I Failed…

After getting

- 16,924,626 views
- 34,008 subscribers
- 16 DMs telling me to unalive myself

I FAILED to hit my YouTube goals in 2023

Doing this taught me THREE crucial lessons that every media led brand/person must understand going into 2024…

The Backstory

I posted weekly for a month in July and had gained some momentum through shorts + the Mr Beast thing in the first half of the year

I wanted to post consistently to end the year strong… but I didn’t do that.

Why?

- I tried to do it all myself and failed to remain consistent
- business picked up… which is good!

But my personal stuff took a back burner.

But I also was really focused on a whole other goal: Vlogging the last 5 months of pregnancy leading up the birth of my son.

It’s selfish, I know. But I didn’t care tbh. I wanted to document it all for myself and for my family So I decided to make a weekly vlog and schedule them ahead of time to post daily after Dino III was born. Would be a time capsule experiment for myself as well as a fun thing to watch back with my wife while we are adjusting to this new way of living.

I had this thought of “what if I made 1 vlog a week and 1 longform video a week?”

Stupid.

2 videos a week for 5 months, while running/growing a business AND spend time with wife AND still maintaining my “life”

It was impossible

So instead I opted to just focus on the vlog. There’s definitely a part of me that wishes I had stayed focused, but I also know that 5 years from now I won’t regret it. I’ll be thankful for capturing this time.

So if you’d like to watch the vlogs, they’re on the YouTube channel!

However, here’s what I’ve learned through this experience:

1. YouTube does not need to be your personal journal It certainly CAN be… but most likely if you treat it this way, you will not succeed. For the last few months I’ve selfishly thought “what do I want to remember?” when it came to planning and filming my videos. I used my personal life as the content rather than actually making something new

2. My videos do not reflect who I really am When I look at my catalog of videos through the eyes of someone who knew nothing about me, I wouldn’t be fully understand “who is Dino and what does he stand for” I’ve just been making… I haven’t been making with a purpose or vocal goal in mind. I want to change that in 2024

3. I got scared too much this year In Jan - Feb had some huge success via shorts and exploded my subscriber growth from 800 subs to 34K!! And then I had a viral moment where Mr Beasts entire fandom started a witch hunt for me for a week or two Yet it didn’t make me more confident in what I was posting. It actually made me more fearful with what I was posting: - will this get the same amount of views?

- is this “good”?
- am I revealing private information and will people be able to find my physical location?
- will people start a witch hunt for this?
- does this match my brand?

The list goes on… In 2024, I don’t want to be scared. I want to be confident in what I make. And the only way to be confident is to prepare well, be relentless, and learn from every moment.

I’m not going for subscriber growth in 2024… I just want to become the person who posts high quality videos for a specific audience consistently.

That’s it.

Looking forward to this next year and I hope you are too!