My name's Evan Gregory, I'm one of the Gregory Brothers
and we have a YouTube channel called schmoyoho.
I think our channel has worked because
people love the music, they love our sense of humour
and there's something novel about what we make
and if we made each other laugh, our audience is gonna like it.
I think it's important for creators to evolve their content.
I think you can have a very successful year, 2 years, even 3 years on YouTube
doing 1 thing and doing it well.
Eventually, either you will tire of it or your fans will tire of it.
You should always be thinking about what the next thing is.
Even if you don't choose to do that next thing
be thinking about what it might be.
So, when is the right time to make a change?
We've done it based on many different variables over the years.
We definitely look at metrics to a degree.
Generally, we aren't in our metrics every day or every week
like I think some channels are.
And I think at times, that can make a channel too repetitive
it's like, "OK, we know our fans like this
"so we're just gonna make it over and over again."
We watch those end screen numbers pretty closely.
And we saw that people were much more likely to click
and then go watch another video
if we presented the catchiest part of that new video
rather than dwelling in the happiness of the video they had just watched.
And we've been really focused in the last year on CTR
which is your click-through rate
for certainly individual videos, but also series of videos.
But I think it's important to, at times, just sit back and say
"why should I care that this got 100,000 views instead of 300,000 views?"
You have to be able to get some satisfaction from your own creative fulfillment
and not just from external likes, from external comments.
But also, just look at your comments
as a whole, as a list, as a data set, almost like your analytics.
That can tell you if a new video is working or not.
And for us, it's always been that balance of
"what is our audience asking for or suggesting?" vs
"what do we wanna try? Is it a new medium? Is it a new type of video?"
And striking that balance and trying to do both
has really contributed to our longevity over the years.
About once a year, we all get together
and just talk about, like, "what do we wanna focus on in the next year?"
and it's a creative discussion and it's a business discussion.
The success can't come if you don't have the creative right.
You want to find something that you love doing
and won't hate yourself for doing week-in and week-out
and something that feels signature to you so that when people come back to it
they're not surprised that you've chased the next thing
but that you've delivered something that feels familiar and fun to them
and it is what they expect on your channel.
There are billions of videos to choose from.
Millions of other wonderful creators that people can go watch.
But you need to understand that the ups and downs are totally natural.
You're gonna have fans that stick with you
and if you can go back to what they love about you
then you'll find another up cycle again.
You'll get back there.