Tweet

Ali Abdaal

11 Jun, 11 tweets, 4 min read

@petermckinnon

When I started my YouTube channel, there was one channel in particular that I took a lot of education and inspiration from - @petermckinnon

Here are the 9 things I've learnt from watching his videos 👇

📖 1. You are the story - when I started on YouTube I thought my life wasn't interesting enough to vlog about. But as Peter says: "your personality is more important than doing fun things like jumping out of a plane". This made me more okay with putting myself out there.

🤡 2. Be yourself - one of the things that's really obvious is how much personality and charisma Peter exudes. He does loads of fun/weird things on camera that his audience love. In my first few videos, I was very stilted, but now I try to exaggerate my own personality quirks.

@NotionHQ

❤️ 3. Share what you love - Peter is very open with sharing the things he loves, whether it's his tattoos, gear, favourite iPhone apps etc. And so this is something that I've been trying to do with my stuff as well e.g. my love of @NotionHQ or doing things at double speed.

🍪 4. You don't have to be typecast - my first videos were for medical students, but I wanted to explore other themes. Peter's advice helped me to be okay with doing so: "you shouldn't put a limit on your creativity and be free to create whatever you want".

📽 5. How to film - my entire YouTube filming setup is all kind of based on Peter's earlier videos where he talks about videography, lighting, sound, and other camera stuff e.g. I really like his video on creating a lighting setup for $50:

@beckiandchris

💎 6. Aesthetics matter - I really like the aesthetics of Peter's channel (although I think the gold standard of production value goes to @beckiandchris). Anytime I need aesthetic design inspiration I look to these channels.

@Kickstarter

😍 7. Build an audience that likes you - when Peter launched his camera bag on @Kickstarter I immediately dropped like $700 on it. It was a weird feeling because I just felt grateful to support him. I often think about that feeling whenever I worry about selling stuff.

🏋️‍♀️ 8. Good stuff takes effort - I'm always completely amazed as to the amount of effort that goes into Peter's content. He'll spend hours to make things absolutely perfect. So instead of trying to find shortcuts, think: "how can I make my content as good as possible?"

🚗 9. Enjoy the journey - it should be fun to make, shoot, and share everything you're doing. If any of those things aren't happening, then something isn't working and you need to correct it. Plus, the real way to be more productive in life is to have more fun.

@petermckinnon

🎬 Huge thank you to @petermckinnon for being an ongoing inspiration. If you want to watch the full video you can check it out on my channel 👉

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