I’m on YouTube and I’m Terrified!
I always encourage people to try something that scares you a little. Well, the same applies to me. I’m now on YouTube for the first time and what a personal confrontation for me! Where do I start? First, it was Nicci, Jen, Vlad, and others who said I should expand outside of Quora to reach a different audience. My first reaction was nope. I love to write, not sit in front of a camera. I then had to think about it a while and I thought, well, why the heck am I saying no? The truth was I was afraid of looking like an idiot, ridicule, failure, all the stuff any entrepreneur faces, but in the end, they were not good enough reasons not to try, especially if I was actually eating my own dog food. Not that I was actually eating dog food.
So, as simple as it sounded, starting was a lot more difficult. There were lots of considerations and tests. I tried something very simple and it looked like crap, sounded like crap, and I thought if anything, I was going to damage the very brand I wanted to build, so it was time for some research and conversations with lots of people.
After looking online, if I was to do it right, it would be with a very good camera, good sound, and the right backdrop to start. We thought about building a set but then realized it was too soon. I spent about a month playing with different solutions before I made the commitment to what I thought was the right gear, then had to wait for it, as it was all on backorder. Every piece of gear was on backorder! Every one! So, that too took time. Then once you have everything, you’re still making adjustments, sending stuff back, ordering other stuff you forgot until finally you have something that turns out a good look. Yes, it could be done a LOT cheaper, but we wanted to make it look very nice, right from the beginning.
The moment of truth hit when I sat down to record. I did take after take, screwing up, going off track, getting frustrated, interruption after interruption, before finally getting a time down to record when I wasn’t distracted. Take a close look at the time on my watch in my first video. That’s AM!
Then it was the challenge of editing, who to do it, how to edit, what about an intro? Who should do that, what colors? Then, there was the whole conversation about topics and in what order. What should I wear? More discussion, more takes, until finally I could put a few files in a folder that were a good starting point. Damn it! The lighting is wrong. Spencer came and bailed me out. More lights! More debate, lots of comments from others. All were good suggestions, but I have to start. I can’t make each one perfect. Again, my own dog food; the small experiment and build from there.
I then had to build the “thumbnail” for the video, create the channel and get the thing up and running. All new to me! So here it is, 1:27 AM as I’m writing this, and I just posted the first video and I’m terrified, but this is how it goes with me. I hope you watch, give me that thumb’s up, follow me, etc., and even make some comments, good and bad. It’s all new to me. Okay, I need some sleep. Oh, here is the link.