Catching Up - F1 Movie, Hasan Habib, & Visit w/ In-Laws!

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Hey folks, I'm just going to do a quick entry. I'm on the highway here. I'm headed to the movies and I just wanted to give you a quick little update for how things have been going cuz I like doing this periodically. Uh it is a Saturday night. I am meeting up with a former Microsoft employee and he's a content creator. His name is Hassan Hhabib. Uh he's awesome. I got the chance to talk with him on a podcast last weekend. Last weekend, I think. um just super genuine guy. Um just tremendous, right? Like I think it's super rare you meet people like this. So um super cool to be able to hang out. We're going to watch a movie. We're going to watch the F1 movie. It's cool that he's like very close by. So that works out. Um but I figured I'd give you an update cuz things have been a little bit slower for me this past week and that's for a good reason.

So couple good reasons. I had my in-laws visiting from Canada, which is great. Um, I love them and it was awesome to kind of uh spend some time with them and my wife. Sorry, this intersection is Oh my god, what is going on? Someone just turned left in the intersection at the wrong side and that was they almost t-boned the person in front of me. Amazing. Um, not amazing, but amazing that no one got hurt. So, my in-laws were visiting. We got to do some touring around uh my wife and I with them. And uh the other thing that made this week a little bit hectic was that I had my on call rotation. So um that just adds a lot. Um so really I got like no videos made unfortunately. I I think I made like three code commute videos but I was just super busy doing not normal stuff for me.

And um which is fine. I'm just like kind of giving you the update as to where I'm at and and why. Uh I didn't do like I did a newsletter this weekend, but the weekend before I didn't write one cuz I was like I'm just uh in the middle of my two week on call shift. Uh you know in-laws were visiting. So I'm like I want to get to sleep because usually I'll stay up pretty late on a Friday kind of uh use my creative energy from the week and put the newsletter together. So, I'm like, "No, I'm going to set this one out." Didn't do the live stream uh last Monday because, you know, going to be tired from on call, have the in-laws visiting, all these things, right? So, just kind of out of the the normal loop. But, um there's some interesting things I'm going to be focused on.

And first is that I'm going to be doing a call early this week to talk about next courses I'll be creating. Um, I don't know when I can share yet, but uh I think I was talking with the I have to sneeze. My god. Was talking with the marketing and um sales guy. It's coming any second now. Pardon me. One more. No. Okay. Um so we did a call on Friday. We're going to call with Nick Chapsis earlier in the week to kind of just get on the same page for next courses I got to do. So, I think once that's settled, um I'll work with the the sales and marketing guy to come up with a plan for like how I'm allowed to share out information. So, stay tuned for that. I haven't made courses in quite some time cuz my beginning of the year was super crazy and hectic.

So, I'm pretty excited to get back into that. But the other thing that's kind of like chaotic, um, it's exciting, it's good, it's a growth kind of thing, but it's like also logistically a total pain in the ass. Um, so I have had a YouTube core uh coach before in the past. Uh, it's through a company called Vid IQ. They make um they do a lot of videos and stuff for for YouTube creators, but they also have like a platform uh like a sort of like a browser plugin and an app for YouTube um give you better analytics, that kind of stuff, video ideas, but they have coaching through it. And I used a coach before. He was awesome. Um but the way that the coaching set up, I was like, ah, like the feedback loop, the timing doesn't work very well. So like by the time I'm getting feedback, I'm already like videos ahead.

like it it's just it wasn't um not his fault but like the setup wasn't great. I kind of got to the point where I'm like I'm not getting the value out of this even though he was a very good coach and I enjoyed working with him. Um but more recently I said hey I'm going to reach out again because my YouTube channel this is Dev Leader by the way my main YouTube channel it's stuck. Um it's just stuck. I have never had growth a growth curve. Um, I have had consistent flat growth, so it's growing, which is good. But it averages roughly uh 400 to 500 subscribers a month for two like two years straight. And um I am constantly told by people, I don't know why your channel doesn't have more subscribers. I don't know. And I'm like, man, I don't know. I've like across my two channels now it's like over 600 videos and uh between my two channels I'm still I think I might be at 15,000 subscribers between my two channels.

So I'm kind of like I'm just kind of feeling stuck. So started working with a coach and talked through analytics and uh one of the things that we realized with my channels and I kind of I kind of had a feeling about this but I I think I needed a push in the right direction. Code commute is an example of me leaning into this. And so what you're watching right now I said I want to make vlog entries and I don't think that they fit on my main channel. I'm going to make a new channel for that. But um the the problem is my dev leader YouTube channel. I wanted it to be my general software engineering channel. The problem is that it is almost entirely the subscriber base is almost entirely net and car developers. There is nothing wrong with that. I love making net and car tutorials.

But that means that any other content I put on that channel is basically making it so that YouTube is confused about what my channel is, right? So if I make a resume review video, people wanted these. I'm happy to make them, right? They're free for people. I pay to get the video edited. I post those, they get almost no views, right? They they don't because when YouTube goes to push out a resume review video, it goes to a bunch of .NET developers and they're like, "What the hell am I going to do with this? I don't care." So, my core audience isn't going to click to watch those videos. So, why should YouTube try and push it anymore? Right? So, if I make those, if I make general software engineering videos or I'm just giving career advice, same thing. my live streams, they do really well if I'm live coding.

If I'm not, they don't do very well. Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy to see people from Code Commute come over, but relative to like other content, like a a programming tutorial, it's not great. So, I think what we've concluded is that I actually have to spin off another two YouTube channels, which is nuts. And I have to figure out the logistics around this, but it's looking like I'm going to do a dedicated resume review channel, which is what that's going to be. Very simple. I'll probably do like later on, I talked about doing like a mock interviews and stuff, so I'll probably have that included there, right? Interviewing and resumes. I will do my my podcast channel, and that's just going to have general software engineering videos because they're quite rare that I make those. but it'll have my live stream. It'll have the podcast episodes and any general software engineering videos I do.

And then my existing channel, Dev Leader, will be C tutorials. The only really crappy thing about that is like like Dev Leader would have been really good as just like the general software engineering one, but it's already kind of embedded with the .NET developers. So that's okay. But uh this is kind of this logistical headache that I have to go figure out because I already have all those videos uploaded everywhere. Um sorry, uploaded on that channel and now I'm going to have to go re-upload them everywhere. I don't know how that works. Blah blah blah. So I got a lot to figure out there and I think just over the next couple weeks it's going to be a little bit uh little bit crazy for me that way. But we will see. I'm almost at the theater here. So I just wanted to give you guys an update.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate you all. And I'll see you next time.