Approach YouTubing like Franklin D. Roosevelt Faced the Great Depression

I stumbled upon a quote the other day, that stuck out to me, and in the video above, I discuss my thoughts as they relate to the business of YouTube.

FDR provides insight into this season of our society and maybe the season of your life too. It might give you some inspiration, as it did me.

This particular quote comes from Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech that took place in Atlanta. I live in Atlanta, so that is a fun connection. It also takes place at Oglethorpe University, which, funny enough, was a former client of mine when I had my marketing agency.

FDR's Speech

This is FDR's commencement speech from May 22nd, 1932:

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. …

We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely…

We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!”

 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, May 22, 1932

There are insights here that are relevant to YouTubers. It's certainly relevant to the societal situation that we find ourselves in with our country and the chaos and the tragedy unfolding, but I wanted to zoom in on how this applies to us as YouTubers. Let's explore.

Persistent Experimentation

FDR says, 'This country demands persistent experimentation.'

What a great phrase!

That's a great application for YouTubing. You've got two things: one, experimenting. That's something I've been doing on my channel. Hopefully, that's something you've been doing on your channel.

But persistence is the key. You can't just do one experiment and hope that it works out. The idea here is that you keep trying things until you figure out what it is that's working. And that's one of the awesome things that we have the opportunity to do with the social media platforms, with YouTube, because of the algorithms, because of the way that those systems show our content to different people, and the audience and the algorithm push it to a larger and larger audience depending on whether it's compelling and whether they're interested in it.

The way to test that out is to put a lot of content into the system with different experiments, different types of videos, different framings, different packaging, and different ideas. And some platforms are going to respond to it differently, and some audiences are going to be in different places on these different platforms. But that is the idea, is to experiment, and to do it persistently, and to figure out what's working.

And then when you figure out what's working, lean into that, do more of those things that are working. And that's the approach I've taken with my YouTube channel. I'm trying a lot of things. I'm figuring out what's getting the most traction, and I'm leaning more into the things that are getting more traction.

Imagination

FDR also hits on this idea of imagination.

It's like when you think about the kind of videos you could create, you may be limited to the types of videos that you've seen, but you don't have to be limited to that. That's where creativity and imagination are important. That's where they come into play.

Start to think about what are things you could do, what are things you could try, and what are ways you could tell this story or share that message. Lean into that.

Facing the Brutal Facts

Roosevelt also mentions the idea of facing the brutal facts bravely.

YouTube is another great example because we get brutal analytics. We get to see how many people got an impression of this video, and we get to see how many clicked. We get to see how many stuck around and how many fell off. We have those brutal facts, and we can look at those, and they can inform us. We can lean into them and go, 'Hey, I would have loved this video to have been better. I would have loved for more people to have clicked it, to have watched it, to watch more of it.' But they didn't. I failed. I dropped the ball. I didn't do a good enough, I didn't do good enough packaging, I didn't do a good enough presentation, I didn't talk well, or I didn't have enough emotion.

Whatever it is, that I might have been missing, something was holding me back.

But these are practices that allow me to do it again and again until I get to the point where I've mastered the craft of shooting, editing, and presentation. And facing those things that we might not want to face, but those are what we have to face. We have to overcome those obstacles to be successful. And it's going to require humility and swallowing our pride.

The Courage to Remake The World

And the last thing FDR talks about in that quote is not just having the courage to make our way, but remaking the world.

We're operating inside of these systems, but we don't have to just stay inside of them. We can do things outside of them, and we can connect back and forth between the platforms and between our platforms, our websites, and our systems.

And they give us opportunities, and perhaps we can be a part of, shaping that system into something even better, something that more can benefit from.

Faith, Courage, & Vision

So, that's a speech from almost a hundred years ago. They say this was one of the early speeches by Roosevelt that led to the New Deal project that followed, and that was quite transformational in our country and set the stage for many things as a response to the Great Depression that was economically crushing to our country and the people in it. It was very devastating with a lot of tragedy. We got through it. We survived.

And we're in a time now where some of those challenges we're facing, and in this little micro business that we call YouTube, we face our challenges. And so, how do we move forward through those? How do we leverage them as an opportunity to do something more interesting, more powerful, and as FDR says at the end, may we have the courage, the faith, and the vision?

And so, may you have the faith, the courage, and the vision to, take your YouTube channel to that next level and do something interesting and amazing and incredible, and that others would be inspired, educated, and entertained by the work that you've done.