Content creation has completely changed my life in 8 months | Insights of a Creator Ep2

I've been a full-time content creator for eight months now and it has completely changed my life and I wanted to do this video because I think it's going to give you nothing but hope and drive to chase your own content creation dreams based off seeing how much persistence and failure and effort that I've had to put in to get where I am today so in this video I'm going to talk about my journey through kind of five or six different niches and you know every format I'm going to then talk about how I knew it

was the right decision to quit my job what it's like actually being a full-time content creator and what the future looks like for me you know as a full-time content creator and how I'm diversifying myself and building out more of a creative business so it all started about 4 and a half years ago for me I was training for an Iron Man and I decided to start an Instagram Fitness account this was pre-s incredibly hard to grow kind of did around 100 to 120 photos and videos just on the feed didn't really grow that much

but I enjoyed the process of just putting myself out there just getting started I didn't know what was good I didn't know what was bad at the time I was just kind of just posting I didn't really know what my friends would think of me I was scared I was like thought that they oh he just wants to be an influence but you know what I try to just kind of get over that very quickly and just you know enjoy what I was doing and just think I don't care I then did the ey man

it came just to a kind of natural ending of me doing that content I wasn't growing I was kind of getting a little bit deflated and demotivated by no growth so I moved towards YouTube I then started doing more YouTube long form did around 15 20 videos on personal development note taking this that and the other my videos were awful absolutely awful um again found that really difficult to do didn't really know much didn't really have much time to do it um and I quit that as well I did that for about four or five

months then I joined twitch um and at twitch I got inspired by streaming I then um started streaming war zone and I had success uh really quickly I had a viral video on Tik Tok after about 3 weeks um and I couldn't believe it it's the first time I'd had any virality and I would not wish this on anybody cuz I could not handle it my phone was absolutely blowing up for weeks on end and then months my twitch was blowing up and I thought I'd made it I started making money and I was like

wow this is my first taste of money making content I previously had never made content before for money I was making content purely just to explore some creative desires within me that my job wasn't allowing me to do um and I think that's super important as a content creator I think if you're doing it purely just for money um I think you'll struggle to sustain and motivate yourself uh for a long period of time when you don't make any money because you need to be real with yourself like most cre creators you know are not

going to make good money for 2 or 3 years because that's the amount of time it takes you to probably get to the level that you need to be at to start like getting good growth and start getting brand deals and monetization opportunities so make sure you've got your reasons straight for why you're creating content once that started to happen I started to go all in um and I burned out I honestly I burned out I was working streaming creating content and I was leaving myself no room to learn or improve either I just thought

that like if I'm consistent I keep showing up I will be successful and that was a very wrong approach and attitude to have I should have focused a lot more on you know how to get better at editing how to be a better streamer but all I was wanted to do was go live make a Tik Tok onto the next day uh my strategy and approacher was wrong there um the wave that kind of initially started for my virality died um and yeah that that hit me hard like I I realized that you know this

isn't working I'm not going to be successful doing this this way um however kind of towards the back end of that me streaming war zone got a little bit more interested in the actual growth of streaming because as I was you know stopped growing I started to try and learn how to grow more I started streaming less cuz I was burning out um and I was like actually I quite like this um I then took 6 months off because I just was like I'm done with content creation for a little bit I'd been doing the

streaming war zone for about a year um so I had like just got a bit fed up with just not getting what I wanted you know yeah just like everybody I was putting in lots of work lots of effort not getting the returns that you know I was hoping for and then I was like okay I took 6 months off and I re-evaluated my Approach I now was looking at it well I enjoy content um I really like doing this and I actually now think that I you know I've realized I can make money from

it I didn't really you know ever think about it like that so let me have a bit more of a strategic PO with how I spend my time because that's the key thing where most creators go wrong and where I went wrong is I was spending my time on the wrong things too much time streaming too much time doing this that and the other and I sat back and I thought what do I need to focus on in order to increase my growth and just increase my chances of success and for me that was just

purely focusing on Tik Tok short form content that's all I did I stopped streaming all together and I switched niches I grw I'd grown my Tik Tok account to over 100,000 war zone um sits on about 103,000 at the moment I started completely again from zero all my socials created brand new accounts that was a hard pill to swallow that was a really hard pill to swallow I was like should I create a new account or should I keep the same account I don't know like oh I said you know what Ben let just just

let's take all the skills that you learn learned from creating content you know on Instagram YouTube and streaming you know you know a lot L you know it doesn't matter that you've switched nieces you started again because you're not starting from zero knowledge you're just starting from zero follower account that's fine I started streaming education growth um that didn't really work nobody really knew who I was you who are you like what are you doing this advice for so I started a podcast instead I was obviously still working at twitch and I thought actually why

don't I start podcast I can use some of my my streaming Network to interview them because if people don't believe me in terms of what I'm saying that you need to do for streaming growth maybe they'll believe the people that are already growing all right cuz this is where I'm learning most of the stuff anyway I'm just you know evaluating how other people are growing and then digesting that into short form content but nobody was listening to me which is fine uh when you start creating I think a lot of people get imposter syndrome when

they start um because they think well why would anybody listen to me because I've not done anything you know I don't I think you just need to ignore that you just need like everybody has to start somewhere you know you do know something and there's always somebody that knows less than you that would be happy to learn from you because you're a good personality fit for the type of content that they like to consume in terms of like you as an educator let's say and so as I was moving forward with this I realized that

like the podcast was taking me hours and hours and hours to do um and short form content wasn't doing that well and I started to again re-evaluate how I was spending my time um and then around February February March things change for me I had always been this creator that wanted to be super unique you know wanted to stand out wanted to come up with my own ideas in my head and you know that wasn't working and I saw a podcast from a guy called Brandon Kane talks about having a more of a datadriven approach

that you could actually reverse engineer viral videos and figure out why they're going viral and then remake them into your own style and obviously often it's the idea and the topic that makes the video go viral more than the execution itself and I kind of like this idea you know I like science I like maths I like data I like kind of all that I started giving it a go um at this point I was slowing down with my podcast um again I was slightly burning out again doing too much uh all my weekends were

dedicated to creating the podcast um and then I started to have success like I was I basically looked up all of the top streaming Educators on Tik Tok and saw what sort of topics and ideas were doing well for them um and essentially started to write them down in a spreadsheet and see well this topic works for this person this person and this person this must be resonating with the Their audience of streamers which is obviously the audience that I wanted to create content for I started implementing some of these ideas you know into my

own style trying to make them better trying to like put my own spin on it and it started to work it started to work it wasn't a coincidence I had seen like you know in the last 30 days I had around like 20 Tik toks and around two go over 10K views and then in the next 30 days I had 20 Tik toks or so and like 10 or 10 of them had gone above 10K like there was there was results there that going wow this is working I'm going to continue to do it and

I hit like the AI tool content creation boom as I like um I hit that like as it started to boom and I was like ready to create that sort of content I'd also identified it in the streaming education Niche it was actually really undersaturated there aren't that many people that create streaming education content um they're mainly on YouTube so it was actually really undersaturated Market I I'd known that i' known that I could offer something different and so I went at it I then started expanding out my Niche into sort of like editing cuz

I knew streamers had to know how to edit cuz I've been a streamer uh and so they'll know how to they'll want to know how to edit and they'll probably like be willing to consume my content on Premier Pro cuz that's just generally what most streamers use at the time um and that started to work as well and you know all throughout this time I never really knew what Niche I was in or you know what the niche would be in the future I was just kind of starting to just experiment more because I wasn't

seeing growth and then I started to see growth and then I just started expanding out my Niche uh then started doing more creative resources create a website also started seeing success and also started to realize that this niche as well is undersaturated people that just create videos about like tools and websites and asset packs and that super undersaturated I got right place right time and that's just what you need sometimes you need right place right time you need momentum sometimes your content's good you just haven't found the right place right time and then you know

I then started to get emails from Brands this is when I started to like make money um and this was like different than when I'd make money is a streamer because that money was all kind of donations was all like done on stream you know and very very different this was now like money from Brands Brand's offering like $500 for me to make a Tik Tok video and I thought that was wild I was like holy $500 just for like a video take me one evening yes please start doing that next month you know start

to get more brand deals my this is when I was about about 50,000 followers on Tik Tok again not that big because Niche was undersaturated you know I stood out still um and then the numbers started to go up 500 turned to 1,000 1,000 turned to 1500 1500 turned to 2,000 2 3 months later I'm earning triple double triple my salary and I'm thinking well I probably need to think about this is reality now I'm potentially going to have the opportunity to quit my job how do I know when the right time is in my

head the right time was I was going to wait for five six months of continued progression in terms of my inbounds and also you know my Revenue as long as I'm getting you know if if this month I get 10 inbounds and next month I get 15 next month I get 20 I could see that you know there's a linear linear you know Trend going up that I'm getting more inbounds as I'm growing and that's a positive sign and also the cost the the the the amount that I was charging was also going up as

well and I wanted to just get to a point where I would have 20 to 25 Grand in my bank account as like like emergency income like that would last me around 6 months or so um and I got to that point a lot quicker than I did things started to escalate and then I spoke to my parents I was like I'm going to quit I was going to quit in December I ended up quitting in like September um and I was like I can't handle this anymore I was working like all day every day

like would like wake up go to work get back would be editing from 7il 9: I at this point I now streaming as well uh making brand deals till 3:00 in the morning you know I was pretty I was this is real grind here real real grind like working silly hours um just just hustling just hustling hustling hustling just just never taking time off because I knew that like I was nearly there um like I said I quit my job and got to the point where you know um it it had become a reality now

it become a reality for 4 and a half years I had been on and off chasing my dreams you know and I did a few other niches in between those other ones I didn't even mention because I just was like didn't even do them for that long and never knew whether I would make it or not um and eventually made it uh eventually made it um and the feeling that I had in the first month that I was um uh self-employed fulltime was just incredible I made another video about this in my journey I cried

because because I was crying so much in the first month because I'd never felt a feeling like it before I'd never felt a feeling where I just felt free I could do whatever I want whenever I want I could wake up when I wanted I could go out to lunch and go out to breakfast and just do anything and have nobody above me to tell me tell me like why I couldn't at this point I'm I'm easily making you know around 7 to 10 grand a month you know I'm not making chump change either you

know I'm living very comfortably and there's no stress or pressure on myself I'm doing three Tik toks a week that's it it's all I'm doing all I'm doing you know and I'm like wow this is this is what life should feel like this is what life should feel like in like incredible sense of Freedom um and you know over the last 8 months I have to just pinch myself or remind myself how incredible this is to be a full-time content creator like as long as you build it right and as long as you just don't

commit and you know I didn't quit my job to then go into another stressful full-time job I quit my job to give me the freedom of time to do to do whatever I want and part of that is making videos which I which I thoroughly enjoy I I love what I do um and part of that is just you know enjoying myself um and so you know I still get stressed I still like it's there's ask people ask me like do you feel stress and pressure on being a full-time Creator being self-employed and I do

sometimes but usually not not financially at all I'm very like I said I'm very comfortable there it's more so just like wanting to just do the best I can with my videos wanting to my videos to perform now because performance is of my videos is now kind of somewhat directly correlated with my Revenue um so that gets me stressed um unnecessarily and so I've now got to the point where I'm asking myself what's next what's next for me as a content creator I don't just want to do brand deals all the time I want to

like start like building a more of a create a business you know diversifying my revenue streams I'm not too bothered about earning a lot more money I just want to make kind of more money in different areas so that you know I have got that diversification I have got that security you know and I am just exploring different things and I'm just learning and improving um and so for me that looks like probably building out some mini courses building out some stuff around how I come out of ideas because I think that's my one of

my strongest things when it comes to my content is that I'm pretty good at churning out ideas so I'm going to package that in into like an sop like long old document to like to sell um got some like want to do more Consulting B2B stuff um but you know at the same time I'm just taking every day as it comes trying to I'm trying to it can be a bit lonely as a content creator as well I've joined a workspace just to get me out of the house because I don't see my colleagues anymore

I don't go out that much and drink I have joined a few other communities as well that you know running club and just some networking stuff I try as much as I can to to go to events and stuff that's like my social aspect of being a Creator because you know I don't you know see people a lot but I'm I'm I'm happy doing what I'm doing I'm happy working I'm happy chugging away I'm happy making this YouTube video YouTube is something that I definitely want to do more of like because of the diversification factor

I I know that there's a big ceiling here I know that there's a place for my content um and so I'm you know I'm happy that I'm sat here filming this um and I think like I'm getting tingles in me again here I there's there's there's so much opportunity for me in front of me I'm not somebody somebody that that doesn't know what what what big opportunities are you know when I when I sniff them out and when I find them I I take them I've done that for my whole life uh I'm just I'm

relatively hungry all the time um and I just think that like I'm at the early stages of of potentially massive success in what I do it's just how much do I want to push myself to get there I don't know yet I don't know I always questioned myself when I was in corporate if I ever got to middle management would I want to go higher than middle management because you know higher than middle management yeah means more money but means more responsibility more stress and it's the same way that I now look at my create

a business you know how much do I want to go how much do I want to push it do I want to build a big team do I want to build a big business because ultimately that's going to be pretty Hands-On and pretty stressful and yeah it might make me more money but if it takes away the time and freedom that that I was chasing well then am I going to be any happier than I am now just because I built something bigger and make more money I don't know that's the question I've got in

my head that I'm not sure of the answer to and I'll only find that out until I do it but in in my head I'm I'm really patient I'm really patient I've been patient for a long time and I'm really Keen to build slow to make the right decisions to not go head first and build so quickly that I land myself in like a just an absolute mindfield of just work and pressure and stress that I absolutely hate it like this is not why I wanted to be a full-time content creator there's lots to think

about for me lots and lots to think about you know as I said I want to do more on YouTube My Tik Tok and Instagram are still in maintenance phase just you know keeping them chugging along I want to start an on email newsletter um I want to obviously launch some courses in that maybe offer some one one toone stuff Consulting event workshops you know lots lots to think about here but I'm excited about the future for me I've I've as I said I've chased my dreams for so long to be a full-time Creator and

it's incredible I Can't Describe to you how how it feels to just be a full-time content creator that's that's relatively comfortable it is just it's just all it's it's the best feeling in the world in my opinion it's the best feeling in the world um and I encourage anybody and everybody who is chasing to be a full-time content creator to just keep going it might take you a year it might take you 3 years it might take you five years but you know you just got to be somebody that just keeps on chugging along you

know you can give up and you can just stay in your corporate job and be unhappy forever or you can just see it out for you know 3 to 5 years and you'll make it a success 3 to 5 years is nothing you just need to convince yourself that you know you need to just keep going and keep keep pushing through even though when it's hard and you don't want to do it you know it will be worth it in the end I promise you I absolutely promise you so please keep trying please keep trying

please keep going I'm going to keep continuing to share my thoughts and insights as a Creator and you know hopefully give some more advice on you know more of the psychological and mindset things behind you know pushing through those barriers but I hopefully this was useful hope it was valuable have a nice weekend and I'll see you in the next video