I have no duties for the day, no school, no work — basically 24/7 free time. How can I use my time wisely to grow faster than my competition? Can you guide me on how to start posting content on YouTube that I'll be able to monetize in the future?
It really depends on where you are. If you've made some money already and have notable accomplishments to talk about, starting a YouTube channel is fine. But if you don't have anything notable, no major accomplishment yet, I would not start a YouTube channel first. What I'd do first is knock something out of the park and get some social proof under your belt — get a win in the arena of business. Then once you have the win, you can start talking about it and combine the two into a 'wins machine,' like I have. If you're a total beginner who's never sold anything or made any money, focus less on monetizing through content and more on starting a business and doing outreach to people who might want your products or services. Make $20-40K, pay down your client debt and knowledge debt, understand what people are really willing to pay for — then you can start posting content on YouTube later.
Ask yourself why you want to be a creator first. If it's for fame or the idea of people watching you, reconsider. But if it's because you're genuinely a great explainer, capable of educating people better than most, with some unique knack that fills a real market demand — then yes, go for it. If that's the goal, focus on becoming top 1% at whatever you want to talk about first. For me that was business, then I niched down hard into AI and automation because that's where my initial content did best and where I was genuinely strongest — I'd say I'm well beyond top 1% there. Achieve real results first, then talk about it — the world isn't short on people with opinions telling others what to do; what's rare is someone who's actually done it and can say 'here's my recommendation, and here's the proof that it worked for me.'
becoming a creatorcredibilitycontent strategyexpertise
Well, I wouldn't be in your situation in the first place. It doesn't make sense to start a YouTube channel or talk about stuff until you've actually delivered value in the past. If your revenue is less than $20,000 a month, you shouldn't be running this channel right now because lead volume will be too variable and there's nothing to build a business around. Spending time just touching up your content and trying to make it really high quality completely defeats the purpose—believe it or not, your content doesn't have to be very high quality as long as you're somebody worth listening to. For example, I'm just in my room in a tank top after a shower; I might not know what I'm talking about when I started this video, but it's still worth listening to because I've achieved outcomes that a lot of people here want to achieve, and I've consolidated a lot of knowledge. The two are valuable together, but the actual quality of the content aside from that knowledge and the perceived value of being associated with me isn't anywhere near as high. So the hack is: you need to do good first. Don't start a content business and then run another business side by side. Start the other business, crush it, achieve massive success, and then make videos talking about it. If you do anything else, you're really just putting the carpet before the horse and wasting your time.
My recommendation is to first grow the SaaS a bit before you start a YouTube channel. Instead of advertising $2 K in MRR, frame it as a $100 K‑a‑year business. That kind of headline is more interesting to viewers. If you’re still early and don’t have impressive results, people won’t be inclined to spend time on your content. The key is to focus on what you’ve achieved that’s better than 99.9 % of the world. When you have a tangible outcome—say you’re consistently making $8‑10 K a month—you can use that as the hook for your videos. Spend time improving the SaaS, develop strong skills, and once you have a modest success metric, start talking about it. Use that achievement as the basis for your content and you’ll be able to attract an audience.
If you have $1,000, it's effectively the same as having $0 when viewed from a high enough level--there's no real difference. My advice is identical for anyone with zero or $1,000: start a daily consistent outreach habit, regardless of platform (social media, email, etc.). Choose a simple daily target--for example, talk to or get in front of 10 people each day for your business. Over a year that's 3,650 contacts; even a tiny conversion rate can generate significant capital because luck stems from preparation plus opportunity, and you boost luck by maximizing outreach. Most people struggle because they lack such daily habits; the real bottleneck in almost any venture is soft skills, sales ability, and marketing. You could build a product like Netflix tomorrow, but without marketing you'd have zero viewers. Practical ways to hit your daily goal: send 10 Upwork applications daily, send 10 cold emails per day on behalf of your business, or reach out to your favorite YouTubers (like me or Ali Abdal) with a custom pitch each day. Alternatively, list the top 10 creators, identify their problems, and offer to solve them--doing this for a month yields about 300 high-quality touches, each taking only 5-10 minutes, which can drive real results. Begin this habit now and maintain it for months; the compounding effect will create the bulk of your long-term capital.