I stopped thinking like an editor and started directing the outcome.
Most editors hand back a cut and stop there. I run the whole thing — what the video should be, the hooks and story order, the retention read after it ships, and the growth calls that decide whether a channel becomes a business. No team, no handoffs, no agency markup. You talk to the person who does the work.
That approach helped take Chloé's channel past 100K (17K→109K in about a year, with a 2M-view hit) and built a real business on top of it — products, sponsors, memberships. It's why David Ondrej — 397K — hired me, and his average view duration went from five minutes to eight. Same lens on every channel: the edit has to do something for the business, not just fill the feed.
The full story lands here soon.
