I can’t believe it has been 5 years. Half a decade guys. Half a decade!
It seems only yesterday I was contemplating starting a YouTube channel, and in a manner akin to blinking an eye. 5 years have gone by.
Being a YouTuber has been the experience of a lifetime, and the education I have obtained doing this job is the likes of which I never got in any educationary institution, or in a sense, will ever get anywhere else.
In that time, I have made 138 videos (some I deleted and others I have since made private) I have edited what seems like 100s of videos, both for myself and others.
Amassed 3700 subscribers as at the writing of this post (yes boys!), garnered about 235,000-lifetime views, 8,700 likes, 2,200 comments and 1,200 shares.
Let us get into the story of my YouTube channel. The greatest project of my life.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
In May of 2019, I arrived in Nairobi from Eldoret, a newly minted life insurance agent with less than a year’s experience on the job.
In Eldoret I had suffered to make ends meet, going hungry and having different sets of landlords come close to chasing me away from their properties.
One landlord actually padlocked my house, for which I had to jump very many hurdles to get the house opened again (that’s the story of another day) another landlord actually brought a prospective tenant to view the house I was living in, while I was still living in the said house!
My life was done at that point, at least from an economic standpoint, I was in the doldrums. I was in the upside down, haha.
Funny enough, that’s not even the lowest I have been, there was a time I used to beg friends in Eldoret to let me wash their laundry for some little money. That again, is the story of another day.
So after months of trials and tribulations, with my insurance business suffering worse than myself, if you can believe that.
An Aunt of mine called me out of the blue, she was living in Nairobi. And the phone call went a little like this.
‘Hi Dennis, this is your aunt ……….’
‘Hi Aunty, how are you’
‘I’m okay, I understand that you are currently in Eldoret.’
‘Yes I am’
‘And that you are selling life Insurance there?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘How is that treating you.’
‘Not very well.’
‘Which Insurance company do you work for?’
‘ICEA LION.’
‘It has branches in Nairobi, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘If you are not doing well in Eldoret, what would you say you come stay in Nairobi with me for a while, sell your insurance, then maybe after 6 months you will have found your feet and you can move to your place in Nairobi and begin life in the city.’
‘Yes Aunty, definitely, I’d like that very much.’
At this point I was a desperate man, and a desperate man clutches at any straw they might find, a drawing fellow will grasp at any chance of oxygen.
So my Aunt said.
‘Think about it for a bit, take a month, and then if you still want to come. You can come.’
And so I took a month and came. I landed in Nairobi in May 2019 my birthday month. I was turning 25, I had never lived in Nairobi before (I had visited a few times, just for a few days at a time)
So in a sense, this was going to be the very first time I would live in Nairobi city.
I was a 25-year-old man, being hosted by an aunt, with no prospects in the city, financial or otherwise, no friends and no idea where I would start to sell life Insurance.
SELLING INSURANCE IN THE CITY
I arrived at my aunt’s house on a Friday, stayed indoors on Saturday and Sunday, and then stepped out on Monday to walk the streets and try selling life insurance.
This type of sales technique is called ‘Cold canvassing’
In this sales technique, a sales agent walks around, going into random offices and trying to convince total strangers to buy life insurance. It is a highly ineffective strategy, mired with many pitfalls and challenges.
The chances of success are tiny, tiny indeed.
The stories of my experiences in the city selling insurance could fill a book. But since that’s not the aim of this blog post. I’ll leave out the nitty gritty.
After months of little success selling Insurance in Nairobi, I started contemplating starting a YouTube channel.
My Aunt, as it turns out, had wifi in the house, and so YouTube became my most consumed entertainment medium.
Watching all these YouTube videos had me seriously thinking about starting my own.
In those days, I watched mostly Kenyan content. From the likes of:
- Miss Trudy
- Wabosha Maxine
- Over 25
- The Green Calabash
And in my mind, began fomenting an idea, an idea which scared and excited me in equal measure.
If these people could make YouTube videos and succeed, why couldn’t I?
Suffice it to say, I knew nothing about making YouTube videos at the time. I knew nothing about cameras, or videography or video editing.
I was the true embodiment of ‘You know nothing Jon Snow’
But still, I was determined to start.
Launching my YouTube channel.
In September of 2019, I uploaded my first YouTube video.
The title of the video was, ‘Is money equivalent to happiness.’
My idea at the time was that I’d make a YouTube channel centred around self-improvement topics.
How naive of me.
Here I was, struggling to survive in the city. Struggling to make insurance sales. And I was going to advise people on self-improvement.When there was hardly any improvement in my own life. Hahaha.
It goes without saying that those first videos did not do very well. Infact, it would be accurate to say that I made the bulk of the viewership of those videos.
I was watching and rewatching my own videos to at least make up the numbers so that my embarrassment would be if not completely alleviated then at least reduced.
Because as much as a video with 5 views is embarrassing for a YouTube creator. A video with zero views or 2 views is even more embarrassing.
Buying my YouTube Camera
As soon as I made my first YouTube video I knew that my Infinix S4 phone camera, (The tool I was using to create videos) wasn’t going to cut it.
In 2019, YouTube was already a very competitive landscape and if I wanted to be taken seriously, I was going to have to find a better tool for shooting videos.
I started thinking about buying a camera at that point.
The challenge, as you know, is that professional cameras are quite expensive. At the time, don’t forget, I was an insurance agent making very little headway in my insurance sales.
The solution presented itself to me a few weeks later. It wasn’t an elegant solution, but it was a solution all the same.
In ICEA LION, there was an insurance agent’s Sacco, meant to help insurance agents working for ICEA LION Life Assurance company access credit and improve their lives.
Insurance agents are not credit-worthy because of the nature of compensation in insurance sales, you see, whereas working people in conventional careers earn a salary, Insurance agents earn commissions.
An Insurance agent can earn Ksh 200,000 in a given month and then earn Ksh 20,000 or less the following month. Due to this, banks shy away from giving insurance agents credit.
It is assumed that because of the nature of their job, the likelihood that they would default on their loans is very high.
Hence the agents sacco. ICEA LION agents had come together and decided to form a Sacco, save money and access credit in that way.
It was this vehicle that I would use to help me buy my camera.
And so I joined the Sacco and committed to saving ksh 2000 every month. My goal was to save Ksh 15,000 or ksh 20,000 so I could access three times my savings and buy a camera priced at around ksh 50,000 to Ksh 60,000.
Eight months in, I had about 14,000 shillings saved. My earnings were not very predictable so there were months when I saved less than the aforementioned 2000.
Anyway, I was given a loan facility of Ksh 40,000, and it was then my responsibility to figure out where I would get the rest and buy a camera.
After a bit of research on YouTube (Meaning watching 100s OF CAMERA VIDEOS), I settled on the Canon M50, a mirrorless camera from Canon priced at the time at Ksh 50,000.
My aunt contributed Ksh 3,000 to the endeavour and the rest came from my meagre commissions.
On August 10th 2020, I bought my Canon M50. And man was I proud. It is upto now, the most expensive thing I have ever owned.
MY GROWTH ON YOUTUBE
My growth on the YouTube platform has been a journey of attrition. Slow as a snail for years.
It is only since about a month ago, that the channel has started to pick up some form of momentum.
Let me share some numbers with you.
SUBSCRIBERS
I UPLOADED MY FIRST VIDEO ON 14TH SEPTEMBER 2019.
It took me a year to get to 100 subscribers.
It took 2 years and 10 months to get to 500 subscribers.
It took 3 years and 5 months to get to 1,000 subscribers.
And this is where it gets interesting.
It has only taken 1 year and 7 months to go from 1,000 subscribers to 3,700 as of the date of this post.
LESSONS I HAVE LEARNT ON YOUTUBE
Over the years I have learnt many lessons being a YouTube creator.
I have also created many resources about those lessons. Some on this website, and others on my YouTube channel.
Here are a few of those resources.
YouTube Tips
SUMMARY
It has been 5 years of making videos on YouTube. It has not been easy, but I have somehow survived.
I have grown so much as a person and as a content creator. And there is one thing I know for certain. I know it better than I know anything that I have ever known.
I know that because of being a YouTuber. My life will never be the same.
Here’s to not buggering it up.
