 Alright, so before I tell you what's the one thing I did to get here really is, I think you gain more by understanding how it all happened first. So hi, my name is Kwame. I'm a documentary filmmaker and photographer, as well as a voiceover artist based in Accra, Ghana. And you are welcome to my channel. It's okay. Now, this channel is my attempt to make sense of life and the human experience in general. And I'm just happy that you're here. Now, today's video is going to be one about my sincere gratitude to every one of you, 1,092 subscribers currently part of my journey on this channel. You guys are just amazing. So the big 1K happened a week ago, Wednesday, 17th of June, 2020. And I got to say that, look, this day will forever be memorable in my life. And on the morning of that day, my account had 965 subscribers. And so I had been doing my usual promo post of soliciting for people to click that subscribe button and join me on my journey. I do that every once in a while. So a couple of days before this happened, actually, I noticed that my account was getting a lot of attention from new people who were so kind enough to reach out and express their love for what I was putting out. So let me just say shout out to Pam and Gloria. If you guys don't know them, they are also YouTubers. So I'll leave a link to their channels so that you can subscribe and follow their journeys as well. They are awesome people. They're really, really awesome people, very genuine and open. So that kind of gave me confidence, though, that I may be onto something, you know. And I've always had that creator's insecurity of not being sure about the true quality of my work. And so this external validation did a lot for my confidence. So back to the 17th of June, I'd been, you know, promoting on Twitter and Instagram, Facebook, the same avenues I used to share my work. And I needed just 35 to hit 1K, just 35 people to subscribe. Then something happened that evening. I discovered that Twitter had a new update for Voice Notes. I was like, whoa, so everyone that knows me, you know, kept pointing it out to me that this was specifically made for me. And I decided, you know, to test this voice note thing with a random voiceover and boom, like everything started going up from then up until 11 p.m. My phone was still blowing up. Suddenly, like there were new eyeballs on this thing that I've been doing for the last eight years, which is voiceovers. I've been doing it for such a long time and they were giving me compliments and whatnot. It felt really good. I got to say it felt really good. I'd almost forgotten to even use that attention. I was getting to direct more attention to what I did as a professional freelancer at the moment, which is filmmaking and YouTubeing and all that. But thankfully, I have friends who look out for me like that. So big ups to all those people. So I began using the opportunity to shout out my YouTube to the new people. So I went from 965 to 1013 in just a couple of hours. Look, I couldn't even sleep. I was just too excited. So if you're watching this video and you're waiting for some hack to grow your channel, yes, it's not magic. I'm not going to sit here and bullshit you about something you can easily do, just easily do. No, as far as my channel and my journey is concerned, I've done one thing and one thing only to get here and I can describe it with just one word, consistency. That is all I have been. I've been consistent. This year, I decided to live by the mantra of do, learn, repeat. I've always had that insatiable want of growth and improvement and that's what this channel is about in the first place, self-development and growth. So if I tell you I was so sure that I was gonna get 1000 subs this quick in six months, then look, I'll be lying. It took me by surprise. Same way that looking at my videos from a few months ago, I mean, takes me by surprise, realizing how much I've grown with the video quality, the look plus even how relaxed I am on camera and everything. So I'm not sure where I need to be, but I can see the difference. So that's good enough for me. For six months, I posted every single week and sometimes even twice at the peak of the lockdown season. So I've been doing a lot of work. All I've done is to post consistently even when I wasn't sure what to work on. Somehow I knew I had a quota to meet posting something every single week. Remember, presence is what counts. Presence is very important. So let me tell you what I've learned also about YouTube listening to the bigger YouTubers and this whole YouTube thing and how it works. So there are millions of new accounts that get created every single year, millions. Now YouTube does pay contents creators because your content is used to sell ads to other brands and in the beginning you only needed one case subscribers to be eligible for monetization. Just that, nothing more, just one case subscribers. Now a few years down the line, YouTube realizes that getting the 1,000 subscribers wasn't such a big deal. People could easily get it based on how much you can promote your channel using your social media to meet that 1,000 subscriber mark without necessarily putting in the work with your videos. So this is what they decided to do. With 1,000 subscribers and your 10 mediocre videos, you expect to benefit from it? Nah, it doesn't work that way. So YouTube decided to, I mean, change their tactics and make it a little more worth your while to be able to get the content from you to sell to advertisers and also start monetizing. So now they require you to have 4,000 watch hours in addition to the one case subscribers over a period of 12 months. That is the rule. 4,000 watch hours is equal to 240,000 minutes of watch. Now that's a lot of work. And even though I have one case subscribers, I'm nowhere near meeting that mark of four case subscribers. 4,000 watch hours. So that's why you should watch more of my videos. You know, I need the minutes. Yeah, plus if you're having a YouTube channel in the genre that is heavily saturated, then you do know that you have even more work to do to stand out. So anyway, what I'm saying is the one thing I've done all this while is being consistent, super consistent. I've been consistent with posting every single week, sometimes even twice. I've been consistent with improving the video quality that I put out. I've been consistent with researching. I've been consistent with promoting what I upload. I've been consistent with engaging people who watch my content, liking and commenting. Now, when I learned more about what it took to get somewhere good on this platform, I just lowered my expectations of expecting to blow up, for example, in three months or six months. I was aiming more for like a year to make it somewhere that I can look back and be proud of what I have done so far. So I didn't expect to see it in six months. So if you're looking for some magic hack, I'm sorry to disappoint you, do your research, commit to improving your content in every aspect of video quality, light, sound, presentation, everything. And make sure that you show up when you need to. That is how you see growth that you can be proud of. So consistency is the one hack. And on that note, I'm gonna say I'm truly grateful for all the 1K and over people who subscribe and watch my videos. That's if you like this video, don't forget to like, subscribe, and also hit the bell button to get notified when I post a new video. I appreciate all of you. And I'll catch you again on the channel another time. Peace and hopefully the hack works for you. Adios.