What a journey this is! My first two years, no shorts. Trying to get back in the game in September of 2025 I started doing "Walk and Talk" Shorts. I did 14 Sept - Nov. I did this challenge in December of 2025, since then I have posted 53. In late February, I felt the shorts were screwing up my analytics, so I unlisted 19 scheduled for March 😂🤣. So here I am in March with Alexa's voice in my head saying, "Even a few views on shorts is EXPOSURE!" My biggest takeaway today, I need to SLOW down and take serious developing my skills in word smithing good scripts. Shorts are the perfect place to start, a lesson from @Adam Tinkoff, who does fabulous shorts on his channel! Questions I have still lingering in my head, 1. What is a good description to write with shorts and 2. When is the best time to post them? I think Alexa said mornings and early evenings. I did write, film, and edit a short today, it's attached. Let me know what you think. I will be posting my shorts on Sunday Evenings and Tuesday Mornings. My long videos go out on Thursday evenings. I did film to other videos to batch today, I didn't write the script, I had help from AI. With all that, I am back in the short business on my channel! Exposure is key if you want to grow. Thanks for your support @Jenny Sharratt @Dr. Saundra Stancil @Eddi Pinegar @Cat PInegar @Ricardo Solomons @Casey Hamlin @Adam Tinkoff @Dajana K.

Most creators are pulling from the same sources. Same Google results, same ChatGPT outputs, same angles. Then they wonder why their videos feel like everyone else's. I switched a big chunk of my pre-production research to Grok and it changed what I was finding. The reason is simple. Grok lives inside X and pulls from what people are actually discussing right now, not a cached version of the internet from three months ago. So when I research a topic, I am working from a different information set than most creators in my niche. There is also the multilingual angle. Grok now surfaces non-English posts in plain English. Japanese creator discussions, Korean market analysis, German tech threads. Angles that have not made it into English-speaking content yet. That is where you find the ideas nobody has done. It does not replace the rest of your stack. But if your research keeps leading you to the same places as everyone else, it is worth adding. What tools are you using for pre-production research right now?

About the First Gift Basket Video: I had to make this a whole environmental experience. It is a new birth for me, liberation even. I started by setting up my space, taking some setup photos, having a devotional time which included journaling about this experience and the support I have received from each of you, taking a soothing spa bath, pre-conditioning my hair (okay, TMI, but this is a new birth experience), getting dressed for my design, having a nurturing breakfast (lemon drink, blueberries, grapes, apple, banana--in that order), and returning to my "design center," which is my desk for this moment, to make this gift basket. I am excited!!! It feels so good to be doing anything related to my passion. This is fitting because it is Palm Sunday (to those who acknowledge it). How appropriate is that! I know you may be tired of hearing/reading this, but this is the breakthrough in progress. So with all of that TMI said, I designed the gift basket and recorded it. Next I am editing the video and will let it marinate in the YouTube Studio before I release it to the world. Here's a before picture of my work area with the gift items, and of the me with the finished Christian-Based Easter Gift Basket. (No bunnies, eggs, or candy found in this creation.) It can be used as a gift, get well, birthday, just because gift. I will let you know once the video is published. It will be published by tomorrow if not earlier. Now onward to the editing, finishing my hair, then to Day 12... Side Info: -Current Niche: Teaching Gift Basket Biz Startups -Pivoted from: Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse Accountability Tags: @Yvette Bowlin @Jenny Sharratt @Dajana K. @Michael LeJeune @Cam F @Travel Gran @Jaye Brunner @Eddi Pinegar @Adam Tinkoff @Ricardo Solomons @Dawn Ponsford @Monika Astara Murphy y @Andy Asher @Deb D @Laura Niebauer @Cat PInegar

Quick Question First: Since I have pivoted my niche, I am wondering should I go ahead and start creating and publishing videos for this new channel. I was waiting for the time in the challenge when Alexa tells us to go ahead and create a video, but I don't know when that is. I plan to redo the 30-second video that ended up being a 1min43sec. What do y'all think? Okay, Day 11! I am liking this one. Creating Thumbnails and Titles. (Clearly the editing portion is stressful, but I will get pass that, lol.) I love how Alexa breaks these two down. I always needed to know the "science" of Thumbnails and Titles and she has it all here in this Day 11. For my background, it will be light against my dark complexion. The focal point will be the gift basket I am designing. It always wins whether I want to be focus or not (and I do not). However, I will be in the frame of my video. I will be showing all of those expressions based on the title and thumbnail and what I am trying to convey in the video. They all should match. For my thumbnail sizes, I have been using "thumbs up," which shows what my thumbnails look like on mobile, tv, desktop, tablet, playlist, etc. There are other tools out there that do the same, but this is the one I learned first and use. I believe, from what I have observed, my Thumbnail is the "What" and my title is the "Why": -"What" (thumbnail) is in the video, and -"Why" (title) my viewer should click. Did I get that right? That's what I have noticed even when looking at the playlist for this challenge. My thumbnail-title combination will not be clickbait! I hate clickbait. It's like lying! Deception! I hate lies!!! I've made all these mistakes except repeating the text of the title in the thumbnail. Guilty😅! I learned early on that this was a no-no. For this lesson, I will be spending a lot more time on creating my title and thumbnails no matter how long it takes before my video is uploaded. My key is going to be batch producing which I know is coming in a future lesson of this challenge.

There was a point earlier this year where I genuinely considered dropping Shorts altogether. Not because they weren't working. But because trying to maintain them alongside long-form was quietly grinding me down. Every week felt like I was running two channels, and I was only properly showing up for one of them. What changed it for me was a pretty simple reframe. I stopped thinking about Shorts as a separate content job and started treating them as something that already existed inside my long-form videos; I just needed to find them. I use Opus Clip now to do the finding. Drop in the long-form, let it surface the best moments, spend a few minutes sharpening the hook on each clip, then link them back to the full video through YouTube Studio. That's it. One filming session becomes a week of content. It's not a magic fix. The growth is steady rather than sudden. But for the first time in a while, the content schedule feels manageable rather than like something I'm constantly behind on. If you're juggling both formats right now, what's making it feel hard?