Why Is YouTube So Hard to Figure Out?

And we're on. There's a few things that have been in my mind as of late. And it's very hard to do that on YouTube on a level where you're trying to rebrand a channel and coming from talk radio where you can just rant for 30 minutes and everything's okay. YouTube does not give you that flexibility necessarily. And it stinks. I am excited about what I'm going to talk about to a degree because I want to get it off my chest. And I don't know if some people feel the same way I feel about YouTube, but it's difficult for me. Let me rewind a little bit. It's not difficult for me to help other people with YouTube. I mean, I can see what they're doing. I can see things and say, hey, do this, bop-da-bop-da-bop, bippity-bop-da-boo, fix it, and they shift. For me, it's been very difficult because I've been a very free-flowing thought person. I mean, I have notes. I prep a little bit. Most of the time, I have notes to keep me on task, but I don't really go by a script. I just go about how my point of view, whatever I'm talking about, and bring it to the table. I have been just struggling with this YouTube thing and trying to figure out, okay, what does the Jeff Adams show look like? Is it going to be a podcast? Because ideally I would like to have this be a podcast where I'm interviewing somebody of some type of interest. And while I'm going with this too, I want to tell you where I want to go with this channel, which there's so many channels out there. that you can pick from, and we're all quicking fast, is how do you gain a core audience anymore? Because typically the things I did, I had some people that followed me very thoroughly through the radio years, as I call them, or the live stream years, and it was great. But I never really was able, because everything I was doing, I jumped from one thing to something completely different. And those people that follow me, it didn't connect with them. Like, why is this guy now doing this when I know him for this? So it's been a lot of like jumping around over the years of what I do from, you know, you know, podcasting, live streaming, talk radio, from music management, owning a record label to being a showrunner, being an executive producer on a radio program, co-host. And, you know, there's similar patterns, but very all different. Because some were in front of camera, some were behind the camera. And I'm just, you know, my life is great. I've been rebuilding for the last four years. And it's just been an amazing journey. Some days good, some days bad. And today it feels, you know, feels when I'm communicating this heavy. Because, you know, I love doing YouTube. I love broadcasting. I love podcasting. I love live streaming. And trying to figure out a formula. for YouTube, you can go mad literally looking at the analytics and like, man, what do I tweak? What do I tweak? What do I tweak? You know, I'm not getting people staying with the videos, blah, blah, blah, blah. You look at things and mathematically you're always in your head when I just want to turn on the microphone and go. And I've talked about a little bit before the thing about YouTube, you have to be your own program director. You have to be a program director or executive to come in and say, hey, look, we looked at the numbers and you're not hitting the marks or losing advertisers, blah, blah, blah. And you knew how to adjust to it. You just knew like, okay, let them do that. They can be the analytical people and I will adjust things and maneuver and do what I do and take it up a notch. And granted, most of the time it all worked out great. So I'm finding myself Because I like looking at the analytics. I like looking at things. But for myself, I feel like I struggle with this because I do miss radio. I miss the free-flowing thoughts of it, of this thing that I do here. And I like it. And I like being behind a microphone. It could be me just talking to a camera. It's great. I don't have to have somebody to interact with. Of course, if I do, it's even better. Um, so I don't know how all of this is going to work out. I just know if I continue to do this and bring this back, because I have killed this Jeff Adams show things so many times over the years. Um, either I just didn't have time for it or I just shifted, you know, cause I was, I was doing something else was I wasn't able to do this. So I'm hoping, um, that in the next several weeks, I'm going to be doing some experiments here on this channel. And like most YouTubers, uh, I I'm, I'm thinking about getting back into the live format, just turning it on, have a guest. We go through some topics, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's as is, it's just going to live on and live there for however long it's going to live there. If that makes sense. Um, and trying to gain an audience again, a live audience that's difficult to do. I don't think it's going to happen overnight. Um, I had some reflections. I saw this old, uh, old studio that I had, which was amazing. It was like 2013, 14 state of the art where people were asking me like, how are you live streaming? How are you doing? You know, visual radio from, you know, in this thing. And it was the early forms of podcasting podcasting was around, but, um, but it was audio and people were implementing video and people like, how are you doing all this? And I had the technology. And now it's so easy for anybody to get on here and just to do what they love to do or talk about. And it's always the case. It's like, not everybody's going to like you. Not everybody's going to like your delivery stuff. And the thing with me I've noticed is I don't play characters anymore. I used to, I can get in and get repped for the camera, do what I needed to do. to get numbers or whatever, but I just don't play characters anymore. I don't want to. I just said, I want to be authentic. Either you like me or you don't. Of course, I am a very comedy mind always. My mind's always turning that way. Of course, if I'm with somebody, that comes out a lot more because we riff-raff off each other. But as far as like this, I just want to be who I am and not try to force something that just doesn't need to happen. So I just wanted to share that and look for things. And if you're a YouTuber and you're seeing this, uh, I would love to connect with you. I really, really would just to talk with you about frustrations. And I'm not talking about somebody that's been doing it. Well, anybody, okay. I'm not, I don't want to put anybody in a box, but anybody that's been doing this for some time. And I know consistency always wins, but I've been, I feel like I've been doing YouTube since good grief. 2007 on and off started vlogging early on with cameras and being on the road with bands and stuff. And, uh, but it just never stayed consistent with it. And then I was really frustrated when I was full-time in the music industry behind the scenes. And that's how I started the Jeff Adams show. I started this live stream radio program that I did and it kind of grew wings and brought opportunity of finances. So when I left the music industry, I had jobs, which was great. And now here I sit, role reverse, building two companies, and I have to do this on my free time. I don't get paid to do this. And I think that's a lot of it, the struggle with it, because I'm determined because I'm finding time in the evenings. It's currently, it doesn't matter what time it is, but it's like seven o'clock at night. Here I am in the studio, putting in work, trying to make this happen. And I know I'm not the only one that feels this way. It's this thing that's inside you that just doesn't go away. It's a drive. It's like you can't stop. I understand because I played basketball, and I really loved basketball early on, and pro athletes. I never went pro. It was always a dream of mine when I was a kid. Oh, I want to be a pro basketball player. That's what I'm going to do. I thought I probably could have went decent in college, but there's always someone bigger, faster, stronger, and that's always the case. But I understand pro athletes now that their mind still works. It's sharper than ever before, but their body is conditioned and it just doesn't work the way you want it to work. That's why I stopped playing basketball. People go, just play for fun. I'm like, I can't because mentally I want to do this and my body won't allow me to do it. So that drive, I get it. And maybe I'm just getting to a point now. I feel like as I'm getting older with this stuff, I'm getting better. But sometimes I look at things back and I go, this is so simplistic. It's not what I used to do. And maybe that's a good thing. Because if you overanalyze things, you make things too polished, people just can't seem to connect with it. And that's where I'm at as a YouTuber. And yeah, I'm a YouTuber now. I used to say, I'm a broadcaster, dadgummit. Don't call me a YouTuber. Or I would say, I'm a podcaster at the moment. Don't call me YouTube. Oh, I'm a live streamer. I mean, live stream, I'm not talking about going around the parks. I mean, literally putting in, you know, two and a half hours of a live stream and having conversations and running a show like a talk radio program and then morphed it, you know, Sometimes it was talk radio and we just turned on the live stream camera. So it was two different things. And we had to structure both things because talk radio go to breaks. You didn't want to lose your live stream audience. So you had to cut the commercials off and then talk in between breaks to your live stream audience. So there was a lot of things that were going on to do these things. And now I'm here. I said, just trying to figure out, this out as a YouTuber, like, well, how's this going to work? And I, I'm blessed enough to be here at blue J recording studios here in Mount door, Florida. And if you want a high end podcast, hit me up. I would love to talk to you about that. Um, produce podcasts in here, but I've had this table for a while, these mics and, uh, Jay who owns blue J recording shoes, like, Hey, why don't you come in here and set up your things, set up shop. You know, we can work out a deal. You bring business in here. We'll do it this way, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's been great, but there's this killer in me that I can't contain. I don't know what it is. Most people are shutting down at my age at 54 years old. I just turned 54 a week ago. Most people are retiring, shutting down, and thinking of other things. Here I am trying to ramp up. How can I do what I love to do again? How can I get back there? How can I get back there? And I am. There's a degree. It's just different. It's just different where I'm at. It's like, I got to do this to do this, or I got to do this to do this. And that's the world we live in now. There's just nothing stable in this world that we do as creatives. You have to sometimes do this to get this. So I'm okay with that. But I don't just do things just to do them. I want to be successful at doing them. I want to move the needle. And I need those challenges. And when, when, you know, for instance, when we were doing the Jeff Adams show, um, weekly, for instance, had a producer rolling with me. I think he still works over at the blaze, but before he, when he was working with me, I said, what's your goal? He goes, Hey, I want to work for the blaze. I want to work for Glenn Beck. And I'm like, okay, cool. And so he was honest, but he was hungry. I was hungry. And we did this story and well, actually he did it. He found the story and we ran with it. then the blaze put our show right on the website. And this is a long time ago. This is 2013, 14, where nobody had access to this type of stuff. I mean, I had it, we had visual, you know, and all the bigger media companies. And it was like probably three years of Glenn being into the blaze, uh, after he left Fox and they put our story right on the page. And I was looking at the numbers. He goes, Hey, look at the backend numbers. I know what they were. We were already at half a million, like two and a half hours after the show. And then we went to like 1.5 million views of this story. We did until Glenn could interview the guests that we had on. And I say that story, not to brag. It wasn't a political story. Well, it kind of was don't want to dive into that, but because that's what I used to do. I used to do a lot of political, um, communication, talking, what have you. And, um, but I say that because it's moving the needle. You know, you do something to move the needle. We were always moving the needle. Like, um, when we first launched the show, we were on Podomatic. We were like number 14 in comedy. I was like, wow, you know, that was just crazy to me. And now it's just so flooded. And I feel, I don't want to always say, I remember when, when we were just, uh, I remember we did this way. Cause I don't want to be one of those guys. You know, I want to always be learning. I always want to be moving and learning new things. And that's okay. And I know I'm not the best out there, but I know that I love to do this. I know I'm capable of doing this. And I know you put me in a seat and they say, hey, can you fill in four hours of live talk radio, live TV? I can do it. The TV too. I mean, I can do it. I can do it. I'm capable. I'm capable to do it in front of the camera and behind the camera. And that's where I'm at. I'm trying, I'm trying to find something that's going to work. You know, I did a story about Oasis, uh, you know, I think it was like last Friday and it's, it's, it's, it's performing well, but it's just looking at their retention that kills me. I'm just like, you know, YouTube's referring out, but people are not staying with it. I'm like, dadgummit, how do you build an audience on here? It's so frustrating because my mind still thinks talk radio. I want to do things that are free flowing. Uh, and then you want to analyze where you need a hook and like, okay, I'm not one of those YouTubers, but maybe then I think maybe I need to become that. And then I start trying to do things in that area. And it just seems bizarro to me, man. And I look at the numbers, I go, this is not me. What am I doing? Yada, yada, yada. So I don't know. YouTubers, are you out there? Can you hear me? I want to talk to you. Maybe I want to interview you. If you have a successful channel, we'll get in, you know, you could come in here or I can bring you in remote. We can talk about your channel and your struggles with YouTube as a creative and, and, and trying to build what you, what you do. I, I do know this about YouTubers and the thing about YouTubers, I said this, um, a while back, which was a really interesting thought is like normal people make great YouTubers and people go, what do you mean by that? I mean, a handyman, someone that gardens or someone who does just ordinary things, they end up becoming the great YouTubers because they're not conditioned. They learned the trade. They turned on their phone, their cameras, and learned how to do this. And they had no formal training background. Maybe some of them did, maybe some didn't, but they just figured it out. But they realized that it was just something they had to do. I'm not there because I have all these years of industry things in my head that I just can't reset because it's like conditioning for me. I was trained to do those things the way they were done. And now they're completely irrelevant here on YouTube. So ordinary people always win on YouTube. They do. And I mean by ordinary people, I'm just saying like people that didn't come from talk radio or the music industry or things that that world where you were always in front of the camera or behind a microphone or making records, whatever you were doing. It was different. There was a process of doing things. And YouTube is just not that. It's just not that. It's not a free-flowing platform. And maybe there's people that like that. I like free-flowing platforms. That's why I love podcasts. And I can sit there and listen to podcasts and people are just bantering back and forth. There's no clock. There's no commercial breaks. Well, sometimes, well, majority of them now have commercials, but I love it. So I don't know. YouTubers, hear me. Are you out there? This is a plea for me to find you and maybe some free flowing YouTubers or any YouTubers love to connect with you here on this channel. And, um, let's figure it out. I mean, I don't, I don't know what else to say. I mean, the channel's monetized, made a few bucks here and there, but I look at these things and I would literally have to pump out five, six videos a week to make what? 150 bucks, 200 bucks because of the retention rate on this channel per month. That's a lot. So I'm like thinking, I'm like, how can I do this? And maybe I will. I mean, I always look at these people that are successful YouTubers and they have these courses and I always feel weird about it. I go, man, my background, I go, I think it's pride more than anything because of my background. I was 2017 live streamer of the best male host of 2007, the PDZ Optics Live Stream Awards. Oh, I was in 2007. I was in Inc. Magazine as the top 10 live streamer marketers to watch. But maybe that is. Maybe it's just pride because that's the past. Everything's changed in 10 years. Everything's different. And I just want to figure it out. tweak it out, but I don't, I don't want to be something. What I'm trying to say is I played characters my whole life because people go, Hey, we need you to be the number two in this. And we need you to be taking jabs at people. And we need you to do that. I'm like, okay, no problem. I knew what my job was. I know what I had to get done. And I'm afraid that someone would come in and just say, we need you to do this. And I'm like, Oh, I got to perform again. I don't want to perform. I just want to be me, but maybe that's what it takes. Maybe you have to perform it because I see most of the people on YouTube. I'm like, dude, I can see it a mile away. They are living a double life. I see right between the BS and the spewing. Maybe that's my years of investigating, reporting of finding out things about people and deep diving and making sure that we have the right news to talk about it and bring it to light. So in any event, YouTubers, again, I plea, if you're out there, I'm ready to communicate. Help this old school guy. Maybe bring me back to something. I don't know. Until then, see you on the next one. Maybe. I don't know. On the Jeff Adams Show. Pedro, you're dozing off. Take us out of here. What? When Jeff is buying, the prime ribs frying.