Just Do It

Today I am here with a message for all of you entrepreneurs and aspiring creatives, the message is, as someone once used in a marketing campaign, Just do it!

It doesn't matter your ages, status, education, if you have a dream and you want to do something, go do it.  I'm not saying put yourself at risk or make stupid choices, actually really, there are no bad decisions if you look at everything as a learning curve and let's face it, life, life is a learning curve.

This week after having a Youtube account for 10 years I made my first Vlog, it was pretty bad but could have been much worse I imagine, the fact is that after 10 years of being in business I need to add more things to my portfolio, more income streams, more ways of earning a residual salary which keeps building.  My quest for the future is to be a digital nomad and I want to keep creating things for as long as I possibly can and there's no denying that if you look at the facts out there, video is the biggest emerging way that we as humans consume information.  Watching Youtube is like having your own microcosmic TV channel, you can watch shows about pretty much every subject in existence.  What I found, is there are a lot of guys out there who are photographers, there are a lot of men telling you about what's in their camera kit or delivering pieces to camera about the buttons of the latest camera but there are a lack of women of my age creating videos.

Over the last 10-15 years women have flooded the photography market changing the way portraits and weddings are shot forever, women not only possess immense technical abilities but we're genetically programmed to have empathy, it's not that men don't possess any empathy but in the battle of the sexes, where empathy is concerned, women will always win.

So that's what we do, we take our subject matter and we "add the feels" we can put ourselves in the position of the bride, we can talk to the smaller people like we would our own babies, we have the mother's instinct and I guess the brides too.  We brought a kind of softness to the industry and we added our technical abilities and wildly creative sides as well, I'm not saying we're better than men, we're just different.

So now, I want to do with video what I've done with photography, in 10 years I want to say I've achieved stuff, I want to succeed at Vlogging well and making moving stories of my own, I'm not saying I want to make movies or that I'm about to set up as Newcastle's next big videographer but I have stories to tell and I want to tell them my way.

I read a quote today which said "Just remember, no matter how huge the Youtuber is, they all started with 0 subscribers". That spoke to me, not just in the context of Youtube but I suppose in life too, you see, you have to start somewhere, no one won anything by just sitting back and letting life roll on whilst they took a passive role, no one made their first million by sitting on the couch, you have to go out there and follow your dreams, you have to just do it, do something, do anything, take some risks, what's the worst that can happen, if you fail you dust yourself off and you start again.  I've had so many moments in 10 years when I wanted to give up but I didn't, I pushed on inspire of my mental health or the breakdown of my marriage or being a single parent or having a breakdown.  Somewhere inside me I just found the strength to keep carrying on.

I have a long way to get from the place I am now to the place I want to be but I am not going to let it stop me, on Monday I had 29 subscribers, after publishing just 2 videos I have 40 subscribers and I have only had to lightly beg people!

So, wherever you are now my message to you is to keep pushing on, don't doubt yourself or second guess yourself, just believe in you, believe you can do this and go out there and just do it!