I launched a YouTube channel

I finally started a YouTube channel: youtube.com/@ozchen.

You can tell I was pretty creative with the channel name.

Here’s my first video—give it some love!

It’s not a perfect answer, but mine is a reactive one: I got a bit tired posting on Instagram.

Even if my main use for Instagram was to post finance content, I couldn’t help but get sucked into doomscrolling on the same platform.

(For the same reasons, this is why I didn’t get too into TikTok—I knew it would be too addictive.)

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Before heading to Oaxaca for vacation, I took an accidental break from Instagram.

My brain felt much better. I noticed I was less distracted and wasted less time.

With some distance, I was able to observe my behavioral when it came to creating short form content on social media platforms:

• I put myself in a more reactive mode to post often, rather than focus on ideas that I really wanted to dig into (which were often longer form).
• The content I posted felt more ephemeral on Instagram, versus building up to a substantive content library.
• I felt friction trying to create the content mix of being a relatable person online versus being a money coach (some of the successful IG accounts I follow are really good at this)

Before heading to Oaxaca for vacation, I took an accidental break from Instagram.

My brain felt much better. I noticed I was less distracted and wasted less time.

With some distance, I was able to observe my behavioral when it came to creating short form content on social media platforms:

I put myself in a more reactive mode to post often, rather than focus on ideas that I really wanted to dig into (which were often longer form).
The content I posted felt more ephemeral on Instagram, versus building up to a substantive content library.
I felt friction trying to create the content mix of being a relatable person online versus being a money coach (some of the successful IG accounts I follow are really good at this)

On a practical note, multiple YouTuber friends said that long form videos uploaded to YouTube had more staying power.

Key idea: content on Youtube tends to compound. It’s far more likely that an old video gets picked up and trending versus, say, Instagram or TikTok.

This fits my mental model of why I’ve been blogging this entire time—articles I’ve written years ago still pick up traffic. In a way, making YouTube videos out of my longer-form blog posts seems to be a natural extension of my creative journey.

So here begins a new experiment.

I’m green and open to feedback. Tell me what kind of personal finance content you’d love to see on YouTube!