Want to be a creator and have something holding you back? What if I told you that what’s holding you back is almost certainly not a dealbreaker?

It’s been nearly 10 years since I began posting my content to YouTube and in that time I’ve learned quite a lot about how content creation. I had no idea what I was doing when I first started out but through trial and error I managed to correct a lot of my own misconceptions and came to realize that the biggest thing holding me back was my own doubts.

People have these doubts for a variety of reasons, but I wanted to take you one-by-one through the most common ones I hear and set the record straight. Maybe you’ll find in the end that your doubts, like mine, were little more than a paper tiger.

1. You have to have the right equipment.

This is a big one in the video world and I’ve noticed more and more YouTubers switching from talking head format to having videos composed completely of b-roll and animation because it comes with a huge benefit: they don’t have to worry about a camera.

But you find this attitude in a lot of different arts. I’ve known musicians who stress endlessly about whether they have the right amp or effects pedal, believing that perfect tone is just one purchase away.

I’ve known artists that convince themselves that they’re not ready for prime time until they have the right brushes, the right paper, the same pen nibs as the artists they idolize.

As someone who started out with and continues to use less than perfect equipment I’d like to set the record straight: your equipment doesn’t matter.

I know why people get hung up on this--they see successful people in their niche and it’s easiest to say that what separates you from them is the equipment they’re using. But bear in mind: once upon a time they were making do with no more than what you have at your disposal right now.

I very deliberately made the choice many years ago with my own content that I was not going to buy top-shelf equipment because it was going to be a waste of money for me. Having great equipment was not going to make my content good.

There was only one way to get to a point where I was making good content and that was by creating work and evaluating it. Being inspired by others and trying to incorporate what inspired me into my own work.

If I couldn’t hold onto an audience shooting with a GoPro and my iPhone then I certainly wasn’t going to be able to with a high-end DSLR and a more professional studio. I worked to make my content as engaging as possible and then upgraded my equipment.
Can I tell you a secret? I didn’t get a DSLR until about 2 years ago. The first 8 years of content on my channel was made with Flip Cams, GoPros, and my iPhone. And when I got the camera? I still didn’t use it for my videos for another 6 months!

Why? Because I wanted to know the ins and outs of how it worked. I didn’t just want to throw technology at my content. I wanted the technology to support my content. And until I understood how exactly it would do that, I spent my time learning the ins and outs of DSLR settings.

There are lots of other channels out there that use better equipment than I do, but most if not all of them aren’t producing content as engaging as mine--my views and subscriber counts tell the tale.

2. You Need to Go Viral

This is a pretty well-worn story at this point: content creator has a piece of content go viral and it makes their career. Opportunities open up, people pay attention, fame and fortune ensue, right?

I’ve had friends that have had viral success and there’s something they don’t often tell you about virality: it’s temporary.

Having a viral piece of content may feel like you’re on top of the world as you bask in adoration and attention and wait for your payday to come. But what happens the day after?

We call content viral because it behaves like a virus: there’s an onset of engagement that then explodes into a spreading of information and attention, but just like a virus it eventually subsides. Who today remembers some of the early viral videos? Who remembers “Charlie Bit My Finger”, “The End of the World”, or even “Gangnam Style” for that matter?

Virality has an incredibly short shelf-life and while it can absolutely help you grow your audience, you have to be able to have follow-up content ready for the converted.

I’ve never had a video go viral in my 10 years as a content creator and I honestly don’t ever plan to try. Because I’d rather be consistent and make sure that my audience is there with me for the long-haul.

Virality produces content that is short-lived and subject to fickle attention spans. Consistency produces an intimate relationship between you and your audience.

Now it does take a long time to build an audience this way and many a YouTuber has found success by having a link to one of their videos make the front page of Reddit, but building an audience organically also insures that their core interest is in the content you most want to produce.

Don’t look for a quick hit. Look for a real audience that will stick with you.

3. Your content has to be perfect

We’ve all had that beautiful idea. We’ve sat down to try and realize it, pushing through whatever obstacles appeared in our way. Sometimes those obstacles teach you something profound in the process and sometimes they’re just annoying.

You fight and scrape and push your way through it, holding onto that image of what this beautiful thing can be and when you get to the end...it’s just not right. It’s not the picture you’ve been holding in your mind all this time.

Or worse, you see that beautiful thing in your mind and feel like the gulf between where you are and where it is just seems insurmountable. So you don’t even try.

So I want to introduce you to a mantra that’s been a huge help to me in my own journey as a content creator: perfection is the enemy of progress.

Some of us may be familiar with This American Life host Ira Glass’s wonderful quote on this topic--how people who want to create are inevitably people possessed of taste and that we frequently find the things we create fail to live up to the standards of our own taste.

And you know what? That’s okay.

It’s okay that what you produce isn’t perfect. It’s okay that it’s not what you had envisioned in your head because people rarely do achieve such things.

In my 10 years of producing content I can only think of maybe 2-3 projects I’ve done that either matched or exceeded my vision for what they could be.

A college friend once helpfully put it to me this way: everyone agrees that Van Gogh was an absolute genius. Everyone is familiar with at least a few of his paintings that have entered the popular zeitgeist. If you buy a book about his work, you’ll probably be exposed to at least a few dozen of them. You know how many paintings Van Gogh created in his life that survive to the present day? Nearly 900.

We remember a select few works from a man who left nearly 900 of them. In other words, absolute genius creates transcendental work that makes a huge impact on the world about 1% of the time.

You have to produce a lot of work to get anywhere near perfection. You have to make a lot of mistakes to get anywhere near perfection. Accept it and learn to love the lessons. It’s the only way you’ll get there.

4. People who create content are special

You know that YouTuber whose work you love? That artist whose comics make you laugh? That writer whose works fill you with a profound sense of awe?

It certainly seems like they’ve been touched with some kind of divine providence, as though there was some lottery for talent and relevance that they won and the rest of us mere mortals lost.

There actually is only one thing that separates you from them and that’s the work they’ve put in to develop their art.

This is a thing that freaked me out a lot as my YouTube channel grew and continues to freak me out on occasion: people believe that success makes you special and they put you on a pedestal because of it.

But I know what they either don’t or won’t allow themselves to admit: there’s nothing special about me.

Anybody could have built my YouTube channel. I was lucky to have been around at a very unique time in the history of the Flow Arts when the community shifted over to sharing videos online. There were many other people who were active at the same time I was who created better videos or had access to better resources than I did.

But most of them didn’t stick it out. Many of them experienced a moment or two of success and moved on to other things. I kept at it. I kept learning what to do and what not to do. I kept challenging myself to get better at it and every time I saw someone new come onto the scene that did something that amazed me, I asked myself why and if there were any lessons I could take from their work and apply to my own.

Anybody with this kind of patience, dedication, and willingness to grow and learn could do what I’ve done. Anybody still can--heck, why not you?

The only thing that stands between you and those people you idolize is time and work. It’s up to you whether you want to take that challenge on.

5. If I’m not successful right away, I never will be

It’s really discouraging when you create things and it seems like nobody is interested.

I can’t count the number of videos I’ve produced where I really believed I was giving people incredible information that they’d really appreciate...and then found that my view counts were in the pits.

It becomes really tempting to tell yourself that this thing is never going to work and you’re not cut out for it.

But take heart...Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Success is rarely a thing that is an easy demarcator between having it and not. There’s no finish line to announce to you and everyone else that you’ve made it--huzzah!

You’re going to experience a hundred small victories and a lot of setbacks. There are going to be small windows where you feel like you’ve got the pieces together and others when you feel completely lost.

And then you’ll stop months or years down the road and find out that other people are now treating you the way you’ve always treated your idols. When did that happen?

Even if you try to walk yourself back through it, I doubt you’ll find a magic moment when all the pieces fell into place. Success is like building a house brick-by-brick. You’ll get lost in the process and eventually find as you near the end that you want to add a new wing or change your idea of what the roof should look like. The house emerges as you’re worrying about other things.

Think of every piece of content you produce as bringing you one step closer to that goal. But honestly? If you’re doing it right, you’ll forget all about the goal and fall in love with the journey, then look up far down the line and realize you surpassed your goal a long time ago.

Success is built day-by-day. Have the patience to build it rather than expecting it to appear.