Becoming a YouTuber: The Modern Form of Student Life

This headline might scare some of you.

You are thinking back to your days in high school and how much you hated it.

I hated it too.

I'm sure that's why many of you wanted to start a YouTube channel in the first place. You wanted to escape the life that being a student created.

But the student I'm going to teach you to become is a lot different from the student you are imagining.

By the end of this newsletter, you will:

1. Understand why becoming a student is necessary as a YouTuber

2. Learn how to become a student of your craft

Let's do this.

Why Your Channel Isn't Growing

The #1 reason your channel isn't growing:

You aren't trying to improve it every single day.

Many creators get caught in the misconception that they already know everything they need to know about YouTube.

So they believe that if they keep uploading every day, eventually they'll succeed.

But it's not just about pumping out content. It's about making each video better than the last.

The truth is, your 1st video will suck.

Your 100th video will suck.

That's completely normal.

This isn't something you will naturally be good at. You aren't naturally good at anything.

Is Novak Djokovic naturally the greatest tennis player of all time?

No.

He has unbelievable talent, but that would mean nothing if he hadn't practiced every single day to improve.

Is MrBeast naturally the greatest YouTuber ever?

No.

He's spent over a decade learning how to improve on every single video.

Look at his first upload:

It's taken him 840 videos to grow from where he was then to where he is now.

If he hadn't tried to improve on every video, he'd still be posting the same boring Minecraft videos to this day.

None of us would even know who MrBeast is.

Even today, after accumulating years of knowledge and having over 330M subscribers, he's still finding ways to improve his next video.

Why You Must Become a Student

You should have one goal with every upload:

Make it better than your last.

When you become a YouTuber, you become a student of your craft.

Every day, you should be learning about how to improve your videos.

You should be analysing your hooks, titles, thumbnails, ideas, and everything to do with creation.

Study bigger YouTubers. See what they are doing that you are not.

There is one key difference between the student you were in high school and the student you must become:

This time, you choose what you learn.

You have the freedom to upload whatever you want. You are in complete control.

And hopefully, the topic you've picked to create videos on excites you and makes you want to learn.

Be grateful. Nobody is forcing a textbook in front of you.

How to Improve on Every Video

The problem many creators have is they don't know how to improve.

So I'm going to give you a step-by-step process to ensure you get better on every upload:

1. Find a big YouTuber in your niche that you look up to, and find one outside your niche.

2. Each time you publish a video, compare it to one of theirs.

3. Write down three things they're doing better in the idea, packaging, and video.

   • Ideas: Are their concepts more unique or engaging?

   • Packaging: How do their thumbnails and titles draw attention?

   • Video: What editing, pacing, or storytelling techniques elevate their videos?

4. Implement what you learn into your next video.

YouTube is incredible.

It's a huge database of knowledge on how to grow.

All you've got to do is analyse that knowledge and implement what you learn.

Your Growth Will Compound

When you are improving on every video, it compounds.

Even if you are only improving by small amounts.

If each video gets 1% better, your 100th video will be 100x better than your 1st video.

Imagine where you'd be if you were improving by 10%.

Now get creating.

Only a short newsletter today.

It's fair to say Christmas has thrown off my routine (and made me put on a couple kilos).

But now I'm back.

Here's to 2025 being the best year of our lives.

See you next Sunday,

Rory