Prepping for Sunday's Automated FACELESS video took 2 FULL days, all day Thursday and Friday! And 8+ hours of recording all day Saturday and I almost quit multiple times. It was extremely difficult to get through, and I made a last minute change Friday night that would spell disaster for the recording session. I made a technical choice that came back to haunt me! When Saturday came, I got prepped, I got one of my 3 YouTube shirts lol and started to get all the browser windows set up for the big recording. I felt ready, I knew it was going to be a lot of recording, but I was ready. - Then it came.... my neighbor decided today was the day to bring in the gardeners for a huge clean up... The hedge clippers turn on right outside my window lol That killed 2 hours and really put me on edge. I was already way behind. - Then finally I got going, my gut felt horrible. I had such a long and technical video ahead of me. I have to be so careful doing these videos. - But I got going, got through the first couple videos sections (I record in short batches then pass them to my video editor). - Then I realized I made a serious error. The way I had built the automation (with a last minute change the previous night) left the automation with a serious bug. There was potential it wouldn't work at all. I spent 1.5 hours recording that session and it was a complete waste. It's like 2 PM now. - The night before I had decided to give people the option of using still images, or animated videos (built from those still images) for their Faceless video generator. But I realized the way I was building it wouldn't work, or might throw people off. - I thought about scrapping the feature all together and moving forward with only the animated videos, but I remembered 1) I already mentioned it in the intro, and two, it wouldn't be as good. And several people actually asked me if I could do it with static and animated videos so they could choose.

AND why I'm currently making my own thumbnails (despite not wanting to) 👇 Building efficient workflows and processes is obviously something I enjoy. And hiring people to help you can also be very helpful, like say your video editing and thumbnails. But trying to be too efficient and outsourcing has taught me some hard lessons. Sometimes we try to "put things on autopilot" before we even know where we're going. "Well I've created 3 YouTube videos, time to automate everything!" right? Probably not. And, a graphic designer can make cooler designs that I can, so I should hire someone from fiver? Maybe, maybe not. What I've found is that if you try and automate too much, streamline too much, you end up producing bad videos. Your focus is in the wrong place. Yes, sure, automate your flow, make it easy, but put something in place and move on. Don't keep tweaking it, or trying to make it perfect. I've created 1400+ videos on my YouTube channel (a lot of them shorts). That might seem like a brag but it's kind of embarrassing given where I'm at. I see people with 20 videos with 100K subs. So that tells you I was doing something wrong. You could spend HOURS and HOURS over a year making videos efficiently and never move the needle. Remember how you were trying to save time? Well you actually wasted it. That's what I did. When I carve out the time, really get to the core of what I'm trying to create, and make a great video the videos pays BIG TIME. And in terms of getting help on thumbnails, just because someone can make a cool design doesn't mean the thumbnail will work. There is a little magic that happens in the thumbnail, where you convey a concept, create curiosity, or articulate a point (in a simple way). And it needs to be done quickly. If the words are wrong, if the concept is off, even if it looks cool, it won't work. And imagine spending all that time on a video and no one clicks it? Ouch... I'm not the best at thumbnails but I've learned to move the needle. When you find a good thumbnail editor, it's likely that you spend time together strategizing on it together. Not just off shoring it.

Planning can be a powerful thing, sometimes. But it can also be a waste of time. Planning can also become overwhelming as well if you're stuck in planning mode. Sometimes we lack the experience to build detailed plans to achieve large goals. So if we try, that can lead us to spin our wheels and go down useless rabbit holes and todo list building. Or scanning the internet for the perfect plan. When is a plan a good thing? Well consider this, I could pretty easily give you a plan to get on video, or scale your content to 100+ pieces of content per week. It would be very detailed and would lead you right to where you need to be very quickly. A good physical trainer could give you a plan to get healthy in 90 days. Step-by-step. Those plans (if you wanted those things) would be pretty powerful and useful. Experts know all the little step you need to get there—and they can lay them out for you. But when you try and create those complex plans on your own without the experience—it's a waste of time. The better approach is to make a goal. And then to identify the next biggest roadblock in your way to achieve that goal. You don't even need to identify all the steps to the goal. Having a loose idea of the steps to that goal isn't a bad thing—but that list might change after you get over the first hump. All your planning needs to consist of each day (or the night before) is what are the 1 or 2 things I need to do today (or tomorrow) to I solve that next biggest challenge in front me. Keep your head down in that mode and devote all your energy to the challenge, not building todo lists. Imagine the clarity and focus you could give that challenge if you TAKE BACK all that mental energy from building all those lists and plans to get where you want to be. Food for thought.