I had a big breakthrough today. I've been a YouTube creator for more than a decade, and I've also been on Udemy, on Facebook Gaming, and in crypto, and in all of those places I've had huge success. But at the same time, I've consistently felt like a failure. I've tried so hard and I've succeeded so much. I got to be a top 10 instructor on Udemy. I got to be a top 20 Facebook Gaming partner. I got to be one of the top YouTubers in the world for crypto. I've had so much success, and then it all just comes toppling down. It's so frustrating. I've been thinking, what do I learn from this? Because I keep feeling like it's all not enough, like I'm wasting my time, like I'm not doing anything useful, like everything is for nothing.
I was laying in bed thinking about all of this last night, and I remembered a video that Kobe Bryant did. Kobe said failure is not real, that it's just learning opportunities. So I asked myself, okay, what do I learn? What exactly do I take from all of my experiences? And what I came to is this: the ideal strategy for me with Udemy, Facebook, crypto, and everything else I've done, including gaming, would have been to just take it easy. Instead of over-optimizing, instead of going insane and feeling like I had to be the number one Udemy instructor, the number one crypto YouTuber, the number one Facebook Gaming partner, the ideal approach this whole time would have been to take it easy.
What "Take It Easy" Actually Means
What do I mean by that? When I got on Udemy, the ideal strategy for me would have been to just teach courses and put one out occasionally. We don't need to be a top Udemy instructor. We don't need to get first place. At the time, I was so concerned with trying to earn ten-plus thousand dollars a month, a thousand dollars a day. I told myself I needed to be the top Udemy instructor, dominate all the others, be this big important famous man. But look at me now: I got banned. And one of the reasons I got banned is that approach. I doubt I get banned if I'm not taking that insane, push-hard, dominate-everyone-else mindset.
Some of the things I did on Udemy came straight out of that mindset. I did incentivized reviews, where I'd pay people to review my courses. Udemy said they were cool with that at the time, but then they changed their mind. It poisoned my foundation on Udemy. By taking that do-anything-to-win approach, by obsessing over needing to win, needing to dominate, needing to be number one, I put all this time and energy into Udemy and I did make over 600,000 dollars there from 2014 to 2016. And then what happens? I get banned, and it's like I lose everything.
In the short term, I used to look at instructors who only made a couple of thousand a month on Udemy and think they were busters, that they were lame, that they sucked. I figured if you were actually good, you'd be cranking out all this money like me. But now a lot of the instructors who used to look up to me to learn how to do Udemy have out-earned me. They're the ones who have made much more money than I have. A lot of them never made as much as I did in a single month, but they did it for longer. They made money on Udemy for five, ten years. And I'm like, man, I need to take some lessons from that.
Consistency Over Domination
What I want for my business now is this: I don't need to dominate and be number one. What I want is to be consistent over a period of 5, 10, 15, 20 years. I don't want to constantly be trying to dominate and get first place. The cost of acting like that, the cost of over-optimizing, is that you lose everything or you get burnt out. With Udemy, I got banned. With crypto, I went all in and I got burnt out. I got burnt out doing crypto YouTube and I quit on my own. I sold everything and I quit.
If I had kept doing crypto YouTube, I'd by far be the number one crypto YouTuber, and I wouldn't even have had to do it every day. I wouldn't have had to grind it out. I literally could have just made a couple of crypto videos a week. Imagine if I had made a couple of crypto videos a week from 2014 until now. But in 2014 I was too obsessed with doing Udemy courses to focus on crypto. And then once I finally did get into crypto, I went all in on it. Again, I go all in. I get insane and I'm grinding out video after video. My audience that was there for gaming, for Udemy, for music got sick of me doing crypto, and I put my audience off by doing constant obsessive crypto videos for two years. Then I end up quitting crypto anyway for years. Then I'm all into music. Then I go all into gaming. Then I quit gaming and I'm trying to make a business.
A lot of people teach you to pick a niche, optimize, pick a niche, go all in. But the problem I've found with that approach is that what you really need to do is think about long-term sustainability in most areas of life. A lot of these motivational gurus say hustle harder, hustle more, hustle stronger, do more, do more. In my experience, that doesn't tend to work very well in the long term. Now I'm obsessive in a different way: I want to think about what's going to work long term. I keep being tempted to do short-term optimization. Hey, just play Warzone solos every day. But that's not fun. Just do crypto videos every day. But that's not fun. Just review cryptos and go all in on crypto. That's not fun. Just do music then. I don't want to just do music. I don't want to just do crypto.
The Never-Enough Mindset
Look at what I did with Facebook Gaming. I got banned from Facebook, demonetized from Facebook Gaming. Why did I get demonetized? Because I was constantly being as sensational as possible. I felt like I never had enough views, even though from almost anybody else's point of view I was really successful on Facebook Gaming. But for my obsessive, dominating self, it was never enough. I really want to get out of this never-enough mindset and have it be enough. I want it to be enough, and to just enjoy what I'm doing.
When I first started on Facebook Gaming, I was having fun. But then it got to be not fun as I obsessed over views and felt like it wasn't enough, as usual. Once it got to be not fun, everything went downhill from there. And the more it got to be not fun, the more I kept trying to get views and money. That's the optimization trap again. What if I just went forward and didn't optimize? The ideal scenario a decade ago is that I just make one Udemy course a month and I don't try to sell it hard. Instead, I made 10, 20, 30 courses, and I made 190,000 dollars in one month on Udemy. And then I was banned shortly after that, because I was obnoxious. I was everywhere. I was utterly dominant.
When you get that level of attention, you get higher scrutiny, you piss people off, you create resentment in people. The Udemy policy team sitting there hearing me brag about making almost 100,000 dollars in one month, when that's as much as they make in a whole year, sure, they have an incentive to shut me up and to come up with a policy violation. On Facebook Gaming, they didn't like what I was saying, and they chose to take it really negatively, not asking questions, just demonetizing me right away. Why did I keep ending up in those situations? Because I always felt like it's never enough. I never had enough Udemy sales. There were months I felt really good, like yeah, I'm crushing it, I'm making big money. But then the next month I'd feel like crap when it went back down.
Getting My Time Back
I was so obsessed with doing Udemy that I could hardly do anything else. I tried doing some Facebook Gaming streams a little bit, but I couldn't focus on them because I was absolutely obsessed with trying to get money on Udemy. But then, ironically, when I get banned from Udemy, it actually leaves me feeling better. It's like, dang, now I've got time. Now that I've been banned, I actually have time to do more, and it's really good. In some ways I'm so glad I got banned from Udemy, and I'm so glad I got demonetized on Facebook Gaming. But I don't want to go through that stuff again. From now on, I want to set things up to be ultra-sustainable, so that in the future I don't need to get banned to get my time back. I just want to be sustainable.
To me, the ideal scenario would have been to do Udemy but sell a course every month. Do Facebook Gaming but just do a few streams a month. Don't stress yourself out. Don't get all upset. You don't need to take over and be number one. Just do a few gaming streams a week. Do a few Udemy courses a month. Do a few crypto videos every week. Don't sweat it. Don't make it so everything you do is Udemy, or everything you do is Facebook Gaming, or everything you do is crypto. That's where I went wrong, and I'm still tempted to go wrong again, feeling so frustrated like I need to optimize everything.
I've come to believe that if I just stay consistent, have fun, and don't over-optimize anything, everything is going to go super well for me. Imagine over the next decade I do crypto videos, I do gaming live streams, I do music, I do motivational talks. I could even make an online course or a community if I want to. Imagine if over the next decade I don't have to deal with getting banned, or getting burned out again, or demonetized again.
The number one rule is fun
So that's where I'm at today. What do I actually need? I need to just enjoy where I'm at and not over-optimize. Enjoy where I'm at, have fun, and do whatever is fun every single day. To me, the number one rule is fun. When I look back at what went wrong on Udemy, the honest answer is that I stopped having fun. Creating online courses was a blast originally, but it stopped being fun the moment it turned into pressure. It became, "Hey, Rob's making more sales than you are, man. Come on, you need to get another course out, and another, and another." Suddenly there was no time to stream, no time to talk crypto, no time to do YouTube, and the only thing I was supposed to do on YouTube was sell courses. It stopped being fun the instant I started over-optimizing.
That's the pattern I keep noticing in myself. When all I did was Udemy courses, or all I did was Facebook Warzone streams, or all I did was retro games, I made the thing not fun anymore. So my lesson to myself is simple: stop making things not fun. And the way you do that, in my experience, is you stop optimizing.
Why optimizing usually backfires
The crazy thing about optimizing is that it's usually a short-term move dressed up as a long-term strategy. We tell ourselves, "Well, you just need to pick a niche. Pick a niche, optimize around that niche, and things are going to work out really well for you." But we rarely take the time to think it all the way through. If you commit to a single niche for ten years, are you actually going to still want to do that niche in ten years? Are you going to still want to make those videos a decade from now? A lot of the time, our optimization doesn't take the long-term consequences into account at all. It's optimized for this month and blind to the next ten years.
That's exactly why I want to remember this today: don't optimize again. Just have fun. Fun is all that really matters. If I can stick to having fun, things are going to go great. And if I can't have fun, then there's genuinely no point in optimizing, because optimizing without enjoyment just means I'm not enjoying my life. If I'm not enjoying my life, what is any of the optimization even for?
Freedom is the whole point
I know myself well enough at this point to say it plainly: I'm not going to have fun if I'm obsessed with optimizing. What I do have fun with is freedom. When I give myself freedom, that's when I enjoy this. One of the best parts about being a YouTuber, a streamer, whatever it is I am, is exactly that freedom. So one of the most important things I've come to believe I can't do is lock myself into one specific niche anymore. The thing I need to protect is sticking to having fun.
I'm really grateful for the chance to remember this message. I'm glad I haven't quit, no matter what's happened along the way, and I'm glad I'm still here. I want to keep reminding myself of this, and if you've found something similar in your own creative journey, I hope you'll help me remember it too. If you want to see more of how I think through this stuff, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist. Don't optimize. Just have fun.