- Shaun has grown multiple channels
past one million subscribers,
two billion views,
14 million subscribers total,
and I'm asking him what are the behind the scenes
tips, tricks, and secrets,
and advice and tactics used to get multiple channels
past one million subscribers
and one of the big ones
is putting family first.
And you might not realize the impact that this makes
if you want to grow a channel.
- True
- But we're gonna talk about that coming up in this video.
- Hey guys my name is Tim Schmoyer,
welcome to Video Creators.
We're all about helping you guys grow a YouTube audience
so can spread a message that reaches people
and changes their lives.
And you do need to consider the lives
of the people in your audience,
but you also need to consider
the lives of the other people that you live with.
- Correct.
- Because your lifestyle as a creator has
a tremendous impact on the people you are--
- Within the wall of your own home.
- Yeah, so if you wanna reach past a million subscribers
like Shaun, that's an important thing.
When you say, "Put family first,"
what does that mean in relation to
your content creation and your YouTube strategy?
- Well, the only thing we take with us from this life
is our relationships and primarily that's with our families
and we only get one chance to raise these kids.
- Don't screw it up.
- We talked about through this series how easy it is
to become YouTube drunk and being addicted to the numbers
and how that can affect you personally,
but it has huge impact on your family.
And you see this a lot in the
Kids and Family content arena
on YouTube where families are addicted to the numbers,
and the growth, and the success,
and the fame, and the money,
and they have little kids.
And I'm not judging anybody's parenting,
but if you're creating events to go to
specifically so you can record it,
and it's not really meant to create family memories--
- Yeah.
- Then you're doing it for the wrong reasons, right?
And eventually we only have one chance to raise these kids
and if we don't take that time to actually be a parent,
with the camera off, we could lose that opportunity
and that's something you'll never get back.
One of the things we do in our family's channel
with our kids is we ask them: "Do you wanna blog this?"
Sometimes they're like
"No, I just want this to be our family".
And sometimes they're like "Yeah, it's gonna be fun!"
'Cause they want the video to--
- True, true.
- So we give them the option:
if they say no, cool.
The internet doesn't need to see everything we do.
They're gonna be just fine.
Oh but it's gonna be lots of views
and we can't sacrifice this!
Never sacrifice.
I know when we say it, everyone's like:
"Yeah," but when you actually-- your reactions,
it's easier than you think to sacrifice your family
for the sake of views,
especially if you are a family channel.
- Correct. Absolutely.
We had on Cute Girls Hairstyles
a daughter that had shorter hair.
Rylan our fourth daughter.
And with short hair there's a lot of hairstyles you
can do with that but the other girls had long hair,
so she was perfect for what we needed on our channel.
She did not like doing tutorials.
And if you go back and look at
our entire library on Cute Girls Hairstyles,
you'll see that Rylan is maybe in
three or four, maybe five out of 450 hairstyles.
- Wow.
- Being one of four older daughters,
that's not very many.
- Yeah.
- And the audience actually thought
it was because she was our least favorite child.
- Oh - Which is not the case.
- Yeah - It's that we weren't going
to force her to be in a tutorial
just 'cause she had short hair,
'cause we wanted the views on short hair styles.
- Yeah.
- If she didn't want to,
we weren't gonna force her to do it.
And was something that we've held to from the beginning.
We don't force our kids to have YouTube channels.
They get one if they want one.
Only if they're responsible enough
to take care of the work that entails it.
- At the age of 13.
- Exactly.
- I mean this plays into so many other ways
besides just content.
It's just like,
there's always more email to do.
- Yeah.
- And then my family sitting down to dinner.
And they're sitting there like "Dad, are you coming?"
And I'll be honest sometimes I'm like "In a minute!"
which turns into five, - I've fallen into that.
- The dinner gets cold. - Absolutely.
- And then, the family and the other people,
whether it's your family or people,
roommates, or whoever,
just people in your life who are important to you,
friends, like "Oh, I can't hang out with them because
"they're just going to video it".
- Correct.
- Or, "They're just gonna want to put this on YouTube."
- Absolutely
- Or, "They're always busy with that thing,
"they don't have time for me".
Then the calls stop coming.
Whether it's family or people who are important to you,
It's important to put those real-life relationships first.
And you know what?
If the person doesn't get their email responded to, fine.
- That's right.
- I've given up multi-- you know,
several thousand dollars in brand deals.
Just one brand deal will be several thousand dollars,
you just, you know what, dinner with my family
is more important than that right now.
Which I know sounds like "How could you say that?"
But it is.
- I think it's important too, between spouses,
for any of you that are married.
It's hard to work with your spouse and live with your spouse
'Cause there is no shut off
between work and personal, right?
When you work in an office as a husband or a wife
and you come home and you have that together time,
that's traditional, that's what everybody experiences.
- Yeah
- When you work together,
you're together all the time.
- Yeah, yes. - So it's important for you
especially when the success starts to come
and more and more and more people want more,
that you remember to take the time out
to date your spouse.
- Yes.
- Go on a vacation with your spouse
and with your kids without the cameras.
Give them those memories that are not tied to the YouTube.
Now, it's great to have the videos on YouTube.
They'll be like family videos they can watch
forever in the future,
but if the intent is solely to get content for views,
then your priorities are upside down.
- One of the things that
has been really helpful in our family
is we practice like a 24-hour period every single week
where we just disconnect.
- That's smart. That's smart.
- And, so we turn-- we put our phones--
- It was hard for you to do?
- At first it was. - Yeah.
- Now I can't wait.
- 'Cause you expect you know the reward, yeah.
- Our whole family looks forward to that,
so we go from Friday night to Saturday night,
'cause that rhythm works best for our family.
And I'm not checking email,
I'm not looking at social media stuff.
- Good for you.
- We started every Friday night
with a big celebratory meal as a family.
One of the things we say in it with our kids
is "Good work, brings good rewards."
- Sure. I love that. - And so they do good work,
all week long,
with our homeschooling and things,
and then we come to this meal like this is like the treat
that our family gets to experience together.
Dad was working hard,
my wife works harder than I do, so--
- All our wives work harder than we do.
- Did your wife work?
I'm like, "Harder than me."
And so this is the point where we got to share that
around this big meal.
The only time that we do dessert,
we have special drinks, they get soda,
we don't usually do that during the week,
things like that.
And then Saturday is like we're playing games,
like board games together,
sometimes video games,
going out to parks.
It's just, we disconnect and that's it.
And that rhythm has been really important for our family
and it's-- like our whole family looks forward to that.
It's really hard,
but when I started just,
let me just see if I can go 24 hours without checking
work email. - Yeah.
- I realized that, because that was so hard,
I am addicted and a slave to work itself.
I'm not-- I'm a boss, but I have a big boss
that is like, sucking me in. - The job.
- The job, yeah. - Yeah.
- I can totally relate. - That's been really healthy
for our family and that allows us to put them first
and just disconnect and recalibrate
for the rest of the week.
- Yeah we always make it a point.
Every Friday night, we have older kids now
so they can babysit the youngers.
- That must be amazing.
- Meaning I get a date night out.
And our rule is: no phones.
It's hard sometimes because we have the kids
need to get a hold of us,
and our phone's there and it's beeping,
or buzzing and you wanna look at it,
sometimes I'll look and she'll be like, "I gotcha."
- Yeah.
- You know but, the intent of it is to still date,
still enjoy that time together,
because the schedule can completely overrun your life.
And you're like, "Who are you, do we even know--"
- Yeah when you become business partners instead of
romance partners. - Yeah, exactly.
Instead of-- Yeah, yeah,
you know, we got forever together.
Why ruin it now?
- Yeah, we gotta get into our date night and talk about
emails, and brand deals, and even kid stuff sometimes.
Yeah, so...
- This is advice not even just for YouTubers,
it's for anybody.
- Now we're just ranting as dads.
- Yeah (laughs).
- Or like, spend more time with your spouse.
Tell them how much you appreciate what they do.
- That is far more important.
- I don't do enough of it,
but we're trying to put things in place
where we have that time to do that.
- Yeah.
- It's so easy to lose that time
to work or kids or whatever.
- One of the things that I like doing as a creator
is like, subscribing to channels from, of like people that
I think are doing it well.
And just trying to learn from the outside,
like what are they doing, how are they doing it.
So, there's links to a lot of their channels down below,
you guys can go check them out, subscribe,
follow their channels,
even if you're not into hair style and stuff--
- Or teen girl stuff, just, watch what we do
and if it helps, it helps.
- Right, and learn from them.
Yeah, and just pick up on their values
and their systems and their patterns
and everything that they do.
All that's down there below.
Subscribe here to Video Creators if you haven't yet already.
We'll be doing another series about how
they got to one million subscribers,
with another creator coming up here soon.
So subscribe to get that,
and I'll see you guys in that next series.
See you then. - See you guys.