My oldest son approached me about 8 months ago asking to create a YouTube channel. I said no. His mother said no. So the answer was …. no.
He then approached the topic a few weeks later, and had given it some more thought. It was obvious to me that this was a topic of interest to him. So I asked him what he was thinking of posting out on YouTube. He gave me some vague answer involving some videos involving stick figures and some beats he had cut. So I cracked open the topic with him, and we dug in. Today, I consider this one of my projects that I’m indirectly involved with – as he is the creative force for the channel.
We explored the possibilities, and I took it as a coaching moment for him to learn how to clarify what he wanted, how to build a justification for his vision, and then an actual delivery plan to realize this vision provided that the full justification and funding were agreed upon.
Guess what? This is not unlike my life at work. If you have a great idea, it does not really matter unless you can enlist others in the vision, secure some seed funding, and then deliver relentlessly – no matter what. There’s a ton here to expound upon on a later post.
So I asked him to give it some more thought.
I provided him a framework to take the idea further, and to test this romantic notion of a YouTube channel against the hard nosed planning I was putting him through.
So we hatched a game plan on a Thursday night that went like this, he got most of the actions of course 😉
His To Do’s
- Figure out the name of the channel and your online brand
- Figure out your tag line
- Figure out a short bio / mission statement for your channel
- Decide what you will accomplish by launching this channel
- Provide a quantified goal with a date for the desired accomplishment (such as total subscribers by X date)
- Decide how this will work – I left this open ended to have him arrive at a proposal which we refined later
- Decide what types of content he will be posting – saying ‘videos’ was not an acceptable answer. He’s posted this self made song here, and I still cannot believe he did this on his own…
- Provide me 3-5 competitors that he really admires and 3-5 competitors that he thinks he could surpass in terms of quality, audience, and innovation
- Propose a time budget per week
- Propose a financial budget to launch for the first 3 months
My To Do’s
- Research how to start a YouTube channel
- Determine how best to monetize a YouTube channel
- Establish best practices for building a YouTube channel
Jointly Performed To Do’s
- Agree upon budget of time and money with a firm commit
- Agree upon a publishing schedule
- Agree on content approval workflow
- Agree on comments and subscription rules of engagement
- Agree upon guiding principles for this channel
- Pick a start date
- Pick a ‘revisit’ date
He performed nearly all of his to do’s within 3 weeks, and I performed nearly all of mine during the same time frame. The one to do that I left outstanding was the monetization one. I did not want to put any extra pressure or add another dimension of complexity involving financials. So we punted on this. Creating the content and cultivating the consistent discipline of creation is the most important aspect of this project.
So fast forward – we had our ‘jointly performed to do summit’ while we were both doing cardio on the treadmills at the local gym. I’ve got him doing some weights and cardio with me on a regular basis.
He blew me away with his forethought in this third meeting, and we were able to power through all of the decisions quite effectively.
- Agree upon budget of time and money with a firm commit:
- He undersold the time commitment initially, and we landed on a reasonable time budget for this project. Given all of the other things going on in his life – this seemingly is working, even this week. Financials were easy – I told him what I’d invest given his level of commit. We’d revisit later.
- Agree upon a publishing schedule:
- He wanted daily. I told him weekly was a good starting point. Discipline, consistency, and volume are being cultivated. We will likely ramp the production to twice per week in the coming weeks as school starts up again and it stabilizes. He has some good shit in the hopper right now.
- Agree on content approval workflow
- He agreed that all content would need to be approved by me, for now, before he posted. This was not negotiable. I committed to revisiting this as he demonstrates a true concern for his audience and his own reputation for good work.
- Agree on comments and subscription rules of engagement
- This is an ongoing conversation. This is an opportunity for me to cultivate a healthy level of detachment and of concern when it comes to feedback online – particularly when it comes from complete strangers.
- Agree upon guiding principles for this channel
- This was the most fun for the both of us. We came up with about ten or so single statements that we both agreed to abide by. This notion of guiding principles rather than fixed rules has served me very, very well in some of the most dynamic working environments in my career. Another opportunity to cultivate some flexibility here with my son.
- Pick a start date
- We started either that night or the next night. No need to wait on this sort of shit once I realized he was serious, and we could soft launch this without any cost or upfront investment. He had over 15 videos when we launched this – so his content buffer is quite healthy at the moment.
- Pick a ‘revisit’ date
- We agreed to run through our ‘operating agreement’ a few months down the line, and we agreed that as he demonstrates more regularity and ongoing commitment – things will open up even more for him.
Launching the channel was the easy part. It was gaining agreement on how the content was going to get produced, and the ongoing delivery model. Before we could have a meaningful conversation on the delivery and ongoing operations – we had to get to a point of clarity when it came to his ‘why’ and his vision for the longer term outcomes with dates and quantified results as a target.
This is seemingly simple stuff for a YouTube channel, but if you look a little closer – this is in many ways a dry run for doing any meaningful activity either at school, at home, or in a corporate setting. Tons of lessons learned that were exercised as a fun project for him – frankly for me too!
He has reached a point of regularity and of increasing quality output – that it is time to share this with you in the hopes of cultivating interest in a few ways:
- For you as a creative force – you have something to share with the world, and the benefits are manyfold for those that put themselves and their work out there. If my son can launch a YouTube channel based upon a handful of meetings and a bit of self inspection – what is holding you back???
- For his channel – he is steadily building his subscriber base. If you are interested in learning how to do anims and stick figure judo – check him out here. He has also posted an original song or too – the first time I played this (we do content approval via text) – I honestly thought he downloaded this from someone… He is putting in the work.
- For you as a parent or mentor – If you have a kid that is interested in doing something a bit novel or out of the box – encourage it. One of the greatest gifts you can provide anyone – whether it is your kid or your neighbor – it is the belief that they are capable of streaming creation into the world.
Selfishly speaking – it has been incredibly rewarding to watch him run the gauntlet of thought processes, content ideation, content creation, and ongoing delivery discipline even as he’s managing so much else going on in his life. I expect these habits and the discipline to truly carry forward into other areas of his life.
Exciting stuff.