Being a YouTuber is like being an octopus

I love a good analogy. This is an analogy I've used internally but first attempted to describe to another human when chatting with @reckless here: https://www.theverge.com/22231657/mkbhd-marques-brownlee-interview-youtube-creator-influencer-decoder

THREAD

Being a "professional YouTuber" is actually several jobs in one. In tech, for example, you're a professional video editor, writer/researcher, a professional reviewer and cameraman. Then you manage an inbox, accounting, content strategy, social media, and sponsors deals.

An octopus has 8 arms, three hearts and nine brains. The amount of control over multiple tasks and spatial awareness that an octopus has is insane. It's kinda like being a YouTuber (stick with me here)

When you eventually grow to point where you want to start scaling and building and hiring, there are tons of challenges, of course. Scaling a creative business is extremely hard. Because you already do EVERYTHING. It actually feels like cutting off one of the arms of the octopus

That arm is PRECIOUS. You've always controlled it. But when you find someone to dedicate their time and energy and effort to controlling that ONE arm, they can get WAY more out of that arm. (Every octopus arm has a brain that goes with it btw. You can keep talking to that brain!)

The challenge as a creator is to deliberately, methodically, intelligently cut those arms off and grow them into their own potential. BUT keep those 3 hearts.

Challenge: find out what your hearts are. Maybe that's the edit. Maybe that's the on-camera stuff. Maybe the writing. Maybe it's several of those. But those things that are integral are often hardest to define. Sometimes you cut off an arm, realize it was a heart and put it back

Moral of the story: The octopus is one of the smartest, most capable animals in the ocean

But in the world of creative, independent media the octopus can grow WAY stronger and more powerful when the sum of the parts is greater than the original octopus. Keep swimming, friends