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Why Everyone Should Start a YouTube Channel

2025-04-11 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 15:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers, His medical past, Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

Ali argues that everyone should consider starting a YouTube channel even if no one watches: the main reason is internal growth from putting your ego out where it can be judged, along with a sense of personal agency and the meta-skill of learning new things; he suggests treating the first seven videos as a free, phone-made hobby experiment.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Why start a YouTube channel even if no one watches; his own start in 2016 and 2017

  • ★★★ Ali calls his decision many years ago to start a YouTube channel the single most life-changing decision of his entire life. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali began taking YouTube seriously in 2017, when he saw a business opportunity in videos on getting into medical school that could drive sales to his course. — 00:00:29 · YouTube
  • ★ Ali traces pretty much every good thing in his life since 2017 to his YouTube channel in one way or another. (overstated) — 00:00:29 · YouTube

00:00:56 — The internal reasons: putting your ego out there and confronting the fear of judgment

  • ★★ Among the practical benefits of a YouTube channel, Ali thinks speaking on camera is very valuable, and so is learning to edit videos, since even as AI tools take over editing, having the skill lets you prompt and use them better. — 00:00:56 · YouTube
  • ★★★ The key reason to start a YouTube channel even if no one watches, Ali says, trumping all practical benefits, is the personal, emotional and spiritual growth you go through. — 00:01:26 · YouTube
  • ★★★ On an internal level, Ali says, starting a YouTube channel means taking your ego and putting it outside your body into the world, where it could be attacked, and that is scary. — 00:01:26 · YouTube
  • ★★ Unlike answering on a Zoom call or in conversation, speaking to a camera knowing the video might be published feels confronting, and Ali calls that a very good thing. — 00:01:55 · Zoom
  • ★★ Ali says personal, emotional and spiritual growth involves putting ourselves into uncomfortable situations where we can confront the internal demons that guard the gates. — 00:02:34
  • ★★ Starting a YouTube channel when no one is watching, Ali says, you will feel the fear of judgment: worrying how your face looks and what friends and work colleagues would think of the video. — 00:02:34 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali says a huge part of personal growth is recognising that no one actually cares and that, if they do, it should not affect you; all personal and spiritual growth ends in being able to transcend the ego. — 00:03:10
  • ★★ Several thousand people have taken Ali's Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and many of them have made only a handful of videos. — 00:03:45 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Many Part-Time YouTuber Academy students who did not make it as YouTubers, Ali says, are still really glad about the growth they had from making even a few videos. — 00:04:10 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

00:04:24 — Sponsor read for Epidemic Sound and its Voices feature

00:05:57 — It boosts your sense of personal agency: everything is figureoutable

  • ★★★ Another reason to start a YouTube channel even when no one is watching, Ali says, is that it gives you more of a sense of personal agency: you can take something like making videos and figure it out. — 00:05:57 · YouTube
  • ★★ Quoting the title of Marie Forleo's book Everything Is Figureoutable, Ali says we all start as kids believing that everything is figureoutable. — 00:06:24
  • ★★ As we grow older, Ali says, we internalise the belief that we cannot learn new things; when a parent, caregiver or teacher tells a child they are bad, that is how a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset forms. — 00:06:24
  • ★★ For many people, Ali says, the belief that they cannot learn new things sets in at work, once they become specialised in their job and never branch out. — 00:06:24
  • ★★★ Almost no one who takes up a hobby such as the guitar sticks with it, Ali says, because being bad at something threatens the ego of people competent in their jobs, yet you cannot learn new things without being okay with being bad at first. — 00:07:14

00:07:43 — You gain the ability to learn new things: the senior doctors and Azul

  • ★★★ Starting a YouTube channel teaches you skills, Ali says, but arguably more important is the meta-skill it teaches: the ability to learn new things. — 00:07:43 · YouTube
  • ★★ After about two years as a doctor at his local NHS hospital, senior doctors knew of Ali's YouTube channel and business, and around then his video on how much he made as a doctor versus a YouTuber went around. (hedged) — 00:07:43 · NHS, YouTube
  • ★★ Many senior doctors who encouraged Ali told him they could not learn anything else: so specialised, with the sunk cost of medical school and decades of training, they did not think they could do anything else. — 00:08:22
  • ★★★ Ali does not claim a YouTube channel will answer all the dreams of a doctor in their 40s or 50s, but says starting one from any professional background forces you to learn new skills and teaches you that you can learn new things. — 00:08:22 · YouTube
  • ★★ The average age of a Part-Time YouTuber Academy student is 36, Ali says. — 00:08:51 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Azul, a financial planner in his 50s who took the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, reinvented himself with videos walking with his phone and giving financial advice to older people; his channel blew up after about 18 months. — 00:08:51 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Though Azul's channel got no traction at first, he kept making one or two videos a week, at one point daily, because he enjoyed the process and learning new skills. — 00:09:20
  • ★★★ At whatever stage of life, Ali feels starting a YouTube channel even when no one is watching is a valuable use of time: not a hundred videos or weekly uploads or getting rich or famous, just giving it a go. — 00:09:20 · YouTube

00:09:43 — What is holding you back: video ideas, the seven video challenge, his music videos and not starting for money

  • ★ Ali hopes this video is the nudge, the permission from someone with millions of subscribers, that viewers need to make a bet on themselves. — 00:09:43
  • ★★ Learning new things, Ali says, is a key part of keeping our minds and our spirit healthy, because the spirit has needs for growth. — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Ali's 7-Video Challenge for complete beginners gives prompts for the first seven videos; you pay to join and get every penny refunded if you make the seven videos within seven months, an accountability mechanism. — 00:10:43
  • ★★★ Ali's ideas for a beginner's first videos: why I started a YouTube channel (at a given age or as an accountant), five lessons I learned in the last five years, and advice I would give my 21-year-old self. — 00:11:11 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali tells beginners not to overthink a new YouTube channel or plan it like a business aiming for a million subscribers: the goal is simply to try it out. — 00:11:11 · YouTube
  • ★★ For many people, Ali says, a YouTube channel is an instrumental goal, a means to subscribers, sponsors and money; he is glad his own did not start as a money-making scheme. — 00:11:48 · YouTube
  • ★★ Since 2010 Ali wanted to be a YouTuber making music videos, inspired by Kurt Schneider and Sam Tsui, whom he still loves. — 00:11:48 · YouTube
  • ★★★ For years Ali procrastinated every summer holiday on making a music video with his friends; in 2016 he made a handful, still on his channel, found no one watched, but learned to use a camera and to edit. — 00:12:18
  • ★★★ In mid-2017 Ali had the idea of using YouTube for lead generation for his business helping students get into medical school, and applied the video skills he had learned from his music videos. — 00:12:18 · 6med, YouTube
  • ★★ Content on making money as a YouTuber or influencer, which Ali partly blames himself for, gives people the wrong impression that the only reason to make videos is money. — 00:13:07 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali always tells creators in his content not to try to make money from YouTube: it should not be the primary goal. — 00:13:07 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali suggests treating a new YouTube channel as a hobby or art project; only if you enjoy it and can see yourself doing it for ten years is it time for a business plan, niche, target audience and value proposition. — 00:13:07 · YouTube

00:13:53 — Make your first seven videos, with a phone and free apps; sign-off

  • ★★★ Ali recommends that your first seven YouTube videos be purely for you, an experiment to see whether you like the art of making videos. — 00:13:53 · YouTube
  • ★★★ The first seven videos cost nothing, Ali says: no gear is needed beyond a phone, iMovie and DaVinci Resolve are free (CapCut too, he thinks), and you need not even edit but can upload straight from the app. — 00:13:53
  • ★★ Beginners need not make long-form videos, Ali says: YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels or TikTok work too, anything that involves creating something and putting yourself out there. — 00:13:53 · Instagram, TikTok
  • ★★ A faceless video is fine, Ali says, but it does not give the spiritual growth benefits of putting your face out there, which is really confronting. — 00:13:53
  • ★★★ Ali treated YouTube as a hobby at first with no idea it could become a multimillion-dollar business; had he known, he might not have started, overthinking even more than in the six years before he began. (hedged) — 00:14:31 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Ali recommends that anyone who has been thinking of starting a YouTube channel do it, even if no one is watching. — 00:15:07 · YouTube

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: YouTube

Also: People: Azul (youtuber, mentioned from 2024) · Kurt Schneider · Marie Forleo · Peter McKinnon · Sam Tsui

Projects: 7-Video Challenge · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Everything Is Figureoutable

Organizations: 6med · Instagram · NHS · TikTok

Concepts: growth mindset · lead generation · sunk cost fallacy · value proposition

Places: Hong Kong

Products: CapCut · DaVinci Resolve · Epidemic Sound · iMovie · YouTube Shorts · Zoom

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