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9 Lessons From My Favourite YouTuber

2021-04-04 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 15:13 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Productivity and time) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: His medical past, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Lesson from a book

Ali shares nine lessons from Peter McKinnon, the YouTuber who most shaped his channel: you are the story, be your weird self, share what you love, make whatever you want, learn filming from others, mind aesthetics, an audience that knows, likes and trusts you, good work takes effort, and enjoy the journey.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: nine lessons from Peter McKinnon over four years

  • ★★★ When Ali started his YouTube channel four years ago, Peter McKinnon's channel was the one he took the most education, inspiration and entertainment from. — 00:00:00 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ As a medical student starting his channel, Ali thought his life was not interesting enough to vlog until he saw Peter McKinnon's video How to Vlog. — 00:00:36 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Peter McKinnon (quoted): Peter McKinnon says a vlogger's personality matters more than doing exciting things such as jumping out of a plane. — 00:00:36 · Peter McKinnon

00:00:38 — You are the story

  • ★★★ Peter McKinnon (quoted): Peter McKinnon tells would-be vloggers that not travelling or living in the middle of nowhere does not matter, because you are the story. — 00:01:41 · Peter McKinnon

    “you are the story”

  • ★★★ Whenever Ali has imposter syndrome about YouTube or feels he is not interesting enough to make videos about himself, he goes back to McKinnon's "you are the story" video, which makes him more okay with putting himself out there. — 00:01:41 · Peter McKinnon

00:02:12 — Be your unapologetically weird self

  • ★★ Ali says Peter McKinnon's early videos, with their intros, coffee and silly fun on camera, showed a personality-driven approach to YouTube he had not seen in photo and video tutorial channels. — 00:02:20 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Seeing McKinnon's weirdness loved by his audience made Ali more okay with being weird on camera: his first videos were stilted and formal, like a presentation, but he grew more comfortable over time. — 00:02:48 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Ali thinks presenting and exaggerating his own personality quirks, which viewers picked up on, was part of what made his channel go well in its early days. — 00:02:48

  • ★★ McKinnon's charisma on camera made Ali want to be "the Peter McKinnon of medical school". — 00:03:23 · Peter McKinnon

    “I want to be the Peter McKinnon of medical school. That was my kind of thought process.”

  • ★★ Austin Kleon (quoted): In Steal Like an Artist, which Ali calls very good, Austin Kleon says that when you first learn a craft such as YouTube, you learn by imitating other people. — 00:03:23 · Austin Kleon

  • ★★ Ali says his failure to become like Peter McKinnon is what made him evolve into the camera personality he now has. — 00:03:52 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Peter McKinnon (quoted): Peter McKinnon tells vloggers to share the things they love, because they become integral parts of the story the vlog tells. — 00:03:52 · Peter McKinnon

00:04:12 — Share what you love

  • ★★ Ali says Peter McKinnon openly shares what he loves, from his tattoos, wallet and iPhone apps to his editing techniques, coffee and camera gear, and that love comes across on camera. — 00:04:23 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ For four years Ali has tried to share unapologetically the things he loves on his channel, such as Notion, listening at double speed and his desk accessories. — 00:04:52 · Notion
  • ★★★ Coaching YouTubers in his Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Ali always helps them remember that the point of making YouTube videos is to share what you love. — 00:04:52 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali started as a medical-school YouTuber answering how to get into med school, then branched out into study content and then productivity content. — 00:05:28

00:05:32 — You don't have to be typecast

  • ★★ When Ali made a vlog about his life, viewers commented asking for study content, and he worried that, after two years of it and two five-hour Skillshare classes on study techniques, study content was all he was allowed to make. — 00:06:00
  • ★★ Peter McKinnon (quoted): Peter McKinnon says his channel holds a myriad of things that are him and that you should never put a limit on your creativity. — 00:07:17 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★★ McKinnon's video gave Ali permission to explore themes beyond productivity, such as sitting down to talk about his feelings; some viewers dislike those videos, but it is his channel and he will make what he likes. — 00:07:46 · Peter McKinnon

00:08:26 — How to film

  • ★★ Ali learned the principles of lighting from a Peter McKinnon video that turned a terrible lighting setup into a good one for less than $50, and applied them to his channel. — 00:08:32 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Ali's whole YouTube filming setup, its light, camera and microphone, is based on Peter McKinnon's earlier videos about his own setup. — 00:09:00 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Ali sees medical-school YouTubers now basing their setups on what he documents and likes the cycle: you learn from people, do the thing, and then others learn from you. — 00:09:00

00:09:39 — Aesthetics matter

  • ★★ Through a collaboration with Peter McKinnon about two years ago, Ali found Becky and Chris, which fast became one of his favourite YouTube channels for its branding and aesthetics. — 00:09:39 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★ Becky of Becky and Chris is a photographer and interior designer; Chris is an interventional radiologist working as a doctor. — 00:09:39
  • ★★ For aesthetic design inspiration Ali looks partly to Peter McKinnon but mostly to Becky and Chris, his gold standard of production value. — 00:10:11 · Peter McKinnon

00:10:23 — The power of building an audience

  • ★★★ Ali's seventh lesson: building an audience who know, like and trust you is an incredible thing. — 00:10:23
  • ★★ About a year ago, as soon as Peter McKinnon released his $500 camera bag, made with Nomatic as Ali recalls, Ali backed it on Kickstarter for about $600 to $700. — 00:10:23 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Ali felt grateful to Peter McKinnon for the chance to support him by buying from him, a goodwill towards a creator he had never felt before. — 00:10:52 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★ Since COVID Ali has not used the camera bag once, but keeps it under his bed and is glad to have it. — 00:10:52
  • ★★★ When Ali worries that people will think him a sellout for charging for a course or a Skillshare class, he recalls that he never thought Peter McKinnon a sellout for charging money. — 00:11:27 · Peter McKinnon
  • ★★ Ali says Peter McKinnon spends about half an hour shooting hundreds of shots for a single Instagram flat-lay photo and another half hour editing it. — 00:11:48 · Peter McKinnon, Instagram

00:11:53 — Good stuff takes effort

  • ★★★ Seeing the effort behind McKinnon's photos made Ali appreciate that every good thing in life takes a lot of effort. — 00:12:18
  • ★★★ Ali asks himself how he can put even more effort into his videos to make them as good as they can possibly be. — 00:12:47
  • ★★ Peter McKinnon (quoted): Peter McKinnon says sharing should be fun to make, shoot and share, and if it is not, something is not working and needs correcting. — 00:13:16 · Peter McKinnon

  • ★★★ Asked how he is so productive, Ali says the real answer is that he mostly enjoys what he does and tries to enjoy the journey in anything, from exams and medicine to YouTube videos. — 00:13:16

    “The real answer to that question is just that I enjoy what I'm doing for the most part.”

00:13:27 — Enjoy the journey

  • ★★★ A few weeks before this video Ali forgot that writing his book was supposed to be fun and let stress and pressure about expectations build up, until his housemate reminded him he was supposed to be having fun. — 00:13:56
  • ★★★ When Ali is stressed, not enjoying something or struggling with a goal, he reminds himself to have fun: the only reason he is doing it is because it is fun. — 00:14:24
  • ★★ Ali finds that when he is having fun doing something, he is more productive by default. — 00:14:24
  • ★★★ Ali says making videos is supposed to be fun, and if it stops being fun for very long, something is wrong. — 00:14:24

In the description and comments

  • ★ Answering a viewer's joke that Graham Stephan would be hurt, Ali sends huge love to Graham Stephan and says he discovered him a year after Peter McKinnon. — creator comment · Peter McKinnon

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Peter McKinnon

Also: People: Austin Kleon

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Steal Like an Artist

Organizations: Becky and Chris · Instagram · Kickstarter

Concepts: speed listening

Products: Notion · Peter McKinnon Nomatic camera bag

Only in the description or credits: Graham Stephan

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