[Music]

good evening tonight's going to be a kind of a fun show for me a little bit of a a little bit of a celebration we hit a milestone earlier yesterday I'd been stuck on 199 subscribers for like 3 days and I was wondering if it was going to even happen uh but here we go right here proof that I've got 200 subscribers so I wanted to say thank you very much for uh all of you for subscribing I really appreciate it um it has been it has been an amazing journey um and it has not gone the way I thought it would by any stretch the imagination um I set up you know I set up the channel originally um to do videos based on real estate and what I saw in the real estate market is real estate broker in St Louis Missouri and um for whatever reason right when I started it just did not take off and it was it was just wild and so um I just you know to be at 200 subscribers for me this channel has been left for dead a few times uh so it's it's been it's it's good and I just wanted to say thank you very much I wanted to go over some of the things that I've seen and some of the things I've learned and and some of the things that still puzzle me uh the first thing I wanted to do is the first thing is I had a my my best video on the channel is a YouTube short and it isn't even about real estate I used to do live streams and we used to talk about stuff that was interesting and stuff that was fun and so I came across this channel called The Outdoor boys on YouTube and it was a fantastic Channel and my thought was is hey you know all my subscribers and the people that watch my videos I could tell them you know hey hey here's a wonderful channel that you might really enjoy uh take a look at it and see you know if you like it you know because I I find it really great and and my thinking was is all I'm doing is helping um helping my audience find a channel that they may not have otherwise watched so let me show you the short that I did and then um it was just basically all it was was a clip from the uh a clip from the live stream that I did that night and so here it is right here I'm G to play it for you and I'll stop it in in in in different spots but here we go it's the outdoor boys they've got 3.6 million I don't know why we got a add in the middle 3.6 million subscribers so I was setting up who the outdoor boys channel is what it's about okay it has 3.6 million subscribers contrast that to my maybe 150 subscribers at the time I I mean I mean it's a great Channel and it's doing great things okay here we go here's what's next I'd never seen I don't know why YouTube decided that it was time for me to see this I had never seen the channel before and it had been recommended to me through the YouTube algorithm and I thought that was awesome because here's this Channel that I would would have never otherwise found without the YouTube algorithm and then my thinking was is hey maybe some people in my audience might you know now they know about the outdoor boys Channel they might be able to go find it on YouTube and watch it that's what the thinking was but I mean can you imagine now I I can't imagine sending my kid with me camping okay that's just that's just past anything I could possibly imagine I mean so I can't imagine taking my kid with me the outdoor voice Channel Luke he goes out in the Alaskan Tundra 20t of snow hiking okay takes his young kids all right that's impressive but not only is he does that he does it while filming the whole thing he's creating beautiful videos of this wonderful scenery and taking his children it's very very impressive the the production quality is very very high okay I can't imagine being able to produce such a wonderful video okay and bring my kids along it's like how do you have time to watch them and to to do these videos it's very very impressive and what if something happened to the kid what if he was injured or she was injured or what if they got lost or what if I got lost and this guy's filming everything which is what I thought was really impressive okay it's not that oh I can't take my kids camping or oh I'm afraid to do this it's not about me it's about this guy in his ability to do this thing which is really impressive and my audience should probably watch that that because it's it's great if it's something they might be into this has to be some of the best stuff I've ever seen this has to be some of the best stuff I've ever seen okay that is the highest endorsement I can possibly give and yet I had people writing comments like stop trying to profit off of the outdoor boy Channel I can't profit off of a channel when I'm not even monetized okay and all I'm doing is trying to tell my audience you know here's something you might want to watch it's kind of fun okay I got I got accused of I mean you know I'm I'm I'm uh criticizing the outdoor boy Channel how do you criticize the outdoor boys Channel when you say this is some of the best stuff I've ever seen it was bizarre to me okay but it was really eye openening because clearly people will assign values to any video you put out there and I and I wasn't prepared for that because as I sit and I watch as as I sit and watch YouTube the things that I watch first of all I don't think I've commented on a video ever it just is I'm not normally by my keyboard and I it just wouldn't occur to me um but then like I don't I mean the way I see it is um it's just like I would want to have an informed opinion before I wrote something before I to comment and this is this is one of the problems that we have is like I'm doing things the way I would think that you would do them right but there's there's over a thousand people watching that short every day okay so it's like you know everyone comes to it with you know you may be you may be driving down the road right you shouldn't be watching video but you may be and you or you may be you know you may be half asleep and you may see that come on and you assign some sort of value to it and it's not what I had put out there it's not what I what my intent was and so it's amazing to me to see um how something so innocent turned into such a mess for me okay because this one video is the viral video for my channel it's got nothing to do with real estate right I've now got a short that has nothing to do with real estate if the YouTube algorithm is even recommending um that short people that want to subscribe to my channel and to talk about Outdoors stuff we've we've I've not talked about the outdoors since and that was like a year ago so this is this is one of those things that I've learned is you know if somebody writes a comment and and it's just dumb I just have to kind of let it go because it's they're in a different spot like what they're seeing is different than what I'm trying to produce um and so that was eye opening for me um it's it's just it was just bizarre when I when I saw that YouTube had picked that up as the one video that they were going to show I was like really I mean is this is going to kill my channel and believe me my C my channel I think's been dead like three times I've I've managed to pick it up at least get some views so um that was the first thing is is it was a learning it's been a learning experience for me that I can't take what people write you know too seriously sometimes people say that I'm bald and they're like you're bald it's like oh I know I been that way since I've been in my my early 20s you know I'm going on 20 years of this now it's not a surprise to me um it's just strange it's just a strange thing and that's what happens when you put yourself out there you're going to get people that that don't like you just don't like you so that was that was something I learned and then the next thing is is my channel is about real estate news commentary and opinion and it's mostly in the residential space but um we look to other parts of the economy to try and determine what's going on so it wouldn't be unusual if I talked about inflation it wouldn't be unusual I talked about credit card debt um you know used cars uh uh repossessions things of this nature uh late payments we're you know we're looking at things in the economy to try to understand what's going on in the real estate market at this time and for some reason YouTube just can't find my Niche okay like it it just cannot figure it out um I'm not sure why but I think there's a couple reasons one I don't like to do clickbait titles so I don't I don't write like like you've seen maybe you've seen a few of the videos where they'll show the titles and it'll be like you know uh I you know I'm GNA die of cancer and then they'll get like five million views and then I'm cured of cancer it'll get like a hundred views it's the same person maybe you've seen that floating around and um I think that the clickbait pay titles especially with gloom and doom pay I was watching another uh real estate uh investor Channel and he was he was talking about how the what we call the crash Bros okay the people that say the economy is going to crash the housing Market's going to crash tomorrow get out while you still can they were banking between like 65 and $100,000 a month on YouTube by just saying it's going to crash it's going to crash and that's just not who I am um I don't like a tremendous amount of negativity I always think that there's a reason to buy a home for a certain people we call them life events you're having a baby you're getting married you're you know something's going on in your life or you know something bad's happening there's a divorce there's something of that nature but there's always like kind of a reason to buy a house and that's why I'm never like this is the time to buy this is the time to sell um because it it just it depends on where you're at in your own life and another thing is I don't like slick or highly produced videos so or highly edited so I the idea of me taking like three takes to say the same thing doesn't make any sense to me like I don't want I hate those videos I hate those videos but I know that those get more views so maybe I should but at the same time I'm just not and number four uh my channel isn't just like the latest get-rich qu quick scheme in real estate so I'm not going to say like hey you should buy storage buildings in the middle of nowhere um because that's going to make you all kinds of money and you're never going to you're never going to have to work again I'm not going to say you should buy 50 apartment or you should buy 50 single family homes and everything's going to go perfect and you're never going to have any issues um it's just it's just not who I am and so uh I think that because I'm I'm pretty like I feel like pretty levelheaded you're you you don't that I don't get a chance to get into like the YouTube recommendation algorithm for real estate and real estate news I just don't think it happens um so that's that's one of the things I wanted to point out is that the niche is not like that's why it hasn't been growing like it should be um the people that would like to watch my videos would like to see stuff that's like real right no BS no fluff just this is what's going on in the housing market this is what I see this is what you need to pay attention to so that's that and now um there's this other issue that I think hurt my channel when I started and um I I'm I I just don't know how to get around it and so let me just try to explain it to you and it's it's this weird thing about a soft band that I'm kind of aware of um I think I get knocked down a bit due to the language of the pandemic okay so much of the real estate news over the past three to four years have been about people making choices due to the pandemic however it seems like there's a soft ban on anything related to the pandemic for I know for a fact that there is because if if I write if I if I say certain stuffff I'll get either I'll get a warning you know I'll get a medical warning put across the bottom um it's wild so it this this soft ban on this anything related to the pandemic it makes it super difficult for me to talk about what has gone in the real estate market because much of what we're seeing in the current real estate market is a result of the pandemic okay I mean before it start started and by the way I'm saying pandemic now because if this video doesn't do that well it's okay it's my 200th video you know or 200 subscriber video celebration video I don't suspect it's going to be that highly ranked anyway but you know if like let me give you an example if I say that the housing market was locked up for two weeks during the pandemic I'll get a soft band on that okay if I say that the government printed billions of dollars to try to rescue the burnt economy during the pandemic I get a soft now I'm saying pandemic Co 19 Corona virus those words can't say those to get anywhere okay if I say that migration patterns for the a lot of the country were people who Moved uh to to a work from home model during the pandemic I get a ban and this is in contrast to someone who makes a reaction video to a cartoon there's no ban there it really sucks so many of the channels that I like and enjoy like like when guys are fixing cars okay or when there's a race car driver they're never talking about the pandemic okay because in their Channel it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't matter you know they're talking about winning the race or they're talking about making getting a car to run and so it's very very frustrating because my body of knowledge is in real estate and what's going on has been affected by the pandemic for the last number of years yet anytime I say the word pandemic or any if I see an article and I read a portion of the article that's going to get me a soft band it's really really really tough and it's something that I just I know is is kind of holding me back then there's this this other thing that I wanted to to go over and like I wrote a little outline out and you can might be able to see when the screen turns pretty white on my face that that's what I'm looking at um but I wanted to talk about something that's kind of been like a philosophical thing for me on this channel and and that and it's true with my uh Real Estate website as well as it's the everchanging landscape of YouTube YouTube is constantly changing what worked last year may not work this year if I make content solely to feed the algorithm that isn't the content I really want to make I want to talk about the real estate space and news I don't want to be researching keywords writing out a script and then optimizing it for SEO I just want to make the videos as a sort of window for you to see what someone in the industry is thinking it took more than three years to get 200 subscribers and who knows how long it could take for me to be monetized but that isn't the point I want to do my own thing and I want to thank you for coming along look I'm I I I will uh I will do what I think is right okay it's funny here's some of the things I've I've learned just by doing this for a while one if I mention a big city in my video I will get more views so here are two big cities that you will get more views if I say house prices are down in California or California uh California housing crash oh my God I would get I would get a thousand more percent of views on my video on that one video if I do New York housing struggle I will get more views it's it's just the way that's kind of the nature of it if you look at sports if you look at kind of how the East Coast or the West Coast kind of dominates when the Dodgers are in the World Series for example you're going to see higher ratings than if St Louis is in the in in the uh in the World Series series and I know this having lived in St Louis for much of my life I mean it it's just the way it is there's just more people in California and New York and so you just don't you just don't get that exposure so you know you have a choice as a Creator do you do everything that somebody like it's like do do everything that they want you to do every single time so that you can have this you know this channel that isn't really about you anymore it's just kind of a sellout to what an algorithm that isn't real is saying or do you do what you want to do do you speak your mind to to the ability that you can obviously you can't say certain words like pandemic okay you know what what do you do and then the other thing is is you know do you do you make the content like Crash Brothers or storage brothers or you know do you do that so that you can you know I don't get higher in the rankings and and do it or do you do what you want to do and so I've chosen to do what I've wanted do is there a time when YouTube's going to come back for me in my my videos probably not probably not uh and that's that's okay um they have they need to have people watching okay and I need to uh I need to do my my stuff and so that's why I'm on Rumble that's why I'm on Odyssey um that's why I'm on Twitter you know that's why we have the website you know I I I'm not going to just stay on YouTube because I I can kind of see that not going to be a huge amount of growth or if it is um you know it would be it would be very very surprising finally um I wanted to add one more point and that is failure okay I know that you see all these channels with thousand subscribers in a week uh people make four videos and they're monetized and yet here I am at over a th videos produced and only 200 subscribers uh I've tried longer form videos I've tried streaming I've tried shorts nothing has seemed to work and it can get pretty frustrating however I don't think where we are now is where we're going to end up I think the channel will continue to evolve over time I I have an idea of where I want to go but you kind of have to work your way through it okay uh I I'll just just about me one of the things about the way I think is I I very I I see something in the media that that that causes me to to question something and then I bring it forth in a video that's kind of the way I see it um the original thought okay isn't really spurred until I see something that has been written or something that has been said or something that is going on in the marketplace and so at some point in time there should be this evolution of you know this is this is this is what I think and here's how it looks you know here's how it looks like I should be able to produce that I'm not there yet I don't I don't know that it's ever going to happen but it should right I'm not I I see people like I see people with big followings on like Twitter and I know there's this one guy that that's got like a million YouTube subscribers it's just in the real estate space and I know that like half of the people that see his stuff just are just knives out saying like your data is wrong you're wrong and then the other 50% are like thank you so much this is great so even even if you did have all the right information you're already going to have 50% of the people that are going to be haters it looks like so I don't I I want to move in that direction like I said though I don't want it to be uh super slick produced you know unless unless it was every once in a while but I even then I just want a space where you know if you see something in the video and you you disagree agree or right in the comment section you disagree I mean there's nothing wrong with that and maybe you've got a reason most of the stuff one of the biggest biggest well one of the strangest things ever is watching all these people that are supposed to be experts saying that the sky is falling the sky is falling the sky is falling it's going to fall at some point in time if you say it enough times right over 20 years we're going to have another we're going to have another boom we're going to have another bust that's kind of the way the markets work now you can argue that the FED accelerates those okay with their terrible policies that's that's a reasonable consideration but you know to just to just be a one trick point to just say that you know the housing market is terrible you should never ever buy a house you should rent and just enjoy it forever I'm just not that I'm just not that person and I and I hope that at least it's coming through I mean if you want like I follow probably a thousand real estate agents on Twitter and if you want the canned response like you know you know um what is the one that what drives me call me for a free home evaluation right or it's never the wrong time to buy a house or you know happy happy Halloween all month long I'm just not that person and I have never been that person and I'm sorry but that's just kind of the way it is now look um we're going to keep doing this and we're going to get better or we're g to get worse but but this isn't you know this isn't my main job my main job is to help buyers buy homes and sellers sell theirs okay it's not it's not killing me to do these videos right now in this format um I hope to do other things with the channel I hope to bring you all along with me but I you know I understand that if you can't find me um then that's the way it is so anyway there's a couple things one I wanted to test something I've heard that YouTube made changes so that if you if you say the word subscribe it comes across the bottom of the screen now but you can only say it three times in a video and the funny thing is is as we all know like or if youve if you got a YouTube channel like the first 30 seconds are the most important part of the video and after that the the watch time goes down and down and down to pretty much zero like I'm at 23 minutes I doubt anybody's watching this still but for those of you who are I'm just testing the Subscribe uh feature and seeing how it goes um and with that I'm going to head on out tomorrow we'll get back to uh to the regularly scheduled videos honestly I really really appreciate it for those of you if even if you came accidentally and uh were on a short and hit the button to fast forward and now I'm in your subscribers that's totally fine like please don't get rid of me in that spot um just thank you for watching thank you for listening and I will catch you on the next one