Creative Freedom vs. Commercial Pressures

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What’s up, Rock Nation! Today we’re joined by Tejas - the filmmaker and creator behind one of the most thoughtful and vulnerable docuseries on YouTube. After spending 9 months crafting a series on attractiveness, Tejas pulled in over 1.7 million views and sparked thousands of deeply personal conversations in the comments. In this episode, we dive into how he built a YouTube channel rooted in depth, not just reach, and how he’s redefining what it means to build an audience that actually cares. We get into his creative process, the emotional cost of getting vulnerable online, and why most creators are thinking way too small.

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Timestamps:

0:00 – Trailer

0:33 – Intro

1:12 – Why Creators Are Pivoting to YouTube Series

2:32 – The Spark Behind the Attractiveness Series

5:07 – The Rule Tejas Uses to Validate Video Ideas

6:18 – How He Structured the Four-Part Series

7:26 – Comparing thumbnails

8:39 – Building Stakes and B-Plots Into Episodes

10:36 – Thumbnail and title strategy

11:23 – Breaking down Tejas’ attractiveness series

12:49 - How to start a successful series

15:20 – Artlist

16:18 - What comes after title and thumbnail

18:16 - How often will Tejas create a series on YouTube

19:49 – The Anxiety of Inconsistent Uploads

21:03 – Short Form Pays the Bills, Long Form Feeds the Soul

23:03 - How Tejas has changed as a creator

24:23 - Editing process

24:47 – Prioritizing Depth Over Width in His Audience

27:38 – Why Word Count in Comments Is His Favorite Metric

28:52 – How to build depth with your audience

32:47 - How to create authentically online

36:38 - What Tejas has learned from his roommate Colt

39:31 - Producer brain

40:08 – Tejas’ ideal monetization strategy

48:20 – Dealing with burnout

52:20 - The future of Tejas’ channel

57:25 - Short form vs long form audiences

58:54 - How to make the leap from short form to long form

1:02:51 - studying formats

1:04:27 – How Tejas’ creative process has changed

1:05:54 - Tejas doesn’t want to go viral

1:10:05 – Tejas’ mindset going into YouTube

1:12:01 – Tejas’ big theory

1:12:43 - What tejas learned from creating short form content

1:13:48 - Keeping the viewers attention

1:16:25 - The future of the creator economy

1:26:04 - What feels off about the creator economy

1:28:44 - What tejas is trying to work on in the next 6-12 months

1:31:45 - Creator vs consumer relationship

1:33:53 - Advice to 18 year old self

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