Yesterday I filmed eight, nine, ten videos, and that felt really good to be able to catch up on my work. I read thousands of messages, gave away a bunch of money on open chat, and made music. Having the time to really catch up on my work was awesome. What's nice about being a YouTuber is that I have the flexibility, so if I've got a bunch of time, I can essentially do a couple of days of work, if not more, all at once.
I'm grateful that my crypto channel just made its highest views yesterday that it's made in at least a month. I put videos out that people seem to be enjoying and that are helpful. It's amazing how simple things are sometimes, and how you'll get the exact advice you're looking for. For example, I was on one of my calls with SixFigs. I did three crypto videos with SixFigs recently. He said that he had met BitBoy Crypto in person and asked him, what's the secret to YouTube success? BitBoy said you just have to grind out videos, like several videos a day. As soon as I heard that, I knew how true it was.
Quantity beats chasing the perfect video
What's frustrating is trying to do one video a day, or less than that, and trying to make it perfect. Then, if you don't get the title, the thumbnail, and all of that correct, it bombs. Now, it depends on your niche. If you're Mr. Beast and you're trying to make extremely sensational videos, then yeah, maybe doing one a week or less makes sense. But if you're doing news kind of content where people just want to hear what's new all the time, then it's a straight-up quantity approach.
I'm really happy with the changes I've made recently and all the things I've tested. I feel like I'm in a great comfort zone, or a great spot, just doing three videos of ten minutes or less a day on my crypto channel, and then a vlog and a music video. I made a couple of songs yesterday, and I listened back to the dance track I made, song number 300, and I thought, wow, this is actually pretty good. That's amazing considering how little I know at this point.
I'm grateful for any day I can really enjoy my work, because there are some days I don't like it that much. I'm grateful when I can get a system in place that feels like it's really working. I'm getting what I want, the viewers are getting what they want, and we're all, in theory, becoming more educated or better in the process.
A day to myself
I had so much time yesterday because my daughter went over to a friend's house in the morning and then to a sleepover in the afternoon. My wife took my son to play at Playgrounds of Tampa, and then he went with Laura and her family to his cousin's gymnastics competition. So I really enjoyed a day to myself yesterday to just film videos.
I also played basketball again. I got 63 three-pointers in just a little over 30 minutes, almost exactly 30 minutes, just banging down three-pointers. Man, it's so satisfying to be able to take a ball and throw it through a hoop that's ten feet in the air. I don't know exactly how far away a three-point shot is, but it's so satisfying. All these toxic stories people tell about getting older and your body falling apart, and yet my body has never shot three-pointers this good, ever. I've never been able to hit this many three-pointers before.
Count the makes, disregard the misses
What I can say is that my strategy of counting every three-pointer I hit and basically disregarding the ones I miss is extremely effective. I show up, I make the effort, and I count the results. I'm looking at applying that same simple idea to as many areas as possible. For example, with my crypto videos, if I'm just doing one video a day, I get kind of obsessed about how many views it got and all that. But if I do three videos a day and focus on just executing a few simple ideas quickly and then putting them out there, it works better. It's not up to me how many views a video gets. It's up to me to show up, put in the effort, and try to package that effort in a way that is good for others.
I'm obsessed on YouTube too with getting search results and browse results, because one of the ideal ways to get discovered on YouTube is to get found in search. That said, I also wonder why I care about growing at all on YouTube. I have more open chat comments than I can read most days. I don't even read my YouTube comments. Do I really need to grow? At this point, if I just sustain, everything's great. And if I'm right about ICP, I'm going to be debt-free pretty soon, have tons of passive income, and I'm going to be totally set.
Am I really ready to be totally set?
Am I really ready to be totally set? A lot of us think we'd love to get out of the struggle, that we'd love to have money and not have to work. You know what's surprising? A lot of times when you get what you want, it kind of destroys your whole reality, which can first lead to dysphoria and confusion. Often there's euphoria first, like, yes, I got it. I've had that a lot. I've gotten exactly what I wanted.
For example, there was the dispatcher at work when I was a police officer who was, in my experience at the time, a perfect ten, gorgeous and fun. As soon as I hooked up with her, two days later I was absolutely in the depths of misery. Because if you have an idea in your head that you're unhappy because you don't have something, that you're unhappy because you're broke, because you're single, because you're unhealthy, what happens when you get that thing and you're still unhappy? What happens when I'm going to work two days after hooking up with the dispatcher, thinking, now I've really done it, now my whole reality is going to fall apart? I remember looking at a traffic light on the way to work two days after, feeling like my whole reality was on the verge of coming apart.
That's exactly what happened. The whole reality I'd been working on building up for years, getting what I wanted, brought everything down. It brought down my job as a police officer and the place I was living. I hooked up with the dispatcher in May 2009, and six months later, in October, I'd moved home with my parents in Mississippi. I'd quit my job as a police officer, and the dispatcher had a restraining order against me, after a lot of drunken behavior and lying to the police department and things like that. I'd worked since 2005 to set up that whole reality and to get myself a place I loved to live. I had a place almost rent-free because I was the police officer for the little apartment complex. I had a job, one of the best-paying police jobs in Columbia. And I had the girl I wanted. All the unhappiness that had been held back by the thought that if I could just get this really hot girl to love me, everything would be great in my life.
I was happier with my destroyed reality
Six months after that, my whole reality was wrecked. I was at home with my parents, playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 eight hours a day and going to the gym. You know what? I was happier. I was happier six months later, after having gotten what I wanted and then everything came down. I was happier with my destroyed reality, starting all over again with a whole new set of things.
Lots of times when I've gotten what I wanted as a YouTuber or a content creator, when I've gone viral, when everybody's talking about me and money's coming in, I've been shockingly unhappy, just thinking, is this all there is? So I find it amazing today when I can actually sustain being happy and satisfied over time. I've wondered, what is the difference between sustaining happiness over time and getting something you want that makes you miserable?
To me, it's the effect my actions are having on other people. When I was getting drunk and being insane as a police officer, the effect my actions were having on myself and other people, especially with my drinking, was chaotic and rough. When I'm making YouTube videos, I'm showing up as a husband, taking care of my relationship, my kids, and my house. When I'm making YouTube videos that help other people learn what I've learned with crypto investing and what I've learned in my life, then I'm happy and satisfied.
So to me, it seems the secret to real happiness and satisfaction is asking how my actions are impacting other people. If I can get what I want while giving other people what they want, then I'm truly satisfied and happy. That's a lot harder to set up, but I'm grateful that now that's where my target is: how can I serve everybody else while having the things I want and the things I enjoy? If you want to see more of how I work through this kind of thing, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
So for the rest of the day, my plan is to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting shortly. AA meetings have been a big part of having a satisfying, happy life and reprogramming my mind. I also went to yoga for the first time in five days. I don't usually take that long off, and it felt really good. I'm so grateful to have this to share with you today.