That experience was a real eye-opener. When I got married to Mike, what I generated through my channel contributed to the budget for our wedding, and went towards the deposit on our first house. But I wasn’t getting too carried away. I wasn’t prepared to leave the prestige of my City job, or the potential to be a senior manager or even partner, for a quick buck. I decided that I would keep up my hobby posting videos online on the side, while also maintaining the steady income and security from my day job … I was ‘multi-hustling’.
And I was learning so much along the way. As more work came in, I began to standardise my process by auto-responding to emails, creating a rate card, and putting aside set times to manage the business side of my social media profile. Before long, I was booking three to four projects a month, and making double to triple my salary, but I was still scared. I couldn’t fathom a future where I was reliant on myself and not a boss or stable company. What if it all disappeared? I knew that once I left my industry to do something completely unrelated it would be extremely difficult to ever go back. I wondered what my parents would think, what the bank would think, what my friends and colleagues would think. But the numbers didn’t lie. I could see this was a viable business. I didn’t know what the future was going to hold, but something told me that if I was smart about this, I could make it work.
Not just a leap of faith
I’m a fairly risk-averse person, and I like to make calculated decisions. Leaving a stable job to build my business online was not done on a whim. But I could see my revenue growing more and more. My calculations, based on the data that I had, indicated that I would continue to grow in the future. Planning for the next five years, I weighed up the pros and cons for pursuing my business, or staying in my City career. My business won. I made the decision then to become a full-time YouTuber (more on exactly how I got there later). Even now, I find it amazing – crazy, even! – that I was able to turn my secret hobby into my business. It came from a genuine place of passion and love, with no expectation of financial gain. When I first started there wasn’t even the option to make money in this industry. But I realised I could build a long-term future doing something I was happy to work on day, night and weekends, for ever and ever.
Finding your grind
You might be thinking, What exactly am I going to do if I want to go it alone? I’d better follow my passion, right? That’s what you hear all the time. But hold up a second. Because …
Passion isn’t everything
What’s your passion? Speaking candidly, I’d confess that my passions are sleeping in late, watching TV and eating food. I’d watch Netflix all day if I could! But you can’t make a living watching telly (let’s call the guys on Gogglebox the exception that proves the rule). You have to find something you like to do in life, but you need to acknowledge reality at the same time. And that’s a philosophy I’ve always followed, from choosing my first job after university to deciding to become a full-time YouTuber and influencer. That doesn’t mean abandoning your dreams – in fact, it’s the total opposite – but it does mean acknowledging the circumstances that you’re in and which lie ahead, rather than blindly ignoring them. That’s why, rather than telling you to focus on finding your passion in life, I’d say focus on finding your grind.
Here’s how I see it, whether we’re talking about finding a hustle IRL or building your brand online. The truth is, if you’re playing to your strengths, these should really be one and the same thing. This is important. Everything that I do, from my hair-extensions business to my clothing partnerships, works in synergy with what I’m doing on YouTube and my other platforms. The growth of my businesses has been natural because I’d already found what excited me and made me want to get out of bed in the morning. In fact, pretty much everything I’m going to say now applies as much to finding your business path as finding your space in the online world.
LIFE LESSON: As well as following your dreams, you want to find an equilibrium between your passion and your unique skills, while also appealing to an identifiable target market – or, if we’re talking about influencers, an audience. When you’ve managed that, you’ve identified a path that could be worth exploring.
Here’s another way of explaining that idea. There are lots of versions out there of this Venn diagram. In the digital world I replace Market with Audience. The sweet spot in the middle? That’s your grind:
Yes, you’ve got to have a PASSION for what you’re planning to put out into the world – you need to feel fired up, engaged, interested. What is it that sets you alight? What could you talk about for ages and not get bored? What would you be willing to dedicate all your free time (and perhaps, eventually, all your time) to? It might be making (and eating) great food. It might be running your own business. It might be being the best mother you can be. Only you know the answer. While you’re at it, ignore the naysayers. People can turn up their noses at other people’s interests. To that I say, who cares? Immerse yourself in what you love.
You also need to have the SKILL to back that up – that might be in the form of knowledge that you’ve acquired, because you’re so interested in your passion you learn everything there is to know about it. It might be in terms of experience, because you’ve spent so many hours, days, weeks, dedicated to actually doing it. Whatever it is, it’s not just a fleeting interest – you’ve got, or are prepared to get – the credentials. What does that look like? In my case, I was spending hours and hours on forums discovering everything I could about beauty and fashion and putting it into practise with my hustles. This was all before I started my YouTube channel, where I shared my passion for those subjects. Which meant I’d put in the time!
The third piece of the puzzle is: who’s your AUDIENCE, a.k.a. your market? Does anybody else actually want to share in the thing you’re passionate about? If so, who are they? Do you want to be an influencer in order to build on what you’re already doing in your professional life, speaking to your peers in your industry and impressing people who could give you work? Are you speaking to consumers, who might order your product or hire you for your services? Or are you leveraging your tastes and personality to build a following of supporters who like what you’re about as a person, with a view to launching a business that caters to them later on? They’re all totally legitimate options, but determine what’s important to you.
Once you know who your audience is, you can allow that to guide you. For example, if you have a blog aimed at fellow online business owners, it makes no sense posting photos that shout ‘Look at me, I’m a bad B on the beach’. It’s not related to your enterprise. Or perhaps you want to make you, as a personality, your product: do you eventually want to be able to partner with big brands, appealing to as many people as possible? Or do you only want to find a small sector of people who think exactly the same way as you – to find your tribe?
And if your audience is niche, and you’re worried that what you want to do online seems a bit obscure, or not mainstream? That’s totally fine! That’s the beauty of the Internet – you might not have anyone in your town who shares your passion for say, shark movies, but you’ll definitely find them online. You don’t have to appeal to everyone: I don’t. But I would rather have 100 engaged, enthusiastic followers, than 1,000 who aren’t that interested.
Try out your grind
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