I Feel Lost as a Content Creator...

I don't know if I'm having a content blocker or I'm burned out creating developer content, but I feel lost and overwhelmed with deciding what direction to take this channel in. I wanted to share that with you. Why? Not really sure yet.

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Transcript

Don Hansen: 0:13

I feel like I'm failing as a content creator and I wanted to create this video in hopes that I can talk through what I'm thinking and hopefully find some insight in that, and, if not, maybe you guys can help me find some insight. I'm definitely going to be reading the comments, but I kind of just want to share what's been going on with my channel, which I feel is dying, and I feel like I know why. So let's, I guess, just jump into it. I started this channel doing a bunch of coding bootcamp reviews and I'd bring on students and it was a really cool format. It helped a lot of people and the reality is that a lot of coding boot camps just got too greedy and they started pushing out a lot of aspiring developers with cookie cutter knowledge and the whole, the whole.

Don Hansen: 1:16

The strength of a coding bootcamp was to be able to provide a lot of guidance and mentorship and cohesion with your cohort. You'd meet other people and you would go through this experience together as growing as a developer, because being a self-taught developer can be very lonely At least it was for me and I think it is for a lot of people, which is why I encourage you to get out there, go to meetups and go to hackathons things I did not do back in the day but a lot of coding bootcamps saw the profit come in during the pandemic and they took in more and more people and pretty much created hybrid or remote only programs that didn't have the same quality as their initial in-person programs, and they just took in as many people as possible and spit them out into the dev world to try to become developers. And we're going through a very, very rough job market right now at the entry level and a lot of it has to do with a surge of people trying to become a developer during the pandemic. I truly think that and it sucks because a lot of people are still struggling to find a job to this day that didn't find a job done, and so a lot of coding boot camps are struggling to even get students anymore and it's very hard for me to trust that a lot of them are providing quality software engineers and providing quality education and prioritizing that, not prioritizing taking investment money and just trying to make a profit off of all of these students for the least amount of effort possible, because what I see is so many aspiring developers struggling to get a job in their portfolios are not great at all level knowledge a lot of tutorial-based projects, a lot of projects where they're not even trying to get a user base behind them. They don't look like professional projects and they can. There's a misconception. I think a lot of junior developers need to realize how powerful your skills are. You can build a full-fledged company with the skills that you learn, and if coding boot camps aren't teaching you how to do this, they are failing you. If your courses aren't encouraging you to push these boundaries and make professional-looking projects, they are failing you. So I feel like I've lost my confidence that most coding boot camps are going to prepare software engineers. I think coding boot camps that really prioritize quality, not scalability, and really want to preserve that experience that made the coding bootcamp industry so popular in the first place and produced so many good results for people's careers like mine. You know I came from a coding bootcamp. I got a job six weeks afterwards. Until I start seeing more coding bootcamps push out higher quality engineers, it's hard for me to like want to do coding boot camp reviews anymore, which is what my channel is founded on. So I've tried different things, I've done solo videos and you know what I really find fun Talking about habits and psychology.

Don Hansen: 5:24

When you're trying to become a developer.

Don Hansen: 5:26

It's a lot more difficult than you realize, because you have to. You essentially have to conquer so many of your demons. You realize how much of a procrastinator you are. You realize how much of a perfectionist you are. You kind of have to dig into why that is and why that continues to hold you back from actually achieving results. You have to go through weeks of just no motivation, doubting yourself if this is the path for you, doubting your intelligence. Are you even smart enough because you just went through a course and you feel like you remember nothing?

Don Hansen: 6:07

You try to go to a project and you blank and what you do in that moment it's a pretty good signal of how you're going to handle a lot of the hurdles of even becoming a developer that you are going to face. After you blink, your mind goes blank. You have no idea what to do. Are you resourceful enough to look up, get motivation, get inspiration, get mentorship to get past that blocker, or is it not for you, right? You're going to encounter so many challenges to your intelligence and your habits, encounter so many challenges to your intelligence and your habits and like maybe you think this is silly, but I I really think, like childhood trauma that has caused shitty work ethic, shitty social skills, where you can even read the situation in a room. You have absolutely no idea how to just interact with another person sitting across from you in an interview. You put them on a pedestal, you're intimidated, you're full of anxiety.

Don Hansen: 7:07

There's so much you have to overcome to become a developer and it's a lot. It's a lot more than people realize. It's not just a technical, which most people are failing at. Then there's the soft skills, then there's the social skills. Then there's the career strategy and being able to analyze your situation and trying to be data driven and make data driven decisions to then better your strategy and building a system that allows you to push yourself forward and grow as a developer but also understand how to be competitive in a developer market. There's so much to learn and I think I think the soft skills and the psychology side is really interesting. So when I talk about imposter syndrome, when I talk about how you feel like a failure, I feel like I can empathize with those feelings and when I talk about it, I feel like they're very helpful for people. I think those kinds of videos it feels very natural for me to do and maybe I need to do more of those videos. I have a psychology background so I still have my interest in it, so I've thought about doing videos like that.

Don Hansen: 8:29

I've also thought about doing reaction content and reacting to tech news and developer news. But I feel like that kind of content attracts fairly toxic people and maybe it's the way that I do it, but I don't think it is because I see other reaction content people and there's a fairly large amount of toxicity in their community, especially when you go harder with the reaction content which there's value in it, and I think it's okay to have a little toxicity in your community. But I'm trying to figure out what kind of audience and what kind of community I even want to build. I'm like I'm still figuring that out and I don't know, um, and I don't know if I want to just attract a bunch of reaction andies that want to just watch me roast content or roast reddit posts or like I like doing that once in a while, but I don't. I feel like the expectation you're in your community just grows and you kind of get stuck in this niche and I feel like I want to balance in my community, and so I feel like I like different things.

Don Hansen: 9:50

I like talking about psychology. I like talking about habits of developers that are growing. I like talking about tech news. I like talking about reaction content. Maybe that's the answer to be able to create a variety of videos tech news. I like talking about reaction content. Maybe that's the answer to be able to create a variety of videos.

Don Hansen: 10:06

I feel like I have ideas that I want to do like and I I like my one-on-ones. I have like 25 minute sessions where you can just come onto my podcast and get help, um, but most of those requests are how do I get a developer job? No research done on their part whatsoever. I have no interest in answering questions like very generic questions where you don't even have an outline, you have no context for me, like you can just watch my videos, you can watch other people's videos for that right. I like digging into specific situations. That is interesting. That is where I can help people. Or it's a question of why am I not getting a developer job, which is, to be honest, probably a two and a half hour deep dive into your situation, where I have to look at your resume, your cover letter, your follow-up messages, your interactions, what you're doing with networking, what meetups you're going to. How are you interacting in those meetups? What's your portfolio? Look like your GitHub look like what are your projects that you highlight in your GitHub? What do they say about you as a developer? What the hell is your interest?

Don Hansen: 11:11

And most people want to become some generic developer that just give me any position. Why the hell should a company Want to hire someone that doesn't even know what the fuck they want to do and what kind of problems they want to solve? You expect me to help you when you like I have. How do I want to say this? You expect me to help you when you don't even know what you want to do? It takes time, it takes hours to dive into this and dig it out of people. Sometimes, which is okay, you can be in that position where you don't really know. Dig it out of people sometimes, which is okay, you can be in that position where you don't really know, but that's.

Don Hansen: 11:43

It's hard to answer a lot of generic questions that come from aspiring developers, like how do I become a developer or how do, or what is preventing me from becoming a developer? Why aren't hiring managers interested in hiring me? Right? These are deep questions and I think people want very surface level answers. So how do I create content for that? Most people don't want to come on in front of the camera. They want for free. They want free help, a two and a half hour session and to get a simple answer. And there aren't simple answers for questions that you have obviously not been able to get answered for months and that should be a signal to you. But it's fun to dig into people's situations. To do a two and a half hour deep dive could be fun, but the format of just bringing on someone quickly or just answering your question in a Q&A format often fails you in a Q&A format often fails you. It fails you because it enables you to ask very generic questions without any context and expect a very simple answer to a tough, in-depth problem.

Don Hansen: 12:54

I have ideas of content I want to create and I think those are what I'm probably focused on. So I'm kind of getting away from the coding bootcamp reviews and I'm moving into a little bit more habits, psychology and deeper dives into people's situations. But I'm still faced with this blocker Every time I think about, like creating a video. Every time I think about creating a video, I don't know what it is, I haven't been able to identify it, but I don't know if I get overwhelmed or I feel like I'm going to create. I feel like I can't help people in the way that I used to, because the market's gotten rougher and I got to do a really deep dive into your situation.

Don Hansen: 13:43

I think I'm tired of giving generic answers. I'm tired of creating the same content and giving the same advice over and over and over, and maybe I kind of just got to suck that up, but I feel like it's burned me out from creating content and I don't know what to create. And every time I think about it I just I don't know. There's just a blocker. It's intimidating. I feel like I'm going to give the wrong answer, and maybe it's perfectionism, maybe it's imposter syndrome.

Don Hansen: 14:11

Myself, I guess I'm a little bit lost on what to do and I feel like I'm being very dramatic right now in saying this, but this has been on my mind for a long time and I don't really know where I want to take this channel. There are a lot of things that seem fun to me. I genuinely just don't know what kind of content I want to create, and I feel like there are things that I love. I love interacting with people, I like the live streams, but I'm just a bad YouTuber. I don't like creating videos. I've wanted to be a live streamer for a long time but I feel like, yeah, I need to create videos and YouTube content to push forward with my business, because I quit being a developer probably four years ago to do this, to give this a try. I remember watching Joshua Fluke's videos and I was amazed by what he did with his with me. Everything that he said resonated with me and it was really cool to see him build a living off of what he did and the kind of content he created.

Don Hansen: 15:51

I don't think there's a linear path in this story. I think I'm just trying to talk out loud to figure out what I want to do going forward, because I know I love mentoring people. I love the one-on-one mentorship. I think it'd be awesome to finally create an in-depth course, because I've identified so many holes in other people's courses, like it would be great to be able to use that knowledge to build what I truly think is gonna prepare people, and I think it's gonna be a longer course than people expect, and I think that's needed.

Don Hansen: 16:24

Developers need much longer courses than what are offered. It blows my mind how much money these companies make at producing surface-level knowledge developers. I just I can't believe companies and content creators are still getting away with this. I think niche courses are really good, but I'm talking about like A to Z solution courses where you take my course, you're going to be hireable as a developer. Most of the time you're not. You're going to need to supplement quite a bit. Um, but that's that's lengthy.

Don Hansen: 17:03

To create an entire course like that, which what I create is probably is it even going to serve people? Is it going to be of quality enough with the initial version to even help people like I? I think everyone needs helped. Um, I think people need more in-depth courses and really get a solid foundation. But can I produce that with my first iteration?

Don Hansen: 17:27

Maybe I fuck over a lot of developers by producing crap, because you're told as a content creator, you're supposed to create a course as well to really generate that income, and that's the tricky thing. I think it would be amazing If I had to take the money out of this and I could just create content. I think it'd be much easier, but I've YouTube has royally Um it. Youtube has royally fucked me over in terms of revenue. I've gotten errors and accusations from YouTube about um botting my traffic. Um, and YouTube's like it's so frustrating dealing with YouTube support where I've literally lost um good $10,000 last year, literally lost um a good ten thousand dollars last year, just because of accusations from youtube about essentially how I'm botting traffic and um, it's just, it's the invalid traffic thing. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but um, my channel has been flagged for invalid traffic and I've never done anything like that and it completely stripped all my income from YouTube and it's made, it's forced me to try to find income in other areas, which is why I finally started really pushing out, like the one-on-one mentorship sessions and the technical stuff that I offer, which is good. I'm actually glad I did that because I'm having a lot of fun. It's kind of like reignited my excitement for coding again. I get to dive deep into the fundamentals and I actually will take time out of my day to decompress by coding.

Don Hansen: 19:08

Again, I'm building a project and I feel like sometimes it's easy just to get trapped in this YouTube spiral of creating what you think people want, not what they need. What they want and what's going to get engagement and what's going to get monetization, so you can put food on the table. I feel like I'm in a better spot financially with my business to be able to put food on the table than I was when YouTube first stripped me from all my income. But now I'm kind of just left with like, what the hell do I do with my channel? Because I want to create content? I just don't. I don't know the direction I want to go.

Don Hansen: 20:06

Do I have anything else to say? Um, no, I don't think so and sorry if my voice sounds weird, I'm getting sick. I have been losing sleep just because I've been trying to work a little bit extra. I'm I'm just not going to bed early enough, but, um, I'll probably feel better when the weekend's over. But anyways, I kind of just want to share it. I don't, you know, even though I'm sick, I just want to. I don't know. I had an urge to just share this and I want to hear your insight. Um, you know, even as aspiring developers or even other content creators, I'm really open to your advice.

Don Hansen: 20:44

As aspiring developers, what do you struggle with the most? What kind of help do you truly want? What kind of content can I create? What kind of questions can I answer that aren't generic how do I become a developer questions, or why am I not getting a developer job? Questions that you expect to be answered within even an hour, just for you? Um, I don't know if that's an easy question to answer at your stage, um, and I'm very curious if other content creators have faced any of the challenges that I mentioned.

Don Hansen: 21:13

But I feel like I'm just having a content blocker. I've struggled with, uh, figuring out how to put food on the table, and I figured it out because I'm able to. I guess I did figure it out, but I feel like I really want to grow this business, I really want to grow this channel, and I'm trying to figure out the direction I want to do that in. So I'm very curious what other struggles other content creators have that maybe they're similar, maybe they've overcome what I've overcome, um, but what I'm thinking of is to not this is my solution, because I my main blocker is what content do I create? Because I know what I like doing. I know what I enjoy doing to help other developers or aspiring developers. I figured that out. But what kind of content can I create? Because that's like your life force of your business as a content creator, obviously, when you sell courses, when you offer mentorship sessions, what kind of content can I create that I actually want to create, that grows the audience that I want to grow?

Don Hansen: 22:21

And I think it's just sharing my thoughts like this that are probably going to be a little bit more focused to developer advice. But I feel like I just need to stop intimidating myself and just create shit, no matter how low the quality is, just push it out there. Don't worry about editing, just talk, don't snip anything, just push it up, just like this video, um, but anyways, I just want to get my thoughts out there. Uh, if anyone has any insights, um, I'd greatly appreciate them. I'll, I'll definitely read the comments, but, um, I appreciate you just listening. It was just a chance to be able to share my thoughts that I was feeling this week. Okay, that's pretty much it. Anyways, have a good rest of your day, good luck at all of your projects and happy coding. Take care.