Are you all in for the conversation...forever?

Enjoying Independent Creative? Subscribe to Work in Progress, my weekly email newsletter. Click here to subscribe or connect with me on Twitter.

–

This week on Creative Elements, I spoke with Amy Landino.

I've been following Amy's work on YouTube for a while – and over the last couple of years, her YouTube channel, AmyTV, skyrocketed from 80K subscribers to nearly 400K today.

Talk about growth.

So I wanted to talk to Amy about that growth. And I wanted to talk about how to be successful on YouTube.

And when I asked Amy those questions, she didn't point to choosing the perfect title, or creating a vibrant thumbnail like you see above...

She pointed to "the hard work that everybody likes to forget about."

When Amy got started on YouTube 12 years ago, she made a commitment.

She published a new video every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for three years.

If you're trying to run the numbers, I'll do it for you – that's more than 450 videos created in that three-year span alone.

And it still took years after that to really hit the big inflection point from 80K to 400K subscribers.

She went from 80K to 100K in a month...then doubled to 200K in about 100 days, and then 300K about 400 days after that.

So after 12 years of publishing and a lot of growth, what advice does she give?

"There was a lot of things that had to happen. And every last one of them has to do with listening to the audience and finding out what they want."

Every week she shows up when her audience expects her to show up.

Every week she treats her content like a "coffee date" with her friend.

Oh, and her friend has a name: Charlotte.

Charlotte isn't a real person – but she represents a very real person. And Amy knows a lot about Charlotte.

Most importantly, she knows that Charlotte expects her to show up every week. And Charlotte expects Amy to understand who she is, and what she needs.

And so Amy does show up and deliver something to help Charlotte – week after week, year after year.

Sound a little exhausting?

Well, welcome to the life of a professional content creator.

"You've got to be all in for the conversation forever, like forever is a long time, but like pretty much forever. If this is a reverse engineering of a business plan and you need people to be buying your product or thinking about your brand, you need to be there for the conversation indefinitely."

"You've got to be all in for the conversation forever."

As exhausting as it may sound at first, it's hard for me to imagine a more fulfilling life than showing up to serve people with your work and being supported because of it.

This interview was chock full of goodness like this.

If you're an aspiring content creator, I highly recommend listening to the whole conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other player.

And if you're an aspiring content creator, I just opened up applications for the first ever Unreal Collective Creator Cohort – a 12-week accelerator program to launch and build an audience around your creative project.

→ Click here to learn more and apply

–

I'd love for you to tell me in the comments...

1. Who is your Charlotte?
2. What kind of content are YOU creating?

–

Jay Clouse is the creator of Freelancing School, which provides the training and community to help people make a living freelancing. He is also the founder of Unreal Collective, a community for founders, freelancers, and creators that runs a 12-week accelerator program.

Jay hosts Creative Elements, which interviews high-profile creators who have made their own independent living.

You can connect with Jay on Twitter @jayclouse or sign up for his Sunday newsletter for creatives at jayclouse.com.