What I wish I knew before starting on YouTube

Do you ever take a second and reflect on how far you've come in life?

For instance, you may still be scratching your head at how you were able to pull off all those exams and end up with your college or university degree.

Or you could never have envisioned having the job that you currently hold today.

What's funny is that very often, when I'm writing these emails, I like to focus on what things are working right now because those are the strategies and tools that I feel are going to help you progress most along your YouTube journey.

Sadly, I'm not exactly the best when it comes to reflecting on my own experiences so far.

But when I do think about everything that I've gone through on YouTube to date, there is one particular item that I wish I knew before I got started.

No, it's not how to churn out thumbnails in half the time.

Nor is it how to come up with evergreen topics that will pay you for years to come.

What I wish I knew before I got started was how much my life would improve when I finally started making money on YouTube.

You see, before I started making YouTube videos, I was incredibly financially stressed.

Working in management consulting at the time, I was barely able to get by on my $42,500 salary.

You could say that I was basically forced into finding another way to make money because those 2% raises I was getting at work weren't going to give me the life that I desired.

If you would have told me, as soon as I started my journey, that I would be able to make tens of thousands of dollars a month with YouTube, I truly think that that would have helped me enjoy my YouTube experience more and probably even achieve more results than I have.

Why is that the case?

Because YouTube success is more of a mental endeavor than it is one of skill.

While you and I may not have ever met, I can tell you one thing for certain: you have the capacity to learn the skill of YouTube that you can use to make a part-time or full-time income on the platform.

But where people struggle the most is not in the development of the skill, but in enduring the mental obstacles that building a successful channel will entail.

I know for myself personally, there were many times when I was struggling to get views and wanted to quit.

I had tremendous periods of doubt where I thought that my channel would never get off the ground and that maybe my parents were right—that I should stop spending all my time in their basement making videos and instead just focus on my career.

It's in times like these where I wish 32-year-old Adam could have spoken to younger me and told me to keep on pushing and explained how much better my life would be when I was making a full-time income online.

That future Adam would probably tell me how helpful that money would be when planning and paying for my future wedding or simply covering groceries, which were about to hit exponential new heights in price in the coming years.

While obviously making money online is not guaranteed, I truly believe that continuously envisioning what your life will look like when you succeed will increase your chances of success.

Because there will be times when you doubt whether your channel will ever take off, and you're likely to consider quitting at least a few times along your journey to success.

But if you can picture paying off that car loan with your YouTube money or using it to speed up your timeline for retirement, I guarantee you that those hundred-view videos that you're generating right now will no longer pain you like they do and instead motivate you even more to scale on YouTube and turn your channel into a cash-flowing machine.

Until tomorrow,

Adam

Note: All Tube Academy spots for September have been filled. If you want to join the waitlist for October enrolment, reply back “Tube” and I’ll send you the details and put your name on the waitlist.