6 things I learned after creating just 6 videos

So as the title suggests, I am recording myself for the past 8 days and I have learned 6 things. I’ve learned more than that, but the other learnings are not relevant in this context.

For those who’re planning to get started with recording videos for your career. I’ll tell you what triggered me to record videos, and not stop from here.

It was an early peaceful morning, 12th May 2020. I was happily scrolling through Facebook and saw a story from 2012, where I shared a video talking about how formal education is such a waste of time.

This added as a fuel to the RDX that I’ve been collecting a lot lately. I saw a lot of posts saying that formal education is an absolute waste of time.

I had a huge regret for believing that formal education is a waste of time. That was when I had no goals, no orientation, no ambition, whatsoever.

Here’s the very first video

I’ve talked about this in my native language, Hindi, but for those don’t understand the language, here’s what I meant.

We blame the education system because we’re not oriented to our goals right. Just because Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg were a dropout, doesn’t mean you too will come up with a cool idea like Facebook by quitting your college.

Formal education is important if you’re passionate about a subject and want to learn the basics, and theory of that subject. You can’t skip that.

Formal education is like that YouTube ad that you can’t skip.

You wouldn’t trust a doctor who is passionate about medical science but didn’t get a formal degree. Would you?

You wouldn’t trust a lawyer, who is in love with the law, but he hated formal education and took a Udemy course instead. Would you?

Without formal education, you wouldn’t even know the terms you will be using every single day, let alone the techniques.

And I hate it more when social media influencer says this & themselves sell courses online.

Okay, enough of poison.

That was the start. That was a little bit on what triggered me to record videos and not stop from there.

Now the cream part.

6 things I learned after creating the first 6 videos of my career

1. Export your videos right

I’ve never used premier pro in my entire life. This was the first time I even open the software by myself. I didn’t even dare to explore it, just because I’ve seen people do complex things like shown the image above.

Since I had never worked on premiere pro, I had no idea how to export the videos.

I obviously Googled how to edit (cut and append) and export, but I did not select the “Entire sequence” in the export menu.

Because of this, I was able to export only a short sequence of videos, a second or two if I remember it right.

You need to select the entire sequence from the dropdown while exporting the view in premiere pro.

I didn’t do, I didn’t even know it. As a beginner, you too might miss it. Now, you won’t.

2. Recording a podcast is easier than recording a video

The first video was terrible. I was shivering, I was sweating, and I was sitting an air-conditioned room.

Recording, that video made me realize that I can record podcasts way easily. Considering the amount of fear I had to deal with while recording the video, recording podcasts is nothing.

But, now I don’t have that feeling. I can record myself effortlessly. The fear is gone.

Does this mean you should stop recording videos? No! I wouldn’t recommend that. Sure, search engines have started indexing podcasts. In fact, the voice assistant even plays the podcasts.

Why not repurpose the video into a podcast? This will increase your reach.

3. It takes time to get accustomed

I’m not sure if I’m fast or slow, it took me six videos to realize that I can record myself fearlessly, you get better with time. Allow yourself to talk naturally. Ignore the poorest quality in initial days. In fact, ignore all the cosmetics. Focus on creating content than cosmetics.

Apart from getting rid of the fear, I even got used to basic editing. Just the basics, but I can do that in sleep now.

4. Videos are an easier mode of communication

There’s a stat I came across, it’s interesting, useful and I have a lot of value that I can add to it for my audience.

Instead of getting trapped in creating a graphical image and writing a lengthy description, I can quickly record a video. No cuts, no jumps. Just a quick 30–90 seconds video.

In 90 seconds, I created a piece of content that will reach a newer audience for at least the next 3 days.

If I had chosen to create a graphic, I’d naturally spend 15 minutes designing it, 5 minutes in writing the description.

I have 18 to 19 and a half minute which I can spend doing something more valuable.

Furthermore, as an added value, I can use that for a podcast too. There are no rules that you should create a 60-minute long podcast only.

But… videos are a better, quick & easier mode of communication but not efficient, effective & economic.

Reason?

Unlike text form of content, you can’t keep it up to date. You have to keep recording new videos as an update. But that’s not the context here. I’ll cover this in some other post.

I just wanted you to know this.

5. Talk on a higher pitch

This simply makes you feel confident and high on energy. This happened today. I just talked on a little louder pitch, this was also because I talked about something that came out naturally from within.

Talking on a little louder pitch made me feel confident, and I even got feedback that I was effective in that video and I made sense.

The video got longer engagement, more views, and stayed in the feed for a very long time. Depending on when you’re reading this, the videos would’ve drowned amongst other posts on Instagram, but at the time of writing it, the video is performing real awesome.

6. Practice documentation to establish as a brand

Inspired by Garyvee’s insanity model, I realized I’m missing a major point. I wasn’t documenting my day, like everything I do as a professional and create pillar content which I can repurpose across the web in various format.

As per this model, one 2–3 hours of video can be divided into small chunks of videos for social media, then taking inspiration from what people feel about it, create more such videos or other forms of content, (text, images or short videos).

This will keep the audience hooked to your content. I’m gonna document myself as much as I can. I’m gonna go double triple down on content production. This quarter, it’s gonna be videossssssss.

That’s it for this post. Now that I’m gonna document my journey, applied knowledge and experience I gain on the way, I’m gonna be sharing more of content like this.

If you have any questions regarding scaling your business, feel free to shoot me your questions on Twitter. I want you to share your first time of experience that’s similar to mine, did you feel the dopamine released after getting rid of the fear?

Also, I have a newsletter where I share insightful updates occasionally, without disturbing you or spamming you. Feel free to join the list.

Until next time.