Everybody loves a good bit of nostalgia.
My entrepreneurship-journey started with a Youtube-channel.
I was 15 years old and the shy kid in school. I wasn’t great at making friends. After class, I always found myself playing video games.
World of Warcraft, Runescape, Call of Duty, I played everything.
I wasn’t highly skilled. My kill/death ratio wasn’t excellent, and I never got my skill cape.
What I was good at was explaining things to my friends and finding little secrets in games.
I was done with being a shy kid. I wanted to express myself.
YouTube was a great medium to get started. I created my channel, which had the name ‘ChannelOlli,’ and began uploading. Mind you, this was before my voice got deeper, so I sounded like a 9-year-old girl.
I didn’t mind. You have to start somewhere.
Somehow one of my videos managed to go viral. It was a guide on how to save Alex Mason in Black Ops 2. The video had over 339.000 views and kick-started the growth of my channel.
I uploaded content for about three years. My channel had over 3000 subscribers and more than 1.200.000 views. I was proud of that achievement, but once I left high school and went to college, I had no motivation left. I suddenly had to commute 2 hours a day, school work started piling up, and my social life exploded because I met new people. There was no time left for YouTube.
From Youtube to Marketing Agency
After one year of college, I was done. I’m the typical ‘drop-out.’
I started a marketing agency in the summer of 2014 with a friend.
Fast-forward to 2020, and we’ve grown a lot: four full-time employees, numerous clients, and 6 figure revenue.
After five years of working non-stop for clients, I felt like something was missing in my life. I did not have a personal outlet for my creativity.
Don’t get me wrong; working for clients and growing a business is fantastic. I’ve never felt so satisfied in my life.
What I learned is that creating is what makes me happy. They always say that 90% lurk, 7% curate, and 3% create. I love to make things.
I missed my Youtube-channel. I wanted to start making video content again.
The resurrection of ChannelOlli
So I bought a professional camera, microphone and started recording.
I wasn’t going to replicate my old channel, as I wasn’t playing a lot of games anymore. Instead, I was going to create a business channel.
I modeled it after Graham Stephan and other Youtubers in that niche.
Starting in Dutch was a mistake. I felt comfortable talking in my native language but, the reach is abysmal. Sure, my content was more understandable for local clients, friends, and family, but my maximum reach was minimal.
During the last day of 2019, I decided I will do everything in English. I will learn how to write, how to speak, and how to grow an audience in a different language just as I did with ChannelOlli back in the days.
Happiness
I feel excellent about starting a personal project again. My agency -Kreatix- is running and doesn’t require as much time investment anymore. I’m available for sales, strategy, and vision, but my employees handle the day-to-day.
I freed up valuable time and have reserved a day a week in the first quarter of 2020 to work on myself.
I will update this blog with content, I will create videos on Youtube, and I will try to reach an audience with my vision about entrepreneurship.
Feel free to subscribe to the channel here and follow my journey: https://bit.ly/37unoNa
