Some of you know that, about 2 years ago, I started a YouTube channel dedicated to financial planning, business, and how to be your own “Success.Engineer.” This was an expansion / alternate to the weekly meetups I was running about Real Estate Investing for the local LI / NY area, out-of-state apartment investing, and other topics like Financial Planning / Passive Income.
Then, I stopped about a year ago.
As grueling as the endeavor was – I have to admit, it was alot of fun! My primary goal was to put down whatever knowledge I had into a recorded medium, so that others can benefit from it – so that box has been checked off.
However – as the expense of time and energy of creating more content grew, plus looking at the (lack of) traction, and lack of feedback – it felt like talking to a wall. Basically, I started realizing a few simple truths when it comes to growing a YouTube channel:
– Everyone wants to FEEL like they’re able to achieve success by watching a bunch of YouTube videos, but…
– Very few care about how to actually ACHIEVE success
– Even fewer of those want to do the actual WORK to achieve
– An even smaller sub-selection have the mental and physical capabilities to reach the end goals
As I started realizing this, I felt initially very discouraged from continuing the channel – especially since my initial goal was just recording my thoughts (which I accomplished).
But as I paused and spend more time working on myself – I started realizing:
“This is actually wonderful news.”
Why?
* * *
Let’s take an aside for the moment… I think that you’ll agree that anyone taking a quick foray into the world of social media can easily see that the most popular content falls into one of the following categories:
– Fun / Entertaining
– Clickbaity (i.e. catchy title / thumbnail)
– Incites some type of emotion (positive, negative, doesn’t matter)
As an advertiser, YouTube’s primary metrics is to build subscriber count, get views, & other “engagement” measures. Naturally over time, content tends to fall to the lowest common denominator to reach the biggest audiences, by generating content to match the criteria above. Specifically – if you follow or watch any one of the millions of financial gurus / wealth channels out there, you’ll start noticing a pattern of these channels:
– 1. Starting good quality education content at the beginning, but as time passes…
– 2. Since there’s a fixed amount of actionable info, it eventually turns into a news channel…
– 3. Since most financial news is somewhat boring – time to start making stuff up / have outlandish claims.
– 4. If that doesn’t work, invite guests on the show, and (nicely) tell them what they’re doing wrong, or yell at them that they’re stupid.
[As full disclaimer, I started catching myself at the end of stage 1 transitioning to stage 2.]
* * *
Think of any STEM college degree – such as engineering, math, sciences. In all of these degrees, there’s a definite start, middle, and end. There’s no ‘endless content’ – after your 4 years, it’s “off you go” into the world with the knowledge to make something of yourself because you are already armed with the info you need to succeed.
…and there’s the stark difference. If the “student / viewer” no longer engages with the “teacher / guru” in the case of “college / YouTube” – the ending is quite different.
– Teacher & college is proud of another successful graduate
– Guru & YouTube are slightly poorer as they have 1 less set of eyeballs to sell ads to
* * *
While there are some truly high quality channels out there (at least at their start)… inevitably, all “guru” type channels seem to fall into the “common content traps” I’ve laid out above with not too much changes. Once you’ve watched the channel a few dozen times… each show is just repeats with different names / stories / characters.
So, being 100% honest – I had to ask with myself: is there even a place for a channel with my type of content?
The blunt answer: Absolutely not.
Why?
– A. All of the knowledge that someone needs to succeed in today’s world is actually readily available. There’s no exclusive library, subscription, or expensive paywall anymore – it’s practically all there, at just a click away, but…
– B. In an attempt to gain more clicks/views, it’s more important to be clickbaity. As a side effect, even if your channel has the highest quality content, it won’t do squat if you’re not entertaining. Much like the term “Best Selling Author” for books – remember that YouTube success is measured by subscriber counts, views, and likes – directly related to entertainment value (e.g. “Watch my video and become a millionaire in 1 year!”). Unsurprisingly, there’s likely a natural disconnect based on that measure versus quality of content (“10 boring steps to building wealth”)
– C. With the environment given above – then naturally, it’s easy to understand why bad advice is so prevalent online. Should I be grouped into this space, especially given that…
– D. There’s still A TON of opportunities in the field, and ALOT of work to be done to take advantage of said opportunities.
* * *
Above said, I’m always open to sharing my knowledge among friends and family – but it’s pretty apparent that dispensing advice publically would be viewed as a foolish waste of time at best, and arrogant at worst.
So, I come back to something a very clever college professor of mine once said:
“If all your options are bad, consider doing nothing.”
* * *
So, here we are, present day.
It’s been 1 year since I uploaded my last Success.Engineer video – then tapped out.
There’s no more videos, no more meetups planned for the foreseeable future.
From my perspective – these methods just doesn’t work for “spreading the knowledge.”
This is great news, because this means:
– Politically correct answer:
I have alot more free time now to try something else that can work better
– Rude but honest answer:
[ Ask me on PM if you want to know 
]
* * *
Does it mean I’m lounging around doing nothing?
Quite the opposite, actually.
More on that… next time.