6 SHOWRUNNER Habits for Your YouTube Channel

What if you thought about your YouTube channel like a good TV Showrunner? What if that mindset shift is the piece of the YouTube puzzle you're missing?

This mental mindset is the pivot I've made on my YouTube channel for 2026, and I want to talk about what that pivot means going forward and how you can tap into this framework to help you grow your YouTube channel.

In 2025, I decided to get serious about YouTube and work towards monetization. I had 68 subscribers and a couple of hundred watch hours. By the end of 2025, I had 400 subscribers with around 1,500 watch hours.

2025 was a year of creating videos and exploring the ecosystem. It was a year of stretching and growing for me, and in December, I took a month-long break from YouTube to reflect on the journey and evolve for the next phase. What were things that worked well that I could apply going forward? I've identified six pillars of a showrunner that are shaping how I'm thinking about YouTube going forward.

6 Elements of a Showrunner Mindset

• A Strong Vision: Where are we going? What's the destination? What's the end game? This can apply to a channel as a whole, but also all the pieces inside of it. Done well, it leads to creating content we're excited to share.
• Connective threads across episodes. This means shifting from a single episode mindset to a season and series.
• A brand or reputation around these threads, the series as a whole (language, styles, and approaches), and the channel.
• Scaling up systems (in production and reach). This is about organizing to produce at a higher level.
• Showcasing the talent of others (creators and collaborators). This ties into a strong vision that gives collaborators and our teams the ability to shine as they move towards that vision.
• Building a loyal fanbase. It's not just about a stray observer but about building and maintaining a connection with people who watch.

The Shift

These pillars are the core ideas to reflect on as I enter this next year, and how I can level up my channel. In 2025, I had many of these pieces of the puzzle, and now it's about intentionally shaping my videos and campaigns around this framework to mature it.

And this video you're watching is an example of this mindset shift in action. This is my inaugural video for my series, ShowRunning YouTube. That is the name of this ongoing series and a brand that codifies the connective thread. Through this series, I'll be sharing about my YouTube journey so you can skip my mistakes and apply the methods that help your channel grow.

There are other ways this is shifting how I'm creating videos. In 2025, I published 19 episodes of a show on my channel called Juniper and Jones. This is a series that is tracking my wife converting a Ram Promaster cargo van into a magical school bus that inspires kids to read. It had a brand, a series of consequence episodes, and a seed for other series, like this one, for what's to come.

As I'm creating videos for YouTube, I'm thinking about whether it's a single video (a movie), a finite series of videos (miniseries), or a series with no definite end (TV show). If it's part of an ongoing show or a miniseries, is there a brand I can build around it? Are there themes of videos I'm producing that I could bundle together into branded shows or a miniseries?

I'll be exploring this showrunner mindset and applying it to my channel throughout the year. If you want to join me on the journey of ShowRunning YouTube, subscribe to my channel, and I'll see you on the next episode.