19:41Dave Jeltema · Talking Head
1,000+ Hours of YouTube Knowledge in 19 Minutes
A 19-minute confessional from a creator who spent 15 years failing, built to one question he wishes he had asked in 2009.
June 17thThe argument in one line.
Views are outside your control early on, so the way through the stretch where nobody watches is to measure practice instead, judge videos in seasons, and commit long enough for the algorithm to learn you.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A new or small YouTuber with a handful of videos stuck at single-digit views who is tempted to change the whole channel after every upload.
- A creator who keeps judging each video by its first-hour view count and feels discouraged every time it misses.
- Someone who has started and quit a channel before and wants a concrete rule for staying in long enough to see results.
- A creator with no feedback loop who can't tell whether a low-view video was actually good.
SKIP IF…
- You already have a steady audience and a proven format and want advanced growth tactics or packaging tricks.
- You want specific title, thumbnail or retention formulas rather than a mindset and measurement framework.
The full version, fast.
Most creators quit in the valley of death, the stretch where you work hard and nothing happens. The way through is four practices. Before filming, decide the one skill you'll practice and how you'll measure the video, since views aren't controllable. After publishing, grade your own work through outside feedback, an outsider's-eye walkthrough of thumbnail to ending, and a study of a similar video that worked. Treat roughly 20 videos as a season before judging a big change, and commit to a long timeline, because each flop matters less when the next video is already planned.
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00:00 – 00:28
01 · Cold open: the four things
States that surviving the stretch where nobody watches comes down to four things, and that 90% of creators never reach video 20.
00:29 – 02:27
02 · The valley of death
Describes the post-honeymoon stretch, the creator's own restart with four failed videos, and the decision to make videos he wanted to make.
02:27 – 04:48
03 · You are not owed views
Uses a viewer comment to challenge the assumption that posting entitles you to views, and explains signals and consistency.
04:48 – 07:40
04 · Step 1: Decide what the video is for
Pick one thing to practice and one way to measure success before filming; the power is in the before and after.
07:40 – 10:00
05 · Step 2: Grade your own work
Three ways to judge a video without views: honest outside feedback, the outsider walkthrough with ten questions, and studying a similar winner.
10:00 – 11:30
06 · Using AI as a guide, not an oracle
Let AI surface patterns and comments, not tell you why a video worked, and a plug for the creator's free analysis tool.
11:31 – 13:48
07 · Step 3: Think in seasons
Every video is an experiment and roughly 20 videos make a season, with one big thing tested per season and a review at the end.
13:53 – 16:40
08 · Step 4: Commit long-term
The two-year rule that got him through, why flops matter less when the next video is planned, and the recap of all four steps.
16:40 – 17:48
09 · Close: comment prompt and next video
Invites a comment with your current practice goal, points to the pinned comment, and sends viewers to his breakout video.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- You aren't owed views on YouTube. The algorithm only shows your video to people once it sees signals like clicks, watch time, likes, comments and return viewers.
- Judging a video by views you can't control guarantees disappointment. Decide in advance what you're practicing and what you'll measure, then check that after it publishes.
- Single-digit views on an early video are normal. Anyone whose first video took off usually had an existing audience, industry reach, a second channel, paid views or luck.
- Practicing one skill and measuring something else can live in the same video. What matters is that you wrote both down before you filmed.
- A result you never defined in advance can only disappoint you, because you're comparing it to an invisible standard you never set.
- When views and comments are thin, you have to be the judge of whether a video is good, and that takes honesty with yourself and distance from your ego.
- Ask the people who won't tell you they liked it just to spare your feelings: a coworker, a stranger, a community or a coach.
- Look at your video the way an outsider finds it: start at the thumbnail in a feed, check the title promise, then see whether the video delivers what it implied.
- AI is good at surfacing patterns in a similar video's comments and bad at telling you why your video failed, because it will generate an answer whether it's right or not.
- Use AI to collect what you need to see and point out what to notice, then draw the connections yourself, or you never build the skill.
- One video is not enough data. Judging a whole format from one flop is like judging a season from the first quarter of the first game.
- A season is roughly 20 videos for a weekly creator. If you post daily shorts, 20 is not a season, so scale the number to your pace.
- Pick one big thing to test per season, keep making videos for the same viewer throughout, and review all 20 together at the end.
- Even a season with flat views tells you something if your practiced skill got better from the first video to the twentieth.
- About 90% of creators never reach video 20, so simply getting past it puts you ahead of most people who started.
- Committing to a fixed timeline, such as two years, turns each flop into a non-event because the next video is already scheduled and that part you control.
- Switching niches three times in ten videos meant the first channel never got long enough to learn anything.
Measure practice, not views, and stay long enough
WHAT TO LEARN
Early on you can't control views, so success has to be defined by what you practice, how honestly you grade it, and how long you commit.
02The valley of death
- Every creator hits a stretch where the honeymoon ends and results haven't arrived, and it is normal, expected and temporary.
- Trying to force a hit out of desperation shows through, and creating what you wanted to say removed that pressure.
03You are not owed views
- Without an algorithm you'd have to market each video yourself, and YouTube's version of that is reading signals like clicks, watch time and return viewers.
- Consistency means more than posting regularly. It means making each video for the same person who liked your last one.
04Step 1: Decide what the video is for
- Choose one thing to practice and one way to measure success before filming, since views, growth speed and luck are out of your hands.
- Writing the goal down first protects you from an invisible standard you never actually set.
05Step 2: Grade your own work
- When data is thin you have to judge the video yourself, which takes honesty and distance from your ego.
- Three methods work: honest outside feedback, an outsider's-eye walkthrough from thumbnail to ending, and studying a similar video that did well.
06Using AI without outsourcing the skill
- AI is useful for surfacing and collecting patterns in a video and its comments.
- Asking AI why a video failed or won invites a confident answer that may be wrong, so use it to show you what to look at.
07Step 3: Think in seasons
- One video is too little data. Judge in chunks of roughly 20, scaled to your posting pace.
- Test one big thing per season, then compare all the videos at the end and check whether your practiced skills improved.
08Step 4: Commit long-term
- Quitting after a couple of months and switching niches three times in ten videos meant no experiment ever ran long enough.
- A fixed timeline makes each flop smaller, since the next video is something you can control.
Terms worth knowing.
- Valley of death
- The stretch early in a channel after the excitement fades, where you're putting in work but nothing is working yet. Most creators quit here, just before things might begin to take off.
- Season
- A block of roughly 20 videos treated as one bigger experiment with a single thing being tested, reviewed together at the end rather than video by video.
- Outlier
- A video that performs far better than is typical for a channel of its size, usually studied to find out what made it work.
- Signals
- The viewer behaviors YouTube watches to decide who should see a video, such as clicks, watch time, likes, comments, shares and people coming back for more of your videos.
Things they pointed at.
04:28productBoundless Insight
09:04link10 questions for judging your videos
Lines you could clip.
00:20
“You can't make people watch your videos, but you can control what gets them to.”
02:40
“You aren't owed any views.”
12:42
“When a team loses a game, nobody throws out the playbook. They play the whole season.”
16:50
“Invisible progress is still progress.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
If you want people to watch your videos, you have to get through the stretch where nobody does. It's just four things. But most creators try to fix it by changing everything, every video, and then quit before any of it has any time to work.
90 % of creators never make it to video 20. I learned this the hard way. I nearly quit a year and a half ago.
Now YouTube's my full -time job. And getting here came down to those four things. You can't make people watch your videos, but you can control what gets them to.
I'll break down each one so that you know that you're getting better. even if nobody's watching it. When you start a channel, you're excited.
You see other people doing it and you think, I could do that too. Then that wears off. The honeymoon period is over.
It's not easy anymore and there are no results to keep you motivated. I call this the valley of death. It's the stretch where you're putting in the work, but nothing's working yet.
And it's where most creators quit just before things start to take off. You're only human. You're not dealing with some freak scenario.
Every creator goes through this in their own way. It's normal. It's to be expected.
And it passes. I know because I went through it too. That's the reason I named it the Valley of Death.
So let me share what I learned the hard way so you can survive the valley and signal your content is worth attention. Not quite two years ago, I restarted my channel and started making videos about understanding YouTube. I thought I had a good system for finding ideas.
I thought I knew what people cared about. I thought I knew what an outlier looked like. I spent weeks on videos I was passionate about, made in a way I thought was fun and creative, and nobody cared.
Or maybe they might have if anybody had seen them in the first place. Four videos in, I threw my hands up. I didn't get it.
I didn't know what to do. So I just kept trying a bunch of different things. And looking back, I can see it plain as day.
I was trying to be clever when I needed to be clear. I wasn't consistent. I didn't let my experiments run long enough.
And I wasn't making things people actually cared about. But I had to make those videos to learn those lessons. I got so frustrated I wanted to quit.
And what kept me in it was deciding to make videos I wanted to make. Things I had to say. If I wasn't going to get views anyway, I might as well just make stuff that were for me, stuff I wanted out into the universe.
The second I let go of that expectation, things started to work. It was one of those videos that ended up kicking off my channel. Maybe it was luck, but I know that when you try to force something, that desperation shows through.
And if that was the video that I made on day one, it actually wouldn't have worked. I hadn't built the skills yet. YouTube hadn't gotten enough data on me.
I didn't have viewers coming back. I didn't understand the hidden momentum I was building. I had a false assumption about how YouTube works.
Maybe you have it. I see it in my comments all the time. Oh, and I found this one because it's a good example of what I see.
Here's what they said. I spent two weeks making a six -minute video, and after 12 hours, it's still in the single digits. That comment has a hidden assumption in it.
It assumes that if you post something, people should watch it, but you aren't owed any views. You're on YouTube because it has an algorithm. It goes and finds people for you, and it's easy to take that for granted.
But imagine for a moment if it didn't. You make a video and nothing shows it to anyone. You'd have to convince people to watch it yourself.
You'd share it with friends and family. You'd post it on the Facebook you haven't touched in four years. Maybe you'd try Reddit and hope the bots didn't hit you for spam.
For any of them, you'd pitch it a certain way. Who is it for? What will they get out of it?
Why is it worth their time? It's just marketing. YouTube has its own version.
To market on YouTube, you need to understand what it's looking for. It watches for signals. People clicking.
People watching longer. Likes. Comments.
Shares. people watching another one of yours, people coming back to look for you. It wants to put you in front of the people who do that for your videos.
And people are selfish. I am. We want signals that something's worth our time.
And building that takes more than a few videos. So that's where all of the advice around consistency comes from. And only part of it is about posting regularly.
The other part is making videos the same person would like to watch each time. Somebody liked your last one, make the next one so they'd like it too. So getting single digit views on an early video is very normal.
No one knows who you are yet. And if you're comparing yourself to someone whose first video got thousands of views, there's almost always more that's happening than you realize. You don't see if they brought an audience from some other platform or if they work in the industry, if this is a second channel, maybe they paid for views or just got plain lucky.
If you truly look at those videos, you can usually find what's happening beneath the surface though. The magic or the special reason that it did so well. That's a skill to develop.
It's one of the most important ones to practice. It's how you get good so that more people watch you. And I actually built a free tool that reveals that special magic for any video.
I use it for every video that I make. I called it Boundless Insight. And I hope you'll forgive this shameless little plug for my own thing because I recently updated it and I want to tell people about it.
There's a link in the description. All this comes down to some simple math. Get a little better with every video and stick with it long enough for it to work.
If you don't quit, then success is inevitable. But easier said than done. So here are four things that you can do.
The first two are how you get better in every video, even if nobody's watching. And then the last two are how you survive long enough until it works. So let's jump into it.
Step one is broken into two parts. It's something that you do before you film. You can't control how many views you get.
You can't control how fast you'll grow. You can't control the algorithm. You can't control luck.
If you're not getting the views you want, then views aren't a useful thing to base your measurement on because if you could make them happen, we wouldn't be here. So before you make your next video, Decide two things.
One thing that you're going to practice and how you measure the video's success. Do this for all your videos. One really basic example would be what I did for this video.
Before I made it, I decided that I wanted to practice making videos more quickly. The purpose of this video isn't to go wide and get a bunch of views. It's for me to get away from perfectionism.
So when your video comes out, you don't look at how many views it got. It doesn't matter if it's a 1 out of 10 or 7 out of 10. It doesn't matter because you already decided what you're paying attention to.
Did you get better at the thing you practiced? It's a trap. Most creators get frustrated because they judge their videos on things they never decided they were meant to do.
And the thing that you measure doesn't need to be related to the thing you're practicing. You can practice one thing and then the video can be for something else. It's about knowing what success looks like for this video and how to check for that after it comes out.
This gives you protection from unreasonable expectations. Later when I come back to this video and see how many views it got, it doesn't matter. The point was to get faster.
I'm going to do a retrospective on the process and then make changes to my systems so the next ones gain from this experiment. If you want, you can check the pinned comment. I'll let you know how that went.
The power is in the before and after. That's why before you make your next video, you write it down first so you can check it after. If you don't define what success looks like, then there's only room for disappointment when it doesn't live up to the invisible standard you never actually set.
Step one is decide what the video is for. the thing you'll practice, and the thing you'll measure. You can make some videos designed to go wide and some designed to convert.
But if you're struggling to get views in the first place, then worry about that later. Right now, make your goals things you can do. Showing up, practicing a skill, getting a little better, learning something new.
And when you achieve the ones that you wrote down, that's a win. Don't let something open -ended steal that from you. When I decided to make the videos I wanted to make, I stopped measuring them on views.
Being intentional about what I was practicing and what to measure after it came out made things so much easier. And I've had to relearn this lesson at least half a dozen times since. I'm relearning it right now in my season of experimentation.
So now you have at least one thing to measure once the video's out. But that's not enough to know if your video reached good enough or not. Your intention is important.
Did you practice the thing? But also, you want to know if the video was any good. And if there aren't any views, comments, or likes, at least not as much as you'd like, it can be hard to tell.
Views and comments can be part of the equation, but they aren't the equation. And if you don't have enough data, you have to be the one to decide if it's good or not. It's another important skill to develop.
But this means you have to ask yourself some hard questions. It takes a level of brutal honesty that a lot of creators aren't willing to have with themselves. You need to get away from your ego so that you can look at it from an outsider's perspective.
And then you can ask the most important question. Is this worth their time? Step two is grade your own work.
And there are three ways to figure this out. The first is to give it to people who won't tell you they liked it, just to spare your feelings. People you can trust to give you constructive criticism, like maybe a coworker, a stranger, a community, or a coach.
You're too close to it. Get some outside perspective. I literally help creators with this every day, and I still need others to point out my blind spots in my content.
It's normal. If you'd like help from me, there's a link below with a waitlist, soon -to -be application, that you can check out. The second way to figure this out is to look at your video in the way an outsider finds it.
Start where they start, scrolling past your thumbnail. Would anybody click to watch it? Are the thumbnail and title clear?
What would someone expect when they click on it? Then start the video. Do they get what they expected?
Do they know why they should watch this one? Do they know what they'll get out of it? And then the rest.
Do they understand the value? Did you waste their time anywhere? Does anything stand out as amateur?
Does the video bounce around and talk to many different people? There are 10 questions you can ask yourself about your videos. They're on screen and I'll put them in the description.
Run your recent videos through these 10 and then use them for the ones that you make in the future. This is how you make something worth attention. If the answer to any of these comes back as no or you're not sure, then you know what to fix next.
The trick is to get invested. If you just check all the boxes or ask AI to do it for you, you won't walk away knowing how to make the next one better. Not actually.
It all comes back to intention. Decide who your videos are for and what the people who watch them care about. Then build that into every video.
That gives you a through line. And then every one of these questions gets a lot easier to answer. The third way to judge your own videos is to study a video like yours that did well.
So you can figure out how to make yours better next time. That's the skill that I mentioned earlier, finding the magic. Whether you're studying a video you already made or one that you want to make, pick a video near your size on the same topic that did well.
Look at what they made. What are people saying in the comments? What did they like?
What did they wish they got but didn't? This is one thing AI is actually good at helping you with, spotting patterns and collecting them. Remember, get invested.
The point is to spend time in this, to learn and to improve your skill. But AI can save you a bunch of time. Just don't ask it to tell you why your video didn't do well or why some other outlier did do well.
It'll generate you an answer whether it's the right one or not. And on top of that, it's the wrong question to ask in the first place. And it'll never tell you that because it doesn't know anything beyond what you ask it.
Use it to surface and collect the things you need to see. Have it point out what to pay attention to so you can draw the connections yourself. Otherwise, you'll never get any better at this.
That's how I design Boundless Insight. Proper guardrails, so I'm presented with the information, not the answer. I get to avoid all of the tedious and time -consuming things that I don't like to do.
And looking at the magic of what makes videos work or not means I level up faster than everyone else. Go to a video you want to study. You press a button and it breaks down that video and its comments so that you can see what made it work.
Or you can use the new diagnose feature that I just added. It looks at why a video might be underperforming and lays out what to look at so that your next one will be better. It's a work in progress, not nearly as polished as the breakdown analysis, so I'd love your feedback on it.
It's free, the link's in the description. Let it show you what to look at and then you make the call. You decide the thing you're going to practice, how you'll measure a video's success and how to judge if a video is good enough or not.
Now let's talk about surviving long enough for these things to work. One of the most important lessons I've learned is about how long you give something before you judge it. I want you to think in seasons.
Every video is an experiment. There's always something to practice and learn. A new way to find titles, a different lighting setup, bullet points when you're used to reading a teleprompter, or maybe you're curious whether people respond to positive or negative topics.
Each video helps you calibrate a little, but one video isn't a lot of data. So if you want to know if unscripted videos work for the people you're talking to, one video can't tell you. It's not nearly enough.
It takes time to practice skills and to figure out if things are working. When a team loses a game, nobody throws out the playbook. They play the whole season, then they look at the recordings and decide what to change for the next time.
Most creators run their channel the other way around. One video flops, and they change everything for the next one. Or they check the views an hour after posting and come away with a takeaway based on basically nothing.
That's like judging the whole season from the first quarter of the first game. Think in bigger chunks. I call them seasons because it helps you understand the scale.
A season isn't five videos. It's more like 20. I still treat each individual video as a single small experiment, but together they are a bigger experiment.
These numbers make sense for a channel like mine. Yours is probably different. If you're posting daily shorts, then 20 is not a season.
I'm sure you can figure the math out. Pick the one big thing you're testing that season. like your format or content system.
Keep making videos for the same person the whole way through. Every video still gets its own thing to practice and measure. Then at the end of the season, look back at all 20 together.
That's when you can see the bigger picture and decide what to try next. And if your views haven't budged the entire time, that's still telling you something. Back to the hard questions.
Are your videos worth their time? Did the things you practice get better from the first video to the 20th? I bet they did.
Invisible progress is still progress. If you're already past 20 videos, you've already got a season behind you, and you've already passed 90 % of other creators. They gave up before they got here.
If you post weekly, 20 videos is more than a third of a year. It's less than three seasons per year. My gold standard has been weekly videos, and I'm building back towards that, and ideally even faster.
That's 52 videos in a year. You can learn a lot in 52 videos. But it's only two and a half seasons.
It takes that long to see trends. So, when you pick what you test on purpose, you grow much faster. The fourth one is what got me through the valley and still helps me to this day.
It's very simple and the sense of freedom it's given me is enormous. I mentioned I restarted my channel, but the first time I started it back in 2023, I quit after just a couple of months, giving up halfway through my first season. I switched nieces three times in 10 videos.
Every time something didn't land, I tried something else. So having learned my lesson when I came back in December 2024, I came back with one rule. Whatever I picked, I was going to be posting.
for two years, no matter what those two years held. I still let myself change things when it made sense. I wasn't going to lock myself into something that's not working, but I would be making videos for two years.
I had no idea how long it would take. I just knew that if every video I posted was a disappointment if it didn't take off, I was going to quit. So yeah, it sucks when a video I poured my heart and soul into doesn't get views, but it doesn't really change anything because I'm going to make another one next week.
That's something I can control. This perspective takes so much pressure off of my shoulders for each video. YouTube's a long -term game.
It has to be sustainable. If your hope is for every ball you hit to be a home run, you're on a path to burnout. Time to recalibrate your expectations.
Step four is commit long -term. I'm approaching my two -year anniversary. It's just around the corner and I'm further than I ever dared to dream I could be.
If I can do it, you can do it. That's this channel's whole purpose. I share everything I learn along the way.
There are ways to speed this up. There are tips and tricks and some things that work better than others and stuff that changes. But all of it needs the same thing underneath.
You have to make stuff and put it out there. That's how YouTube gets to understand you. It's how your audience understands you.
It's how you understand you. So now we're back to intention. Decide how long you're in for.
Before your next video, I chose two years. If you want, you can count yours in seasons. Most creators never do these things.
They hit the valley, it gets hard, and then they leave to find something easier. Spoiler alert, everything's hard. Anything worth doing is.
The only way to get ahead is to outlast everyone else. And if you want some help with that, there's a link in the description with more information about how we can work together. So before your next video, decide what it's meant to achieve.
The one thing you'll practice, the one way that you'll measure the success of its small experiment, and then after it's out, grade your own work. Get honest eyes on it. Watch it like an outsider and study a video like it that worked.
Think in seasons, because YouTube is a slow -moving beast. and commit long -term, so each video that doesn't do well no longer feels like a stab in the gut. And while you're in it, celebrate your wins.
Tell people about your thing. It's cool to be excited about this. There probably aren't a lot of people in your life who get it, but everyone in the comments of my videos does.
They want to succeed. They want to see everyone else succeed too. So leave a comment with where you're at right now, the one thing that you're practicing on, in your next video or during this season.
And then I want you to come back to that comment in three months to update us on how things went. I bet you'll be impressed by how far you've come. And comments like these are the reason I do this.
While you're down there, I left a pinned comment with a question about my process for this video. I'm in my own season of experimentation, and there's something about this video I wonder if you even noticed. That's also where you'll find the retrospective lessons that I gained from this video's experiment, the faster method I practice, as well as how I'll use them to improve my systems for future videos.
Feeling discouraged and second -guessing myself is my default. I am a recovering perfectionist. I deal with imposter syndrome, and I don't always trust myself.
But even I was able to get past the valley of death. Like I said, if I can do it, you can do it. If you commit to something long -term, you keep getting better, you keep showing up, you'll get there faster than you ever expected.
Earlier I told you about my breakout video, the one that kicked off my channel. I made it because it was something I wanted to make. I made it when nobody was watching, just because it was how I felt, and I wanted it out in the universe.
I want you to watch it next. If you've made it this deep into this video, it's a message you need to hear, and it'll hit even harder now that you've seen this one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Most channels don't fail on talent, they quit in the stretch where nothing works yet. This video names that stretch and lays out four things to do inside it.
Named ideas worth stealing.
04:48list
The four steps through the valley of death
- Decide what the video is for
- Grade your own work
- Think in seasons
- Commit long-term
The first two make you better with every video even without views. The last two keep you in the game long enough for results to arrive.
Steal forany channel stuck at low views
05:17model
Practice and measure
- One thing you'll practice
- One way you'll measure success
Set both before filming and review them after publishing, instead of using views you can't control.
Steal forany video, at any channel size
08:08list
Three ways to grade your own work
- Honest outside feedback
- Watch it like an outsider
- Study a similar video that worked
A way to judge quality when views, comments and likes are too sparse to tell you.
Steal forpost-publish review
11:31concept
Seasons
A season is roughly 20 videos with one big thing under test, reviewed together at the end, scaled to how often you post.
Steal fordeciding when to change strategy
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
16:40next-video
“I want you to watch it next.”
Ends on a comment prompt, then sends viewers to his breakout video, tying the close back to the story told at the start.
Visual structure at a glance.
