This week, both TikTok and CapCut were temporarily banned in the US, sending many American content creators into chaos. Before they were eventually reinstated, at least for now. And no matter where you live in the world, this situation really does beg the question of all content creators. What would you do if your primary platform, aka YouTube, or your go to creative tool, aka your video editor, suddenly just disappeared forever?
While it's unlikely to happen, it's not impossible, as we saw this week, which is why you need to plan for this. Months or even years in advance. So in this episode of full time YouTuber, I'll share some important lessons that YouTubers around the world should be learning from the events of this week and how you can set up your personal brand and business to weather any storm, if in fact this does happen to you one day.
Hey, I'm Ben, and I help YouTubers who are entrepreneurs at heart grow their channels into profitable businesses. This podcast is for creators who want to help their audiences through informational content. Not to chase fame or subscribers, even though that may come, but rather to build a business that generates revenue while you sleep so you can live your dream lifestyle.
So while this ban on TikTok and CapCut was reversed and the platforms are now available again, this is not yet permanent. They are on a 75 day extension currently to potentially sell the companies or at least 50 percent of them to a US based company. So that still needs to happen before TikTok and CapCut are out of the woods.
And in this episode, I really want to break down the two facets of this, because I think it's a really interesting question that we should all be asking ourselves. And that is what if everything was taken away from us, what would you do? Well, I'll start with the platforms and then I'll move on to the tools.
So what would happen if YouTube suddenly got I know this sounds like an apocalyptic scenario, but it actually kind of happened to me just a couple of weeks ago. Because of my own stupid fault, I accidentally deleted my channel and it was so close to being permanent that my whole life was flashing before my eyes and I was really starting to freak out.
And think what's next for those that don't know, I was trying to change the email address on my big YouTube account with over 200, 000 subscribers. And in the process of doing so, YouTube created a secondary account that was attached to my new main account. And so I attempted to delete this secondary account and in the process, it decided it was going to delete my main account and every single video and trace of me that ever existed on YouTube and Google.
Suddenly went offline instantly. Like I was searching Google and there was no trace of my channel and even my top performing videos had completely disappeared, which was an extremely scary experience. So I come to this episode with. With that experience in mind, having gone through the traumatic experience of having everything disappear.
And I want you to think about content creation as a metaphor of a house. So picture a house in front of you and that house is built by strong, sturdy pillars. If that house, however, was only built with one pillar. And that one pillar was, for many people this week, their TikTok accounts, but in my case, it was my YouTube channel.
And then something like that happened. For TikTokers, the platform got banned. For me, I accidentally deleted my own YouTube channel. Well, if that had been my one and only pillar of my house, and it had suddenly come crumbling down and was completely unrecoverable, there would be no foundation left. No structure, it would just be dust.
And I'm happy to say that that didn't happen, thankfully, because I did have other pillars in place. Those other pillars were one, my email list. I have a big list of engaged people who are on my mailing list. So if my YouTube channel disappeared, I'd still be able to connect with my core diehard audience that will follow me through thick and thin because I made the effort many years ago to start collecting emails and encouraging people to join.
Not in case this apocalyptic situation happened. It's actually because that is your most diehard audience that are most likely to buy products from you. But yes, just in case the worst happened, I knew that having an. email list would be the strong pillar that would still be standing after the house crumbles.
Not only that, but I had multiple other pillars that I'd built in advance. The other ones were my Instagram account. I've got 30 something thousand followers on Instagram. Same with my Facebook page, I've got 20 something thousand and between those multiple Pillars. I've got my core most engaged and diehard followers who went out of their way to follow me on multiple platforms.
So therefore, if one of the pillars did crumble, I could just reach back out to people on those platforms and let them know what happened and tell them, Hey. My channel got deleted, I'm starting a new one, feel free to follow it at the link below. Or if YouTube went offline permanently, I could then pivot my strategy towards posting solely on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Or maybe I just focus solely on email. But in those scary 30 minutes my YouTube went completely offline and I was genuinely convinced that I would not be able to recover it and I'd have to start from scratch. Even though 99 percent of me was in pure terror. At the thought of this being real, there was 1 percent of me that knew that it was going to be okay, because I had these other pillars in place, and I had the knowledge about how to grow a successful YouTube channel from the ground up.
So the lesson of this metaphor is the more pillars you put in place from day one, The sturdier the house will be when disaster strikes. And this isn't to say you need to build as many pillars as possible and be posting on all of those platforms every single day or week, because that's just impossible.
You're going to burn yourself out and your content's probably not going to be very good, but the way you can start building pillars from as. early on as possible is to start with just one more. So you might want to ask yourself, what is the next best platform that I can be posting my content on that I will one, enjoy making content for, two, there's a big audience that will likely enjoy the information I've got to share, and three, be similar enough to the initial platform.
Form that you don't have to completely reinvent the wheel. For example, if you normally post 20 minute YouTube tutorials, suddenly switching to a 60 second TikTok style format is playing a different game entirely, and that new game has completely different rules about what will work and attract an audience.
And if you put too much time into that second game, it takes a lot of time away from the first game, which was working great to begin with. So I'd encourage you to think about what your secondary platform might be. What is a platform that you could upload to regularly that wouldn't be that difficult where you could use the content you've already made for your YouTube channel and just repurpose it a bit.
For example, when I make a new YouTube video, I will then repurpose that as an email. It might take me 20 to 30 minutes to write it and it still uses the Core lessons and value from the video, but I've just adapted it to the written format and it hasn't taken that much time out of my week to do. So another very simple way to cross post the same content is on another video platform such as Facebook.
So whenever I post a video to YouTube, I will. Also post the exact same video to my Facebook business page, which takes barely any extra work aside from re uploading the new video and adding subtitles, a thumbnail, a description, and so on, which I'm basically copying and pasting from the YouTube video anyway.
But what that's doing in the background is creating a presence for me on another platform that if YouTube went down one day. It's probably not going to, but if it did, I've at least been nurturing my audience on Facebook. For then when that day comes that YouTube disappears and everyone flocks to Facebook, I will have had months, years, or even decades of content building my presence on the platform, giving me a massive headstart in this brand new world without YouTube.
So after you do this cross posting for a while, and you're getting into the hang of it. And you're also happy with the way your main channel is growing on YouTube. You're giving it enough time and nurturing to take it where it needs to be. That's when you might want to consider adding one more pillar to your foundation of your house.
And maybe this one is a bit different, like you're emailing an email list. Or you're cutting out chunks of your YouTube video Instagram, or maybe you are just making brand new content for Instagram and TikTok, because you found a way to do that quickly and easily in a way that doesn't disrupt your number one priority platform, which is YouTube.
So gradually over time, you'll want to. Aim to add more and more pillars to your house. Again, I wouldn't go too far with this because there's so many platforms out there. And again, you're going to totally burn yourself out if you try to be on all of them. But I do think the goal ultimately is to get around three strong pillars.
And I talked about this in the last episode, which you should go back and listen to if you haven't already. And in that episode, I talked about how I'm simplifying things a lot. In 2025, while there are heaps of platforms out there and heaps of different formats of video, I'm sticking with three main platforms to spend 99 percent of my time.
Those three platforms being YouTube, email, and podcasts, because that's where I believe my time and effort will go the furthest and help the most amount of people without burning myself out in the process through creating way more work. Then I'm able to do in a calendar week now, just because YouTube podcast and email is my strategy.
It doesn't necessarily mean that's the best thing for you because you want to keep in mind that every niche is different and has a target audience that exists in different places. And really as a content creator, it's your goal to find the source. of targeted audience members and exactly which platforms they exist most on, and then creating great content that attracts them to your brand.
For the fitness niche, that might be YouTube and Instagram. For the business niche, that might be YouTube and LinkedIn. With that said, you'll definitely want to look around and see what other platforms might be a good fit for your style, whether it's Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, email, podcasts, Facebook. X, the list goes on.
So if you haven't already start with two with YouTube being the main one, choose a secondary one. And then I'd say in a couple of months or years, once you've got a lot of good momentum going with your channel, then add a third one. Don't overcomplicate it too much from day one. Otherwise you're less likely to follow through on making all that content every week when you simply don't have the time.
Would I recommend you make content for TikTok? Well, you can, and obviously it's a platform that is exploding, and that's what's caused it to get into a lot of hot water because of breaching privacy issues in the US. But it's clearly got a very big audience on it, so it's absolutely worth trying if you think your target audience exists on there, because not all audiences do.
Also, it's hard to avoid the elephant in the room, and that is that TikTok literally just got banned. So what's to stop it from happening again? Maybe if it's not in the U S it could be in another country that puts up new privacy laws, stopping everyone from accessing it. So I'd say TikTok probably has the shakiest foundation of all the platforms, unfortunately.
Again, the key is to diversify. If you did add TikTok to your top three platforms. Make it number two or three, don't build the foundation on it because if that foundation comes crumbling down, if it got banned again in 75 days, then you'll be left starting on a new platform from scratch. Now the next big aspect I want to dive into, and this is one that a lot of creators face at some point throughout their career.
And that is what if your main creative tool got banned or just disappeared? And that's what happened this week with CapCut since it's linked to ByteDance, which is the parent company of both TikTok and CapCut. And it also got banned in the US for many people. And with so many people using that as their go to editor and building their entire social media profiles and brands.
Out of this app, I saw a lot of people freaking out thinking that it was all over. And if you don't use CapCut, this very well could happen to any editor or app out there. If it breaches privacy laws or it's connected to something that gets banned in your country, it could go offline like that. And here's what I want you to remember.
It's not about the tool. It's about the artist. What does that mean? Well, if you learned video editing at one point in time, you learned that the workflow was 1. Import your files to your computer. 2. Import it to the editor. 3. Cut it up and remove all the pauses. 4. Add titles, graphics, music, sound effects. 5.
Color correct. 6. Export. 7. You're done. And at not one point, Did I mention a specific video editor to achieve those seven steps? This is because this exact same process or workflow can be achieved in any video editor out there. And the way you do this really comes down to the artist, not the tool. I remember when I first learned Premiere Pro, it would have been around 12 years ago and I was coming from Final Cut Pro 7.
I remember I was working as a freelance videographer and editor at the time And I was kind of pushed in the deep end. I was helping a small production company here in Sydney and they needed some editing work done. And they said that the project was already half cut up and they'd done it in Premiere Pro.
And I told them, look, unfortunately I can't do this because I've never used Premiere Pro before. And they said, no, no, don't worry about it. We'll teach you. It's super easy. It's similar to final cut. And I thought. Okay, I'll give it a go, but they're not going to like what I'm doing because I've got no clue.
This is going to take years and years for me to learn this software. Lo and behold, I went there. I started editing with it and I realized just how similar Premiere Pro was to Final Cut Pro 7. All of the menus were laid out the same. The timeline was in the same place. The viewer, the media pool, the software was nearly identical to Premiere Pro.
While a few small things were in different places. It only took me a few hours to learn the new locations, and that was it. I was editing confidently within an hour or two. And the lesson here is that most creative tools operate in a very similar way. You're not having to reinvent the wheel every time you learn a new video editing software.
Since they all follow the same workflow, they have very similar layouts and it's actually so easy to change platforms. I know some people avoid this like the plague. They will stay on a really old outdated editor, like Premiere elements six from 1994, because that's what they know. And they're too scared to learn something like CapCut, but actually CapCut is like a thousand times faster, easier, and better, and requires almost no learning curve.
But it's really only because those people were closed minded and they said to themselves, they made up in their head that it's going to be a hard process to learn a new editor, but really they've edited hundreds of videos before and the overall workflow, steps one to seven, are exactly the same, regardless of the editor you're using.
Which is why I say it really is about the artist. And not the tool, because as artists and creatives, it's our job to produce a result. And when you know how to edit really well, you can pick up any editing tool and produce amazing edits. Like me, for example, I literally quote unquote downgraded my editor from Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve to CapCut, which everyone knows as a big.
You know, software, yet I'm doing the best edits of my life inside CapCut because I love the simple workflow and the way it just speeds up everything. Because once you've already mastered the storytelling, pacing, B roll, A roll, sound effects, music, and so on, all of those different elements that make up a great.
The next challenge is speeding the workflow up and doing things faster and producing more work in less time. And that's why CapCut really was such a great fit for my needs because I was able to take my existing artistry of knowing how to edit and apply it to an editor with a fast workflow. And one day.
CapCut might even get banned in Australia and that wouldn't be a problem at all since I can, again, take that skill set that I've already been developing over the years and apply it to whatever the new best editor is at the time. It's funny, I got a comment on YouTube this week that is along these lines.
They said, CapCut isn't a professional editor. It's like using Crayola crayons to paint a renaissance painting. And I just laughed because this comment kind of missed the whole point. Because the irony of it is a good artist could paint the renaissance painting with Crayola crayons by following the right process.
The tools really don't matter as much. So if your editing platform or another creative tool you use was to get banned one day, just keep in mind that there's going to be a hundred other alternatives out there with very similar layouts. And the process is going to be very similar to achieve the exact same result.
If not. It's just important as creatives for us to always be open minded and get with the times because tools and platforms do change, but the key strategies and processes behind them don't. So if you can relate to this, maybe you've been using the same video editor. Or photo editor for the last 20 years and you don't want to change because you don't like new stuff.
I just encourage you to be a bit more open minded because what if I told you there was a far better alternative in something else and that you were going to miss out on that purely because of the fact you refused to try it. And this thing could double your output and double your results using the exact same processes you've already been using.
Well, more often than not, platforms like this do exist for every type of software out there. And it's up to you to find the best one for your use case. Even if you think you have a great app that you've been using. Always question everything because with every year that passes comes new advancements in technology and Processes become much easier and the results they produce become much better.
So always question every tool you use speaking of platforms being banned from and disappearing This also happened to me a couple of years ago when I was using Upwork. So Upwork is a business platform where you can find freelancers all around the world and hire them to do your digital tasks. And I'd built my entire business off of hiring people on Upwork.
I'd probably hired 20 people over the previous 10 years and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on it. Yet one day, I think it was around 2020, Upwork decided to. Ban me permanently and all new email addresses I've created simply because I offered to pay a freelancer another a hundred dollars through PayPal who worked a bit of overtime after we'd already closed the contract and Upwork were monitoring the chat and they literally just banned my account despite being a very long term seasoned user.
No questions asked. And it made me realize that. Platforms don't have loyalty to you, they have loyalty to themselves and that's it. So you've always got to have a plan B. Luckily, I was able to find a plan B, a replacement for Upwork for managing my staff and projects. And I learned that lesson the hard way that you shouldn't build a house on one single pillar like I'd built my business on Upwork.
That's it for the episode. Hope you enjoyed it. Again, build two to three pillars for your house. So it's strong and sturdy. If there's ever any natural disasters, earthquakes, tsunamis that threaten the foundation of your house, you're going to be good, but you've got to start planning for it now. I wish you all the success in the world.
Good luck with your channel and don't forget you're just one video away.
