This week I started vlogging. This means, on a daily basis (or at least weekly) schedule I’ll keep you updated about what’s going on in my life, how I’m handling my work and what’s it like to run a lifestyle business.
If you are not yet subscribed, take a moment and head over to my YouTube channel, hit the subscribe button and leave a comment.
But why do people actually start a quite intimate format like a video log of their life? For me, this was one of the things I always wanted to give a try besides having a podcast (perhaps next year..) and a few other online experiments.
And even if you think your life seems boring or you don’t bring any special skills to the table – think twice.
There are so many good reasons to become a creator of your own story, let’s dive into a few of them.
Leave a Legacy
The first is rather practical, and I’ve just recently understood this after reading this tweet of Gary Vaynerchuk (if you’re not following him already, do it now).
Imagine you had more footage and films of your grandparents or even great grandparents.
How cool would that be?
You could truly understand your roots and where you come from, how life was back then and how their life was like. Perhaps they could have shared tons of great advice with you in their best years!
Right now, we live in an age where it so easy and cheap to create content and write or record our own story for later generations, it’s actually selfish to not leave them at least a legacy in some form.
Document your life, perhaps you feel uncomfortable right now but your children and grandchildren might thank you one day. Or at least think about their awesome ancestors!
Also, I’m pretty sure you’ll be glad to have these memories once you are older and look back 10, 20 or even more years!
Become a Personal Brand
This reason is more business related and sometimes hard to measure. But we all know about the successful YouTubers, Instagram users and Influencers.
Ten years ago this field merely existed, but all of these people have become personal brands by sharing their knowledge, recording how they use makeup or do crazy things. And they all started small, many of them still film parts of their life or simply got famous by starting a daily vlog.
If you are a personal brand, you can basically do whatever you want for a living from promoting products to creating your own merch, there’s a way to build an income from that status once you’ve reached it.
Of course this should not be your goal while starting out, in the beginning it’s completely about helping others or at least entertaining people.
Share Your Unique Journey
And that’s what a vlog is about at its core. It’s about sharing details of your life, your journey, your decisions and opinions.
People enjoy watching content (that’s what YouTube was made for) and you are unique. Your life is unique.
And that’s why your story and content was not already told before and people might be waiting for someone just like you to identify with.
Right now, I’m following a non traditional way. I don’t have a full-time job like 95% of the friends and family around me. I’m different.
And that’s worth sharing with the world.
If just one person get’s inspired by a piece of your content that’s a huge success.
Learn New Skills
If you think about creating any type of content you might fear that you waste time.
But let me get this right:
When you learn, create and even fail the time is never wasted.
Creating a vlog for example requires a different skillset than what I used in the previous years:
- Talk straight to a camera and act natural
- Get the lighting right for shots
- Cut and edit movies to match underlying sound
- Getting an eye for situations that might look great in a movie
You never know if one of these skills might be useful down the road as you can’t connect the dots looking forward!
Do What You Can’t
Finally, everything new is scary. And most of the time in today’s society we are told that we can’t do xyz.
That’s a lie.
You can do anything you can think of. It just requires a different degree of dedication sometimes for higher goals.
You can show your cooking skills and start a YouTube channel for free. You can create a WordPress blog in minutes to share your messages and opinions.
You could go to Medium and publish your adventures stories. Show your photography skills or style on Instagram.
There are basically no entry barriers and you could achieve all of this with the device you keep in your pocket everyday!
To close this, watch the following inspirational video of my favorite vlogger Casey Neistat.
Warning: If you start watching his vlogs you might become even more addicted to them than to GoT (which anyway takes one more year for the final episodes).
Be creative, you are unique.
Simon
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