Client story: the guy who kept blaming the algorithm

Had a client a while back convinced YouTube was just "against him." Channel had solid production, good camera, and decent editing, but every video flatlined around 5-8k views. He'd been at it almost 2 years at that point.

Went through his last 20 videos with him. Turns out almost none of his titles or thumbnails actually told you what the video was about. Like, vague, mysterious, "you won't believe what happened" energy, but it was a cooking channel. People weren't clicking because they genuinely didn't know what he was cooking (pun intended).

Didn't change anything about his cooking or his personality, just made him start writing titles/thumbnails that actually said the thing. "I tried making X" instead of some mystery.

Next few uploads jumped to 20-30k, one hit 90k. Not saying this fixes everything, but it's wild how often "the algorithm hates me" is actually just "people don't know what they're clicking into."

What do ya'll think?