07/01/2026
This YouTube Short video was published on March 22, 2023. For the first two years, it got about 8,000 views.
Given our following, you would have been forgiven for calling it a failure.
Then something happened that no algorithm can promise and no calendar can predict: it started to move. Slowly, then all at once.
Today it sits at 120,029 views, and almost all of that growth arrived in the last few months. More than two years after I hit publish.
Here is the lesson, and it is the one thing almost everyone gets wrong about YouTube:
Most platforms are a 72-hour game. A TikTok or a Reel lives or dies in its first three days. If it does not catch fire fast, it is gone for good.
YouTube is a different game ENTIRELY.
On YouTube, a well-made video is an asset, not an event. It keeps getting recommended, keeps getting found, keeps working for you long after you have forgotten it exists. Search, suggested videos, and time quietly compound in your favor.
So the strategy is simple, even if the patience is not:
Make each video the best you honestly can.
Publish it. Let it go.
Do NOT judge it in 72 hours. Do not judge it in 72 days. Some of your best performers will surprise you two, three, even four years later.
If you are a lawyer building a brand on YouTube, stop measuring success by week one. You are not chasing a viral moment. You are planting a library that pays you back on its own schedule.
Plant the trees now. The shade comes later.
