Dec 9, 2022

(This one was REALLY a private journal entry, but due to the potential historical turning point in my online career, I thought it'd be great to post it to look back on someday. This is extremely personal, so be kind.)

Make Stuff. New Merch Idea.

SO two days ago I made a movie in a day. A very short 1 minute movie, but I did it.

This was in line with making a video a day for 100 days.

Well I actually did it. I can’t believe it, but from start to finish. From idea to shots to writing to voice over to editing and to posting in a day. Multiple locations and outfit changes and a mass hurry the entire time.

I was super stressed most of the day because I had no idea what I was really doing and in a race with time all day. Especially because I did other things besides that. Picked up groceries at 9, lunch, morning routine and gym. It was a busy day, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.

Well I did, but that night my jaw had a muscle spasm and I proceeded to get severe stress headaches the next day. My mom, who is a part-time school nurse, said that is all severe stress induced. Surprise. It was quite painful, uncomfortable, and annoying that I basically had to bench myself the next day. I tried to actually go to the office late, my mom told me not to, but I did, and once I got there I realized that I shouldn’t be there. Painful headache and sharp pain, often again from stress, that I felt uncertain about driving home. Yeah. Great job dan. And I was on an anxiety pill. So I chilled. And even talking about it is making me uncomfortable so let’s change the subject.

Moral of that story, I don’t think I can do THAT, every single day. I don’t want to not make shorts, that one was shot vertically, but I think they need more time and shot in conjunction with my regular scheduled content.

I think I’m about to make a radical decision with my online content…

I’m thinking about combining every channel and video ideas into one channel.

This may not seem so radical, but essentially combining entertainment and education and a podcast option to one channel is pretty crazy. But, maybe it doesn't have to be.

Let’s talk this out.

Sorry I got distracted scrolling for 15 minutes.

Okay, so combining. How would this work?

Well, in short, I didn't have a ton of great long-form video ideas for my channel.

They all seemed like solo podcast ideas, desk talk.

And I started coming up with ideas for the studio content, teaching, in hopes to build a brand I could sell courses and have a successful online business that way. And many of those I thought, wow, maybe I should make a podcast for these too, because these might be great for audio learners like myself. The problem?

Most of those videos seemed to sitting at a desk too. Very little difference in my desk videos, the longer podcast videos, and these new videos. The main difference seemed to be the content itself. But then I started taking it a step further.

I started seeing the big difference in the content I was making exclusively for short-form and what I lacked in long-from content. And I was using many of the funny short-from videos as podcast episodes. Just uploading them to the podcast. I then thought, oh this is the podcast, I’ll make these for the podcast channel. This will be the podcast’s content. But then I thought, well then what about my page? I’ve already got these followers, do I shift?

So I started making super short films and sketches. I did shoot them for long-form and cut for short, but the long didn’t get views and the short-form version was short changed because it wasn’t shot vertically. It was too close and the shots weren’t designed for that format.

Something similar happened with my sit-down comedies. I shot them for long, which is actually way harder to get the wide shot to look good than a vertical shot. And it worked. The shirt didn’t look bad. But I didn’t like the long. They weren’t long, first of all. They were sometimes less than a minute or right over a minute. That’s no good long-form content people want to watch on their tv.

So here I am.

But you discover this while doing it.

Not theorizing over it.

The big distinction for me is the difference between long-form content and exclusive short-form content.

For instance, what if I made those short sit-down comedies on a backdrop exclusively for short-form, like I did. And what if I made short films vertically, exclusive for short form. Like I just did. And finally, what if my long-forms are generally at a desk & can be educational or entertainment or anything I want, just me?

And what if all of that, all of me, was on the same page: Dan Kathman. So the video a day for 100 days or 200 days or 500 days or 1,000 days, what if that’s all the same channel and the same page? How much more successful would that page be than splitting it between 3 pages?

A LOT MORE.

Alright that's what I'm going to do then.

Maybe someday I look back at this, and realize this was the final straw moment that took my career to where it is.