Have you ever noticed how things seem to always get worse before they get better?
Well, today's story time, with a little lesson-nugget in there too.
You see, I nearly quit my YouTube channel one month before it went viral. Now my channel reaches
over 1.8 million views a month - and hopefully it helps those people too. But it took me a long time
to get traction, and I nearly gave up right before I was able to succeed. So here's the short version
of why I started a YouTube channel and what I've learned about not quitting too soon.
I started working in the field of mental health at a tiny little juvenile correction center
in Saint Anthony, Idaho in 2004. It was part of a mini internship for my major,
and for some crazy reason, maybe my passion for suffering in the outdoors with stinky people,
I decided to work in a wilderness treatment program for troubled youth. And again, somehow
between going eight days without a shower every shift and hiking around in the desert with a bunch
of punk kids who I loved and seeing their growth and sitting around a fire talking about life,
I got hooked. Being part of growth and change and healing and exploring life and emotions and
relationships seemed like the most exciting thing possible. I loved it. I picked up extra shifts,
and I read as much as I could about psychology and spirituality and inspiring stories. And
eventually I got my therapy degree, and I worked full-time in a treatment center. But
then I had my first little baby, and I knew that I wanted to put her first and primarily be a mom.
So I quit my job, and I spent most of my days hanging out with my sweet little poopy gremlin.
But people kept asking for therapy, and even though I was practicing a couple hours a week,
I still really missed it, and I would think about therapy all the time. So in 2016 I
started to think about how I could really help a lot more people on YouTube with the education
side of therapy than I could in expensive therapy sessions. So I dreamed up this idea of building a
series of mental health educational videos to supplement my clients' time in therapy. So I
planned out and I wrote my first YouTube video. It took me over an hour to film a five-minute video
because I had to do so many retakes and I didn't know how to look at a camera while I was talking.
And then my husband showed me how to edit in a simple editor, and about 10 short hours later,
I finished my very first video. So over the course of the next three years, I kept making videos.
I wrote when the babies napped. I'd take a laptop to the McDonald's playplace, and I'd write while
the kids played. I'd get up at 5am and I'd film a video while the kids slept, and then I'd sneak in
some editing at night after they went to bed. And I published my videos when I could. I'd made about
50 of them, but they really weren't getting much traction. Now, in 2019, I learned about SEO, which
is actually really important, and I kept learning how to make my channel better. But at this point,
we had three kids, which means it's like a solar eclipse if you get to sleep through the night,
and naptime was gone. So for me to film, we'd have to set up the spare bedroom on a weekend and
hire a babysitter, and it was just getting more and more complicated. And the channel was starting
to see some traffic, like 20 to 30,000 views a month, but this was only bringing in about
40 bucks a month. So then came December of 2019. It was probably the most difficult month of my
life. Each of the kids rotated through various colds and ear infections. An ear infection means
that your kids start crying as soon as they try to go to sleep, and then they wake you up every 15 to
30 minutes throughout the night. I think that month our three kids had a total of eight ear
infections. And we were so sleep-deprived that we couldn't even function. And then my husband broke
his hand and he couldn't work. And then I got this terrible case of mastitis, and it was just this
long series of injuries and illnesses and sleep deprivation that basically just made everything
super hard. At that point, in January of 2020, the channel reached 10,000 subscribers. And that was
exciting for me. That seemed like a lot of people. But we just couldn't find the time to film and
edit videos. I had a ton of scripts written, but we just couldn't produce them. Our little
family was too stressed out, so something had to give. We couldn't do everything we wanted to do.
So I talked to Ryan about me quitting the channel, and I thought really hard about it, and I was
about ready to be done with it. As part of being a mom, you get used to giving up on a lot of things.
For example, I used to go on a lot of outdoor trips, and I'd already accepted that I just
couldn't do things like that until my kids were a little older. So you get used to sacrificing the
things you care about, and I figured that it might be time to let go of the YouTube channel too.
But then one night I prayed about it, and I got this strong but quiet feeling to just keep going
a little bit longer. So I kept trying. We used a weekend to film a couple of videos, and then
the next month something crazy happened. It was it was February of 2020, and YouTube started
recommending two of my videos at once. And and that month we got a million views on the channel.
So this is about 50 times our usual traffic. And all of the sudden, the work seemed worth it.
To be able to help that many people all at once, that was worth working for. So we got about 50,000
subscribers that month, and every month since then we've just kept growing. So so now YouTube is both
Ryan and my primary jobs. I still do therapy as a hobby; I love it. Um and and I think that YouTube,
that it's the coolest thing to be able to make videos that help people all around the world.
So that's the story of how I nearly quit right before we were able to succeed. And
I've noticed this pattern other times in my life, where right before a big breakthrough,
things get extra hard for a while, and all you can do is say, "I'm gonna just keep going for a
little bit longer. I don't know if it's worth it or if it's a waste of energy, but I'm gonna keep
trying." I mean, another time when I saw this was when I was finally making a long dream to visit to
Chaco Canyon. We had driven 11 hours to get there. We were in the RV and the road was so rough that
things were like breaking in the vehicle, like things were falling off and screws were wiggling
loose, and it seemed like we had no choice but to turn around just a few miles from our goal.
So I stopped the RV, I was getting it ready to turn around, and I paused, and I just, you know,
kind of rested my head on the steering wheel, and I just sat there trying to figure out what to do.
And in that moment, I decided to just drive 100 meters more. So I started the RV up, and I slowly
traveled that short distance. And as I came around the bend, what did my weary eyes behold?
The national park service sign. And just beyond that, a paved road. We had almost turned around
100 yards from success. And we made it. So that day we got to see incredible ancient buildings
and ancient artifacts from the Puebloan culture of a thousand years ago. It was awesome. So I've seen
this pattern happen in these key moments in my life. It's when you push through those dark times
that the greatest blessing shows itself in your life. I really believe that these difficulties
ask you to level up or to learn something new or to just hold on to your original belief that
that this is worth it. So what do you think? Have you seen this in your life? Do things get
harder right before a breakthrough? How do you hold on when things get tough? Tell me about
it in the comments. I'd love to hear your story. And thank you for listening to mine.