Written Mar 10, 2026
After much thinking, I've established that my next goal is 1M subscribers on YouTube by December 31, 2026.
As of the time of this writing, I'm at 307,845.
That's a gap of 692,155 subscribers, and I have 297 days to close it.
The reason I'm doing this publicly is:
- Because I've done it before. About a year and a half ago, I set a public revenue target of $4 million a year. I hit it. It was fun, and I want more of these wins.
- Because the human desire to avoid shame and embarrassment is extraordinarily powerful—I believe I can strategically weaponize it for success.
- Because the last time I did this, many of you helped me. I received fantastic tips, pieces of advice, and ideas that I would have never come up with on my own (and for that, thank you).
To be clear, there's no specific reason why my next goal needs to be exactly one million subscribers. A million subs isn't that different from 950,000, or 1,050,000.
But as human beings, I feel we need to quantify our goals in order to take meaningful and actionable steps towards them. So I'm going to set a large number, and then do whatever I can to reach it! Even if I land a little short, I'll still have achieved the spirit of the goal, and that is what matters.
Taking stock.
My YouTube brand by the numbers:
- Delta between me & my goal: 692,155 (1,000,000 - 307,845).
- Days remaining: 297 (March 9 → December 31, 2026).
- Required daily growth: 2,330 subscribers/day.
In truth, this actually makes me feel pretty good. My last 28 days have averaged somewhere between 1,500–2,000 subscribers per day. So the gap between where I'm at and where I need to be is only ~800 subs/day.
I've hit 3,000+ in a day multiple times before. Meaning, if I can capture whatever magic was behind those peaks and make it more consistent, the odds of making it are reasonable.
My daily average over the last month has been 1,592. If I divide 2,330 (my goal) by 1,592 (my current status), put another way, I merely need to improve my effectiveness by 1.46x.
So I don't need some miraculous breakthrough! I just need a 46% improvement in how effectively I spend the time I'm already spending, and I'll be on track to hit 1M by December 31 2026.
What's actually driving my growth.
From what I can tell, a disproportionate amount of my subscriber growth comes from a handful of videos. It is almost never a steady, even drip across everything I publish—it is a few massive spikes that carry the rest.
So I should be able to analyze those videos, and then recreate their "secret sauce". Let me do that now.
My biggest day to-date was 3,210 subscribers on May 1st, 2025. That followed my n8n full course, a six-hour masterclass that took forever and (frankly) was a massive pain in my ass to record.
I've published many long courses that have not performed, so it's clearly not about the length. It was a combination of the length, the quality, and the timing.
In truth, the market wanted n8n content at that exact moment, and I just so happened to deliver it.
My second-biggest spike, 2,435 subscribers, was the Clawdbot pushback video. At the time, there was this massive hype wave around the tool, and I made a video pushing back against it. I felt people wanted a voice of reason, and so I supplied it.
After a few more of my top-subscriber-day reviews: it is clear to me that they're all timing-related. There is always some overarching desire in the market for knowledge about something, and I sense it and create the perfect resource to address it.
Over the last year, I've hit these breakout moments maybe once every two months. If I am to succeed, I merely need to hit them ~1.5x as often. Perhaps every month or so.
Motion vs. displacement.
This is similar to a concept from physics that I come back to often: the difference between motion and displacement.
Motion is movement. It is zigzagging, sprinting, covering thousands of kilometers of total distance, recording dozens of videos every week.
Unfortunately, not all motion moves you closer to your goal. It's just... energy.
Personally, I have an abundance of motion, owing mostly to raw work ethic. I will always err on the side of "volume" over "strategy" as that is what has worked for me historically.
As I've grown, though, I feel that has changed. And now, I'm at a point where, in order to win, I believe I need to direct that energy in a specific direction.
This is displacement: the straight-line distance between where I am now and where I want to go.
In short, I should stop doing the right amount of work and start doing the right work. Because I have proven I can produce at an absurd pace; what I have yet to prove is that I can consistently identify the highest-leverage content opportunities before they peak.
The strategy.
So the question becomes: how do I systematically identify what the market wants before it blows up on YouTube?
I can think of three ways.
1. YouTube SEO and keyword analysis. This is the obvious one imo. I will look at search volumes for up-and-coming keywords, trending topics, browse feature recommendations, and the like. Since my channel already gets ~20% of its views from search, if I can identify which keywords are about to spike and create definitive content on them, I capture a disproportionate share of that wave. Doubling this will take me to ~1.2x.
2. X/Twitter discussions. Since the barrier to entry for content on X is dramatically lower than YouTube (it is just 280 characters versus a full production pipeline) that means trending stuff probably shows up on X first, then migrates to YouTube, then eventually reaches other platforms like LI/IG. Assuming I monitor X I should get a head start here.
3. AI newsletters. These should be similar to X, because of the lower production reqs. Will have some major overlap with X, though.
Anyway, my strategy should be pretty simple. I will pipe all three into some sort of daily overview that takes me maybe five minutes every morning. If anything sparks my interest, I will take a deeper look. If anything is major, I will record a video on it that day.
Five minutes per day means 150 minutes per month on news review. That kind of blows, because up until now I've spent a whopping 0 minutes/month on news, but if it can improve my subscriber growth by 1.46x, I should win. I think that's a very reasonable trade.
Meanwhile, I'll also continue pressing on longer-form courses. I can do both at the same time given the lower production value (no reason why not).
I'll then evaluate growth after ~2-3 weeks and see if this strategy is working.
Update, Mar 29 2026
Reasonable success so far.
Since the last time I posted here, I've published 9 videos in approximately 20 days. I've also gained ~42,000 subscribers, or a little over 2,100 per day.
I am still underperforming, to be clear. Just barely. And every day I continue to underperform, I move further away from my goal. One day at 2,100 means my daily goal moves up an additional ~1 subscriber per day for the rest of the year.
But in general, this is working a little better than I initially anticipated. I have found that optimizing for short, news-style updates has messed with my head a bit (I hate being this plugged-in) so I may set stricter limits around that and find a more habitable middle ground.
But in the interim, I will continue optimizing and iterating on the right cadence of updates to longer-form, more authoritative content like my courses.
Borrowing the famous words of Colonel John Smith... I love it when a plan comes together 😎