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Project One Video: Week 1 - The Goal
Week 1 of the Project of the Month
First off, last month my wife gave birth to our daughter, Emmy! She is a happy, healthy, and beautiful baby girl. If you noticed that I sort of dropped off the face of the Earth last month, that is why. It took a little bit of time to adjust to life with two kids, but now I’m ready to get back to it!
This month I am launching Project One Video, a self-explanatory project where the goal is to make and publish one video on YouTube.
While a video may not be a traditional “product,” this project fits into my larger vision for this website and the build-in-public formula. If I want to keep making things and sharing the process, then video gives me another way to show what I am working on, teach what I have learned, and eventually market the things I build.
It also gives me a way to put future Projects of the Month on YouTube, which feels like a natural next step for this series.
Learning From the Last Project
For the last two months, I worked on Project Zero Inventory, a project aimed at using on-demand manufacturing to test product ideas with minimal upfront investment.
Part of the project was a success. I published three kids books using Amazon’s print-on-demand service, proving that it is surprisingly easy to create and sell a physical book without purchasing inventory or handling the shipping myself.
The 3D printed products were a different story…
I ran into multiple delays while trying to manufacture the kitchen tools I designed. Rather than extending Project Zero Inventory into a third month while I try to resolve this, I am moving onto a new project. I will revive Project Zero Inventory once the manufacturing process is sorted out.
The main lesson is that I need to choose Projects of the Month with a smaller scope and fewer dependencies outside of my control. This is especially true right now when my time is a little less predictable than usual.
Project One Video is built around that lesson. The goal is small, clearly defined, and almost entirely within my control.
The Goal
The goal this month is to make and publish one YouTube video. The video will be a tutorial demonstrating some of the work I have been doing with AI agents.
But the real goal isn’t just to upload one video and call it a day. What I really want is to build a sustainable video production workflow that I can repeat again and again into the future. That means working through the entire process from planning to recording to editing to publishing to slicing it into shorts and figuring out how to do it without turning every video into a massive production.
There is a lot to this, but to keep things under control, I’m setting a low bar for success: publish one complete video by the end of the month.
Why YouTube?
Right now, LinkedIn is the only social media platform I regularly use to share my work, but lately I’m finding the only people interested in anything I post are people who want to hire me or sell me something. There is nothing wrong with that, but I also want to reach people who are genuinely interested in the projects, tutorials, and ideas I share.
I think YouTube is the best next step. Video is particularly useful for the type of work I do. A written article is great for explaining an idea, but sometimes it is much easier to demonstrate a tool, walk through some code, or show a finished project on screen. YouTube also has a much larger audience of people actively searching for tutorials and technical content.
Beyond that, the advantage of going to YouTube first before expanding to other platforms like Instagram or TikTok, is that its easier to slice a long-form YouTube video into smaller clips for other platforms than it is to expand a short-form video into a long-form one. Since there is a clear order of operations here, I want to want to go along the path of least resistance.
My hope is that this first video becomes the foundation for a larger online presence. But before I worry about building an audience, I need to prove that I can actually make a video.
Moving Forward
Publishing one video is only the first step. The real value of this project will be building a repeatable process that makes the second video easier than the first, and the third easier than the second. Once that foundation is in place, I can use it to share tutorials, document future Projects of the Month, and expand onto other platforms.
For now, though, the mission is simple: build the workflow and publish the first video.
Stay tuned for next week, when I’ll lay out the plan!
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