I thought I was gonna be an engineer, last year of high school, through the encouragement of a mentor I decided to give my creativity a shot,

I went to school for photography because although I wanted to be a Youtuber, photographer seemed more realistic. I’ll be honest they didn’t teach me much that I couldn’t learn on my own, but what was helpful was the environment and people who shared the same interest as me, it allowed me to practice and shifted my mindset,

some would argue a mindset shift isn’t worth $4000 a year, but at the time I didn’t have access to any similar environment for cheaper.

I was soon booking real jobs, making $50-100 shooting events, real-estate and weddings, I took any job I could get, photo video even some graphic design work (side-note I quickly realized im way better with a camera than with Canva haha)

I dropped out after a year because I thought the time commitment and the cost of school wasn’t worth it, especially because I was making money and learning lots more on the job.

It was all going so well, until covid hit and all my opportunities disappeared.

During quarantine I joined an online film school from a very popular college, it was not good, it didnt have information, feedback, or the community that physical photography school had for me initially, I quickly dropped out.

But with the confidence of knowing I can actually make money with my camera and creativity, I decided to try video-editing online.

I had some videos I made for coffee shops and my friends weddings, those showed off my videography skills, I also had a bunch of vlogs I had been making since I was 16 on a YouTube channel.

I followed every business and creator I liked. I didn’t know what cold-messaging was back then, so I would just comment on posts and videos. Eventually some creators would make posts about hiring editors and I would send over my portfolio and why I want to work with them!

The most helpful tip I can give you is that, most people told me that my portfolio stood out because I was able to show off my personality in my YouTube videos and that I had shown I understood how to tell a story. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the first time personal branding was working for me.

Skip to 2024, I had been video editing as my job but not really making a full time salary, money was never a priority to be honest, I just liked that I could do what I like. 2024 was when I realized I had to grow up, but that doesn’t mean find a real job.

I knew that I had skills that were valuable but I had a decision to make, keep creating videos for other people or make videos for myself and build my own audience, I chose option 2, and honestly to my surprise in less than 50 days I got up to 50k followers sharing content about how to cinematically vlog, my reels were getting 100k+ views some even going past 1M

Brands started messaging and emailing me, before I knew it I was signing $2000 brand deals. I quickly also launched a community because I wanted others to know how to do this too.

After 2 months of running brand deals, and a coaching community. I got everything I wanted, faster and easier than I expected but I wasn’t happy, new problems came up and I got overwhelmed and burnt out. I stopped posting for almost a year.

This last part I don’t even really know why I am sharing, there’s no lesson, it is just the truth of my story. And that’s important to me because I’m launching a program and community again, but this time I want to focus on Sharing Personal Stories.

When we focus on creating honest beautiful engaging personal stories , I believe, self-improvement, self-fulfillment, audience growth, financial security, those things will all follow. As long as we don’t lose sight of the craft and art of sharing our stories.

My larger mission is making visual storytelling available to everyone, because everyone deserves to have their story heard and everyone deserves to hear beautiful stories.

If you share the same goals, I would love to have you apart of my group :D