Pioneers!
Welcome back to yet another log. Two moments of celly this week! Tejas’ video on track to hit 100k, and Dodford hitting a GRAND SLAM with his Adam Sandler doc. Give your congrats in the comments.
All three boys hit their goals this past week too! Slay!
With that, let’s get into the log! 🤠
Over here, I drone on and on about storytelling techniques, frameworks, bla bla bla. But really, the most important question to ask is; what is your story?
Answer it in 3 sentences: an am, a make, and a why.
I am afraid to leave my comfort zone. I make videos about people that inspire me. Presenting their lessons is why I create them.
This week I met up with Colin & Samir’s editor, Chris Schwaar, who’s on a 2-month tour of Europe. Possessing an infectious enthusiasm for the small things around him, Schwaar’s recent Postcard series on YouTube is a breath of fresh air in the landscape. Each video’s narration is word-for-word a postcard he sends home to a friend. Isn’t that lovely? And with each video only being 1 or 2 minutes, you easily find yourself binging his entire catalogue. The reason why? His 3 sentences are crystal clear.
I am curious about the world. I make videos of my travels. Sharing with my friends is why I create them.
Screenwriters consider these questions when writing characters. Just because you’re a real person doesn’t mean you can avoid it. What’s your throughline? What drives you? The stories will write themselves!
Unfinished Chronicles
Previous week’s goal: shoot and edit a brand deal for TikTok ✅
Next week’s goal: finish research and structure for next video
Wow, that exceeded expectations. The Sandler documentary reached 2M views in 4 days and I’m left… scratching my head. I’ll never get over the idea that those little ideas we all have can stretch and form into something that lives beyond us. I also learned I only said 11% of the total words in that video, thanks to Jay Alto’s tweet. In other news, the TikTok is done and I’m researching my next subject. There’s a tighter deadline on this video than ever before, so back to battlestations!
Content creation is just as much an emotional battle as it is a visual, analytical, psychological, and creative battle. While the cause of this stress is different for everyone, I believe that it’s all rooted in one thing: expectations.
Post at this time, get this many views. Edit it like this, get this many likes. Have a call-to-action like this, get this many blah blah blah. If you do a certain thing, you can expect a certain outcome.
It seems logical, and to some, a viable way to go about creating content. Mirror it off of others who have “figured it out” in your space, and you’ll soon follow. But if it doesn’t work how you expected it to just because you did something similar, you’ll find yourself once again sulking back to the drawing board.
The solution? Have less expectations. Simple - kinda.
I had a long-form video “flop” this weekend. Didn’t get nearly the amount of views or engagements I had expected. But on my way back to the proverbial drawing board, I reflected on a few ways to lower your expectations in favor of being proud of your work, no matter the outcome:
Fall in love with the process - love the mere act of making something more than you love the outcome. Become addicted to the process, not the results.
Be patient - We’ve all been conditioned to want everything right now instantly, which does nothing but set us up for disappointment if we actually believe that we deserve that instant gratification.
Adopt a growth mindset - Treat every outcome in a situation as an opportunity to learn, and to celebrate, rather than an opportunity to overanalyze and compare.
Here’s a quick visualization of what it’s like to have expectations vs. what it’s like to not have expectations. You decide which side you’d be on.
Chronnies
LWG: Upload! ✅
NWG: Write the next video
If you didn’t pick it up, had a low point last week! Questioned everything. A classic valley moment. But honestly, writing this log, and doing some more reflection helped me get back on the horse quicker than usual. Despite my last video’s ‘abysmal’ performance (while the other two cowboys here blasted off to the literal moon), I’m just as excited as before to get the next one uploaded!
“Tejas, they are offering $14,500 for two videos and two sets of IG stories” said my agent three weeks ago, “you are sure you want to decline it?”
I was laying in bed waiting for a rush of guilt and regret to hit me as he said that, but surprisingly so, it never did. So I paused, took a breath and said, “Correct, decline it. Thank you.”
He went on to tell me the ad space is drying up and that this was an amazing deal, he could even ask for more money… but it didn’t matter. I told myself and the Out West community that I was in a Season of No. I truly had this unwavered confidence in my decision.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely love money, and $14,500 is a nice slice (I’m extremely grateful), but what’s the flip side of accepting this?
Spending my creative hours making branded assets, responding to emails, revisions, deadlines, unfocused energy. And for my entire creator career until this point, I played that game and my resume shows that.
It’s been three weeks since that conversation, and I’ve had nothing on my calendar except to make a damn YouTube video. Which I did. Three weeks of totally focused energy which resulted in a product that never would have existed had I said yes to my agent.
I’ve talked about focus a plethora of times before but this month, I genuinely understood what it meant.
CHRONICLES:
Previous week's goal: This darn video will go up on YouTube. ✅
GOAL: Get into the edit! One week left before upload!
Wow, it all feels surreal. I made a 17 minute video in a style that feels more like me than anything I’ve ever done before… and the results paid off, somehow. I have no words other than, thank you thank you thank you. It was such a risk and last week I was in a sad place but glad that energy was harnessed into something that has shown me a very clear path of what’s next. Next upload - June 4th (hopefully lol).
Awesome! I enjoyed reading the highs and lows of each perspective and the thought process behind them.
I wouldn't be suprised if someday Dodford had a netflix level documentary!!!