 Hey Tribe of Journeymen and Women. So today I have an unusual subject, but a very intriguing one. And I think you'll find it super valuable because first of all, I'm gonna talk about some secrets of YouTube based on my own experience and some of the new challenges I'm facing. I'm kind of in a very interesting situation because right now I'm running two channels. I recently started a second YouTube channel. And the first one has over 125,000 subscribers, which I think is a significant number to create. It's also significant because I changed the subject of it a few times, which is bad practice on YouTube. Usually you shouldn't do it, but there were good reasons for me to do it. I'm pretty sure I would have more subscribers if I would have done that, if I wouldn't have changed subjects once in a while. And also if having subscribers was my main goal, which wasn't my main goal was to deliver certain messages. If it was the other way, there would be even more subscribers, but 125,000, it's a significant number. It usually means like, you kind of made the first big step on YouTube and you can consider yourself a YouTuber, I guess. Although personally, I consider someone to be a YouTuber when you reach 100, sorry, not when you reach 100,000 subscribers, but when you earn your finances from YouTube. When YouTube is your primary source of income, which is my case, I'm living off of YouTube. When that's the case, then I think you can consider yourself a YouTuber. It's not when you are going on this actually bridge where hopefully I won't fall in, but maybe we'll just sit here for a moment. But yeah, if you're just like, you have like 20,000 subscribers, which is great, but no, you're not earning any money and you're just kind of posting videos and not so many people care, but you care about it and then you're like, I'm a YouTuber. I don't think so. I think personally for me, a YouTuber is a person who earns his money primarily from YouTube, but it's a whole discussion. Now the thing is, so I had that experience of running my own channel, living off of it, which to a degree, I'll share some parts of it, but also recently I started a second channel. And when I started the second channel, I bumped into some issues because I thought, I know the game of YouTube very well from my first channel and I'm just gonna make it happen in day one that as soon as I'm gonna start my second channel it's just gonna take off. It didn't. And then I was caught off guard and I thought, shit, so I had to kind of re-remember what made my first channel work. And a lot of the things, I learned a lot of lessons on YouTube which are universal. I could apply them again in my life and applying them again on the second channel, but there were some missing pieces. I felt like there's something I'm doing wrong, which I think in general is a powerful tendency of kind of way of acting is when you take, when you experience difficulties, you're not just doing the same and expecting different results. That actually also connects to one of my favorite quotes, which apparently Einstein has said that he's responsible for this quote. That Einstein defined that insanity or madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results. And some people they're like, they're hard headed and they're like, I'm just gonna keep doing the same thing and eventually I'm gonna make it. I think that's not really the case. Perseverance and hard work, which we're gonna talk about today, it's crucial, it's very important, but it's not just about that. You also have to see what you're doing wrong and always constantly learn from your mistakes. You always have to question, what else can I do better? Where can I approve on? Or what worked and what I can repeat and what didn't work and what I can change? So that being said, what happened to me is when I started to see that my second channel is not picking up the way I expected it to, I started questioning. So what am I doing wrong? What's the lacking part? And that brought me to search for answers from experts, which I personally think is one of the best ways to go about things. Something sometimes we forget and sometimes I forget myself, is when you lack certain information, you're not sure what's the problem. A great way to go about it is to find the person who's considered to be the best at that subject and see what solutions he's suggesting, he's offering kind of to gather the missing intelligence. I used to do that in the past many times, opening my dojo, starting my first YouTube channel, but I felt I bumped into that wall again and that's where first of all, I discovered Seth Coden and he's great, I love him. Considered to be like the best marketing expert in the world. But then the second person I bumped into was Gary Vayverchek. I hope I'm pronouncing the surname right, especially if Gary's watching. Holy shit, I don't wanna fuck this up. So, but Gary Vee, that's the simple way of saying that's how he introduces himself. So, he's considered to be the best expert in the world for social media, which includes YouTube but doesn't stop at it. And I bumped into his first book, I think it's his first book, it's called Crush It. I'm gonna talk about it in this video, but I already wanna say go and read it. If you want to be an influencer, if you want to create a YouTube channel, Instagram, podcast, whatever, go read the book. It's brilliant. I read a bunch of books about social media marketing, marketing, et cetera. There's nothing like it, nothing else. Some of the information is the same, you know, like there's universal principles, but his approach to it and certain things he says, you know, he's very, what I appreciate about Gary, he's very blunt, he's very direct. He doesn't screw around and he doesn't put out fluffy things to make you feel good. He first of all, one of the biggest lessons that he says, which I wanted to make sure I stress in this video, is the importance of hard work, of grinding. Especially these days, because the market is so saturated that unless you're ready to grind, then you're not gonna make it. And I really appreciate that message because I think it's absolutely true. And for me, grinding was never a problem. I'm a bit of a workaholic myself. I like to do the work I like to do. I don't have a problem motivating myself to make my videos. But some people do, and I think that's, that's the need to hear that message. But also even for myself, it was important to remember that when I started the second channel and I started having those difficulties, it was difficult to get things to pick up. Hearing the Gary Vee saying that, you know, until you publish, and I'm quoting him more or less, until you publish 50 videos, you can't know if you're in the right direction or not. Like it's too early to decide. It's only at least after you finish, publish 50 videos, then you can look at it like, oh, okay, this is going well or this is not going well. And even then, it's still early. Until you put in a year, two years, three years of hard work, you shouldn't panic. And I think that's what we do. That's what a lot of us do then. And that's what I did for a moment with my new channel, The Journey. I put out some videos and I was so used to my, quote unquote, fame. And I was so used to my main channel having that initial, not initial, I mean, eventual popularity, that if I would even put out a okay, decent video at best, I know that at least 1,000 people will watch it and they'll comment. And here I am with my new channel and putting out a video and nobody comments. And there are like 20 views, 50 views. I'm like, holy crap, you know, what's happening? And then in the beginning, when I started the Martial Life Journey channel, my main channel with a hundred thousand subscribers, reading the book of Gary V, reading Crush Shit and reflecting back about what I did right and what I did wrong with the Martial Life Journey, I remembered that actually the grind definitely happened there as well. Like the success didn't come quick. And that's kind of one of the things we sometimes fuck up with, is when we reach a certain level of success, we start to feel like that always was like that. We kind of start to forget that shit wasn't easy back in the day, that I had to put a lot of work. And I kind of got used to having those subscribers, that interest from people and then I published a new video on the new channel and barely anyone cared. I also made a few other major mistakes of announcing my new direction in a bit of a shocking way and I kind of demotivated people and following that long story, if you weren't involved in that. But so I did other mistakes too, but then still not a few, very few people cared about my new videos initially. And then I was felt like, holy crap, what's wrong? You know, what am I doing wrong? And part of it was, it takes time. You know, you need to grind it out. You should not panic until, you know, a while you're, until you're a while into it. And one of the lessons and messages I appreciated most from Gary D from reading his book was the idea of, I actually need to check my audio. Sometimes it stops and I don't want that to happen. It's all good. Sorry. So one of the main messages I appreciate from Gary D is that you should put the blinders on. That's, that's how he specifically says it. It's kind of a quote for him. That you should put the blinders on and you shouldn't care whether you're getting a thousand views or 10,000 views or whether people are loving it or not. In the beginning, that's not the point. And even later, it's not the point. I think, I think we resonate here with Gary. It's that, I know from my own experience and I've did that mistake way too many times in starting various projects outside of YouTube as much as on YouTube. You know, you put out a video, you put out two videos, you put out three videos and nobody seems to care. And then you'll, because those three videos didn't have what you consider to be success, you didn't have a lot of views. You start to go into panic mode and you decide, ah, shit, that means nobody cares. This is bad videos. This is bad, that direction, I should drop it. But the message is, it's too early. It's not a time to panic. Initially, it doesn't matter how many people watch it. Until you put in enough of the grind, you can't really know whether you're on the right path or not. And I realized I'm kind of making that mistake with the journey. And listening to Gary and he, hearing him say that, I kind of put the blinders on. I was like, you know what? I trust my direction. I trust my intuition. I know I will make these make mistakes. I know I will learn from them. But also too, I just need to put on the blinders and just go ahead and keep publishing videos. And eventually, you know, things will take off. I deep inside, I know it. I trust it. Doesn't mean I didn't have doubts on the way, but I trusted that deeper voice, that intuition. And now I'm sitting here on this thing next to my parents place, which I'm visiting. And now I'm starting to see great signs of success. Like, some of the videos are starting to take off. I'm like, holy crap, this is amazing. I'm so happy, you know, but put it, but, and I'm lucky, you know, because I kind of found the right answers. I'm still sure I'm gonna bump into huge walls which are gonna discourage me and then I will have to work on them again. But I'm lucky that I had, I have already a lot of knowledge about how YouTube works and I have some shit to offer, some good shit. And also I have people who know me, you know, because of my main channel, I can see people are still, it's still easier for me to attract viewers to my videos because there's a certain relationship already developed. Although I still need to re-earn their trust. I do have that luxury of already having some establishment on online media. But, so my grinding was fairly short and I still will continue to grind, don't worry, but it took me like, today is what, April 20th or something like that. So that means, and I started my new channel pretty much right after New Year's. So it took me like four and a half months to get the initial signs of success. But those four months and a half, I keep saying that, but they were rough. I was not getting the views that I was expecting and I got a lot of criticism and I started to doubt myself and feel like, oh crap, you've been doing something wrong. And then again, listening to Gear AD, I was like, crap, no, no. Keep it together, Rokas, keep pushing it, you're gonna make it. And I'm lucky it took me only four and a half months to kind of get that initial success where I'm like, oh okay, I see that this is working. But also too, there's some wisdom from my past YouTube experience where I'm able to recognize those small levels of success. There's a bunch of people whom I would show and be like, oh look, this video got 500 views. And they're like, Rokas, you gonna make a living out of it? It's only 500 views. I'm like, no, no, you don't get it. This is a significant success. So not everyone will agree with me, but I know what I'm talking about. I've been through that path. Anyway, sorry, kind of went on a tangent here. I wanna make sure I keep it on subject and let's get back to Gear AD, which the video's supposed to be about. So that's the first lesson. That's a huge thing that Gear AD reminded me and that's kind of the message I really want to say to everyone. Don't worry about the numbers. Don't worry about initial failures. Put on the blinders and keep working. And if you're gonna read the book, you'll learn more about how he presents that, but that's a powerful message which everyone should hear. That until you try for a long time working your ass off by crazy, you cannot say that, you know, oh, nobody cares. But coming back to the general story, so I read the book, Crush It, and then also there's a second book. I guess it's a second book called Crushing It, which he published later and that's the, I listened to the audio book, which is really cool because he would make live comments as he was reading the book, which is packed with stories of people applying Gary V's suggestions and making it work through hard ass work. And also he kind of reflects about what new lessons he learned and kind of summarizing what he presented in the past. So it's a really nice book. Again, I highly recommend reading that as well or listening to an audio book version. But that aside, one of the key lessons and discoveries I made listening to Gary V's second book, and it was an interesting moment because in his first book, and that was written like before social media exploded. So obviously there were some moments which were difficult to know what's gonna happen in the future. And there's a moment where he says that you need to become the best possible expert of whatever content you're going to share. And I kind of felt like a trip there. I slipped and I was like, I was reading that actually in the middle of the night, my girlfriend was already asleep next to me and I couldn't sleep because I was going through that mind journey of, fuck, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? I need some information. And I already had Crescent and I woke up in the middle of night and I started reading it to search for answers. And that was the phrase I read that you need to be the best possible expert of the niche that you're going to cover. And for a moment I thought, shit, that's not my case, especially with a journey. You know, I want to change the world and I want to have huge positive impact and yada yada, but I'm like, I'm not the best motivational guide. I don't know how that motivation works better than anyone else. And, you know, I'm not like the most inspiring person of the period. There's like, I'm not the best expert of the subject I want to cover. And that made me think and that made me go even down a deeper rabbit hole of realizing, crap, I need to start, you know, working my ass off, not only in producing content, but also in re-educating myself in the subjects that I want to cover online. So that kind of made me feel good about realizing, well, I can still do it. I can still work my ass off and become an expert at something else that I'm not yet at. But also I look back at my journey and I remembered initially the martial arts journey channel. I started as an Aikido expert and I was making tutorials and I did a great job. I was presenting it in a way like no one else did at the day. I was more human, I was more casual because in Aikido, martial arts used to do, people are very kind of strict and to be strict and very formal and I was just casual, I was caring and I think people took it up and also I started with a very specific realm which I was very good at. That's Ukemi, safe falling. I was very good at breaking it down and demonstrating it better than most Aikido instructors I guess at the time and I was putting it out online and I was lucky and that way I found a niche which is a super important subject as well. I'm not sure if I'm gonna touch that but niche is super important. Gary V talks about that too. So you choose a very specific niche and you become the best expert possible. So I did that in my martial arts journey. That's how my channel, my Aikido channel became one of the three biggest Aikido channels in the world before I dropped Aikido and moved on to the next thing. But, so I resonated with that. I saw the truth in it but also I did something else. Thus the name, the journey or martial arts journey which eventually the name of the day wasn't that it eventually became that but that reflected the process very well because as soon as I dropped Aikido and I started exploring martial arts and questioning them publicly documenting my journey of rediscovering martial arts and critical thinking in martial arts. The troublesome part was that I was not an expert of anything. And so that kind of conflicted with what Gary V said. Now the funny part is Gary V in his first book, Crush It he mentions it with one sentence by saying, well, but if you're not an expert you can document your journey of becoming one. That's knowledge. And that's it. And I was like, that sentence. I was like, oh, that's what I did. And I was surprised. I was like, that's interesting. He only gave one sentence to this. Now my whole channel was based on that but then funny enough if you read the books you know what I'm talking about. In Crush It, in his second book he actually he actually says that specifically. He's like, I can't believe looking back that I only said one sentence about that because he makes a whole chapter about that that especially these days on social media, you don't have to be an expert from the get go that your journey of becoming an expert you still have to make it interesting and engaging but that can be valuable content on itself which is exactly what I did with my martial arts journey of being a no one at combat sports and eventually meeting some of the top people in the world of that subject of eventually having my first mixed martial arts fight traveling to the States and Ireland just because of that and devoting myself to training and that whole journey was fascinating and people appreciated. People saw the transformation I went through from the first time I've sparred and then me fighter and my ass got kicked to me spying again with him three years later where I actually stood my ground and that was a huge inspiration to people apparently on comments and so I did what Gary Vee only briefly mentioned in his first book and then he gave a whole chapter in crushing it and that made me reflect again and made me ask myself, well, shit maybe I don't necessarily have to be an expert from the get go to cover this subject to cover this realm that my journey thus the journey might be as valuable as well it may take longer to pick up and get people's interest but where there may be value in me documenting my path to trying to make the world better and you know my struggles and what works and what doesn't work and I trust that years later we will look back at this and be like, holy crap you know, Rokas didn't know what the fuck he's doing in the beginning but he believed himself he worked his ass off and now we have this, you know maybe this is, maybe you're watching this video years later maybe this is like 2030 and you're like, holy crap Rokas was in this spot on this weird bridge and you know, and now he's here and so you can see the whole journey which is fascinating and that's part of what I'm betting my energy on is documenting my journey of becoming an expert of the direction I want to move into but coming back to Gary Vee I appreciate that he specifically said that he introduced that subject because that encouraged my thinking again based on my experience, direct experience of creating a successful YouTube channel I knew that he's right I was an expert of a field and I was able to cover a niche and make it big and then I devoted myself to documenting my journey and that became a big thing so I know those both past work and now hearing him say that I know that that's exactly what I can do with the journey so I think those are the main lessons I learned there's so much good stuff out there go and read those books, don't hesitate just, yeah, whatever you're going to do I think it's worth reading them even if you're not going to do social media but yeah, I'm just kind of summarizing for a quick brief moment of where am I now and where are those explorations and thoughts from reading Gary Vee what I kind of came to realize is, well actually there's a couple more things and I'll just quickly mention them because they're valuable and I think our life is all about providing value to each other so one thing that I enjoyed in reinforcing again it's something I discovered myself before but hearing him say that I felt like, shit, I need to own this even more one was being authentic and I resonated with him on the level where some people try to make their videos perfect and I think it's not about that and he mentions in his first book that he doesn't think it's about that either where what matters more is that you care about what you do what matters more is that you really care about giving something valuable to people that's number one and that's something I really resonate with but then our society keeps explaining to us that oh no, it's all about money and giving value secondary you kind of first need to make sure that this is financially going to work out and only then you provide value and you don't give too much and blah blah and I like his perspective and that's kind of how I'd like to function as well where first of all, no you just give everything possible the most value can you provide everything and just give it away eventually the money will come that was my experience in the past and hearing him say that that we enforced it in me again and led me on a journey to just not worry about the financial side of course I do take care of my finances you know and I make my money still from Arto's journey and from some editing work so I make sure that I'm not starting you know but I'm not worried about making money it's not a primary focus first of all I'm all about giving value and hearing him say that he reinforcing that in various stories from the second book that if you focus all about providing value that eventually it's going to work out it was great to hear that that kind of again reinforced my way of functioning and made me go even more for this road that I'm going to and kind of led me to creating those first bigger successful videos and yeah the coming back to the casual not necessarily casualess lessness maybe it's more about just being focused more on providing value on caring and being yourself than trying to make a perfect video which I hate I don't like making perfect videos and that kind of inspired me as well with a few other things that happened in my life but that was one of the parts key parts where I realized you know I can make these one take videos and I can sit here on this weird bridge thing with you guys you know just chill by the lake and talk about life and and that's that's as good as that's even better you know you've done than making some fancy ass video in the studio scripted and polished and whatnot the main point is not that and it's good to kind of reinforce that idea yeah so I think there there was one more thing I wanted to say just I lost it somewhere in my mind so so uh but I'll just kind of summarize the whole thing and and give you some more tips if you're interested in doing youtube or whatever and I think since we're kind of ending our conversation I'm gonna slowly head back home to my parents take you through this wonderful neighborhood so yeah so uh read the book it's a great book tells a lot of truth and personally reflecting like like my final takeaways from it is work your ass off put the blinders on focus mainly on caring don't try to make things perfect and I'll probably make a specific video about that but it's a general super important idea that I that I'm just protecting from the wind super important idea that I I keep reminding myself and others is if you try to make something perfect and that's obviously you know I may be wrong on some levels but but that's my experience that if you try to make something perfect it becomes hard because you can kind of demotivate yourself thinking oh I need this and that and eventually you don't do it at all it's better just do it well enough just do an okay job but just keep on going eventually you will improve eventually you will become better and that perfection your your your your mediocracy what what's going to be like just a regular video for you with practice it will become way better than someone's perfect so you know don't try to make things perfect just just go and do things publish it don't worry about the views focus on giving value and yeah I think that's what's going to work out and and that's final words that's exactly what worked out for me or it's working out I asked myself what's the main value I can give as honestly as I can what's the unique experience that I can share that no one else can share and that that made me remember that there are some valuable stories that I never shared online in this raw format my my downfalls and my my successes which you know I worked my ass off to go through and and I discovered things which unless you go through that path you don't discover it and hopefully you know these insights will make your life better you won't have to work your ass off as much as I did to gain those same insights and yeah so so listening to GaryVee definitely inspired me to to head down that road so yeah I think this is gonna be enough if you're interested about more youtube tips and you know stuff that I realized works let me know in the comments I'll make a specific video just talking about youtube this one was dedicated more to GaryVee you know there's a chance you're watching this so so thank you a lot man I know you know that you're doing an amazing job but but thank you from the bottom of my heart as well for for doing it I hope I'll chip in my value as well as much as you do in the future and everyone else go read the book life is awesome keep grinding and uh keep questioning