The Low-Stakes 50-Video Start
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Max Fosh's advice to anyone starting a creative career, drawn from his own three years of unpaid hospital radio and eighteen months of unpaid street-interview videos at university. The core move is to start during a period of life where failure costs nothing — a degree, a job, anything that absorbs the downside — so no single upload carries existential pressure. From there, copy a format you admire as a starting template, recruit one willing friend rather than waiting for a crew, and publish on a fixed cadence to whatever small community you already sit inside. His decision rule for whether to continue is volume-based, not vanity-based: make fifty videos, then judge. And the judgement criterion is value delivered — did you make someone laugh, learn or feel entertained — not subscriber count.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Start where the downside is absorbed
Begin during a phase of life where a failed upload changes nothing — university, an existing job, a side-of-desk arrangement. Max had a degree running underneath eighteen months of videos and three years of radio.
Watch out People who succeed elsewhere first import that pressure into the new thing, and then need it to work instantly — which is not how YouTube works.
- 2
Copy a format you love as your template
Max's first videos were a straight lift of a general-knowledge street-interview format he had watched repeatedly, right down to the question style. Imitation is a legitimate way to start before you know what you are good at.
- 3
Recruit one willing friend, not a crew
He asked around for anyone who would hold a camera for two hours on a night out. Nobody was paid because nobody was earning — it was simply a fun thing to do at university.
Pro tip Your first collaborator often becomes your first employee; Coco went from camera-holder to a 50/50 channel split.
- 4
Publish weekly into a community you already belong to
For his final university year he made a new video on a different topic every single week and posted it to Facebook, where roughly a thousand fellow students would see it and tag each other.
- 5
Make fifty before you judge
When someone tells him they have made three videos and asks what to do next, his answer is to make fifty and then decide whether they still want to do this.
- 6
Judge on value delivered, not numbers
After fifty, ask whether you are making people laugh, educating them or entertaining them. If nothing is working after fifty, that is a signal about the niche, not necessarily about you.
- 7
Only then think about niche and packaging
Get going, get good, get smart — worry about niche, thumbnails and retention tactics once you can reliably ship a video a week, not before.
Pro tip It can take two years to learn where you actually provide the most value; Max says he would not know where to start with an education channel.
In the wild
Rejected as a presenter by his university's TV society, Max reasoned that the street was public and he could just do it himself. He filmed five episodes of night-out interviews, posted them to Facebook, and students began tagging each other. He then made one new video a week for his entire final year, unpaid, while doing hospital radio overnight shifts and a degree he admits he did badly in.
→ One of the videos was reposted by the page Student Problems and racked up around 18 million views — none of which he was paid for, but which he later used as leverage.
After graduating, Max drove around the country with Coco for two weeks, filming in a new university city each night and editing the previous city's video the next morning — fourteen cities in fourteen days. He was convinced the consistency would make things blow up. It did not. Views on YouTube were around 200, he lost money on petrol, and he ended up working in a pub for three or four months while still making videos.
→ The push failed commercially but kept him producing, and he was still making videos when he happened to walk past Zac Allsop months later.
Common mistakes
Starting once the stakes are already high
Beginning after success elsewhere loads each upload with 'this has to work or I'm a failure'. Max deliberately built during a period where a flop cost him nothing.
Quitting after three videos
Asking for strategic advice at three videos is asking the wrong question. Fifty is the sample size at which the answer means anything.
Not changing anything after a breakout
After Fashion Week took him from 1,800 to 80,000 subscribers, Max went straight back to making the same street interviews for another year. He calls that decision really stupid in hindsight.
From the transcript
“Do it in a period of your life where the risk is so low.”
“I always say okay, just make 50. Make 50 and then decide whether you still want to do this.”
“but ultimately it comes down with can you provide value through a video to somebody?”
From the episode
The Highs And Lows Of Being A Viral Sensation - Max Fosh
Max Fosh