Vidsummit 2025 was lovely. Many people don’t know this, but I still actively work as a doctor in Australia, whilst balancing my own channels/doing YouTube strategy/building things for CreatorSide. I’m likely taking over some clinics next year too. It’s a lot, to say the least. But I think under the right amount of pressure, your brain has to switch from a “can I do this?” mindset, to both “what do I do?” and “how do I do this?”. Doubt is no longer an option, but a movement that wastes energy. We simply need to have a rough plan for the future, then to continue moving forward as fast as we can. That’s the best we can do. My notes are extensive but, some brief insights from talking with YouTubers of all kinds and sizes: 1// Everyone’s just trying their best to figure out how to approach this messy world. - This was a recurring theme amongst many really bright, talented, and great people — who are by all means conventionally successful. - Social media tends to make us think that everyone’s got it figured out. In reality, everyone’s just trying their best. - It’s okay to have not figured things out yet. It’s sometimes frustrating, distressing, concerning, even sad. - I’ve found that “subtraction” was perhaps the most interesting commonality in helping people shift paradigms in general. - The principle is: let’s take away your current solution/approach to things. If you weren’t allowed to use it, what’s the next best thing that you could do? - Surprisingly, this “#2” solution was often the true #1 solution, just hiding because of how vastly different it is to solution #1. It involves thinking like a completely different person. - The lens with which we see the world is in its own inertia. When you take a moment to stop, breathe, and turn things upside down — it leads to some truly creative/inspiring approaches that might be more helpful. 2// Some complex problems can often have simple solutions. - For example, one approach that I never thought of before was this idea of “time arbitrage” where you have one editor in USA, and another editor in Australia. - This means that they can pass projects to each other, meaning work is being done around the clock. - Time utilisation is really, really important. When you realise some of the biggest YouTubers have turnaround times of 48-72 hours, there’s a kind of compression that cuts away a lot of fat. 3// Vibes are becoming more chill. - I think this will definitely trickle down to content and also viewer preferences, but the days of a lot of hyper-ambitiously produced content seems to be becoming a less common aspiration. - Fortunately, this is where storytelling will be extremely useful. 4// AI is a tool of the effective, but isn’t utilised well. - Regardless of AI’s controversies, I think YouTubers have in general reached a nice middle ground where they see it as a tool in their creation, but not necessarily as the be-all and end-all of it. - But, despite business pushes towards mass adoption, creators are well in-tune with viewer preferences for it. I think the smartest creators have basically given it a shot already, and seen what the audience response is. - It’s more controversial than the AI-optimistic think, but less controversial than the AI-pessimists think. There is a confusingly mixed reaction from viewers towards it. - Though, I do think some YouTubers are really taking fuller advantage of it than others. 5// Copying vs. Innovation. - Copying what’s good is a shortcut to success. I’ve always been against plagiarism, but I think it is to one’s own benefit to copy smartly. - However, the most “brilliant” things I’ve witnessed recently use the following concept: - Brilliance in a solution is not about coming to a fantastic answer, but instead, to ask the right questions in the first place. - When one copies, they *assume* a different person has themselves asked the right question in the first place, and then come to the optimal answer. - In short, concretely speaking: sometimes you need to completely ignore searching other people’s solutions. And just try something new. - Experimentation and developing unique first-hand experience is the key to achieving something that will remain unachievable by others. Copying only lets you replicate a fraction of another’s success. It’s innovation and good old fashioned first principles thinking that lets you go to the next level. - If your model of reality is accurate enough, it eventually converges to solutions made by other smart people independently, since both of your answers reflects reality itself (rather than other people’s perception of it). - More simply put: if your theory of YouTube is right, then it will result in more of the kinds of views you want. The proof is in the pudding! 6// Views are the ultimate metric…but are they? - They might be… - But a recurring and brilliant insight from multiple really smart people was, not every view is the same. - This also means that, importantly, you may need to change the emotional attachment you have with view and subscriber count. That’s extremely difficult to do as a YouTuber, since it’s sometimes the complete opposite of what we’ve been trying to accomplish for years. - It’s also difficult because our own metrics for success are not necessarily universally accepted. - But at the end of the day, you should optimise directly for the metrics of success you define. - Maybe that’s views, after all. Maybe that’s revenue, instead. Maybe it’s something creatively or personally fulfilling. - (NOTE: It’s definitely not AVD or CTR for most people though! Do NOT use this as a metric for success, unless you’re very confident about its interpretation, which usually means you’ll at least be appropriately familiar with its true correlations to view count and probably have made a lot of graphs or work with multiple YouTubers.) I hope to continue to be in the YouTube space for quite a long time yet. If you’re reading this and we had a conversation at Vidsummit, thanks for the chats as I learnt a lot from every single person I met, and I’m glad to know/meet so many great people I genuinely like. May we all continue have many interesting conversations as we collectively help to curate the future of the world’s attentional gaze, hopefully in directions that make the world a better/happier place. (Pictured: - #1 — entrance to Vidsummit - #2 — lads/legends)
