How to Balance Teaching and Storytelling on YouTube

I wanted to make stuff that would be useful no matter what because that's what I believe is actually hardest to learn and design right is not the specific software there's so many people out there doing that already I wanted to teach the less tangible things like just the stuff you need to know that makes you a good designer so iteration right finding process for that it doesn't matter what software you're doing doesn't matter what you're even

designing that's always a process you should go through and something that you need to learn so yeah I don't know if I thought consciously that I want to make sure I'm making evergreen videos it's just the type of stuff I want to teach is evergreen I'm here with my coworker Charlie hi Charlie's a designer she is also a youtuber willing to her channel below but we met because we both spoke at the same conference the Shan

West conference and I think interrogated for you for a while yeah through that process learned that and actually there's a favorite moment where you were talking about how much you enjoyed your job and he said yeah the only thing that I really loved tonight the commute I was like oh well would you like to work for a software company where you could work remotely and you know yeah that'd be great then I might work yeah you're

talking about in New Zealand some of the time whatever and then I friend Levi interrupts it was like Charlie he's offering you a job and then I was like Oh what I wanted to talk about today with Charlie is not just being a creator but how you structure your content hmm a lot of people ask me for advice about okay should I focus everything in teaching yeah right cuz I can work here we have the the

phrase teacher they mean it yeah neither of us have it on t-shirts at the moment and then there's this other side of the story telling people who tell amazing stories and that's why you followed them yeah and then there the whole category that you might search for on YouTube of everyone who's teaching tutorial how do you approach the intersection of things so I started my channel specifically not wanting to do tutorials actually okay because that was

all I saw from designers on you she was just other tutorials but so I don't think it really considered it teaching when I first started but I think it was in a different way okay I was sharing advice more than I was like doing structured here's how to make something in Photoshop so that that's definitely still teaching yeah I didn't want to be a tutorial channel my goal with my videos is to make the kind of

content that I would have found useful to see when I was getting started in the design industry so a lot of that is teaching but some of it is honestly just sharing my life right just sharing what it's like to be a designer sharing what some of the struggles that you might face that you don't realize when you're in design school you know still learning I have a video recently where I went through all my iteration

process for designing a graphic yeah I'd been through this process of designing something pretty terrible to start with and if each design I made was like a slight improvement in getting to the end product so I just talked through this is how I did it this is why I made these decisions and just showing my work but kind of teaching through that right yeah that makes sense yeah so then how does storytelling come into that because

one thing that I've seen with the best creators is that you're not just following them because I got fact number one and then fact number two and then a great takeaway to bring and package it all up yeah right I'm actually following that person yeah and I the Photoshop tutorials not gonna do that for me even the design advice tutorial that's getting there yeah but how do you bring your personality and storytelling yes your channel so

I make well I haven't been doing it recently but my main structure that I try to stick to with my videos is two a week one is a vlog where it's sharing my life I film my week I film myself working at my desk and the projects that I'm working on if I go out with friends you know that sort of thing that's like a chunk of my life that you're seeing in this video and then

another video on the weekend is a moral structure teaching like advice video so that's kind of what I've been trying to do because I think it's important if you want to build an audience for them not only to get value from your content SN or good I learned something from this but think about in school you probably your favorite classes were the ones we really liked the teacher right and I think it's the same online that

you're gonna like learning from the people who you enjoy watching so if I share more of my life and people can get to know me a little bit through my videos then they'll be more likely to pick my video when they want to learn something and mine is one of the options available you know my video on which I think but also people click on that blog to be like entertained you know they just want to

watch a weekly vlog it's a very popular thing on YouTube and so I've like snuck a bit of teaching into this right you know look at that yeah you were the things yeah I like that of actually weaving you know the stories enjoy I'm gonna I'm gonna teach you this thing but I'm also going to you know entertain you yeah throughout that and and give you something to really connect with yeah I have another example look

where I've done this recently actually I was struggling with the redesign of websites for our conference crafting class yeah had to do a lightweight a reskin to update the brand and I was really struggling with that and so I was working on this project as I've logged my week and so I was talking about the process of doing this to the camera and like showing my screen about what I got into at that point why I

was struggling so much and I think sharing it in that way the videos got a lot of like a lot of great comments people who are enjoying hearing about that right it's I think because I'm sharing as I'm in the situation and I'm telling the story around it while it's still happening rather than next year making a video looking back and saying I designed this conference site you know here's what I ended up with yeah because

the other thing is right people tend to go into the the peer teaching side or the pure story talk side yeah and so if you're in the peer teaching side at least for me when I made tutorials I would get it so that I had it polished and then I would record it yes and if I didn't get it right I would rerecord it mhm and then I'd be like look at this look at me you

follow this and be a design professional just like me you know it's what you're talking about is you're getting into a project you're saying this is hard hmm I'm stuck hold on oh yeah that's not gonna work either you know and then then you're like here's how I solved it and it's a hold it soldier yeah what are some of the other things if someone is getting started as a creator and writing up that YouTube channel

okay what are a few things that you'd share with them I would say to not get too hung up on the quality I think this is where a lot of people get stuck in thinking they see youtubers who have been making videos for years amazing filmmaker feels like our friend Levi Allen who makes beautiful videos perfectly color corrected slo-mo shots you know but if I'd waited until I got to that level to start a YouTube channel

I probably still wouldn't have started right so there's more and more people starting a channel every single day and that means unfortunately the market is getting more and more saturated there's more options for people to have to subscribe to so yeah just get started and don't wait any more until you've got it perfect because your first few videos you put out a probably gonna go out to like 100 people max you know you it would be

great if you got to that in your first month don't have unrealistic expectations you know so start practicing and start putting in the work now well Charlie thank you for for doing this thank you thank you for doing great design work for convertkit thank you blast last few years it's been really fun to work together and we'll link to your channel check you out there and yeah come come to craft and commerce come to all our

events will those be there yeah great all right we'll see you guys later right