TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

Why Chasing Views Can Break You

• vidIQ • Season 6 • Episode 16

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We explore how to grow a cooking channel without losing your soul to the algorithm, from first uploads and analytics to revenue, burnout, and rebuilding a sustainable creative practice. Brian shares hard-won lessons on craft, pacing, sponsorships, and setting boundaries.

• defining the Venn diagram of values, audience, and algorithm
• who the channel serves and why deep testing matters
• switching from restaurants to consulting to YouTube
• early gardening detour and pivot to food content
• voiceover structure and cinematic b-roll choices
• analytics that shape pacing and openings
• resisting views-maxing and stunt food trends
• production realities of recipe videos and redos
• staircase growth model and reading signals
• when to quit a job and why savings matter
• brand deals, agents, and scaling output
• grief, burnout, and nervous system costs
• rebuilding boundaries and redefining success
• service-first strategy and durable creator business

If you're new here, of course, you can hit that subscribe button on YouTube


Values Versus Algorithm

SPEAKER_04

There's this Venn diagram always of what the algorithm wants and what I want to make. And you have to find something that's in the middle. How much do I want to optimize for what the algorithm wants? Or do I want to concentrate on cultivating an audience that wants the same things that I want or are more in alignment with my values?

Brian’s Channel And Audience

SPEAKER_01

Welcome back to the Only Podcast is searching the internet for some of the most interesting creators, and I'm so happy to know that I am successful once again. I'm Travis, and welcome to the Vidai Goo Podcast. I have an incredible guest today. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Brian is here with me to talk about YouTube in the food space, something that I'm actually really passionate about because I love food, as everyone knows. Uh, Brian, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. And today we're going to talk a little bit about his journey and the things that he's learned along the way on YouTube. If you're new here, of course, you can hit that subscribe button on YouTube. If you're listening to the audio podcast, we got all types of links in the show notes. So we want to make sure you are ready. Just grab a seat. Hey, it might even be a good idea to grab a pencil and paper and get ready to take some notes as we talk to Brian. Brian, um, I want to talk to you first about your channel. Just give people who are aren't maybe familiar with you just like a little uh elevator pitch about what your channel's about.

From Restaurant Chef To Consultant

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's a cooking channel, first and foremost. And uh the audience is home cooks, but I would say they lean towards enthusiast home cooks. The recipes we do are, I wouldn't say they're they're not big, like they're not not beginner-friendly, but we go into pretty uh, we go into a lot of detail explaining the process. And we do a lot of research on the recipes to make sure that they're as good as possible, a lot of testing, and I do my best to communicate those at a high level. But I mean, if beginners can get something out of it. If you're more intermediate advanced cook, you can get something out of it. And even if you're like cooked professionally, I think you can see the techniques and learn something.

SPEAKER_01

So let's talk about before you uploaded your first YouTube video, what were you doing professionally?

SPEAKER_04

I was in a bit of a career transition. I was working as a consultant chef for a large food sales company. My job was basically to go into the accounts that bought food from the food service provider and uh was like an asset for them. So I was wasn't really on the sales side. I mean, I was on the sales team technically, but I was an asset for the salespeople to be like, hey, if you buy food from us, this guy who knows what he's doing can come in and help you rewrite your menu so that it can be more profitable. He can help set up food cost systems for you, kind of just like the stuff that an executive chef does to keep a restaurant running. Most restaurants don't have anything like that. They don't know what their food cost is. They don't know really how to make money on food, they don't know how to merchandise food on a menu. So I I transitioned from being a restaurant chef to doing this because it paid a lot more money and was way easier. I was just super, super burnt out as a restaurant chef and I needed a break, and this opportunity came along and it ended up being a good place to be for a couple years. And then as I started getting into YouTube, it was an easy-ish job, so I had a lot of free time to put extra time towards learning about how to become a YouTuber.

SPEAKER_01

How long were you doing restaurant work before you were doing kind of this other job?

SPEAKER_04

Probably like 11 years, 10 years, somewhere in there. I started cooking professionally around the time I was like 21, 22, and uh transitioned to being out of the restaurant space maybe around like 33 or 34.

SPEAKER_01

So is it something that um you would say you were passionate about at uh at a young age, or was it something that was like, I'm actually pretty good at this. Let me just let me just see if I can get it to the restaurant business.

A Music Dream Detours Into Kitchens

Discovering YouTube As A Career

SPEAKER_04

It was I went to college to be a recording engineer. Music was like my entire life growing up in high school through college, and it's like a a dying field. I mean, even in the year 2006, 2007, it was a dying field. And the only people who get paid money to do recording are they live in LA. Maybe a couple people in New York here and there, but it wasn't like a trade that you could really get into. But at the time, all these colleges were offering degrees that like really were semi-meaningless, like here, pay us 100 grand and here's like a certificate. But it's like audio arts and acoustics is not a real job. I mean, for some people it is, but the people who are doing it didn't go to college. They just happened to be like living in LA around musicians and then started working at a studio and learned how to do it. Uh, kind of like you do YouTube, like you don't go to college to be a YouTuber. You just pick up the skills you need along the way to make the thing work. Um, anyway, so I went to college for that. Wasn't once I graduated, it wasn't working out, and immediately was like, I gotta figure something out. I was working as a bank teller, and that was not very fun. But uh, and then I went to, I just had like a experience in a restaurant one night. A friend of mine, I didn't know anything about food really. And a friend of mine took me to this restaurant in Chicago called Avek, and it's like a casual Mediterranean style restaurant. I didn't even know cool restaurants were a thing at that time in my life. You know, like I was making$19,000 a year as a bank teller, and so like I I ate at Taco Bell. It was like my, you know what I mean? Like Taco Bell and like the Thai restaurant and Mexican food around the corner from my house. That was it. Anyway, so I had this transformative experience. I was like, oh, restaurants are cool, food is cool. All these cooks were behind the line. It was an open concept, and they just looked like they're having the best time ever. And I was like, oh, like I want to do that. So I like instantly changed my whole life plan from becoming a recording engineer professionally to wanting to be a cook. So I like uh came up with this scheme basically to go from being a bank teller to being a restaurant cook. And it involved me being a bus boy at a restaurant to earn money and then working for free as a stagiaire in the kitchen for three or four days a week. And I did that for a long time and eventually got some good names on my resume, and that's how I got started in the business.

SPEAKER_01

That's interesting. So weirdly, um, I don't think I've ever said this on this show before. I actually went to school for a music and video business. Um, I was gonna I wanted to be an uh audio producer, so it's funny that we kind of had that in common. Um so let me ask you about before you up still before you uploaded your first YouTube video, um, how did it come on your radar that like this was a possibility of something that you could do? Like were you watching someone else on YouTube? Were you inspired by anybody? Like, what was that journey like?

Pivot From Gardening Videos To Cooking

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I was into YouTube since 2010, 2011, just watching it religiously. And for me, it was a learning platform. I've always been the type of person that's like, if I'm into something, I'm gonna learn as much as I possibly can. I get like obsessive about it. And like YouTube is a good example of that happening in my life. But so I would just use YouTube to learn stuff, whether it was like gardening or new cooking techniques, and I would just be on there constantly. And I and eventually over the years, you're like, oh, there's like there's people out there who do this as their job. But back in 2013, 2014, you didn't really understand it. You just what consumed the content. This is way, way before any sort of terms of creator economy existed. You're just like, I watch these people, it seems like they make content on a regular basis. And then around 2018, 2019, I started watching some travel YouTube channels, and they seemed to be doing it full-time, and they were taking it like this was the transitional period of YouTube becoming more professionalized. And I was like, oh, like I could do this. And I was always kind of racking my brain for what my YouTube channel would look like. It never really occurred to me that I would do a cooking channel. I thought maybe I, oh, maybe I love to travel. I could do a travel channel like some of these other people. But uh, it never occurred to me that I could do like a cooking channel, just because at the time in 2018 YouTube, there was very little uh like cooking shows on YouTube. There was like Chef John from Food Wishes, and I think binging with Babish maybe was getting started around that time, but there wasn't a ton. And I was, and I didn't, as somebody who like lived and breathed cooking professionally, at that point in my career, I'd been doing it for 10 years. I just wasn't that interested in consuming food content anymore. I was wanted to learn about other things because I was spending 70 hours a week doing food. Um yeah, so it was around that time that I was like, oh man, people can really do this. And I was just kind of running the program in the back of my mind, like, what would that look like for me? And then when 2020 came around, I got furloughed from my consulting job. And then it was just like, well, let's go. Now's the time to try something.

SPEAKER_01

And is it because you were so good at cooking that you did that? Because I guess in a way, it this is the thing I've talked to recently, what I call blue-collar uh YouTubers, where they took their full-time job and made it into a successful YouTube channel. I've done a couple of those interviews recently. Um, so I'm I'm really excited, but probably by the time this goes live, most of those would have been live as well. And that's really cool. But most of those people um weren't burnt out in their job by the time they did it. I'm not saying you were, but you were also talking about you were doing it for seven hours. I definitely was. I definitely was. So was there like a moment where you're like, I gotta do this just because I'm good at it and you know, I'd rather do something else? Or or why did you choose cooking if you were kind of like, you know, it's just my job?

Cinematic Food And Visual Standards

The Hidden Difficulty Of Cooking Content

SPEAKER_04

Well, I was burnt out on restaurants. I wasn't necessarily burnt out on cooking, which is a little bit different. Okay. And the thing that I always liked about restaurants was, or like getting, you know, when you you started as a cook, you have no input into the creative process of developing a dish. But the place I always wanted to get to was actually developing food. And that means picking, having a vision for what you want to make, and then sort of iterating on process to make it the best it could possibly be. Like I've always had a passion for that. And the last restaurant I worked at before I transitioned to being a consultant was a casual cafe, bread bakery, pizza restaurant. So there were all these opportunities to like iterate on classics, which is I I just loved that. Like, what's what's the best pastrami sandwich you could make? And like, I don't know, I've always just felt like it was cool to polish the classics or what like what really what is the what is the crystal definite, the crystallized version of a pepperoni pizza, you know, and trying to ask those questions. So that was the type of the work that I felt the most passionate about, but restaurant work is mostly not that. It's mostly the dishwasher didn't show up, or we're getting our teeth kicked in during service, and all of the prep that we made today got wiped out, and now we have to stay late after service to get projects set up for tomorrow so that we can rebuild all the stations for service tomorrow. And it's the slog and it's a lot of personnel problems, especially in a small labor market like St. Louis, where the talent pool is like one fiftieth of what it is in Chicago. You're just constantly stressed because you don't have the humans you need to help you do the project of restaurant. So that was what I was burnt out on. I was still very passionate about recipe development. And so there's a lot of meat on that bone.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So then you went ahead and started uh the channel. Do you remember much about the first time you shot a video, like what that experience was like and like the setup, like how much research did you do, or did you just grab your phone and record what you were doing? Like what was the process there?

Learning Through Analytics And Retention

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So the first two YouTube videos I ever made were actually about gardening. Cause at that time in my life, gardening was like my center of learning. Um, yeah, food had become just kind of the background of my life. And I think most people who get really far along something that they're like a creative endeavor that they've been doing for a long time, you look to other places to sort of restore the creativity bucket just because you can't be that fused. You can't have 60 hours, 70 hours of your life be one thing and then go have fun with it on the weekend. It just doesn't feel restorative. So I was like hyper into vegetable gardening. Um, shout out to like MI Gardener. He was, and uh that guy, Kevin, from um, what's the name of that gardening channel? Kevin Ispirito, Epic Gardening. Those guys have been at it for a long time. I was those were channels that I was watching back in like 2017, 2018 to like really learn about the hobby. And I was like, I want to do what those guys do. I want to make gardening content. And so the first two videos I made were about vegetable gardening, and they were just fire up the iPhone, do what I think those guys are doing, which instantly you realize that what they're doing is a lot more thought through than what I was doing. So you're like, it was a bit humbling because you're like, oh sh, this is what they're doing is real. And I just like instantly you're like, oh my god, there's so much more to this. Yeah. But then you get addicted. You're like, I want to make a better one. But we pivoted away from the gardening quickly because the food food was something that I can it and it has been for a long time, something that I can just speak about with authority without much effort, because I have so much experience with it. So I was like, I don't think I have the gardening experience to really continue to make videos. Like I know stuff, but I don't think I can, and I don't have the interpenetrative knowledge of it where I can teach at a deep level. I would just be regurgitating what I've heard other people say. But when it comes to cooking, I have all of my own knowledge or, you know, like years and years of experience to synthesize into new information that I can tell people. So it's just much easier when the expertise side is figured out. Uh, it's easier to get into YouTube, at least for me it was, because you have to put in so much effort into learning how to make videos, it'd be very hard to continue to learn the thing you're going to teach people while also trying to learn how to make competitive videos on YouTube. Two, you know, you really can't have two of those things going on at the same time. Or at least for me, like my personality type, I can't do that.

The Algorithm–Values Venn Diagram

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And when you started, um, it was still pretty competitive. Well, I mean, there were still a good number of pretty high-end uh food channels. And one of the things that I recognize about a lot of food channels is the like the cinematography is usually pretty good. Because you need to make the food look good, right? And so are thumbnails, like all these things that uh going into YouTube you may not even understand. Um did you kind of figure that out early, or were you always like, yeah, I mean, I think I can make this look good because you've kind of done it professionally for companies before.

Avoiding View-Maxing Traps

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I had some food styling expertise, like how to, I mean, like, yeah, I I I don't want to say this the wrong way, but like I have enough cooking skill that like the thing that I make is probably going to look better than something that a home cook makes, just like from a technical perspective, it's going to be more cohesive, less sloppy. So I had that advantage. You know, there's other food YouTubers who have been successful who are just home cooks. And the, you know, the differentiating factor, differentiating factor between success and failure is not beauty of food, but for me, it's always been really important. And it and it was just like kind of the a natural emergent feature of the way that I cook is that the food tends to look a little bit more composed than you know, somebody who hasn't had to put it on a plate 10,000 times in their life. Um yeah, but I I was always attracted to the the videos that looked prettier as well. Um like binging with Babish is a food channel that I think you know the videos looked pretty nice. And there was another person who was making cook, like Joshua Weissman, whose channel has gone on to be a bit of a different thing than a cooking channel at this point. But at the time, his videos and my videos were relatively similar, and his looked pretty, I guess, cinematic. Meaning just that he has like shallow depth of field and stuff and trying to make things look pretty. And I was like, Yeah, I think I want to make it my videos look like that too.

SPEAKER_01

And what what part of that process, whether it be on camera, editing, shooting, or whatever, was the most difficult for you to kind of uh master? Uh that's a good question.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I'll just say this all of it is hard.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, it's true. You're very it's very true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Filming Real Recipes And Redos

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. That that's something that I think most people don't understand because the content, when it's made well, it shouldn't, you shouldn't know that it was hard to make. But damn, it's hard. All of it is hard, dude. And the thing that's hard specifically about cooking YouTube is that uh you're making a thing in real life, and it's very obvious if it was a success or failure. Like you're holding up a like a um I don't know how to say it, but if you're just making like a video essay, you know, there's a there's a talking head performance and b-roll. Like the with cooking, like the proof of the success of what you're teaching is there visually at the end of the video. Like, did I make the thing right? So there's this pressure or like uh onus on you as the video creator, the cooking creator. Like the result has to work. You know what I'm saying? Like, you can't just be like, here's the process, end of video. You have to be like, at the end of this, it actually checks the box of like finished complete recipe that looks the way it should. So that's just like an added layer. It's almost like some of the camera YouTubers, like their videos, they have to tell you about the camera, but they also have to look really good because they're showing the camera off. There's like an extra layer of aesthetic demand that some niches don't have.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. So would you say, so what's your what would you say that still challenges you to this day? Is there any part of it that still challenges you?

Momentum After The First Wins

SPEAKER_04

I mean, just making something valuable every single week is an incredible challenge. Um I mean, if you want to get into the nuts and bolts of what's hard about it, um figuring out how to communicate visually is always a challenge. Like do you always have to think it through, at least for me, uh to a fault, and I've actually pushed myself too far, but I really want the videos to be visually compelling. And the the way that the style has evolved is like it's this voiceover-based video where it's scripted and then there's B-roll on top of it. So that means that I have to have something compelling, a visual, uh, a compelling visual element for every second of the video, and that just takes a lot of planning. And um, you know, again, if you're doing a video essay or something, you can write a script, record the A roll of you talking to the camera, and then you can fill in the gaps later of like, well, I need a picture of or I need a clip of me opening the fridge, a clip of me driving my car, whatever. Um, and those are those are not easy to get because you have to go out of your way to film those things. But when it's food, you have to, if for example, if I'm showing a gnocchi recipe and I want to explain that you can use instant mashed potatoes instead of roasting a potato. I, you know, I can just tell you that. It's a little bit boring if I just tell you. So to show you, I have to make the whole thing with instant mashed potatoes and film that, that's like an insane amount of extra work. Um, that like a lot of channels don't do, and it's for good reason because it's a lot of work. That part is is hard. I get a lot of enjoyment out of going the extra mile and visually communicating all these details, and that might be one of the things that maybe sets our content apart from other people's who do cooking. But yeah, that that starts to wear on you after a while. You're like, damn, this is a lot. Also, just ideation, coming up with videos that are going to be competitive. That's also difficult.

When To Quit Your Day Job

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, I think that never gets easy. And actually, for content creators, if you're having problems coming up with ideas, we actually have some tools here at VidIQ. There'll be some links in the description. You can get them for free. Check them out uh in the description below. So, a question about like when you're making these foods, uh by the way, I I have your channel off to the side and I keep seeing this breakfast sandwich, and I happen to love sandwiches, and I happen to especially love breakfast sandwiches, and it's one of the greatest breakfast sandwich thumbnails I've ever seen in my life. Right now, the five effortless 15-minute breakfasts, and I'm just trying not to look at it because I haven't had breakfast yet. Um, but thinking about like your your early days, when did things start actually working for you? And were there any times where you were confused why a video did well? Because this is something that a lot of starting creators um don't get. They a lot of people think, hey, they look at your channel, you're like, oh, you got almost 2 million subscribers. It probably always worked for you, probably always had a lot of views. Like, what was your actual experience like early on?

Sponsorships, Agents, And Scaling Output

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, early on, you're just you're just getting a repetition, and the first 30, 40 videos you make, there's no strategy. You're just sort of, I need to make another video. Like the at least for me, I don't I and I think having talked to a lot of other creators, I think it's similar. The early phases are really just about learning how to make a video. The actual content side, I mean, making a video and content are deeply intermingled. They're the same thing, essentially, but there is a little bit of it, like subject matter, it just doesn't matter as much. You have to learn how to edit and like tell a story. And obviously, you have to learn how to you have to learn how to write, you have to learn how to make a thumbnail, you have to learn how to package the video with a title. There's just a lot that goes into it that is even pre-quality content. After you get to a point where you feel like you can make a video that will work on YouTube in the sense of like it's not just like a shaky, rambly iPhone video that has no structure or inherent value. Yeah, once you get past that phase, you can actually start working on, you know, having a little bit of like, I guess, more of a strategy or an approach. So maybe by like the video 30-40, we started like looking at the YouTube studio and be like, well, this got one of ten, this got 10 of 10, so what's the difference? And then you just get these signals every now and then of like, well, pizza video did well, let's try another pizza video, or people seem to be liking sourdough because it's locked down, so let's make another sourdough video. And it's really just this sort of, I'm gonna put a put out a uh like let's say a test into the YouTube algorithm and get a signal back, like, and then try and figure out slowly over time what people want. And then that kind of evolves where your content goes.

SPEAKER_01

Was any of it um, was it mostly like the numeric part of the analog, I'm sorry, of the analytics, um, say like click-through rating and stuff like that, or was it comments, or was it was it even more holistic where you're just looking at like the subject matter itself seemed to do well, and then you don't necessarily dive too much into the analytics, or do you look at the retention graph? Like what aspects of that were important for you to kind of start to uh get this thing going?

The Cost Of Growth: Burnout And Grief

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Well, I think there's two sides of it. You can you can look at the average view duration, you can look at click through rate, and those can be informative in terms of let's say. Just how you assemble a video. Okay, so average view duration, you see that a certain type of, like let's say, for example, I start a video and right away I go into a long exposition about why I'm using this type of salmon instead of getting to the process that's promised in the thumbnail, which is a finished salmon dish. Okay, well, you'll see in the average view duration that uh actually there's a huge dip. Everyone skips over this minute and a half to, okay, so that's informative. Maybe if I want to tell that story about why Sakai salmon instead of king salmon for this dish, well, let's actually chop up that information and spread it throughout the entire video and get down to business right away. So that's where the analytics are very, very helpful in designing the content itself so that you can make something that works on YouTube and you can have like a straight-ish line on the average view duration. Um and then when it comes to but that's but then when it you also have to pick an idea for a video. And that is where it gets much trickier because there's this Venn diagram always of what the algorithm wants and what I want to make. And you have to find something that's in the middle. Because a very, very bad strategy, I think for most people, is to just go based on what the algorithm wants.

SPEAKER_01

Explain that because that's really interesting that you say that. Please explain that.

Rebuilding Boundaries And Process

SPEAKER_04

Well, okay, so there's this narrative, or at least uh up until very recently, there's these very successful creators like Mr. Beast, Ryan Trahan. Um, every niche has one. You know, people they look at the analytics and they want to optimize for maximum views. So they're gonna do whatever the algorithm asks of them. And there's only a few, there's a small percentage of people that have what it takes to do that because you have to be willing to do the work of making the thing that the algorithm wants. And a lot of the time it's not something that most people would naturally want to do. Like, I made the world's biggest pizza. That's a great, you know, Nick Di Giovanni or or Joshua Weissman, they make videos like that now. They're more food than cooking, if that makes sense. It's just sort of general interest food content. And they get tons of views. And uh, but for me, that that like feels very misaligned with what my core values are, which is cooking delicious food. So you have to make a choice. How much do I want to optimize for what the algorithm wants? Or do I want to concentrate on cultivating an audience that wants the same things that I want or are more in alignment with my values? This is a very, very important point in the process of YouTube creation. You you can throw a bone to the algorithm sometimes when you feel aligned. Like, for example, like I made uh we've we've we do a few videos here and there where it feels like this is a big swing at the algorithm, but I've also wanted to make that video most of the time. Sometimes, sometimes we'll make a big algorithm video that's gonna feed a thought, might get a million views, or that's like the sort of the potential space that we're working in. And like at the end of it, I feel exhausted and burnt out, and it was a really hard video to make. And then I'm like, ah, I was just views maxing. I wasn't. So it's a it's a balance. You can't always just make it for the things you want because you have to find an audience, and that's where the algorithm comes in. But if you go too hard towards, I just want to get them, I just want to views max, it's gonna end you lead you to a place that I think is pretty bad spiritually.

The Handheld Mic Origin Story

SPEAKER_01

You're gonna be like, I what a fantastic like explanation of this. We try to talk a little bit about doing things that you like to do. This is where we see I've seen many content creators when I used to do a lot of coaching. Um, they'll make a video about something that they know is gonna get views, it gets views, but it's not their passion, they actually end up hating it. And it's like that's all their channel is anymore. It's like they've done this thing. Now uh the algorithm is like, this is what your channel is now, and that's what they can do. Um, yeah, it's such a great way of explaining that to optimize more for the audience you want, and not so much, not it's not all about views. Sometimes it's about being able to have something that you really truly love and are into. Um, let me ask a little side question. It reminds me of something you've saying earlier. Uh, when you do these videos when you are explaining something, um, especially when it comes to aspects of building um uh of something, some type like a breakfast sandwich or dinner, are you making multiple of those uh to get the shots, or are you just doing are you able to do it in one one go?

If Starting Today: Service Over Views

SPEAKER_04

It kind of depends. There's probably about 20% of the time that it doesn't work out on camera and then we have to redo it. That's yeah, that that if you want to get your battery drained very quickly, that's the number one way to do it. Yeah, especially if you're on this weekly cadence, weekly posting cadence where you're doing multi-part recipe videos and there's a brand deal with a view guarantee, and you you know, you're on a deadline, yeah, and it's not like I can just refilm the A role. Like if I I don't like the way I said something, I can just cut that section out and re-record three sentences. It's like, no, like this is a stew and we messed it up, or like the recipe wasn't dialed 10 of 10. And then when every time you go to film something like this, any weakness gets exposed. It just it if if we don't have, if I don't feel locked in on the recipe process in my mind and know that it's the truth of what leads to a great result, the whatever mistake or whatever thing I missed in my development process, it comes out 100% of the time. So that's just a way, a long way of saying that like it probably about 20, 25% of the time, we'll have to just go then redo the whole thing. And stew takes a long time to make. And you have to, and if it's an early step what you messed up, where it's like, oh, actually, we put in, you know, for some reason in the recipe development process, the amount of flour that we use to thicken this was double, or this happens a lot. And it just ends up working out because when you're not filming it, you're kind of using all of your own internalized kitchen knowledge to make it work. And you're doing these things where you're like, oh, I'm gonna cook it a little bit longer, and you don't realize that the longer you cook the roux, the less thickening power it has, but you're subconsciously making it right, if that makes sense. And then you're like, when you go to cook it very prescriptively on camera, step one, step two, step three, well, it's you cook it a little bit differently because that's how you laid it. And whatever there's a long-winded way of saying that, oh now all the footage that we got from the roux on is actually wrong. So we have to go back, and that is stressful.

Closing And Where To Find Brian

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I can imagine. Um, when you were kind of, I don't want to say cooking. I'm like, I when you're doing well, you know, they say now nowadays the kids say we are cooking, you know. You're when you were cooking on your channel, things started going well. What was like the what was happening? Were you doing a specific type of content that started picking up? Do you remember when things started really catching on and what that was like?

SPEAKER_04

I think this happens with most creators is that you know, maybe around 50 to 100 videos in that range. You'll you'll have if you're the type of person that can take the feedback from the algorithm and you're trying to get in this improvement curve where the next video is better than the last video, in some small way, in every way you you're gonna try like, oh, I'm gonna be more deliberate about my titling, or I'm gonna try and edit this a little bit tighter, or have a better idea. If you do that enough times, somewhere in that 50 to 100 range, you're gonna get a video that has a high return, outsized. And you're like, well, what is it about that? Can I can I try and replicate that? And the answer is probably no. Like some YouTube advice would be like, just make that video again. And that's actually really bad advice, I think. Um I mean, you you can make videos related to it, but I've been told by YouTube consultants, like, yeah, just like whatever that video was, just literally repeat it. Maybe title it differently, just make that video again. And it's like, that's fine. I think it's not the worst advice, but it's not to me, it wasn't it wouldn't be exciting to make the same thing again. And a lot of people who are gonna get served that video have already seen the first one, and it just didn't feel very fulfilling, whatever it sidetracked, but it's it's it's like, okay, at least people are here now. So let's say I was averaging three, four thousand views a video, and now all of a sudden this video gets 50,000 views. Well, there's just more people are gonna get served the older videos, they're gonna get served my newer videos, and then it just kind of ratchets up the momentum a little bit. And then another few weeks later, you'll get a video that is has outsized returns. And it's kind of just like step by step. And I think that's actually the best way to grow, is not getting a viral video early on, because it gives you all of this signal to go all in on one thing, and it also narrows your focus and it cuts off your learning iteration time. You need to make a lot of bad videos, you need to make a wide spectrum of video types to figure out what feels good for you, what's sustainable for you, what product do you want to make, instead of just being like my tenth video went big and now I just have to make videos that way, and it you haven't really figured it out yet. So you're gonna make something that is very suboptimal in terms of like the production style, how you edit it, how you package it, and you're gonna be scratching your head like, why didn't that one work? Why didn't that one work?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So when when you were um let's say you, I guess, how long into it were you before you quit your job? Maybe like 14 months. Wow, it's actually very fast. That's actually super fast. But okay, so we're we're in that part of your your content creation uh portion. What why did you quit your first your full-time job? Um, was it because you just had it was too successful? Some people I've talked to, it's been a couple things. Number one, it's the money outpaces what they were making or the amount of time was going away. Like, explain that process for you and your advice for creators who are actually doing well. Like, when do you take the step away from something that is, quote, more stable? Because YouTube is all over the place, as we know. Um, and what was your your journey through that?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Now that I'm thinking back to it, it was probably like 16 months. I started the channel in March of 2020 and I quit my job in September of 2021. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So why um can you can you ask the question again real quick? I just want to make sure I answer it properly.

SPEAKER_01

Um, it's twofold. Number one, I want to hear about your journey of of quitting. Like, why did you quit? Where were you, like, were you making as much money uh on the YouTube channel as as um your regular job? Was it that it was too busy? And then your advice, knowing what you know now, what would you tell a person? Like, where is the jumping off point? Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So I switched over to YouTube when I was at could make like 1.5 times my job.

SPEAKER_01

I like that. Okay.

SPEAKER_04

I it's different for everybody, but at that time I had a little bit of money saved too. This is a huge one. Um, like I could have stayed afloat financially for a year or so if if like I made no money on YouTube and I had to go crawling back to my job. I wouldn't have been, it wasn't paycheck to paycheck on the YouTube side. Yeah. Um, so uh yeah, I was getting paid decently well at the job I had. It was the highest paid job I had ever had. But the thing about YouTube is especially back then, it things things grow quickly. So I went from not monetized to making$5k a month on AdSense in six months or less, you know. Cooking, cooking specifically, the window of time in which I started, there was kind of uh I lucked out a little bit because people were in lockdown. And once you get enough of a back catalog to get the algorithmic recommendation pinball effect happening where people can have longer session times with if you if you know you start to have 50, 60 videos, well, you have four videos that are actually good. And those videos start getting recommended, and then they have these longer session times, and then more impressions go up, and you're making continuing to learn how to make good videos. So that's really when things start to kind of accelerate. And it can go quickly, especially if you have one or two videos go real big. You like we got well, there was a couple of times where we had these surges of 30,000, 40,000 subscribers in a two-week period. I don't know if that happens now. Back then it was common, like you could see it happening to certain people. Like, oh, that is when they really got picked up by the algorithm. It's almost like you needed to prove yourself by making a bunch of shitty videos for a year and then you got your shot. And if you had good enough content when you got your shot, you could you could sort of like build something off of that. Anyway, so I was, you know, I I around the time you start making, let's say, serious money, you know,$5,000 a month is a is a big number for some people, for other people, it's nothing. It kind of depends on how much your business costs to run, what your cost of living is, where you live, all that stuff. But for me, I would consider$5,000 like pretty significant. That's getting close to like a salary for most people. Um, the other thing that starts happening is that like the viewership that coincides with that amount of AdSense money attracts brand deal sponsors. It's almost like it happens at the same time. So people, you start getting in the 30,000, 40,000 uh view range, then all of a sudden, tons of people reach out to you, agents and brands and stuff, and you take all these meetings about what does it even look like to have sponsored deals on my channel. And all of a sudden, the money gets much more real quickly because sponsorships generally cost per view is quite a bit higher than YouTube AdSense. And that was when I was like, oh, okay. I got in touch with the with my current agent that way back in 2021. He was one of the first people that reached out to me. And he was like, if the videos can get to this point of performance on average, then I can easily sell brand deals at this point. And if you put a brand deal in every video, it's like, well, there's a really clear path to double or triple my current salary. I just have to kind of and and at that time, it was a very clear growth trend in it on our on our channel, and it was very um steady, like a month over month. So I was like, okay. And I and I was like, I have some money saved. I don't love my current job. YouTube is fun and I'm really excited about it. And the return seems high. It wasn't like I'm just doing this because I can make right now this month 1.5. It's like that would be 1.5 times my salary would be the work, the a bad month. That would be sort of like the at the yeah, at that point, the ad sense could have carried me. And the brand deals were this 2, 3, 4x my current salary upside. And I was like, okay, this is worth it. It was gonna be a hard road because to hit these numbers, I was gonna have to make two videos a week. And at that point, I was only making one video a week. Um, so I quit my job and was like instantly like I'm gonna make two videos a week, brand deal in every video. We're making eight to nine videos a month, and I did that for like two years, and it was very hard two years.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I can imagine. Um, which brings us to like today. Um you know, I'm looking at your channel now, and it's been a couple months since you've uploaded. I'm curious about that. What is that all about?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I so doing it the way I did, yeah, which was um if I'm being totally honest, the you know, the the the metric I was maximizing for from 2021 until 2025 basically was money. YouTube, you know, the the story I was telling myself was YouTube is very unstable. I want to make as much money as I possibly can, yeah, and uh to make myself financially secure so that I have the option to quit if I want to in one day, a few years down the line, or like let's say uh move into employment that is more uh like up to me. Right. Let's say.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I want more autonomy, more financial freedom. So that was the goal was like I want to save all this money that I could potentially make um as quickly as possible so that I could have more freedom.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

But I'm the you know, working as a line cook all those years taught me to be like a S-tier grinder. Um yeah, I if I had the ability to push myself to work harder and longer than most people I've ever met. And so that's how I was able to do two videos a week, just me and my wife. And, you know, the video that the video style we make is very labor intensive. It's not loosey-goosey, it's heavily scripted, heavily researched, tons of clips and edited tightly. There's a brand deal, so there's extra work there. Um, and doing that, grinding like that led me to, you know, epic levels of burnout. Um, and I've talked about this on my channel a little bit, but my I I went through a hard time at the end of uh 2022 into 2023, where my mom passed away, my grandpa passed away, my one of my lifelong best friends, they all passed away in like a five or six month period. And on top of the YouTube stress, this was just sort of like a uh mental breakdown type situation where like I just didn't have the energy to do the two videos a week anymore. And so I hired somebody to help me do some of the work I have who still works for us now, and um yeah, made things easier, but I've never really gotten back to the point where I feel full energy like I was in 2020, 21, 22, 23, and going into 2023. Um it is it's just been hard for me to get back to where I feel like I have good balance in my life because I'm always this type of person that's going to um with the incentives of YouTube and the way that it's gamified, it it really takes over my personality. And like I have to I swing back back and forth through these extremes of we're doing YouTube optimized, we're doing long title ideation sessions and these big, big videos that are aimed at maximizing views on the algorithm. And then I crash out and have to go back to being like, well, what is like what can what am I capable of and what feels good? And you kind of got to break it down. And we're in a bit of a deconstruction phase now to get back to what feels good. Because at the end of the year, last year, you know, we had a lot of big brand deals that were there's a lot of pressure to get a certain number of views and stuff. So you do anything it takes, and it just leads to a bad outcome. And that, you know, holding that type of pressure and stress for many years at a time just french fries your nervous system. And I'm at a point now where like any work stress leads me to feeling like tons of fatigue and and stuff. So I'm I'm having to rebuild my relationship with it because I still love it. I still love recipe development, I love the process of making videos, but I've I've been a really bad boss to myself several times in this process. So that's like a huge piece of advice I would give to people is like, if you're the type of person that's very type A, very driven, you really have to be careful and you have to put boundaries on the work because there is no one who will tell you to stop. And the money upside is high if you can work hard. The thing is that it's like only certain creators are really able to scale their creative work. This is not like a regular business. A lot of people will tell you that it is this is a freelance business where 100% of the money is tied to your labor. So when you work, you make money. When you don't work, you don't make money. And if you're the type of person who can push themselves to work a lot, you can make a lot of money. But that is like antithetical to the human condition. Like at a core level, this is won't sustain you, and you have to be really careful. So you have to be smart about designing a business that makes you enough money, but you can't fall into the trap of like following the incentives of more views, more money to like the logical conclusion, which is total burnout.

SPEAKER_01

I love that you were able to talk about that. Because I've talked about burnout on this channel multiple times, but I think the way that you worded it and with the experience you've had really shows that the thing that I think a lot of new creators look at a channel like yours is, oh, he's made it, he's done. Oh, you just got to keep making the videos and it'll be fine. And he's he's probably happy. Oh, it's great. No, you figured it out. Oh, you get tons of views, you're great. I'm sure you have no problems. No, it actually gets harder. And um, it is interesting to to hear it from your perspective and being so open about it. I love that. I thank you for that. It's incredible. Um, and it is very important. Uh, one quick thing I do want to ask you before we uh start to wrap this up. Uh, you start your videos in a really cool way where you're holding a microphone that should not be held. It's not a microphone, which I love. How did that come uh to be? Like, where did that come from?

SPEAKER_04

Well, it's I I like I have this audio background, so I want the audio and the videos to be good. And I've messed around with using a lavalier for the intro. It's very, very echoey. And I never and I I just kind of was like, hey, this is the best microphone I have. It sounds the best, so I'll just use that. I used to put it on the table in front of me, like I was talking into it because I didn't have a microphone stand. And then I was like, well, that doesn't sound very good. This is a dynamic microphone, so it actually like you have to get kind of close to it. Yeah. So I just started holding it. And honestly, like more people like to me, it never really seemed that weird because every podcaster in the I think you're using a microphone right now.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Every podcaster in the world uses it. I just people are like, they like in like every video, there's comments of people are like, love the video, but the microphone really annoyed me.

SPEAKER_00

But it's the best part. I think it's actually really funny. When I first saw it, I'm like, what's happening right now? That's so good. It's the opposite of the tray hand tiny bit. Yeah, that's what I liked about it.

SPEAKER_01

It's like this whole uh let's be subversive about it. Uh, all right. Last question I ask every creator when I come on, and uh, I get some really interesting answers. If you had to start a new YouTube channel now that was not in your niche, um, and you don't you can't use the resources you already have, what would your channel be and what would like your first three videos be?

SPEAKER_04

Ooh, this is a difficult question because I feel like YouTube is in a is in a hard place right now. It's it's it's more competitive. I don't want this to be downer for people. But it's more competitive than it's ever been. It just has continued to get harder and harder to get views because uh you're deal you're you're competing with Netflix and every streaming platform, and there's games on YouTube now. Live streaming has become a big part of what shows up in the algorithm. And when I started, that was not the case. Um, the streaming platforms were creating their own content, but they weren't flooding the zone like they are now. Back then, it was like every every streamer had a couple of series, and that was really it. It was mostly Hollywood content and then like maybe a couple of native things. And so you're going into an environment now where you're just not going to see the returns on views that you did three or four years ago. Like for I'll use Bridging with Babish for an example. Early on, when I first started in 2020, Bidging with Babish was getting three to five million views on a regular video that we would say now we would look at it and be like, there's no way that video would perform. And it just wouldn't because of the title, the subject matter. Like if you look at his channel now to get the views, he has to make videos like the 10 levels of Mac and Cheese, which we actually almost made that exact same video. I reached out to him the week that he posted. It was like, we're literally working on this video. I can't publish it now. Um, you have to go with these big idea-based videos that are really tight and really well thought out from start to finish to get the views. Back then it was just like, you're the only game in town. You're not competing against a hundred thousand other types of content and live streaming and games and whatever, and vertical video, that's the biggest one. Vertical video has changed things dramatically. So, what I would say to people is focus on building an audience and a business rather than building a high view YouTube channel. Um, so if I personally was going to start another channel today, I would find another thing that I know a lot about because I I can't do entertainment content. That's just not me. I can make educational content because I'm the type of person that is a continuous learner. And so the biggest uh, let's say the biggest theme in my life over the past three years has been reading a lot of psychology, depth psychology, advanced uh psychology books, and to to help myself out through this burnout period dealing with grief from some of the loss I've had. And so I would say that I have an above-average understanding of that. So I would, I would be like, what's something I feel really passionate about that I feel like I can help and serve other people with? That would be a big piece of advice. Is if you're gonna get into YouTube, I really don't think it's a good idea to get into it to make money in the long term. Yes, you can make money, but that's getting a little bit harder than it used to be because you're competing against all these things. I think that you can, if you get into it with a serviced mindset, you're gonna go pretty far. You're gonna build a lot of trust with your audience. It's going to lead you in a place to build a business that's more service-oriented. And from the beginning, you're building something that's more sustainable. And these more service type businesses, let's say I'm selling a product to my audience instead of trying to have a brand deal where I'm selling someone else's product or I'm trying to get maximum views to make my living off of AdSense. From the beginning, I would build my business more on less views, high trust, and some kind of product, whether it's a digital product. Like I refer I think courses are possibly dead, but let's say a one-on-one type coaching business can be a good way for a lot of people to get started if you if you're willing to invest the time into building that expertise. When it comes to psychology stuff, there's certifications involved, so that's a little bit more tricky, but I that's how I would start thinking about it. And then how can I serve these people? How can I start solve their problems? Like what are the problems I had three years ago? And what where can I can I start teaching me three years ago? That's not my original idea. I've heard that from a lot of people, but it's been a helpful frame. And so that's kind of that's a long-winded way of answering it, but that's how I would start thinking about it. When I started back in 2020, it was all about views, views equals money. And to this point, that's really what my business still is. And we're in this slow process of transitioning away from that because it's not that resilient. It puts a lot of pressure on the creator. And I think that it's lower trust than if you're building a business based off of a product that you've created for your audience.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I love that. Uh what great advice. Listen, if you are more interested in finding out how to make some incredible, again, I'm still looking at this breakfast sandwich thinking, like, I'm gonna be watching this as soon as we're done this. Uh, checking out Brian's videos. There'll be a link in the description and in the show notes on the audio podcast. We thank you so much for joining us. And if you like this, you can hit that subscribe button. And we'll see y'all in the next one.