Advice to start making your own video tutorials
Recorded – watch the full episode on YouTube.
For someone reading this who is thinking they'd like to follow in your footsteps, what would your advice be?
Mayuko Inoue: So specifically for videos and stuff, I find there's so much of a parallel between making videos and making software. A lot of the skills I learned as a software engineer, I've brought to everything I do on YouTube. So the whole learning how to learn thing for software engineering, learning how to Google the right things, learning how to learn things from tutorials and other online content, has helped me so much in learning how to edit stuff and do cool transitions, and watch how other people are doing things.
"So just ripping off the bandaid and taking that first step can be so helpful, because then you have a whole new set of worries that you can tackle next and next and next."
I think there are definitely transferable skills there, number one. I think starting from scratch never actually means starting from scratch, because you're building upon existing foundations that you're borrowing from other things. I think otherwise it's just doing it. I'm someone who gets into my head wondering is this the right thing to be doing? Should I be doing this? If so, what would happen if this plays out and that plays out? And you just think forever without doing anything, but in reality, I think in order to get to that, you have to take the first step to get to the next step. So just ripping off the bandaid and taking that first step can be so helpful, because then you have a whole new set of worries that you can tackle next and next and next.
You just have to go for it sometimes, and I know it's so much easier said than done. For me, one thing that really helped was that when I was starting YouTube I had a friend who was also starting YouTube. His name's Jarvis, he has a million subscribers now so he's been wildly successful. But we started at the same time – we both wanted to to start a YouTube channel. So we both made our first videos together, we both bought our cameras together. We're like, "Should we worry about this? What kind of lighting is important? Does it matter whether you have a Canon camera or Sony camera?" And we would share with each other the things that we learned. And then once the first one of us posted a video, the other one was like, "Oh, I should post a video too."
"Sometimes you have to forgive yourself that you're going to be really bad at it at first. I told myself the first 20 videos don't count – they can be super bad."
Well, it's not really competitive, but it doesn't feel as scary anymore because you're doing it with somebody else. So finding a buddy, finding accountability groups. Even if someone's not doing it with you, if you tell someone, "Hey, I want to do this thing – hold me accountable for it," can also help with the whole ripping off the bandaid thing, because it's not just a youth thing anymore. And hopefully if it's someone that is super excited about what you're doing they can celebrate with you too. That's also a fun thing to be able to do and share with someone. So yeah, there are many ways to go about doing it, but just doing it and learning how to do it online.
Paul Hudson: So there you go, folks. If you're thinking about getting into video production or video creation, about iOS or mountain bikes or guitars or knitting, whatever is your interest, rip off the bandaid. Mayuko has stamped it with her approval. Go for it!
Mayuko Inoue: The other thing that I thought about was that it doesn't have to be perfect – you're going to learn as you go. I don't know if you remember the first tutorial that you made, but just thinking about my quality now versus then… it's just worlds of a difference. And I've gotten better because I've done it.
So sometimes you have to forgive yourself that you're going to be really bad at it at first. I told myself the first 20 videos don't count – they can be super bad. I just have to make 20 videos, and that's my goal. Do whatever you have to do to get your brain into the action of doing, I think.
This transcript was recorded as part of Swiftly Speaking. You can watch the full original episode on YouTube, or subscribe to the audio version on Apple Podcasts.
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