52 Videos Later: What I’ve Learned So Far [Thinking Out Loud]

00:00 — Six months in, still awkward

Hey welcome back to Slow Builds.

So I’m about six months into this channel now, and this is around video 52. I’m trying to do two a week, so I think I did a few more in the beginning, but I’m pretty spot-on here.

And I know it sounds like enough videos that I should probably feel more comfortable just doing this, but honestly, I still feel extremely awkward.

I only record in this room. I did one other room once, and that was because there were too many people around and I had an opportunity. I don’t edit. I do the beginning and end. I still haven’t shared this channel with anyone outside of my immediate family.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m scared, or I’m still not comfortable at all with this.

So in a way, I’ve been very consistent. But in another way, it feels like I’m standing still at the starting line of all this.

I set out a goal for this channel because I want to see if authenticity can win out in the end here. With AI and videos and faceless channels and the trust aspect of things popping up online, I think there’s something there.

I’m just trying to prove a point.

But at the same time, it’s kind of therapeutic doing this. It allows me a place to let my mind ramble a little bit.

01:50 — I’m not a creator, I’m just pressing record

Like I’m saying, I’ve done this, and I’m not a creator. I’m not a digital content creator. I’m not a YouTuber.

I’m just a guy who presses record.

And the thing I’ve learned is I can press record a little bit faster now. I’m not scared of messing up as much.

I have one video where the cat was meowing. I’m next to a bathroom, so sometimes the toilet flushes. Sometimes people upstairs are a little extra loud. I don’t edit that out. I don’t try to do anything.

So I’ve learned that the videos don’t need to be perfect. They just need to exist.

I’ve gotten better at noticing ideas throughout the day. I started with 52 ideas that AI helped me produce, and I’ve gotten way off track. I’ve done a lot of them, but most of the ones I’ve done have been outside of that.

Obviously this is 52, so either I’ve gone through all of them, or I still have a few left in the bag.

I’m starting to understand what topics keep pulling me back and allowing me to have a voice, or at least try to do something.

I don’t have a voice. I’m just rambling.

03:06 — Making videos feels less impossible now

The biggest change is probably not that the videos are good.

It’s that making one feels less impossible now.

It doesn’t feel like climbing a mountain. At the beginning, even recording felt like a big event. Now it’s still extremely uncomfortable, but it’s more familiar.

I can sit down, talk through an idea, upload it, and move on.

And that is something.

It’s a little bit reassuring that maybe, as long as I can keep the ideas coming, keep the scripts flowing, and continue to work on my workflow, I might be able to continue on.

Well, I’m going to continue on anyway for the year. I know it’s a big commitment to say that, but I’m going to do my best.

03:56 — The parts that still feel stuck

There are parts that still feel very stuck.

I’m still not fully in control on camera. I still don’t really move around. As you can see, there are noises in the background. There’s no editing or overlays. There are no shorts.

And maybe the biggest one is that I still haven’t really shared it with anyone.

That tells me something, because it means part of me is still treating this like a very private experiment.

Even though it’s public. It’s online. Anyone can find it. Anybody can see it.

But with the billions and millions of videos going up, and different channels, and no real link back to me personally in a way, I think if my friends looked hard enough they would find me.

But emotionally, I’m still half hiding this.

At this point, 52 videos in, I shouldn’t feel too bad about it.

04:54 — Commitment versus voice

That’s the commitment versus my voice problem with the 52 videos.

I’ve noticed something with the schedule I’ve been trying to keep. It’s helped me because without some kind of commitment, I probably would have found reasons to skip a lot of them, or take big breaks in between.

But there’s a downside to it also.

Sometimes I need to get a video done.

And when that happens, I may have a few ideas ready, some notes ready, or a script that AI helped me hash out from my own thoughts.

But I have not really sat with the idea long enough yet.

So I go into the video very blind. Just winging it, really.

The thought might technically be mine, but it does not always fully feel worked through yet. And I can feel that when I record.

Instead of it sounding like a conversation, or just ramblings like I was calling them for a while, it can start to sound more formal. Very robotic.

More like I’m reading a finished thought instead of working through an unfinished one, or just tinkering with it in my head unedited and live.

That’s something I want to watch.

Because the commitment matters, but I do not want the commitment to quietly change the voice of the channel.

The idea might be mine, but the shape of it is too clean until I get to get my hands on it.

There’s a difference between using AI to organize my thoughts and using AI to move faster than my thoughts.

06:38 — Using AI without letting it make everything too polished

That brings up the AI stuff.

AI helps me organize everything, but sometimes the first initial scripts feel way too polished and way too formal. I’ve tried to rewrite my instructions a few times for it to help me rewrite and tweak them.

And that’s not me saying it’s a bad thing, because without it, there’s no way I could write all these scripts.

I use AI all the time.

A lot of these videos start with my messy thoughts. Usually I’m working out, or running, or driving in the car, or even walking, and I’ll just be talking to it, throwing stuff out there until I say, do we think we have something here?

Then we’ll go through the process.

It organizes it. It gets the comments. It gets the description. It gets the thumbnail idea.

That part is extremely useful.

But I think there’s a difference between organizing a thought and replacing the process of thinking through the idea before, during, and after.

Sometimes if I record too soon after the script is made, I really feel it.

And that’s me just trying to get videos out the door to keep on schedule.

The idea is mine, but I have not carried it around long enough in my head. I haven’t noodled with it. I haven’t said it out loud enough.

08:06 — Why I use notes, and why that can get messy

Some of that is really because it takes a lot of time.

I come up with the ideas, and this video is half me reading what’s in front of my face that AI helped me turn into jot notes, and half me going off like I am right now.

The reason why I do it is I’ll talk into the phone, we’ll come up with a rough idea or jot-note idea, and then I could sit down and do the video straight up.

But my problem is I’m afraid I’m going to miss some of those nuances and little nuggets that I really want to bring up.

As I’m going through it, I keep coming up with more and more.

So that’s why I use the notes.

But it takes so much time sometimes, and then sometimes those videos become extremely long. This one might go a little long. It’s video 52, so that’s fine. I’m allowed to do that, and this is a rambling video in a way.

I don’t like missing out. I don’t like forgetting stuff. I don’t want two videos to be too similar.

But maybe that’s okay.

I always looked at it like a TV show, like it’s a rolling script and it goes in order. But on YouTube, does it really matter? It probably makes no difference.

I could do a million videos and 30 percent of them could be almost the exact same topic. There’s still a crazy amount more. And what order they are in probably doesn’t matter.

09:43 — The AI topic trap

That brings me back to the AI topic trap.

There has been a lot of focus on AI so far, and I am scared of being stuck there.

The channel is not supposed to be about just that.

I notice how much of the channel is about AI in a way, and it makes perfect sense because it is changing our world. It is new tech that is everywhere. We are all using it. It is changing our lives.

I’m thinking about it. I’m working with it at work. I’m working with it on my own. I’m using it personally.

So it’s everywhere.

But I also don’t want this channel to become only that. I don’t want to accidentally trap myself in one topic just because that is where the early videos went.

And because those are the videos that get the traction.

The channel was never supposed to be about just AI. I’m not an AI expert. I try my best to use it.

A lot of the videos I put out around AI lately are me thinking through where I think we’re headed, or what I think could happen.

I like to get those out ahead of time because maybe I’m predicting something that is going to come true, or maybe I’m going to fall flat on my face. But at least I want to get my ideas out there to see how they compare later.

I myself will look back at these to see what things I said that may have come to light, or may have just gone by the wayside.

But I don’t want this channel to become just AI.

It’s hard when it is such a part of my life, but I also have family. I have kids. I want to talk about financial stuff. I want to talk about patterns of change, working on yourself, fitness, habits, how to live a better life.

Everything life related, really.

I really wanted the channel to be based off the book I’ve been trying to write, and I haven’t touched it in a while. I’ve talked about that AI fatigue and not feeling bad about it, but you still have to give yourself a little nudge every now and then.

12:14 — The traction side

I can talk all I want, but if I’m not seeing traction, there is that side of it.

I’m not seeing a huge lift from it.

I do all this work, and there are comments here and there, and some people showing up. That really matters to me. It makes me feel good.

I haven’t seen too much in the last few. I see people watching them, but not too many people. But enough that it makes me feel okay.

At this point, 52 videos in, I have about half as many subscribers.

You would think you would hit a point where it might grow a little quicker, but I’m hoping that with consistency and time, and maybe coming up with some sort of pattern, I can keep these things at a certain length.

I don’t want to go too long.

I do find my videos are usually 18 to 25 minutes. I haven’t really hit 30 minutes, and I feel comfortable with that. Maybe I need to make them shorter, or maybe I need to do shorts to try to promote them and get a little more traction.

Right now, it’s small. Very small.

And it messes with my head a bit because I start asking whether the work is adding up, or whether I’m just talking into the void.

Which is fine. Like I said, it’s therapeutic.

It helps me get my ideas out, putting them on video like paper video, and it helps with the uncomfortableness of being able to do a video and put it up there without being too scared if someone finds it or sees it.

It’s easy to say you want to build something slowly.

It’s harder when it actually is slow.

14:41 — Views versus purpose

The biggest problem I get caught up in is views versus purpose.

One thing I find myself fighting is what happens when a video stands out.

Sometimes a video gets more views than the others. A lot more views, a lot faster. And I can usually see why.

The “AI helps me cheat” one got a lot of views fast. “AI fatigue” got a lot. There are a couple other AI ones too.

Maybe the topic was clear. Maybe the title was better. Maybe the thumbnail made a big difference. Maybe it just happened to hit at a time when a lot of people were searching for the same topic.

And when that happens, there is an urge for me to lean into it heavy.

Not even in a fake way. Just in a practical way.

You see something work and part of your brain says, okay, do more of that.

But then I have to stop myself. I really do have to stop and take a breath, because that is not really the purpose of this channel.

I want to learn from what works, but I do not want to be owned by what works.

There is a difference between noticing a signal and letting that signal become a command.

A video doing better tells me something. It does not automatically tell me what the whole channel has to become.

I don’t want to confuse a signal with a command.

I want to learn from what works, but I don’t want to be owned by it.

Because I don’t want people to attach to it because I hit a nerve, then people watch, subscribe, comment, and then I do two or three more along the same lines and get that same response.

Then all of a sudden I go back to what I want the channel to be, and I don’t want to let people down. I don’t want to mislead, if that makes sense.

I want to be honest about this the whole way.

16:59 — What the first six months proved

What this first six months has proved to me so far is that I can keep going.

It’s very imperfect.

Not every day. Not perfectly. Not with some polished system.

My system is crap.

But it is enough to build a body of work. And maybe that matters more than I would have thought at the beginning.

The videos are not where I want them to be. The channel is nowhere close to where I want it to be, but it is probably doing better than I thought it would, as bad as it is doing.

I’m not as comfortable as I want to be yet, obviously.

I am more comfortable, but not to the point where I can sit here with the door open, with people listening or walking around. I’m not there yet.

I’m not there to go out in public yet.

But there is something happening that did not exist when I started.

There is a confidence. There is an awareness. There is a simpler system.

18:07 — What the next six months may need

So what the next six months may need is not to make it too polished or too goal-setting. Just honest direction.

Slowly get more comfortable on camera.

Try recording outside the room. I want to use my phone. I want to go around. My kids got a DJI stick and they’re recording everywhere, and I want to try to get out of here.

I want to do more without relying on the script.

I want to get more into light editing.

I want to share the channel. I do work with a rowdy bunch, so I know there is going to be a lot of razzing if it gets to those guys. But to my other crew, if I stay within that little group, I’d be happy to share it at the moment, I think.

I don’t want to get away from AI, because my ideas and thoughts on AI are not always around the coding process. They’re not always around how it is embedded in systems.

It is really about the psychological part of it, the theory, the social part of it.

I see things around elderly people, disabled people, medicine, keeping a part of ourselves, privacy, world problems, investing. It is all connected to what I want to get to.

So AI is always going to be in there for the time being, because I don’t think it is going away.

I want to keep the raw session format, but improve in clarity.

Maybe shorten them. Maybe have a more formatted layout that I can stick to with time limits, and hit my nuggets harder.

There are a few things I want to do.

I want to sit with ideas a little longer before I record them, so I don’t need to have the script in front of me.

I also want to build an app where I can have the notes in front of me as I’m talking, and it is smart enough to know when to keep moving. I don’t like using the mouse. I don’t like using my finger. I lose my place.

I also want to build up a backlog so I can breathe a little bit. This is 52, but I already have three in the pipe coming out before this one that are scheduled.

That gives me time to breathe a little, especially because it’s summer, friends are coming up, and I might have to go away. I want to make sure there is no break.

21:03 — Small steps, not overproduction

I don’t think the answer to all of this is to suddenly turn it into some overproduced thing. That would probably kill the part of it I’m actually trying to do here.

But I do think the next six months need a little more movement.

Maybe not a full studio setup. No heavy editing. Just small steps.

Get out of the room. Try a different atmosphere. Maybe a little more editing. Some new lighting. Some shorts. Things like that.

And I do need to tell people about it.

Maybe I also need to give the ideas a little more time before I record them.

I try my best. I do go through them.

I have videos I’m excited to do. “Underestimating AI.” “It’s Okay to Be Lazy.” Something around the world starving itself. World value. AI reputation and scarcity. “You Still Have to Ride the Bike.”

That one is interesting, and I’m very excited for it. I even told my wife about it, even though she hates this channel and doesn’t want anyone to know I’m doing it.

Even she said, that’s interesting.

22:42 — Still figuring it out

So that is where I’m at.

Six months. Video number 52.

As you can tell, I’m awkward. I’m off script. I’m all over the place. I’m very unsure.

I’m uncomfortable doing it, but not uncomfortable that I’ve messed this one up.

I’m still not seeing any kind of signal that this is working, except for the few subscribers that seem to be dedicated. I’m very happy for that.

I kind of look at it like maybe they see something. Maybe they want to be able to say later, I started following him when.

If I do get a little bigger and get more subscribers, those subscribers from the beginning can chime in like old friends.

That makes sense to me.

That is why I love the feedback. I love the comments. I read everything.

I don’t even know what it would be like if I did take off and there were a lot of comments. I don’t know if I could do it. I’d have to get one of my kids to help me or use AI to help review them so I don’t miss any.

Because I don’t want to miss any.

24:19 — Protecting the reason I started

I’m still figuring this all out.

I’m trying to figure out how much to use AI, what topics to cover, and how to not chase the high-performing videos.

I want to keep a good mixture. I want to stick to my plan.

But I’m also still here.

And maybe that is the part I should pay attention to, because the point was never to look like I arrived.

The point was to keep showing the process while it is still unfinished.

And right now, it is very unfinished.

Maybe the lesson from the first six months is not that I need to become more polished.

Maybe it is that I need to protect the reason I started.

The consistency to me is what matters.

I’m trying to prove consistency and structure.

Because you can’t just randomly show up all the time and expect someone to watch you sitting in a room with bad lighting rambling about nothing.

Unless I’m going to move around, go to different places, and show different things, I need to have stronger topics and better flow.

When I say structure, I mean structure to the videos: the opening, ending, intro, and maybe a part I would edit where I do a quick recap of what is coming up in the video.

That way, within the first 10 or 20 seconds, the video has something that can hold attention longer.

But that is not the point of this video.

The views do tell me something. They show that people are paying attention.

But none of this can become the whole point.

Because if this channel turns into me chasing whatever worked last week, or reading thoughts I haven’t actually worked through yet, then I may keep publishing videos, but slowly lose the thing I was trying to build.

What I’m trying to build is consistency.

I’m trying to build authenticity.

I can’t speak that well. I try my best. My friends know where I’m from, and they call the way I speak “Foster-ese.”

Anyway, I just want to keep this going. I want to keep a consistency. I want to get the year done.

So 52 more to come.

That’s a big number.

It was a big number to get here.

Thanks for watching, and have a good one.