- Hey everyone, I'm Hannah,
welcome back, come on in, come on in,
today, is a very special video
because it's a video response.
If you have not been
on YouTube long enough
to know what a video
response is then I'm sorry,
but we're doing it today,
we are doing a traditional video response.
Recently Chelsea from The Financial Diet
made a video about why she's
scared of ageing on YouTube
and oh boy, did it hit so many points
of things that I'm thinking about,
that I'm scared about,
that I'm confused about,
and I just wanted to share my own thoughts
inspired by Chelsea's video.
And I'll leave the link to Chelsea's video
in the description so you can
go and watch that as well.
The Financial Diet is a
great channel by the way,
all about personal finance
and money and I love it.
So I have a lot of thoughts
and I've broken this video down
into four parts which are
the key parts that Chelsea
touches on in her video that
I also want to chat about.
The first is,
older people getting
involved in YouTube drama,
cancel culture, weighing
in with their opinion
on things that don't concern them,
and or they're not qualified to do so,
we will get into that.
The second is having some
kind of YouTube exit strategy.
The third is building a
self sustainable platform,
brand, or business.
And the fourth is 10 years from now,
what does that look like?
These are all things that
I'm thinking about right now
and I definitely have more
questions than answers,
but this is just where I'm at.
So the first section in my notes,
I called it, in all caps, you
opinion doesn't always matter.
So I personally avoid
weighing on YouTube drama
and on cancel culture at all costs.
Sometimes, I will just
linger and watch from afar,
but I very rarely say anything publicly
about what is going on.
New stuff, new information
is coming out all the time,
and I just feel like you say something,
and then 20 minutes later,
that opinion is not gonna
be relevant anymore,
or it will be the wrong take, you know.
Sometimes I also just
actively avoid reading about
the drama or the cancellation
because I'm like, how
does that even concern me
and I don't wanna waste my time learning
about something so trivial.
And I totally get that
platforms like Twitter
are literally there for you just to
give your opinion on whatever you like
and that's fine, like,
"I really liked this movie," or like,
"Oh my gosh this TV show is great,"
those kind of opinions I'm
spouting on Twitter as well.
But when it comes to drama
or more serious things,
I rarely see it as my place to comment.
But I don't know whether that,
not doing anything is
coming from a place of fear.
Chelsea talks about how as
you grow up on the internet,
we should be setting
ourselves higher standards
and building a habit of
knowing when and when not to
weigh in on some kind of
debate that is happening online
and give your hot take or not.
And when just to say that you don't know.
I tend to retweet or share things
that other people are saying
if something happens that
I feel like it makes sense
for me to weigh in on,
but I just don't know what to say,
and that happens a lot.
I'll be reading about something
that has just happened,
and I'll think I should probably
say something about this,
but I don't know, I don't
think I'm very good with words.
And so I'll often look
for something really smart
that someone else has said
and just be like, this.
That tends to be my strategy,
but I also don't know whether
that's coming from a place
of low self esteem in my
ability to word things
in a way that makes sense
and that is meaningful
and appropriate.
But I don't just retweet or share things
because I think someone may
have worded it better than me,
it might be that their voice
is actually more important
in the discussion than mine,
than a white, straight,
middle class, Western girl,
so that's also I thing that
I consider when weighing in
or not in drama, debates,
who knows whatever it is.
Of all of the things
that Chelsea talks about
in her video, this is the area
that I do actually feel
the most confident about
in terms of how I conduct myself online,
but the downside of that is
actually maybe I'm being
too cautious, sometimes.
And actually,
there are situations where I
should be saying something,
but I'm not saying anything at all.
So the second thing
that Chelsea talks about
is having an exit strategy.
Before we get into this,
I just need you to know
that I'm not going anywhere any time soon,
I still absolutely love
making YouTube videos,
but this is something that I know
I need to be thinking about now,
in terms of planning for the future.
What does like my retirement look like?
How do I build something
that actually lasts?
Am I going to be in front of the camera
at 80 years old?
At what point do I stop and move on?
But move onto what?
Last year, I went to an
event called Clamour Summit,
and MatPat and his partner,
Steph, did an amazing talk
all about having a YouTube exit strategy,
and I went and found
my notes from that talk
and I wanted to chat
through some of the things
that they identified.
So that talk was called,
"Hopping Off The
Treadmill, Exit Strategy,"
oh boy, did I need this talk.
So they identified five
different potential futures
for YouTube creators,
and for me personally,
I think only two of them applied to me.
So the first one is just run the race,
stay on the platform until you can't
or you don't have to,
and by don't have to, it means
you've earned enough money
that you're set for retirement.
You actually don't need to
work another day in your life.
Kind of like, PewDiePie and Jenna Marbles,
those two are definitely in this camp.
They're usually a solo creator,
personality based content,
and rely on Ad Sense.
The second option is pass the torch,
and this means basically
having a new host.
And this one they identified
as being really difficult to do.
We've seen it when Grace Helbig
had to start her new YouTube channel
and the Daily Grace channel
suddenly had new faces on it
and that channel, (blows raspberry), died,
and when Ray William
Johnson left his channel,
and without his face on it,
and with new hosts on it,
(blows raspberry), it died.
At least the last time I
checked those two channels,
they weren't doing so hot,
and I don't even know if content
is still being uploaded
to them, I don't know.
They said in order to do this effectively,
it has to be a really long transition,
introducing your audience
to new cast members,
new hosts.
You bring the audience
along for that journey
and are transparent along the way.
And they said, a really
good example of this
is Good Mythical Morning,
they have the Mythical Crew
and they introduce members
of the Mythical Crew
and some of them even
have their own shows now
on the GMM Channel so
they done it really well.
Also Yogscast I think
have done it really well,
because there's so many
different members of Yogscast.
The third one, and this is the
one that most applies to me,
is become a new company.
So this is about aligning
yourself with an industry,
becoming a thought leader, an expert,
in that area, and it actually means
that you are less dependent
on YouTube fame and success,
because your new company,
or whatever the industry you're in is,
is self sustaining and
functions by itself.
So for me, I'm like, what is this?
What do I do?
What is this company that is created by me
and adjacent to me, but doesn't super rely
on the numbers and being YouTube famous
in order to survive?
A really great example of someone
who has been able to do
this is Grace Beverley,
with her three or four
different companies now
that she's created.
But all of them are in
the fitness and sustainable fashion space
which is what she was making content on.
So she's done it really well,
and I'm like, how do I do this?
(laughs)
And the final two are really
not applicable to me at all,
and the first is get acquired,
so build a channel that
will then be bought
by a bigger company,
that wouldn't work in this scenario.
And the third one was IPO,
which I can't remember
what it stands for,
but it's basically when
you make your company
or your channel public
and people can buy shares.
At the time when MatPat
and Step did this talk,
they referenced that just
one channel has done this,
which is a Japanese YouTuber,
but I went and checked his channel,
and he hasn't uploaded in two years.
So I don't know what that means.
Those a bunch of
different exit strategies,
the building a company
that is self sustaining
is the one that makes
the most sense to me.
The others would be number one,
run the race, but I don't
have the YouTube fame
and the numbers for that to be possible,
and also I'm not interested in doing that.
I am interested in building
something bigger than myself,
that really excites me.
Bringing on new hosts, I'm like, maybe,
but again, that's really difficult to do,
and you need a very long transition,
but I do like the idea of having a team
that you would include
in the behind of scenes
of content that you make
and your audience gets to know them,
that I really like.
But, part three is the exit
strategy I've identified
as the one that most suits me
and Chelsea talks about
this a lot in her video,
which is building a
self sustainable brand.
The Hannah Witton brand
is not self sustainable
because it relies on me,
I am the bottleneck.
If I get ill again, then everything stops,
if I don't want to do it
anymore, everything stops,
if I get cancelled, everything stops.
Everything is about me,
and I don't want it to be all the time.
So with Chelsea, she's
built The Financial Diet,
The Financial Diet is its own brand
and it could exist without
Chelsea in front of the camera,
and it also could potentially exist
without Chelsea in it at all.
The Financial Diet is topic
based, not personality based,
so that really helps
with the passing the torch thing as well.
So my next step is to build something
that can function, sustain itself,
and earn revenue, whilst
being less reliant on me,
but not necessarily without me completely.
And I don't just mean
sustainable on a business level
in terms of the fact
that the cogs are moving
and it earns its own revenue,
but sustainable in terms of my own energy
and mental capacity.
Doing what I do is often
very draining, emotionally.
I enjoy making the more
personal content now,
I find it really fun, it
encourages breaking down of taboos,
and stigma around a lot of the
sex and relationships topics
that we cover,
but, there's only so much
that I can give emotionally,
before I burn myself out,
get bored of myself, run out of stories,
or, just feel like I've exploited myself,
it is possible for you
to exploit yourself.
The more personal videos are more popular
and tend to get the most engagement
and it's really easy to
get sucked into this cycle
of giving and giving because
that's what gets rewarded,
but that's just not sustainable for me.
And finally, 10 years from now.
Chelsea asks, what does my life look like?
What role does the internet
play in my professional life?
Is it the same as it is now?
Probably not, 10 years time,
I've been on the internet for nine years,
and so then that again,
it's gonna be so different
but it's impossible to figure out
what that actually is.
Another thing Chelsea
talks about in her video
is how there aren't that
many older role models
on the internet that give healthy examples
of what it's like to age online.
Maybe like Hank and John Green,
but even then, I feel like what they have
is unattainable for me.
But it's such a new industry,
there isn't a really broad range of people
who are 10 years ahead
of me in their career.
And Chelsea also talks about
is she gonna say anything
that she is going to
cringe about or regret?
And I worry about this constantly.
I'm mostly worrying about
what my kids will think,
my potential future kids,
and also, my potential future
children's friends will think
of my videos.
Or if they'll even care,
actually that would be great,
if they just don't care and
don't look at my videos at all,
fantastic.
But, what if they do?
That's their mum.
Am I worrying about something
I shouldn't be worried about?
I don't know.
Maybe they won't even see them,
maybe YouTube will be gone by the time
my children are old
enough to watch my videos.
And there we have it,
my video response to Chelsea's
rant about ageing on YouTube.
And you just get to hear
what is going on in my brain
and where I'm at and
what I'm worried about
and the future.
So yeah, I am actually a bit
worried about ageing online,
but only because there is
a very limited amount of
healthy, role models, of
people who done before me.
And I'm also worried
about what I'm doing now,
I know isn't going to
be sustainable forever,
and so I need to be thinking
about that right now,
and figuring out how I
do I change things now
so that in future,
I'm not panicking and
completely burned out,
we'll see.
Am I just talking about this
and not doing anything about it?
We'll also see.
Thank you for watching.
I would really interested
to hear your thoughts
on all of this in the comments,
if you have any thoughts,
if you have any words of wisdom for me.
Or you know of any healthy role models
who are on the internet
who have been to able
age gracefully online
and create something sustainable,
that would be really helpful for me.
Please like this video if you liked it
and make sure you subscribe
because I make new videos every week,
and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye.
