These are the five levels of YouTube channels, starting from absolute beginners all the way up to billion dollar media companies. So if you run a YouTube channel and growth has flatlined, it's not because you lack talent. It's because nobody in the game told you what the levels actually are. And in this video, we're gonna show you how to identify exactly where you are, but also what you need to do to level up. Starting with level one, which is the constrained creator. There are over 115,000,000
YouTube channels right now. Most of them are these guys. So
what exactly does it mean to be a constrained creator? Well, as the name probably implies,
you are trying to do too many things at once without real clarity about what you need to be doing. Because as a constrained creator, you're probably more in, like, the exploratory phases of YouTube. Mhmm. Maybe you were, like, exploring whether I even wanna try this full time. Mhmm. What is my niche gonna be? What kind of content am I gonna make? And you're kinda just, like, throwing things at the wall, or you're, like, unsure of, like, where this channel should go. And so typically, and these numbers are not like backed by data or anything like that, but average I would say, the constraint creator is making anywhere between like 0 and 1 k Per month. In revenue from YouTube. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Mhmm. Right? Because you could very well just build up an audience first,
and then kinda figure out what does my audience want,
and then you kind of mold your strategy around that. But at least you're taking action, you're getting started. Yeah. So last year when we were working at Spotter on, like, the education and partnership side of stuff, a lot of the creators that we would speak to live in this area right here. And what I mean is almost all constrained creators,
they are a one man show. They are doing everything for the channel, including ideation, uploading, editing the videos, filming the videos, figuring everything out all by themself. And because they're doing it for themself, that is kinda what constrains them in their content, but also in their business. Right. So one of the pros is that you,
as a one person show,
you're very flexible. Mhmm. You can pivot, you can adapt, you can try new things,
and no one's there just to slow you down. Because like, there if there's one big big issue holding level one from level two, I will say it is that you lack clarity.
You don't really know what your channel's gonna be about, what you wanna make, and what your business is actually going. Clarity is huge. I mean, you probably ask a bunch of these people, like like, what is your niche? Mhmm. And I would say, like, the vast majority of them can't even answer that. Clarity comes from content market fit. It's basically when you're making content that you actually wanna create
and that your audience actually wants to watch and that it can actually make money. Because if you don't make content that you like, you're not gonna be able to do it consistently for a long time. Right. So you're still kinda stuck in that first bubble, and you're still kind of trying to figure out, like, who is the audience who's gonna watch my content?
You're constrained in just those two circles,
and the vast majority of them, they're not even thinking about this third circle.
That's probably why you're at zero to one k. Yeah. But that's fine. Like, you're still exploring. So that's that comes later. But once you've kind of figured out at least directionally,
this is what I wanna do. I'm clear on that. Then your channel levels up to level two. We call these the professional creators.
So for professional creators,
like, the hallmark of knowing that you've gotten clarity
on what your channel should be is that you started to get some momentum attraction on the platform. Right? You're starting to get some viewership. Mhmm. Maybe some returning viewers,
and it kinda feels like it's starting to work. Now this is kinda where, like, the whole revenue thing I was talking about earlier. It kinda breaks a little bit because, obviously, we have examples of level two, three, four, and five making absurd amount of money. It's not really defined by revenue anymore. It's more of a complexity of what your business looks like. But on average, I would say that professional creators
make anywhere between 1 and 10 k per month. So you can basically make a full time living as a professional Yeah. From your content now. What that looks like to become a professional creator, you're probably still doing, like, 80 to 90% of the work. Typically, you might be editing your own videos, but sometimes
these professional creators start to branch out and work with some freelancers, some contractors.
A big argument can be made for the first person they work with, this is true at least for us as well,
is a video editor. That's probably gonna be like the first thing that caps you all the fastest because video editing takes a long time. Mhmm. It takes a lot of work. It's like eight hours for a video or something like that. That time goes back into making more videos, filming more videos, ideating more stuff, making more packaging, stuff like that.
Another potential hire, this is kinda optional that we also see, they might have like a VA. This person is doing like social media scheduling,
answering comments, DMs, doing like basic like email
filtering or like responding and negotiating with brands or stuff like that. But you are definitely still in charge and doing, like, basically all the work besides having these contractors work with you. There's a lot of, like, very successful professional creators. I would say for a long time, someone I admired a lot was a professional creator, this guy named Matt D'Avella. He was basically the creator in his business. He's also, like, a seasoned editor. He's basically the one man show Yeah. Doing his whole thing. I guess the a lot of those guys in the personal finance space Mhmm. Humphrey or Graham Stephan, like Yeah. They keep their team pretty lean, but they're still pumping out content. Or maybe someone like Vrisa, who I think she edits her own videos. Very cinematic stuff.
Kind of solo in on this. Uh, one of my favorite channels that I believe sits in level two right now, this channel called How Town. One of the old people from Vox and from, like and and Netflix, Uh-huh. They quit their jobs and started YouTube channel together. Mhmm. And they, like, break down, like, uh, journalism and some, like, latest research, and they just kinda chat together. That's a really it's a really ludicule channel, but they're a hallmark of, like, being a professional creator is that your revenue is almost exclusively tied to your content. Mhmm. Right? Like, if you stop making content, you basically stop earning money. Mhmm. And with that content, you're unlocking things like brand deals, partnerships,
um, more ad revenue. Mhmm. But those are basically your only revenue streams. I mean, even though we're only on level two, so it feels like we're still, like, at the very beginnings of this whole journey, a lot of people
would be happy
to be at level two. It's just, like, you get to a point where you just define for yourself, like, much is enough? Mhmm. How much money do I need to be making to support myself, maybe my family,
support maybe two other people, their families? Right? Like, that's that's like a decent business. Yeah. It's not something to, you know, to scoff at at all. Many of the people who wanna become YouTubers,
become content creators,
this is what they're thinking. Yeah. Like, this is the end goal for them. Like, they just wanna make a living making their artwork. And so, obviously, there's lot of pros to being a procreator. You get to make a living doing what you love, which is making videos all the time. Right? You get to keep a very lean and simple looking business. You have to talk about stuff you like too. But there's also a lot of negatives to being a procreator. When I talk about the different levels here, it doesn't have to do with the size of the channel in terms of subscribers Mhmm. Or the revenue you make. It is purely like the models and economics of the business and the complexity of the team. So, yeah, we were at 200 k subs on YouTube, and we were procreators because everything we did was just based on the content. Yeah. Trying to get sponsorships,
and that was it. Mhmm. And we noticed that there were months where we made a lot of money because we had videos that went viral. Mhmm. And then some months we had videos that didn't do very well. We made, like, very little money. I mean, biggest downside is the volatility,
And the source of that volatility is the algorithm. Because if your content is the driving force for your revenue,
then you're at the mercy of the algorithm. Right? You have no other business infrastructure to support your revenue other than the content. I would say like in our journey, we hung out in the procreator area for, you know, probably, like, a couple of years. We were probably at 200,000
subscribers still in this realm. And so to go from level two to level three,
the one thing that you really, really need to figure out is
focus. How do I focus on the right things at the right time to put the business together to level up? Prioritization.
Right? You probably have, like, directionally, like, this is the kind of content that I wanna make, but you're still, like, throwing spaghetti at the wall in terms of, like, which topics, which format. You're clear on what you wanna build, but you're not really focused on how I should prioritize my time to build it. But once you figure that out, you don't have to go to level three. We'll use Humphrey as an example again. I think he figured out the focus issue, but he doesn't wanna move on to level three, and that's probably fine. You can be very comfortable and very happy at this place. And I think that's, like, the theme for all these levels from level two forward.
If you solve this issue, this main constraint that I'm talking about, you can be very, very comfortable and happy here. But if you do wanna get to that next stage, this is something that you must figure out before you go on. So when we figure that out, you can upgrade to level three. This is what we call the creator entrepreneur.
This is, I would say, where our business is currently at. Yeah. Probably. Typical revenue in this category is anywhere between, like, 10 k per month up to a 100 k per month. If you're trying to scale from, you know, 10 to a 100 k per month, you need to delegate. You can't be doing everything on your own anymore. So this size of the team is going to expand a little bit. So typically, for talking about like a creator business, you're gonna wanna have someone else up here doing a little bit more strategic thinking and management with you. And so what we see in some of these businesses,
oftentimes, they'll add in someone called a producer. Kind of the rough analogy I use is that in the Hollywood world, there's like a director and producer. So one person has the vision, and the other person makes sure that it happens. Oftentimes, like, at these creator entrepreneur levels, you might also start expanding out to having multiple video editors. Right? Because your videos might start getting a little bit more complicated.
We have, I think, seven video editors that we kinda work through Mhmm. And work with on multiple different projects at the same time. You might also start thinking about someone like a script writer or a designer.
Those are two other hires that we also have on our team now doing specifically just thumbnails. We do a lot of thumbnail testing and split testing. So for every one video, we're making like three or four thumbnails and then variations on those ones. And then on the script writing side, obviously, we need help writing and writing good hooks and, you know, researching and compiling ideas together. So this is kind of the core team that works with the producer and the creative director on our team. So obviously, like, you know, the content team of this business has become a bit more complex. And since you have more hands on deck to help you with things, that allows you as the founder or the business owner to kinda move away from being solely on the content hamster wheel. And the reason why they would wanna do that is hit this scale. It's pretty hard to get to a 100 k per month just working on content. It's possible, but it's very, very rare for a creator just from content to get to a 100 k per month. So that's why these business owners, typically, they're working on building a product or service that supports the channel. For YouTube channels, which we think is a really good path, um, building something like an information product. Right? Like an education product. So you have things like courses,
um, ebooks,
uh, consulting, coaching, community based learning. Those kinds of experiences
can easily get you to a 100 k per month. It's allowed you to step into the building a sales team. Mhmm. And for me, going over to the fulfillment side so that we could actually build out our YouTube
coaching and consulting agency. The hallmark of a creator entrepreneur versus, like, the procreator is that their monetization is not solely reliant on the content. There's an ecosystem of products behind the channel that can support it so that even if we stop making content for a while, the business doesn't die because we had an ecosystem of products and services on the back end that was still generated for us. Yeah. So what are other some other examples of
channels that are at this level? One of them is actually one of our good friends, Thomas Frank. We met his producer, Alex, remember, at at Make With Notion. The cool thing about the creator entrepreneur team,
it can stay pretty lean. Sure. We have a lot of contractors that we work with, but, like, our core team is, like, three people. Right? It's just, these three people at the top here. And so Thomas kinda runs the same thing. He has a two person team where he does basically all the strategy and creative and works on products, and then Alex kinda takes care of, like, making sure the content gets made and doing some other admin stuff in the business. But the cool yeah. But, like, you can stay pretty lean, and Thomas has, you know, built a very, very successful Notion
template business on the back of his channel. He's got YouTube YouTube channels now that he actually runs. And he's also building, like, a SaaS tool called Flylighter. It's because his content is so dialed in that it allows him to step away and work on those other things. It only makes sense. Right? Because now you have so many other people that are all working together. Mhmm. We add on this overhead tax. Now we have to manage a team. Mhmm. That management itself is a lot of our time spent in overhead. What we didn't do before was just get on like multiple meetings
per week just to make sure everyone's aligned,
everyone's like meeting deadlines.
Uh-huh. Like, that can start to feel like a drag sometimes. And so if you're at level two and you know that you're a person who, like, you've gotten to this game because you wanted to make things, but you didn't wanna manage things, then that's why you would stay at level two Mhmm. And just live a comfortable life doing your content at level two. I mean, level three does come with its costs, and I would say that's the big one. And I will say, like, level three, I'm still pretty involved in the content. Like, I'm reviewing, you know, packaging. I'm reviewing final versions of the videos before they got uploaded and stuff like that. But what's been really, really important to remove away from being a 100% content
is to build a system that you can kinda rely on and plug these individuals into there. So whatever this looks like for you, just wanna map it out so you know how to plug people into that system. We call this your MVP, minimum viable product to make this thing work. For YouTube, you wanna make sure you know what is the minimum video process.
What is the minimum video process you need to and what are the steps there so you can offload and delegate appropriately.
Yeah. Like you brought up MVP because
your minimum video process, you should already be thinking about that in level two. But in level two, you're still trying to figure out like which pieces go where or like do I even need this piece at all. But by level three, if you want to be able to survive,
then you need to know like exactly what the processes are for your MVP. That's the constraint here. You can't move up to the next level until you have multiple systems in your business that are built out that allow you to really step back and then level up. And so our goal, who knows, maybe like next year or something like that, we wanna move up to level four. We call these the creator startup. Not to be confused with, like, the start ups that are just starting out or something. Let's just, like, narrow this in and say, like, the start ups that either just got funding or just hit PMF. And they're at the stage of, like, risk really start to scale this thing Mhmm. And grow really, really fast. And so at this stage in the creator startups,
revenue is pretty unpredictable.
You know, some of them are going and doing massive numbers. Some of them are praying staying lean, and the margins are not that great. So there's not really, like, a typical range in revenue. What we can say is that this content team does get more complicated again. So generally, what we see in creator startups, if it's still, like, founder led, the founder now needs to move even further away from the content team.
And so you basically wanna put yourself above the clouds and everything, and then you wanna hire
a creative director to take that spot for you. This is the biggest shift that happens at the creator startup level because now you are basically
not just a creator anymore. You're like a CEO. Mhmm. You know, like, have to oversee
the operations department, the sales team, the HR, like, that other stuff. Like, there's a lot going on. You can't just be so focused in the content. And you can think about other people that might be involved in the process. Like, at this stage, you might also be thinking about someone like a videographer.
It really is dependent on, you know, like, what are the goals of the content and how much it's needed to support the rest of the business. Now having like two managers on different areas of the content, the producer typically is in charge of managing the video editors Mhmm. And managing like the videographer
for sure. But the creative directors typically are the ones working with the script writers and the designers. Yeah. Because they're working on some like prepackaging
Mhmm. And the producers are focused on like post production. Mhmm. Right? So pre production director, post production, producer. Making sure that videos actually get made. Mhmm. Right? So that's kind of the split of, like, who they're they're managing and working with. This is kinda complicated, but, like, who would be a great example of a level four business? First one that comes to mind is Ali Abdal. The reason I say Ali Abdal is because he's got a bunch of people in his core team. He also has people that are, like, in charge of his products. Like, if you wanna, like, draw it out on the side here too. He he basically meets on a weekly basis with, like, his leadership team. The cool thing is when you get to this creator startup level, a lot of them you see running multiple YouTube channels. Because remember, the bottleneck that you wanna break through from level three is that you gotta build systems. Right? Mhmm. And so at level four, your systems are pretty dialed in. Who's to say you can't just copy paste the system onto multiple other YouTube channels Mhmm. Which Ali Abdaal has a bunch of YouTube channels now. I guess a better example would be MKBHD.
MKBHD,
super he's he's got four channels. So he's got his main channel, which is obviously MKBHD.
Mhmm. He has the studio, which is, like, his behind the scenes. This is how we run our creator business. He's got his his podcast
called, uh, I think, the Waveform. He breaks down, like, creator businesses and tech and stuff. And he's got, like, a fourth, like, random, like, cars channel called Auto Focus where he just does car reviews. If there is one big constraint that's holding these guys back from becoming a level five,
it is people. I think I I saw this on, um, a Steven Parlett video. He had a video on behind the diary actually where I forget what the video was titled, but he was talking about the longer he's in business, you realize that as you grow, you're not really in the business of your industry. I'm starting to believe that this is actually the most important idea for success in whatever it is you're trying to do in your life. And this idea,
I'm calling
collecting people. Because that's the only way you're gonna grow. You have the system. You just need really talented people to run that. It makes total sense. Mhmm. If you're copy pasting your system times four, then now there's a bunch of open seats Yep. That you have to fill. At this level, these businesses are basically
trying to snipe each other's talent now. Mhmm. Right? Which this is probably a whole different conversation, but there is a huge
lack of talent when it comes to this whole creator economy because it's so new. Mhmm. And so not a lot of people have developed these niche skill sets yet. Mhmm. And so talent is rare, and yet it's in such such high demand. We're talking about, like, good talent. Good talent. Yeah. People who really know how to run a creative team as a creative director, as a head of content. I hop on a lot of calls with people who come from the the traditional media world, people who like the TV industry or the Hollywood world. And then when they try to make YouTube content, they're like, it's a different skill set Mhmm. Completely. And that's the same thing that goes on how the team is structured too. You can tell that good talent is such a bottleneck. Like, remember, it was kinda like a meme at some point where people are like, why I quit working with Ali Abdal? Ali Abdal created so many talented people in this industry, and they all ended up quitting and starting their own thing. Yeah. Right? So that's another reason why talent is such a constraint at this level. It's because you're at a level where systems are so dialed in. If you work in one of these seats, you can really learn a lot. And I would say if you're interested in joining the creator economy, think about applying to work for like a level four creator startup. Oh, definitely. You learn so much. That's the best way to get into the space fast. But there is one more level above this. So moving on to level five here, and this is when we really become now a creator company. You might think, like, how do you even remove yourself even further from this? Alright? Like, is that even possible? And so what creative companies actually do, they remove themselves by not necessarily moving themselves from running this channel,
but they create, like, a holding company or a media brand above
them.
Mhmm. You can think about, like, the classic creator company example as, like, a MrBeast. And MrBeast runs so many different YouTube channels, but they all live under this holding umbrella company called Beast. Then he's got, like, Feastables as a leg. He's got his YouTube channels. He's got philanthropy stuff. He's got ViewStats. He's got all these products and services that live under this big umbrella brand. So what separates, like, a creator startup from a creator company is the focus on building something bigger than yourself. Because when you say, like, holding company, right, think back to level four. Like Ali Abdul, MKBHD,
like, all those guys
have a company where they're holding all their YouTube channels in it. Mhmm. But the main difference that we see here is that they're essentially removing
key man risk. And I mean key man risk as in, like, the company is not just about one person anymore. Mhmm. If that person decides to leave this whole infrastructure, then everything falls apart. You can't sell this company unless
this founder comes with it. So I think a good example of, like, a creator company that is doing it right now is Johnny Harris. So Johnny Harris obviously has built a massive YouTube channel over the years. He's really well known in the journalism space. He started his company called New Press where New Press produces, like, four different shows underneath them. So we got, you know, Johnny Harris's show under there, like, obviously, main channel. You have Tunnel Vision by Christophe. You have Search Party by Sam Ellis. And then you have The Bigger Picture with Max Fisher. Right? So you have four different separate channels that kinda live under the big brand of New Press. If Johnny stops making videos for a while, there's still still several other, like, content shows and and ARMs that are still running and providing value for that business, and they're building whole other product lines and stuff on the back end of that. So that is like now really elevated to what it looks like. So New Press, this whole thing we have here, there's four of them for different creators too. Mhmm. So there's a creator underneath it, and there's a whole team that comes with it versus just having one person, you know, be part of all of them. So that's just gonna get really big and complex. Another example, very good one in the business space is acquisition.com.
Right? Acquisition.com is a rolling company. There's Alex Hermozzi. There's Leila Hermozzi. There's all these school channels that they have. I think Sharon now, part of the company, has his own YouTube channel too. Mhmm. So they're just building this big media empire as well that has all of these different legs underneath it. Creator companies, like, at this point, you built such a big, like, team
that talent isn't as much of an issue anymore. It still obviously is an issue, but, like, you're gonna be getting a lot of inbound people who wanna work on this team. The issue isn't really, like, getting people in the door. It's keeping everyone aligned on the vision of the business and the channel. And so what I would say is the constraint of making sure that creative companies stand the test of time
is cultural relevance. Is the culture of this company and the team and what they wanna do so aligned that everyone is still motivated to to continue working on this project? But at level five, you've transcended
YouTube
Yeah. As a platform. And I think about, like, the brands that have Wizda the test of time. Something like GQ, you know. They have, obviously, a great YouTube channel, but they also have, like, magazines.
Mhmm. You know, they have, like, a whole bunch of experiences in shows and even, like, gone into, like, the fashion world in in other ways. Yeah. These companies are starting to just elevate and spread into culture and media. And the cool thing is that even when we're talking about these creative companies, like, how important YouTube is in the process. All those ones that we just talked about, like, mister Beast built his creative company off of the back of YouTube. Mhmm. So did Stephen Bartlett, and so is Johnny Harris right now. Like, they started on YouTube. And so it's really, like, one of the best ways to build that cult like audience and following and and brand reputation. And I think we're gonna see a lot more level fours
ascending to level five do the same thing. So depending on where you are, whether you're level one, two, three, four, five in your business,
understanding, like, that key constraint we talked about to get to the next level is what you should be focusing on right now. Once you solve that, you can decide, do I wanna take, you know, the business in this direction where we're focusing on formative stuff and getting more building something really, really massive, or do you wanna kinda chill back and live this lifestyle business? There's no wrong answers. But I think at the end the day, you do wanna be, like, obsessed about what does the content team and system look like to keep that running. I'm not gonna say we have experience in growing level five companies.
Very few people probably do. But we do have experience with the levels before that. And so we put together a lot of different resources
and playbooks that you can grab for free in the description below.
And if you wanna check out how to build systems for your content engine, then check out this video right here.