My YouTube/Website Business Strategy | #2
My attempt to convince myself I'm not an arrogant, spoiled brat.
In this newsletter, I talk about my current business strategy for making money by following my curiosity.
The sweet spot: why finding the intersection between “Things that make money” and “Things we want to do” is particularly important to me
Why be a content creator? Why I think starting a YouTube channel, content website, and/or newsletter is right for me.
Why I’m ignoring conventional advice. Check back in a year for a chance to tell me, “I told you so.”
What’s my strategy? What makes me think I could succeed? How am I setting myself apart?
The sweet spot
I have the same problem most humans on the planet have:
I want to make money doing things I want to do.
Of course… if you’re a member of reality, you know that most things that make money are not things you’d do for free.
(something something efficient markets)
BUT. Some people have done it. It’s not impossible.
Which interests me greatly, because… for me, it’s a HUGE problem.
Maybe I'm spoiled, undisciplined, impatient, etc. But I really hate making myself do things.
Not in a recluse or "stick-in-the-mud" sense.
In the “if I’m really interested in something, I have zero patience for putting my attention elsewhere” sense.
Directing my attention away from
→ The Thing I'm Very Interested In
towards
→ Something I’m Not Very Interested In
is taxing.
If I'm currently paying attention to something that isn't The Thing, my brain will, every 5-60 seconds, pull all my attention away from what's in front of me and direct it towards The Thing.
So every 5-60 seconds, I have to redirect it back.
This might be a tad hyperbolic, but if I'm not interested in what I'm doing, it feels like 90% of my energy is spent keeping my attention on the thing, as opposed to actually doing the thing.
I felt incredibly handicapped in my past 9-5 jobs as a software engineer or data analyst.
I would read things or people would tell me things I needed to know, and I just... would never remember them.
Because it didn't stick.
I would write stuff down but later, when I re-read it, it wasn't helpful.
It wouldn't make sense because I didn't ask clarification questions at the time because I didn't have the curiosity to ask.
In order to get anything out of meetings, I had to basically transcribe the entire meeting word-for-word.
Any meeting I attended without taking notes was a meeting I never attended, for all intents and purposes.
Because nothing stuck.
So, as you might guess, 9-5 jobs have been a nightmare for me. The day-to-day was grueling. I've felt like a failure at all of them.
Why be a content creator?
This forces me to ask the question:
How can I make money doing something I’m interested in?
Even if it isn’t much. I'm more interested in making $15k a year doing something I don't have to make myself do than making even $500k doing something I have to make myself do.
So what is Josh interested in?
Lots of things, but mainly: Math. AI. Computer Science. Investing. Marketing. User Experience Design.
Learning them. Teaching them.
I bounce between those domains. One day I could spend 6 hours of thinking about an investing topic. The next day, I'm chewing on a math thing.
So… I want to make money doing something like that.. then it seems like my best bet is to either teach it or make content about it.
Teaching it in the moment would require me to be interested in it at that moment, which defeats the purpose.
Making content, on the other hand, is more flexible. I can indulge my interest and move on.
Sounds like a content website, a youtube channel, or maybe a newsletter.
Alright that sounds pretty good.
Why I’m ignoring conventional advice
I think that, assuming I have a set of engaged consumers of my content, the profit part won’t be that hard. It might be as simple as turning on ads.
The hard part is usually acquiring an engaged audience. Most people do it wrong. They don’t do sufficient market research, they just make the thing and are surprised when it’s not what the market wants.
It’s a common trope:
Startups making something it turned out nobody wanted
The starving artist
The uncle that opened up a bar as a passion project that ended up going bankrupt
etc
So you’d figure that I’d do the opposite, right?
Do the research, figure out What The People Want, and then give it to them.
😅
Nope.
It would be wise to start with a problem and then look for a solution.
But I’m not going to do that. The whole point of all of this is to make money doing something I'm interested in.
I’m going to start with a solution and look for a problem. I’m going to create content I want to create and find a market that wants to consume it.
Maybe these are famous last words... maybe I'm arrogant by saying, "it’ll be different for me." But you know what?
The best case is I get to make money doing what I enjoy.
The worst case is: I wasted some time and maybe I look dumb.
I'll take those odds.
What’s my strategy?
Knowing that many have tried what I’m trying without success, I need a good case for why this will be different.
In the abstract, it’s pretty simple: I need a process to go from "me doing something I'm interested in" to "people enjoying content I created".
If we assume that
if I’m interested in something, surely a few hundred thousand people on Earth would be interested as well, and
I’m a half-decent at writing and making videos (or I will be by the time I’ve made a few dozen),
then what’s left is distribution. I won’t underestimate distribution, but it’s doable with tools like SEO and social media.
What would also help is having a particular audience in mind.
I don’t know if I can limit myself to content about one area, so I’ll pick the two areas I find myself in a rabbit hole most frequently:
AI and investing
I can use this taxonomy of documentation to get even more specific about the audience I’m targeting:
If I take a few minutes to brainstorm some archetypes of people who’d be interested in stuff I’m interested in, it becomes fairly straightforward to match people to content types:
“students” - folks in college (doing math, computer science, statistics, or business degrees) or coding bootcamps
I imagine these folks are more interested in tutorials.
"amateurs" - STEM-adjacent people curious about science, tech, business (e.g. folks with STEM degrees in “white collar” jobs)
I would guess these folks are more interested in explanations (if they’re just bored on e.g. YouTube) or how-to guides (if they’re trying to solve a specific problem)
"experts" - people who work in a field related to the content
I would expect these folks to be more interested in references (e.g. maybe something new came out and they want an unbiased breakdown of it)
With all of that in mind, here’s an overview of the process:
get interested in something
research it, tinker with it, take notes
if it
becomes “substantial enough”,
seems to fit into a certain domain (AI or investing), and
could be molded into a certain format (e.g. tutorial, explanation) for a certain audience (e.g. students, amateurs) with minimal effort
then mold it into that format (a blog post and/or video).
make the peripheral marketing content for it (thumbnails and titles for YouTube, headers and metadata for SEO)
ship it
lurk on twitter, discord channels, etc for opportunities to tastefully plug it
rinse and repeat
Let’s see how it works out! Check back in a year to see if I failed miserably. ;)
PS: if you’re wondering how my newsletter fits into all of this, here’s a small description of each project:
Small description of each project
breakdownai.com
This is for polished articles about AI. More or less transcripts of break down ai YT videos.
Audience: folks who want to learn about AI
break down ai YouTube channel
This is for polished videos about AI. More or less video versions of breakdownai.com articles.
Audience: folks who want to learn about AI
breakdowninvesting.com
This is for polished articles about investing and business. More or less transcripts of break down investing YT videos.
Audience: folks who want to learn about investing
break down investing YouTube channel
This is for polished videos about investing and business. More or less video versions of breakdowninvesting.com articles.
Audience: folks who want to learn about investing
joshualelon.com
This is for polished writing that isn't specific to AI/CS/Math or Investing/Business. (e.g. emotions, mental models, personal)
Audience: folks who want to learn about me (or just the thing in the title)
lelon.io
This will be just a redirect to joshualelon.com/about. For dating profiles and business cards.
Audience: folks who want to learn about me
Joshua Lelon YT Channel
This is a place to host recordings of me thinking out loud and working through problems. The hope is that, in the future, when I’m making educational content and suffering from the curse of knowledge, I can re-watch those recordings and remember what I struggled with.
Audience: Myself (to get ideas for content generation)
## The Pole (this newsletter)
Audience: "the others" - I’m not really sure where this newsletter will go, but I’m currently envisioning it as a catch-all for smart folks that like my style and have generally overlapping interests with me. Fellow friendly ambitious nerds (cc
).
re creating content you want, then finding an audience for it:
Shaan Puri says something to the effect of “my audience is people who love what I do, the way I do it.”
Interests + personality is as good a start as any.
Perfect approach then. The trap is not giving yourself permission to quit. Rooting for you!