The only thing that will stop you from achieving your goals as a creator

When I first watched a Peter McKinnon video I knew I wanted to be a YouTuber. There was something about his videos that totally hooked me and inspired me.

At the time I was working a 9-5 pm finance job in a basement office in London, it was the middle of winter, pitch black sky on the morning commute into work, and I spent all day underground in the office. 

Due to the glorious British winter, the sun set at 3:30 pm so by the time I left work at 5 pm it was dark again.. yup .. never saw sunlight… bleak.

By now I was so sick of this job and wanted to leave it and pursue being a YouTuber, but I was totally in fear… I was afraid of what people would think of me, I thought my friends at the time would make fun of me.

I thought they would think I was cringe for posting videos of myself talking on the internet… That I was trying to be a different person than the person they knew.

So for a short while, I put off this dream of being a YouTuber and continued to carry out the mundane job of plugging numbers in the basement office in London all day.

I realised I was hanging around with a bad crowd at the time, a group of ‘friends’ that would rip the hell out of one another as soon as someone tried to do anything that would break out of the norm.

This made me realise something - because I was hanging around those mindsets. That is exactly the mindset I adopted.

No wonder I thought I would get made fun of if I was to go after something I wanted to do like being a YouTuber - because that was exactly the kind of mindset I was surrounded by every week.

That simply isn't true. 

Spoiler… everyone is too busy thinking about themselves, their problems, and where they want to go in life. Just like you are mainly thinking about yourself and your problems.

People only care about what value you can provide for them in content. That is why we are having this encounter right now. 

You want to make it on social media and you want to find out what the one thing that is going to get in your way is so that you can avoid it like the plague… right?!

I was slow to realise this to be honest. I made fake accounts and even made videos where I wouldn’t show my face. 

Then one day it just clicked in my mind. Like a penny drop.

If I dream of being a YouTuber… then I can’t fall at the first hurdle and not even have the balls to make a video.

Fired up, I made my first videos on my YouTube channel and it was (at the time) a highly complex mini 2-minute cinematic montage film with complex transitions and voiceover by me.

I thought it was going to be just like a classic Sam Kolder… Andreas Hem video. Not taking into account that they had already been creating for YEARS and had vast experience.

It took me weeks to plan shooting in multiple locations, get friends to help, and even travel down to London to film half of the video there.

I chose to move mountains to produce a single piece of YouTube content. The result..? I didn’t stay consistent with posting.

I made a few more videos some talking head and others more complex vlogs, but it wasn’t long-lasting. This style of content wasn’t working for me.

It was not long after this that short-form content was becoming a thing and I was listening to GaryVee one day talking about how TikTok was THE opportunity for content creators.

I thought, new platform, new start. I can post on there with freedom. So I did, I made short-form tutorials, just like my inspiration Peter McKinnon did on YouTube, but compressed into 30-50 seconds.

That was my break in content, my third video got 500,000 views overnight.

I gained more followers in 8 hours than I had 5 years of Instagram prior.

A few failures and hurdles led up to that point and now we’re here. I became a content creator and I was growing... fast.

None of that would have happened if I didn’t just say F*** it, let’s post that first video and figure it out along the way.

Did some people make fun of me? Yes. Anyone who puts themselves out there relentlessly will be subject to this eventually. Get used to it.

But for every one person who decides to troll you, there are 1000s more who you are helping with your content and they will love you for it.

Action steps

So I want to ask you to go and do one thing. 

Go and make your first piece of content. The video you have been putting off all this time.

Indulge your creative mind and take the action required to bring about success.

Make the video, and put it out there. How it does isn’t up to you anymore, let it go, let it fly.

The only thing that will hold you back is the fear of what other people think.

We’re all going to cop it one day mate, might as well give it all you got right now.

Authentically and wholeheartedly

As always, happy creating peeps.