Good session today. Had @Jude Hill @Laura Hunter on the call talking through their YouTube channels, plus @Heston Roberts dropping in with some automation and Instagram insight. Here's the TL;DR: - Use Gemini, not just YouTube search, to find channels similar to the one you want to build - it cross-references articles and videos in a way plain YouTube search won't. No niche is fully void of competition. - If you can't find anyone doing exactly what you want to do, find people doing something close and align with their audience instead. A YouTube collaboration (interview format) lets the other person's audience subscribe to your channel straight from theirs, worth asking for once you're established. - A personal story is the thing that can't be replicated by any other channel. Lead with it. Shorts are great for reach, and that dopamine hit of views, but long-form is what actually drives people to take action, join a Skool, click a link, sign up. - Posting frequency has no right answer when you're starting out; do what you can sustain, quality over an arbitrary number. - QR codes on YouTube can move a subscriber into a WhatsApp or Instagram follower, worth testing if you want another channel to reach people. - A phone number question on your Skool signup doesn't have to hurt conversions if the fields are set up right Jude's building a channel around the history of roller skating, trying to record and preserve it as a tradition. She's torn between a few directions: teaching beginners, adults coming back to the sport, bringing her husband in for the technical side. My advice there was simple: get started, get the reps in, and don't feel you need every angle nailed down before you post your first video. She's using YouTube to build trust that sends people to her Skool, not to monetise the platform directly, which is exactly the model this community's built around.