transition into your process and your systems. Talk about how you make a video from ideation all the way to publish. What does it look like for you?
- [16:32]
B
I mean, this is, I think, the area where I've had the biggest learning curve because I always wanted to be ambitious with it. I have a really hard time sitting still. I have a really hard time going, okay, this is where I want to be. Let me just do this. So I always hire more editors. I always hire more thumbnail people. You know, I, I, I, it's almost, it's almost like a curse. And I think over the last year I've tried to stabilize that, that process, but there's been a lot of evolutions of this. So I have a discord server for the team and what the team consists of is me, my head editor, who's the guy that's been with me since I was, you know, since basically the very beginning. He sent me an email, he sent me an email of him having edited his parents vacation footage. And he went, I love like your videos. I want to be an editor. I hate my job. Like I let me, like, let me edit for you. And I went, this is great. I never really liked editing. You should know how to edit. You got to know how to edit so that you can, you know, work with editors that hopefully you end up working with. But I just gave him all the money my YouTube was making because I was doing the sports broadcasting. And I went, here's like $500 or whatever the YouTube was making. Take it. You get all of it. Like, let's just make videos. Let's make good videos. So he's there, he's the head of, of everything. And then I have a main editor for the other two channels, so Zealand Live and Zealand Ism, which, what a goofy name that ended up being. And then I have a head editor for the short content and he also helps out, he does some long form stuff now as well. And then I also have my, my brother who's a classically trained, like got a degree from College in videography and directing and producing. So when we film our really high level documentaries, he's the guy that shoots them with us. That's, that's the team and that's, you know, a team of guys that I, that are really in it for the long haul, that love what we do, love pushing things in the right direction. I think that's very important. If you're, if you're ever in a position where you're building out a team is to try and get people that are very invested, not just in the money you're giving them, but in the project that you're giving them. So you asked about the process. I promise I want to get to it. We have an asana, I don't know if you've heard of that site. It's basically like a planning site. And we'll sit down. I have, we have an editor meeting once a week and we'll organize video ideas in the asana. There's like a column that's basically every idea we have. Even if it's terrible, maybe we can turn it into something good. We put it in an area called the back burner, which is like super long list of terrible video ideas. And if the video idea is good enough, we'll move it into planning. And once it gets into planning in the, in, in that meeting, we'll start to put together like, well, how are we going to do this? What's this going to take? You know, what's the thumbnail going to look like? What's the title going to look like? We'll start working through that process and then all of that stuff will kind of start at the same time. This has evolved because we used to make a main channel video every three or four days. But now with the success of other channels, we have more time to make better YouTube videos and kind of more of what we wanted. We don't have to spam stuff out as much financially, which has been nice. So we're able to take more time with those ideas. And then once a video has been put together initially it'll be sent back to me and I will provide notes and VO in spots that the VO is needed. So I'll get like a timeline basically of, of what the video looks like and then I'll go in and write up void to fill the spots that need to be filled. This is particularly relevant for like in person videos. And then I. It gets sent back to the editors again and there's kind of a back and forth at that point to, to polish the Video up. We have a good example. We have three videos usually at any one time that are in some stage of that process bouncing back and forth. That's just for main channel. So for, for other channels there's obviously different processes.
- [20:21]
A
But no, I love that. And obviously being able to hire out means that you're making some type of money, right? So let's talk about monetization now. What are ways that you're monetizing your content? Can you break down the different buckets that, that's coming in? And then if you don't mind giving on average on a decent month what you might could bring in from your creative ventures.
- [20:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, that, that, that, no problem. So yeah, everybody, that's, that I mentioned is a full time and everybody. This, this whole thing's a dark market, right? There isn't like a, an industry standard. I mean there is right. At a certain level. But I have approached all of the people I work with and I pay them a solid monthly salary. I get the same amount of money every month that you know, is negotiated and there's like raises that go into that and they know I also set expectations like this is what, you know that you're getting paid this salary. This is what we're going to need. Some months you're obviously not going to get, you know, creator world, it's sometimes you're not going to get as much. Maybe I go on a family vacation for two weeks, right. You start as many videos and then it's like well look, other months. Even though, though the salary's the same like with the World cup there's gonna be a lot, right? We're gonna, we're gonna turn it up a little bit and then we'll, we'll take it easy after. But I like that consistency because engenders loyalty honestly. And it, it, it's, it's one of those things that I think I, I assume all of the risk financially basically. Like I'm promised to pay all of them that amount of money. It allows them to kind of feel more secure in what they're doing. When I, in, in an industry where I feel like security is hard to come by. I think that for, for guys that want to do that financially, the engine is, is YouTube AdSense revenue. Obviously I, I have an agent, I have a manager and we help organize sponsorships and like different events that we participate in. But my rule of thumb is I need my expenses which includes my payroll to myself. You know, I have like an LLC that the money comes into and then the money goes out of the LLC and pays taxes and you know, pays me, pays my brother, pays the rest of the team. I need the amount of money I'm making from raw AdSense revenue that on average for a year or else I'm uncomfortable and in that, that that's just the way that I like to balance it for me. So average income would typically be somewhere between 15 to 25,000 from YouTube as a whole. And then add in 5 to 10,000 from Twitch would be the ranges that you're usually working with. So that'll put you like I would say at an average month, somewhere around 25 to 30,000 of like gross income. Now then that obviously will cover all of the expenses including the payroll that goes out to myself. And as long as the, basically I'm happy as long as the payroll that's coming out is covered by the raw income. And then sponsorships are all just gravy at that point. And that, that's been a very nice way, you know, business wise to live
- [23:14]
A
for me now I will ask you this. People might be listening to this and be like, oh man, I'm so far from that. You obviously didn't start here, right? You didn't start making that amount of money. You've had to put in the sweat equity, the time. Can you give two or three things that along these past few years that you've grown this business up to the point to where you can make that kind of money? The. Can you give some advice of kind of what, what two or three highlights that you think kind of got you to where you are?
- [23:44]
B
Yeah, I mean I think. Being able to put yourself in a position where you're comfortable enough to experiment is one of the most important things you can possibly do. Because I think an absolutely massive mistake that I also made and it took me a long, you know, if I over hired editors, then it was like, we need to make this certain number of videos or else I'm gonna go broke. Right. Like that's a dangerous place to put yourself in. You need to at every step of the process, like whether you're making $0 or whether you're making a million dollars from your YouTube AdSense. If your expenses are too high, like it's possible for you to make more money making $5,000 a month off YouTube than it is. If you're making a million dollars a month off YouTube, if you're giving a million dollars away in the video, then it's not, you know, it's not going to help. So if you have if you're able, you know, fortunate enough to have, like, a stable job when you're starting out with. With YouTube or something, or even. Or even not. Like, the real jumpstart for me was the pandemic hit. And I, like my job was freelance sports broadcasting, which was a good job for me, but sports didn't exactly keep going through the pandemic. So I lost my job and moved home. And that was my opportunity. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that where my parents were like, yeah, it's the pandemic. Just come home. That was what opened me up creatively to be able to make stuff. Because unless you are 100% happy with where you're at at that moment, you need to free yourself up to be creative, to try and take yourself to the next level. So the one thing is really leaving yourself the room to take the time to do something new.
- [25:24]
A
The risks that you're referring to, do you remember a moment when you made that transition to like, okay, I'm being safe, I know what's working. But, you know, this really goes hand in hand with what you mentioned, a few minutes about being willing to be yourself, be authentic and be. Be goofy. Right. And put your real person, who you are, out there. And don't try to be something that you're not. Can you remember kind of that maybe a mindset shift or a thought or a moment that happened that made you be willing or okay to take those risks?
- [25:57]
B
I think I. It's a bit of a. I guess a bit of a weird story. If you. You talking about motivation or are you talking about a little bit?
- [26:05]
A
Yeah, both.
- [26:07]
B
I remember I was doing, you know, freelance sports broadcasting. I was living with my girlfriend at the time. We're no longer together. And I just remember it got kind of passed through to me that her dad was worried that I wouldn't be able to, like, take care of her. And that's just, you know, I. It's just, it's. It's always like a rough thing to hear. It's just a weird thing to hear. It throws you off. It never catches you. It ignorant good time. And I was streaming as a hobby at the time. And that's basically what he was referring to is like, oh, this guy spends all of his time, like, just sitting at his computer. Like he, you know, what is he doing? And he didn't even say it to me. It was something that just got filtered through to me that that was a sentiment that existed and that just. It just kind of lit this it lit this beacon of, like, I got. I. I got a Sean. Like, I know I can do this. I haven't. I haven't seen or talked to this guy in, like, seven years, right? But I gotta show him. I gotta do it. And it was that. And as silly as it sounds, right when I started streaming, I DMed this guy because I didn't understand how streaming worked. I still remember his name. He does not know this story. I've met him before. I DM'd him and basically went, hey, could you, like, raid me one time, like, really love your stuff. I think that your viewers would really enjoy, like, what I was doing. I mean, this guy was averaging like 80 viewers or something. And I didn't know how to grow, but I was desperate to get in front of people. And he just responded and went, no with a smiley face. And I was like, oh, okay. And so it always, you know, I. I kept track of. In the first year or two, I would always look and I'd be like, did I average more than him today? Come on, come on. You know, like. And it's goofy. I've always been a vengeful person like that. I think secretly somewhere in the back of my mind. But there was two motivations that was it.
- [27:55]
A
Adding the competitive nature of it is important, though. Like, proof of concept. Being able to say that you did it just for your internal gratification is important, right? And you knowing that this guy that, you know, thought, you know, hey, this. He's not going to be able to take care of my daughter if this thing goes somewhere as far as their relationship. But for you, as a man, you're like, wait a minute, I can. I know I can do this. I think that you got to find what motivates you as a creator, whether it be competitive nature, whether it be just the sheer passion of it, whatever it is, you've got to find what your internal motivator is. And on the flip side of that, I want to now toss another question your way. How do you deal with burnout and not getting to a point to where this whole thing takes over? Because if you're running multiple channels and you're dealing with team members, most of the people listening to this aren't dealing with team members, so we don't even have to cover that bit. But as far as just burnout and how to handle it responsibly, what have you done?
- [28:53]
B
Right? I think it's really, really easy to treat. I always equate it to college, because in college you have a Lot of free time. But there's always something you should be doing. There's always some thing that you need to be reading, some homework you could be doing, some end of year essay you could be working on and being a creator, being a full time creator with a team particularly, but just in general you, you always, there's always something you could be doing. You could always make one more short, you could always make one more YouTube video, you could always stream for longer. I think what really helps me is making a list every morning. I make a list every morning of all of the things I need to do to, for lack of a better term, not fail that day. Like what's the bare minimum that I ha. Like what has to be done or else all hell's gonna break loose. And once I finish that list, I try to breathe a little bit. I mean, I could still go do more stuff, but I try to. You're always so in this mode of I gotta do the next thing, I gotta do the next thing. It's like you have to forcibly remind yourself you can relax. If I wanna go for a walk, if I wanna, you know, just play video games for fun, if I wanna go sit on the couch and watch a TV show and not do anything the rest of the day, I can, I am, I am allowed to. Because all of the things that I needed to do today to keep this machine moving, not wanted to do, not no extra on top, needed to do, they're done. So like I miss that sometimes. I'm not going to pretend that I'm perfect. There's sometimes where I just, I ignore the list and keep going. But reminding yourself to breathe and reminding yourself the difference between things you want to do and things that you have to do is, is very, is very important to stop that. Because burnout is real and happens all the time.
- [30:44]
A
Yeah, a list is important to me too. I have a handwritten list. I'm looking at it right now. I feel that when I get put pen to paper, you know, all the digital tools, I'm a big technology guy, I love trying out new tools, new features, but at the end of the day I revert back to looking at what I've written down the night prior or that morning early of knowing, okay, if I get these things done exactly like you said today for the YouTube channel, then I've moved the needle forward in a way that I think is enough. You know, because the word enough is probably what I would say for those listening is that you could, as you mentioned it so well, you can Always do one more video. You can always tweak or edit something behind the scenes. You can always twist a few knobs that might, might make the channel do or perform better or make more money or whatever your end goal is, but there will always be another thing. And so if you don't have a stopping point, you are going to reach an area in your journey where you just get tired of it. You get burnt out because you are ignoring family or, you know, relationships or whatever it may be. And me with, you know, kids and a wife and other responsibilities, you know, I know where that is. I know where the stop point is. Could I do another video today? Of course I could, but I'm not going to because I know what my priorities are. And lining those out and having those set up is very important. I want to ask you now, as we get towards the end of the interview, if you could leave the audience today of creators, wherever they may be on their journey in the timeline with one piece of advice, what would that be?
- [32:20]
B
Don't take it too seriously. Don't. I mean, I, the, the, the, the worst thing you can possibly do is take it personally, honestly, especially if you're able to make money from it. If you're able to do it full time, you've got to appreciate the privilege. But you know, a great example is today, you know, the United States has been caught in a lot of drama around the World Cup. I'm just not even looking at my DMs, I'm not looking at my comments. I'm not like you cannot take the entire journey whether people are watching your video or not. You know, the, you can't just, you know, beefing with certain people start, just don't take it too seriously. Remember that if you're in pursuit of this, it is a gift to be in pursuit of this. It is the job that if you ask any 10 year old in the US what do they want to do, it's probably the number one answer. And just be really appreciative of that because yeah, you're going to have to work a lot, you're going to have to do a lot, you're going to drop a lot of stuff that sucks that people think isn't funny, that people don't like, but appreciate it for what it is and try to go easy on yourself.
- [33:33]
A
I think hearing your answer there brought kind of a light bulb in my head, just went off. I think that all the people that I know that are great creators and that are able to monetize and make money from this job and profession are all people who have and are willing to fall on their face in public because that's what you're going to do over and over and over again. And there's going to be stuff that you put out that there's just going to be crickets and there's going to be people. I'll be honest with you, 95% of the feedback I get on this podcast is phenomenal. But do you know the ones that I remember and the names of the people that I can state to you right now are the people that are not positive. These are all the people, whether that's the competitive advantage, whatever, you're going to fail and you're going to fail over and over and over again. And even when you get successful, there are going to be times when you fail. And that's the experimentation that you must be okay doing. And so I love that answer from you and I love all the answers today that we've been able to kind of discuss. I love talking YouTube, especially with someone like you, who is really deep into the weeds of stuff. And so, Zeland, thank you so much for agreeing to come on this podcast today. And we'll talk to you later.
- [34:49]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me. Have a good one, everyone.
- [34:51]
A
And that's a wrap on this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. If you did and you are not subscribed, whether it be on your podcast player of choice or over on YouTube, if you prefer to watch the video version of the show, do so. It's absolutely free. Don't forget to check the number of things that we have as far as offerings for creators, one on one coaching, YouTube channel reviews, mastermind group, all of that will be linked down below. With that said, if you know someone who you think would be a great fit as far as a creator to have on this podcast, please send me an email dustyustyporter.com and with that said, we'll talk to you guys next week.