Pack your bags, the wagon is leaving soon.

While everyone else madly swings for gold, let’s pitch a tent and provide the water.

As three online-obsessed nobodies, we’ve felt the pressures of the Internet gold rush - make stuff, stand out, and stick around. There are many self-proclaimed “expert” creators, and that is not who we are. Instead, we are three voyagers exploring a new home for ourselves and our passionate community.

Every week, expect three thought-provoking nuggets of insight in this little newsletter of ours.

It likely won’t change your life, but hopefully, we’ll build something together. After all, exploring the unknown is better with friends, right? In such an unpredictable creator economy, there’s one thing we are guaranteeing - a consistently creative community.

Come out West with us - don’t miss the wagon.

I've never owned fancy equipment. In fact, I've never even owned my own camera. For someone who creates videos for a living, it's forced me to see content creation as a problem-solving exercise - as opposed to routine duty. When relying on a fall-back isn't possible, success is rewarded by outside-the-box thinking. This week, I tested my ability to tell a story without shooting any footage. The process was as rewarding as it was demanding. Constraints have always inspired me - creativity shines when there are limitations to our tools.

This week, challenge yourself to take something out of your toolbox. Mine was a camera. Maybe yours is music. Shit, make something with only music. There’s so much fun (and frustration) to be had. But you’ll find the result will be a breath of fresh air.

When setting out to create something online publicly, you’ll often come up to the seemingly immovable wall of “why would anyone care about what I’m making?” I’ve had this thought MANY times over the last 12 months of creating every single day - heck, I had this thought like, yesterday. To make matters worse, the endless vat of “motivational” content online seldom helps.

But every so often, a video resonates. For me, it was this video. Short, sweet, and to the point, Bible scholar Michael Leadon concisely gives reason to the ostensibly reason-less. Take a listen.

What is the motivation behind what you make? Whatever it is, challenge yourself to not be swayed by public opinion, rather, create from an authentic place. If you can stand behind every video you make and say “yep, that’s authentically me,” then you’ve truly won.

(Next week, I’ll dive deeper into authenticity, what it means, and what implications it might have on your trajectory as a creator. Tune in, won’t you?)

Hey, Tejas here. Watch this, it’s 10 seconds.

The beauty and curse of TikTok is its low barrier to entry mixed with its virality-focused algorithm. I’m able to talk to you because of this, but if I play my cards wrong, I'll fall off with no mercy.

It’s happened time and time again, I’ve seen pandemic-creators who were on top of the world now GONE, and that shit’s scary. There is a multitude of reasons this happens, points I’ll talk about in next week’s edition.

Right now all my eggs are in the TikTok basket and it didn’t hit me how dangerous that is until I saw that video of Zack King who stabbed me with the truth.

YouTube is not just another opportunity to create content, it’s a necessity as a creator. The platform creates a foundation for a deeper community, it allows you to tell your story more in-depth and at a comfortable cadence.

We three have made a pact to upload to YouTube every Saturday, and if you’re a creator that’s solely on TikTok, we encourage you to do so well. 🤟🏾