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Brownlee: Scaling a YouTube Channel is Like an Octopus Cutting Off Arms

Marques Brownlee · HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee · Nov 3, 2022 · at 24:34

YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) explains his octopus analogy for how independent creators transition from solo production to managing a specialized studio team.

0:00 / 0:42exact quote · 42.6s
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“I describe the team building act of a YouTube creator like an octopus cutting off its arms. And I say that because when you're a creator at a certain level, you realize you actually have like many jobs, seven, eight, nine jobs. You're a camera person. You are a writer. You are an editor. You are a full-time in front of the camera person. You are managing the inbox. You are the financial accountant. You're doing the taxes. You're doing all this stuff. Right. And wouldn't it be great if you could just cut off one of those arms that's doing one of those tasks and hand it to someone who is 10 times better at doing it than you are? Or maybe they're just twice as good, but they have way more time to just do that all the time.”

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Marques Brownlee Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 48:04 HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
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Marques Brownlee Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 14:44 HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
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Marques Brownlee Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 28:30 HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
Disclosure
Brownlee: MKBHD Avoids Brand Sponsorships From Companies Whose Products They Review
“Normally we don't do sponsored integrations from companies whose products we also review, and that was a choice that we made pretty early, but we have actually had like that happen with these sort of fringe overlaps.”
Marques Brownlee Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 30:17 HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
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“We say no to 99% of the things that we get offered. Like, actually, 99%.”
Marques Brownlee Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 31:55 HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
Disclosure
Brownlee: MKBHD's Production Pressure is Internal, Not Driven by YouTube Algorithms
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Marques Brownlee Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 44:29 HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
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