700 videos, 10 years, under 20 subscribers, and I was doing everything right. Every week, a new video. I worked on thumbnails. I worked on how I showed up on camera. I picked topics I really cared about and brought great energy. 10 years of that, under 20 subscribers. So either everything I've been told about this work is wrong, or I was missing something that the tactics that were suggested could not fix
Here's what I finally figured out. You don't have a content problem. You are hiding in your content. This is Input Output
[00:00:47] 3. SHOW INTRO
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If you've come from a previously successful career and now you are a year or three or five into your creative career and the breakthroughs are not showing up, this show is for you. Input/Output runs on one idea: You are the ultimate input into your creator system. Get yourself clear, and the output follows.
I'm Shawn Buttner, and let's get into it
[00:01:15] 4. INPUT — The False Assumption
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Let's start with what you've been told to do because you're probably doing it right now. Post consistently. Show up every week. Improve your production process. Get your thumbnail just right. Bring the energy. Pick something you're passionate about to talk about. That's the playbook, and it's not exactly wrong. These are things that real channels do to get results. But look at what's not on that list. It's your opinion on the topic. It's not your story and what's related to the topic. It's not the specific way you see things is not in that list. The playbook tells you to produce, but it never tells you to show up, and here's the trap.
You can run every play in that book perfectly and still be completely absent in your content. Consistent, well-produced, on topic, and invisible. And I know because that was me for over a decade. And the metric everyone optimizes for is volume, more videos, more posts, more reps, as if presence were a function of frequency, and it's not.
You can produce every single day and still not actually show up in your work
[00:02:29] 5. SIGNAL — The Work and Where It Breaks Down
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So let's talk about what all of those correct steps actually produced for me, and that's 700 videos over 10 years under 20 subscribers. And I already said this at the top of the episode, and I'm saying it again because it was all about a story I kept telling myself that everything was okay. And the story went like this.
I'm learning, I'm in learn mode, I'm copying what's working. If I keep consistently shipping every week for 10 years, eventually I'd reach some type of enlightenment where it would all click, and I would be getting the results like the better players in my field were doing. So other coaches talking on YouTube in this particular story.
And that's what all the advice said on how to succeed on YouTube and social media, and I, and I believed it, so I kept going. The first time that story kind of cracked was when on year eight or nine looking at the video I just made, I would cringe looking at it. I would want to hide from watching my own self talk on video.
And it took me a long time to understand why I was cringing, and it's not that the things that I was saying were bad. It's not that, uh, all the points were off or wrong. Like, it was all there. It was very visible on camera, me talking. And so the discomfort wasn't about the quality of the things I was saying.
It was about being afraid of actually being seen, and that's a signal. I, I read it as if I just produced enough, I would have the expertise and comfort a- and then the audience But that was not never true, you know? And so I started to, to really sit with how could I be on camera and look like I'm actually enjoying it, or speak into a microphone and sound like I was actually enjoying it.
And so I started to get into groups, and one of those roads led to a group run by Evan Carmichael, who's a big YouTuber, and they, uh, took a look, and he took a look at some of my videos and then pushed back. He's like, "What you need to do is open every video with a big opinion. Lead with what you actually think."
And so over the course of a year, I'm like, "Okay, I haven't tried that before. Let me, let me try it." And it was a lot of doing a video, going to the group, and then being like, "Yeah, you, you kinda didn't do that." And by, I mean, kinda didn't do it, like you hedged your opinion. You didn't really make or say anything that was strongly yours, and so you lost people's attention.
And so I went back You know, after getting this feedback a bunch, I'm like, "I have big opinions," and looked over, I had 10 years of evidence, and you know how many opinions I showed in those 700 videos coming up? It was basically zero. So how many personal stories did I tell? Almost none. And so I built a decade of content, but it was just me reporting information.
There wasn't anything about me as a creator, my values, my, the way that I looked at things that was additive to the things that I was talking about. And so I started really honing in that year to try to fix ha- finding big opinions, and I was totally terrible at that. And again, the feedback kept coming, like, "Hey, your opinion's not there," or, "It's hedged," or, "It's weak.
Put more of your face on the thumbnail." All of this felt comfortable every single time. And it worked, because in that year, I went from 20 to 100 subscribers on YouTube, and that's not huge, but after 10 years of being stuck under 20, that's something that had clearly changed. And I was terrible at the one piece of advice I was actively working on, but it was making a huge difference, and that's when I had the realization.
It wasn't that I need to share more opinions. It's that I, I was hiding, you know? That, that, and that I wasn't actually showing up. Because if I wasn't showing up, then why wouldn't anyone watch another video to get the same information? Or why wouldn't you ask ChatGPT or AI n- now? And so by not holding opinions and not telling stories and actually shrinking my face on the thumbnails, right?
I kept getting that feedback to, you know, blow up your face more, 'cause people respond to that in that particular group on YouTube. Um, every one of those choices was the same choice made over and over, and it was a choice to not be seen. And there's a phrase I use for what I was protecting myself from.
It's the flaming arrows of the internet. You know, the judgment, the criticism, the comments that sting. A- and being a card-carrying introvert, my whole instinct was to build content that was attack-proof. And I, I succeeded, 'cause you can't criticize a person who isn't in the things that you're making. So you can attack the idea, and the idea was borrowed from someone else and slightly synthesized, but it wasn't me, so it didn't hurt.
And that's the irony of this. I thought I was building an audience. I thought I was building an invisibility shield and doing both really effectively, and it turned out I was just posting random stuff to the internet that nobody cared about.
[00:08:29] 6. MID CTA — Newsletter
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Quick pause. If this episode's landing, there's a written version and companion in my newsletter, The Output, which is one idea a week, no filler. You can find it at shawnbuttner.com/joinus. Now back to it
[00:08:45] 7. OUTPUT — What Changes
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So why did focusing on a big opinion work? And why do opinions and stories move a channel when volume doesn't? It's because they make you connectable as a person, not like a topic, but as somebody, and this mechanism is the tactic that nobody ever mentions. An audience can't connect with a title, right?
They might f- be searching for something, but they can connect with the person, and when there's no person to connect with in the content, there's nothing you can really do, no matter how clean the production is. Put a person in it, put a story in it, put how they're thinking through something, and suddenly there's something on the other end of the screen.
So here's a diagnostic you can run today. So pull up your last five pieces of content, your last five videos, whatever, and whatever you make, look at them and ask yourself one question: How much of yourself is in it? Do you have a strong opinion? Are you telling a personal story or a story from a client?
Are you phrasing or sharing something you've processed that only you could have, or could anyone else do the exact same thing and it's just a different face or a different voice? And if it's the second one, you don't have a volume problem. You had the problem I had. You are hiding. And so when you start to get it right, you'll feel it.
It won't feel cringe. When I look at this video pr- probably in the future, but more recent pieces of content, it's something that's not discomfort. It, it, it's a little bit of excitement for nailing what I'm trying to do and kind of seeing myself actually represented.
It's not this dissonant feeling of there's a video or voice version of Shawn out on the internet, and then there's the real me everywhere else. And as soon as you can find that barrier meld or go away, where the person that you're editing in it, in, like, the script later is the same person on the other side of the screen, that's what we're aiming for.
[00:11:07] 8. CONCLUSION
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So that's the reframe. You might not have a content problem, you might be hiding. And if that's true, extra volume isn't going to fix it. It's just gonna give you more places to hide, and to feel like you're being productive. The fix is your presence in your work, in that one video, in that one newsletter, in that one post where you show up 100% you.
That's the whole test. Here's the question I'll leave you with, the same one in this week's newsletter: What would you put out if you stopped trying not to be seen?
[00:11:48] 9. WRAP-UP
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If this episode landed, please do me a favor and follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That's how the next episode finds you, and if you got a few more seconds, leave a comment and rating. That really helps us get the word out and helps the show, and we really would appreciate it.
And finally, with the question that we asked, you can always email me at [email protected] to tell me your answer. I read them all. I love hearing from you, and I love the opportunity to cheer you on. So make sure if you have any questions, let me know.
I'm Shawn Buttner. This was Input Output, and I'll see you all next time