Digital Nomad Grandad — Building in Public
A little while ago I decided to do something that made me slightly nervous — build a brand new YouTube channel completely in public, documenting every step on my main channel as I go.
No editing out the mistakes. No waiting until it’s working before I talk about it. Just the real process, as it happens.
The channel I’m building is called Wise With Age — elder advice and health content aimed at people over 60. But honestly, the process I’m documenting applies to anyone thinking about starting a YouTube channel in any niche.
Why am I doing this?
I’m nearly 67. I’ve been building things online for years — websites, YouTube channels, digital products. I know what it’s like to watch tutorial after tutorial and still feel like you’re missing something.
What people actually need is to see someone doing it in real time. The decisions, the tools, the dead ends, the small wins. That’s what this series is.
The series so far — 3 videos in
Video 1 — Watch me build a real YT channel from scratch: total transparency
The starting point. I introduce the Wise With Age channel, explain what it’s about and why I’m building it, and walk through my thinking on niche, audience and content direction.
Video 2 — YouTube Research Made Easy: finding the most popular topics in your niche
Before you make a single video, you need to know what people are actually searching for. In this one I show the research process I use — the tools, the thinking, and how I decide what’s worth making a video about.
Video 3 — Video Ideas to Script Writing: watch my process
This is the one I just published. I take a video idea all the way through to a finished script using Gemini, record the voiceover in ElevenLabs, generate a captions file, and work through titles and thumbnail ideas — all using AI tools. I’ve turned the whole prompt document into a free PDF which you can grab below.
Get the free PDF — all the prompts from Video 3
I’ve packaged up the entire Gemini conversation from Video 3 — every prompt I used and every response — into a free PDF called Video Ideas & Script Writing. It covers the full workflow from choosing a topic to recording a voiceover to designing a thumbnail.
If you’re working on your own YouTube channel, this will save you a lot of time.
What’s coming next in the series
The next planned video will follow the Wise With Age production process through to a finished, uploaded video — editing, captions, thumbnail, description, tags, and everything that happens between a finished script and a published video.
However, I will probably insert a short extra video, as I mention in video 3, about sourcing assets for the video editing process. Watch this space!Subscribe to Digital Nomad Grandad on YouTube so you don’t miss it.