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With YouTube being the new television and YouTubers being the new celebrities, it’s not impossible for the new generation to want to be part of this online world of entertainment. How do you manage your kids’ expectations at the same time encourage them to pursue their passion? Nate Woodbury will talk about this in this episode, so tune in to learn more.
So do you have a child who wants to do YouTube? They’re really excited about YouTube and you don’t know what advice to give them? That’s actually the conversation we’re going to be having today. We’ll give you some advice. Alright, so this topic actually comes from a question on Quora. A guy named Michael A Millet – ah! – asked this question. A lot of times that the questions are anonymous. I like that we have a name to go with this question. Well hopefully Michael A somehow will hear that we’re talking about him and he’ll listen to these answers. Right, so this is the question. He says my kids like many others want to start a YouTube channel and become YouTube famous. How do I balance managing their expectations while encouraging them to pursue a passion? So I assume that by you’re wanting to manage their expectations meaning, you know that they’re not going to succeed and you want like how do I let them down gently. I don’t know what he means with that, right? But I mean there is a balance between encouraging your kids to want to do more and to get out there and do things and clearly doing YouTube stuff would be something they could have the resources perhaps to actually do. But also yeah he’s saying, yeah I don’t want them to think that they’re going to be famous or personally would that even matter they’d be famous. But kids want to be famous. My first thought when I heard that is one- there’s no need to manage expectations.
You can let them have these experiences or learn you know or go out and try things and they’ll learn. I’ll kind of understand. Like for example my kids, they approached me about a year and a half ago wanting to do a YouTube channel. YouTube for them is a lot of things like Studio C. Studio C, Sketch comedy – alright, yes like BYU and they’ll they do fun skits. It’s kind of like Saturday Night Live right but clean. Clean and family-friendly, yeah. So they started doing skits and anyway it’s like I I love that they’re interested in something that I’m interested. My whole career is YouTube. So when they approached me with that, like okay, cool. They want to do a YouTube channel. I’ll supervise. I’ll help you out with that you know I’m not going to say that you’ve got to do it every day. You know like like I deal with my clients. It’s like okay, you got to do this every day and you’ve got to invest as much time. If you don’t do it, you know it’s like because their kids are having fun and I want them to enjoy it. I don’t want them to feel like oh this is a job. They’ve got a career that they’re focusing on now and yes it’s actually worked out great. They’ve kept interest this whole time. Both my son and my daughter did a garage sale. My bought a camera. My daughter actually bought an old iPhone that had a camera on it. So she could get ah…We really restrict her internet access but she wanted to be able to have iMovie on there so she can film and edit right on this old iPhone. Yeah and it’s like you know, it’s fun and she bought that and… So let’s take Michael’s question and just sort of transfer it to you so that we have useful yeah you know data here that we can work with. Do your kids have expectations that they’re going to be YouTube famous? They like it, they see it. They see the results that I show that I’m getting.
When we have a video spike or I talked about you know Grant Thompson. This channel has 10 million subscribers and so they know what’s possible, but they also see how many views their videos are getting and so they’re kind of like – “okay, yeah that makes sense” and they know that I put out videos every single day and yet they’re not quite that consistent. Sometimes it’ll be three days in a row and sometimes a couple weeks will go by without anything and that’s okay. They’re having fun with it. So maybe that’s a way that that Michael, in this case or anyone that is in the same situation can manage those expectations is to say look, there are people who work on this every day. who put in all this time and effort and we’ve talked in other videos about some of the money that’s spent to make them look high-quality and multi cameras and sound recording devices and all that stuff. You know maybe if you tell your kids – “let’s look up some other kids produced things and see how many views they get, how you know many subscribers they have, how famous they are or are not” And as long as I think they understand that the probably the vast majority of kids that are doing YouTube videos are getting a handful of views from granny and grandpa and the aunts and uncles and the Bahamas or whatever you know I’m saying. And then there are some who do punch through you know I think as long as kids understand that there’s the expectation is well you may if you work hard but nothing is guaranteed. Then you can still encourage them without fear of worrying that they’re going to fail by falling short of full on YouTube famousness. So when I talk to parents and I let them know that I do YouTube I’m YouTube’s producer. They immediately think of their kids and how their kids want to get into YouTube making video playing video games. That every parent that I that’s just… that’s because they see their kids watching those stupid and play video game… You know to if Michael, if that’s the the type of scenario you’re in, maybe I can understand where you’re coming from. It’s like my kid wants to play video games all day long and become a YouTuber like you know I don’t want to bounce his dreams. One thing that I’ve done with my kids has really helped show them the other opportunities that are on YouTube. I kind of talk about the type of videos that I make and that I create and I show them other examples. Recently, me and a parter on one of my channels, we earned the YouTube silver play button. You get that when you cross a hundred thousand subscribers. Okay – pretty big deal and we went to an event and we we did this cool thing up on stage because there was an event going on and you know Kris Krohn and I both are in this of award, we.. And I had my son come with me to help film some footage of that. Anyway, afterwards I was talking to my kids like when do you think you guys are going to earn this one of these for your channel? My daughter’s like – “in a million years”.
So I was actually surprised – okay. That’s pretty grounded. I mean… So she’s got… Her expectations were a little bit further away than I thought they would be. But then I said – “well, what do you think you’d have to do to to be able to get one of these in a short amount of time and they said – “we’d have to put out 100 videos a day and I’m like – actually just one video a day. They were like- oh.. You know so because I do this stuff everyday. I mean I know I’d answer those questions and I know what it really does take so it’s kind of had fun. But you know you might be surprised if maybe your kids understand that the immediate expectation is that maybe you won’t be famous right away. Maybe you won’t hit the silver beaver… What’s it? The silver — play button. So like the Boy Scouts. So that’s the Silver Beaver Award the silver bullet playback button. Hundred thousand subscribers or a hundred thousand… Yeah, hundred thousand subscribers wow! But you know, I mean the fact is that kids are so darn creative and they speak their own language. So they understand what other kids will think is funny or interesting or clever to another kid. If you… But I think I don’t think you should ever not encourage them. In other words, encourage them as much as you can. Some of the videos that my kids have created are amazing. They’re hilarious like I see that I’m like – “you know what, if that were to go up on Studio C or on like a Saturday night alive that would get some applause. You know that’s… right. That was well thought out. They filmed it, they edited it themselves. I would say 75, 80% of them are pretty lame – right. But they’re having fun and their friends like… Exactly! And that’s the key. But they’re totally learning and so I think it’s a great, great experience. I have… My youngest son is 16 years old and he has a sense of humor that is clearly reflective of this generation because I don’t get any of it. I mean he is making himself die with laughter. His friends are all cracking up and I barely know I barely understand what just came out of his mouth and it’s not you know like some weird other language. I’m not that old you know it’s not good these kids with the hippie talk you know or anything like… It’s just this humor is just bizarre. But if he puts something out there and I go – “oh, that’s interesting son.” But his friends will all like it, they all love it, they’ll want to share it. It’s like, I think it’s stupid. But I would never say that to him and he doesn’t know…No, he would never watch this. He’s watching video people playing video games. Okay what one last point- yeah. YouTube famous, a lot of times we can also talk about making money because they’ll see these YouTube gamers or they’ll see other YouTubers and either assume or know that they’re making money on YouTube. It is possible to make money on YouTube but I want to emphasize that it’s actually way easier to make money if you’ve got a business. Right. So you know if you teach your kids principles of business and entrepreneurship and actually how you can create something of value and exchange that you know you sell that and make money. if they can start to see YouTube in that light and what you could do with YouTube to promote a business or think of YouTube at least as a business that will really set someone realistic expectations. It’s not just I’m going to play video games all day long and become a millionaire. Right. Setting financial and business related expectations is another responsibility of ma and pa’s I would imagine. Hopefully help.. Hopefully you found this video a powerful. Take 3. Hopefully… Just subscribe.