10 Things I Learned as a 24-year-old CEO on YouTube
Middle school hobby, University dropout, to multi-million dollar YouTube income
Who could have imagined that 13-year-old filming YouTube videos on an iPod would lead to a media company of 7, and multi-millions a year in videos produced?
I’ve been making YouTube videos for more than a decade now, from watching videos to learn about tech, saving up years to buy my own products, to creating home, tech, lifestyle, travel & car content with some of the most recognized brands in the world. It hasn’t been a fast climb, but with 740,000 subscribers and 100,000,000 views, I couldn’t have ever imagined what this teenage hobby and industry could become.
Three years ago, I dropped out of my final year of university, formed a media company, and assumed the role of CEO to Feature Media.
After all these years, I’ll admit that I’m still rushing out the door in the morning, often disorganized and messy, and can seem lazy to outsiders. But what has made the company profitable, innovative, expanding, and most importantly, what have I learned over the years?
3 Thing I learned
Friends or Coworkers — Without question, the most rewarding, confusing, but effective thing I have had to navigate as a business owner is choosing who to work with and creating a work environment where everyone feels a sense of purpose and freedom to put their strengths to use every day. Skillset aside, though, almost every employee who has joined the company since its incorporation has been/become a friend. Unfortunately, in the business world, I’ve heard both sides of the story that often seem very firm on one opinion or another, rarely in-between. People who believe it is important to surround themselves with people who they can consider friends. In contrast, others have an unbreakably strict rule to NEVER work with friends or family at ANY capacity whatsoever.
As someone who works long hours and has built a lifestyle around the business throughout my teenage years into the twenties, having a social life has always been at the back-burner of my current priorities, I chose this lifestyle and stand by it.
Still, working with friends can often be confusing and personally exhausting as a perpetual over-thinker when it comes to working with friends. I am obsessed with my business; there is no question about it. It is my life. Every second of the day, I am thinking about how I can improve it not only for myself but, more importantly, as a company, how I can build a sustainable business that others can thrive from. It is essential to have an ongoing philosophy of creative and analytical thinking by doing this. With that, it makes it very difficult to understand the meaning of transactional relationships or coworkers or individuals who would consider you a friend if they were not working with you and if the company wasn’t thriving. Thoughts constantly collide from a CEO perspective of approaching each situation like a boss, or buddy, whether to have casual conversions throughout the day to keep things light or to shut down and chat about nothing but work.
Understanding the separations and barriers outside of work hours; do they want to hang out or hear from me outside of a long workday/week. These thoughts cross the mind every day and can often lead to a feeling of loneliness.
I can say I enjoy working with friends because everyone pushes each other to be at their very best, learn, and create, all thanks to a level of transparency and “chemistry” that a smaller team can have. I understand that it is rare and something to be appreciated, but it can come with its set of challenges. I have noticed that as a leader, a friend is someone you genuinely trust, believe in, and feel a greater purpose in investing with their growth and contribution to the company. When conflicts or misunderstandings occur, as with any friendship, it is often easy to dial back to see the relationship as transactional.
However, it can lead to far more satisfaction in the “wins” and, most importantly, team loyalty when done right. Working with friends is going to lead to questions like, do I actually have friends? Is the feeling of being alone what comes with the job? Are the benefits of this role what comes at an expense? Is it worth it? The bottom line is after three years, I seem to gravitate towards working with friends, but I can also TOTALLY understand why some set a firm barrier never to do it.
My leadership style can often be a bit blunt, but I believe that when I communicate directly, it often means I genuinely care about the growth and success of the individual. A friend can genuinely see that and usually appreciates it when someone is willing to hold them accountable within reason. People who cannot handle reasonable critique often learn and progress at a significantly lower speed.
Delegating is hard, but very necessary — Throughout my career, I have always had a lot of trouble handing tasks off to other people. I often felt that people didn’t see things the same way I did or wouldn’t be putting an equal amount of effort into the art from a creative perspective. From an artistic standpoint, it is very valid and common to see things that way, but as a businessperson first, it was essential to realize that everyone has their talents.
A good CEO can identify and utilize individual skills to benefit the company. Selective hiring and trial work should always be part of the process, but giving people creative freedom is crucial to see the best potential of work. As I started delegating more work, it helped us increase our efficiency and our platform diversity, revenue, and outreach opportunities and improve our training and leadership.
The core traits in people you should look for along with skillset are trust and accountability. Can you trust that they will complete the task and take something off your plate? are they effective and communicative about questions and deadlines? And secondly, are they committed enough to the work where a level of accountability and importance towards their contributions are seen in the work? A common issue with delegation is quality of work with no level of accountability for missed deadlines or mistakes, as a CEO one of the tasks is putting together a team that makes the overall company and its mission accomplish the goals of clients and customers. If someone you delegated to fails, it’s on you the CEO to make it right for the client but also identify and fix the problem internally right away.
Using numbers to your advantage (leverage) — It is knowing when you’re using numbers effectively and when you’re improving creatively with the hope of enhancing data points. Every business has its data set; numbers are there to analyze and assist in the black and white matter.
During my time in social media content creation and digital advertising, the biggest thing I have noticed with all platforms is how complex and intelligent every data set has become over the years. The algorithm is a term that is mentioned more than ever before. In a world progressing with artificial intelligence and machine learning, any platform that can learn and adapt based on user behavior will have the most long-term potential. In the early years of YouTube specifically, focusing on the art vs. the numbers can be crucial. Still, especially in the last three years, while establishing and analyzing the foundations of a sustainable business, it is clear that numbers are more often than not there to help.
3 Successes and Mistakes
Successes
Purchasing an office space — Having a dedicated space to produce videos and work every day has been a longtime dream that began during my YouTube journey. From filming on my bedroom floor to building a set and taking up the study room to renting a room in the basement from my parents, it has been an evolution of setups over the years. However, setting up each space to have an overkill combination of tech and entertainment detail has always been one of the most enjoyable parts of the process.
In 2019, it was time to start browsing around for dedicated spaces to grow the team and scale operations. For the past couple of years, I had set up in the master bedroom of the condo, and although it worked very well, having camera equipment in the hallways and tech products piling up in the kitchen is just not sustainable in the long run. I was pretty set on one building for the most part, but with bylaw issues and limited size, a space eventually came on my radar a few times. It was a unit that I had zero interest in the first few times, but as the price dropped, my interest increased, and I ended up purchasing the unit in mid-2020. This unit was 20 years old, looked terrible, and had many design flaws I wasn’t a fan of. Still, at the core from a real estate investment perspective with a perfect location, great size & layout, two parking spots, and most importantly, it was an opportunity to remodel while documenting the process on YouTube.
Although the renovation took the rest of 2020, it enabled us to leverage our connections in the home industry, attract return and new sponsors for our next real estate purchase, and learn more about interior design and development. Once the place was ready to go and the team could move in and operate at their best, it was a rewarding moment in my career.
Growing the team from 0–5 — Hiring the first employee is always going to be the most challenging step in any new business. Build a company where every employee is as excited about the successes as the CEO; that is when you know the company has good chemistry of productivity and purpose. Yet, to this day, hiring is still the single most arduous process.
Trying new things and exploring industries outside the box — I am traditionally known to be stubborn, a creature of habit, and unwilling to try new things if the current is working. Although I have been an advocate for being a master of one but willing to learn the rest, I think it is important also to realize that your business is a lot more powerful than you might think. Take Feature Media, for example; it’s a YouTube channel in simple words, upload videos, that’s it? What a lot of people don’t realize is that behind the scenes, there is an entire media company structure of ad slot sales, affiliate platforms, partnerships outside of core technology, a co-owned clothing company, and recently an online course on YouTube business in the works.
When it comes to branching outside of the box, the best thing you can do is try. It will build confidence, new interests, and valuable connections for your company. Have a goal or collaborative partnership in mind, and make small stepping stones towards that goal.
My key takeaway is that you have a lot more leverage than you might think; always seek it and ask if there is an opportunity. The worst you can get for an answer is no. But always focus your pitch on how you can provide value before asking for something.
Mistakes:
Saying yes to everything — One of the biggest mistakes I still make today is feeling like I have to say yes to everything. In some ways, it is an excellent approach to have, but when the workflow is beyond capacity, saying yes to everything can be overwhelming and often detrimental in the long run. I’m all for filling up the schedule as much as possible as it is fulfilling to publish content consistently and benefits well from a revenue standpoint. It is crucial, however, to step back and ask yourself a few questions. Are you charging enough? Does this project take time away from a more important one? And is it a piece of work that helps attract new business and grow the company’s future potential as a whole?
We have developed a weighted efficiency score that calculates every campaign’s time, effort, resource, effectiveness, and revenue ratio.
Disorganization at the start — One of the most significant steps from sole proprietor or hobbyist to a business owner was adapting organizational workflows that are in the interest of scaling the company effectively. For some, that may increase business capacity; for others, it may be growing the team. Until 2020 (2 years as a CEO), my workflow was quite frankly a complete joke. Everything was in Apple notes, campaigns were not written down, I was the only one that had access to the inbox schedule, and we didn’t have a team calendar. With that being said, I never missed a deadline, so I figured we didn’t have to change anything. It was messy, and I was used to it.
In 2020, travel settled, and it was finally time to look at how we could improve in every way. It started with building a Notion database that effectively keeps track of the company schedule and sponsorship rates and eventually led to inventory management, tasks management, and idea planning. Of course, the most challenging part of building new systems is getting everyone on board, so it was my job as a leader to commit to the platform myself and make it easy to teach and understand. There is no better feeling for me than seeing everyone feeling productive and on their game as tasks are recorded and status updated as we go. Once we established a database, calendars were set up, notes & file folders were organized, and eventually, we experimented with platforms like Milanote that could complement the central database from an idea board standpoint.
I’m still disorganized a lot of the time. The systems don’t exactly change or fix that. But by transforming the company from one that was built for my workflow to one that other people can integrate and understand effectively, everyone can understand their tasks and roles collaboratively. I used to think that the problem was working with people who were just as disorganized as I would when it was my responsibility to adopt systems that make sense.
Understanding that Balance can lead to efficiency — Especially for entrepreneurs who started their business off alone and operated that way for every way, it is very easy to get carried away by the workload and feel the need for constant progressions and obsession towards all areas of the business. This means long nights, no holidays or weekends, and a full commitment to building the business. In the initial stages, this level of obsessive commitment can build character, but it hinders overall efficiency.
Especially in the last year, I have realized that optimizing some lifestyle areas and balancing work a little bit better has allowed for more focused and quality work. For example, say you have been working every day for the last five years, no real breaks, you may feel like you have put in every available hour in life, which is true. But as the energy or passion fades due to long-term fatigue, I noticed more lapses of focus and ability to interact effectively. This meant my supposed 16–18 hours of work was only at its peak efficiency for 8. Whereas a balanced lifestyle with proper breaks and set routines to look forward to can lead to overall well-being and reach that 8 hours of focused work while also giving you room to work overtime.
Although I am not surprised by this personal observation, it was far more prevalent during COVID as work travel was halted for a long time. Travel used to be an element of “break” while always giving me something to look forward to; grind while in town to meet deadlines, plan the trip while on the plane, rest on the way back, and the cycle keeps you going. By being at home for a full 18 months, my life had only been about work up to this point, so with newfound time and lack of travel schedule, it was the best time to optimize what I have been neglecting.
Recap
Being a CEO of a company at 24 isn’t easy and is a huge life commitment, but I stand by dedicating every single day for the last 13 years to building a lifestyle around the business. I’m proud to see where the company has grown and looking forward to seeing what’s next.
I talk all about the business side of YouTube and how to build and grow profitable partnerships with brands in my online course — https://creatorcashflow.com
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