Reciting after @Recider

Welcome Pioneers to the 25% of our 12 week goal!

To remind any new readers, us three captains have creating a 12 week SMART goal to keep each other accountable. Two are doing great, one... not so great.

This week, we also interviewed one of the most creative people on TikTok - @recider. If you haven't seen his content before, it's a must watch.

Sean, take it away!

I ended up posting three TikToks this last week - A video about tea, a video experimenting with just text, and one where I share my thoughts on what productivity "actually" is. Week 2 down, no wheel-spinning for me.

Growing a large audience has its fair share of trade-offs.

In our ideating phase of Out West - about eight months ago now (wow what) - we dreamt of being able to sit down and chat with creators we looked up to. So many came to mind, but at the top of the list was someone all three of us took note of long before we even met. That person was @Recider.

Known for making some of the most beautiful 15-second pieces of cinematics and short stories, Recider carved out a niche and put himself right on the money.. He lives and breathes the concept of “show, don’t tell” and his channel is a textbook for anyone who wants to make impactful short content.

Growing up in Texas, he spoke about how creating scenes and filming solo acts as somewhat of a meditation for him, an escape, a way to express an emotion, and although his extended family pokes fun at him for being TikTok Famous™, he works diligently to change how people view those who identify as a TikToker into a viable explanation for a career.

He reminisced about turning the corner on 10,000 followers and feeling super connected to his audience - the same network of people would comment their support every time he uploaded, and he felt a true sense of community. Now, however, over 1.4 million people follow him, and part of him misses that sense of a small, VIP-Esque audience in his comments.

Your connection to your audience stands paramount to everything you do as a creator, guiding each decision in favor of it.

Recider’s feeling of missing that connection resonated with me quite a bit, as I’m striving for more of an authentic voice with my content. I think Recider does a great job at portraying his actual true self through his short cinematic pieces, and it’s interesting to me how the reception of his videos, because of his audience size, almost squanders that initial sense of community. But what it doesn’t squander is the success he feels as he enjoys the fruits of his labor over the last year.

If you find yourself in a community online, big or small, stick with it. One of the most fulfilling things about creating content is knowing both that it’s hitting people, AND how it’s affecting them.

Growing a large audience has its fair share of trade-offs, and if you’re in this thing for the long play, be prepared for growing pains.

So I'm doing terrible with my 12 week goal as you can see with those two bright red 'X's. Last week, I had to run a naked mile... video coming out soon on @tejashullur... and this week, I have to gift $20 to a random subscriber. *Sigh*. 3 videos shouldn't be a lot but I'm just at a loss of motivation at the moment. All cycles though :) Will be back to speed ASAP.

When I say Recider has some of the best talent I’ve seen on TikTok, I truly mean it. His ability to take the audience out of their seat and place them into whatever universe he creates is unreal. At just 19 years old, he’s got a grip on pacing, emotions, worldbuilding, and a lot more. It’s impressive, especially when you consider… he does all that work in just 15 seconds.

Maybe it’s the dark side in me thinking, but as creative and artistic as our conversation got, the only thing I could think about is – how the hell is Recider going to make money out of this? Danny and Sean would continuously ask these in-depth editing and storytelling questions and I squabble… “So like, have you thought about posting on Snapchat? I heard they pay a big buck!”

I’m a money-hungry monkey, what can I say? All jokes aside, the largest takeaway for me out of the Recider conversation is that he didn’t really have a clear path to monetization, nor did it really concern him at the moment. I mean with his skills, I’m confident he would have no problem becoming a VFX artist at a big production company, starting his own, going to traditional media, or digital… His options are wide.

However, in the conversation, when I asked him about his future – he simply pondered, “Yeah those are all routes I could take, however, the idea of just sticking with growing my following as a content creator is what I like right now. It’s the most creative and free.”

Wow, that’s truly amazing. You weren’t able to say that ten years ago, much less five. But now, with a TikTok account that acts like his visual resume, Recider has options and can go whatever direction he would like!

I’ve learned that the success of a content creator is not binary. It’s not - you’re either a big star or end up a nobody. For most, like Recider and myself, growing a page as big as possible is the goal, however, I’ve met people like Austin Hankwitz who simply want to use his following as a means to another end. He is using it as a way to get leverage in deal flow for his own investments because he doesn’t want the future of creating all day.

Our lives ahead of us are a blank canvas, we can all paint it any which way we want. That’s so fucking cool.

Recider, it was awesome talking. Excited to watch your journey!

I evaded the wheel of doom and managed to upload three videos this week, one of which did pretty well. Decent performance.

Danny: The term GOAT gets thrown around a lot. But when it comes to you, we have to consider it quite seriously. It feels like you go viral more than anyone else on the platform. How does going viral feel nowadays compared to when you first started? Does it feel the same way?

Recider: Definitely not. It’s almost becoming subconscious knowing what to include in a video and how to format it. At the beginning I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over but there’s so many tiny little details going into it. I feel more confident, I guess.

Here, Recider touches on that remarkable phenomenon of learning by doing. As a TikToker, you don’t have much time to flounder in the process or grovel in the aftermath. You just have to create, post, create again. Which is why we see so many creators exponentially grow their talents (and platforms) in such a short time.

Tejas: I'm just curious, where does this love for making videos come from? And then what brought you on to TikTok, right?

Recider: Like, I didn't really think it could be a career or anything like that. I just kind of enjoyed doing it. And then once college did roll around and I was like, oh shit. I don't know what I want to do with my life. I always knew I enjoyed making videos. Just kind of like how college snuck up on me, I figured that I should get some experience. And so I started like making videos on my own and then I wanted to put them somewhere and, like everyone else, I'd been scrolling through TikTok and I saw a lot of videos that weren't that great that were getting millions of views.

And I was like, I could do that! Like, that could be me. So then I started posting on TikTok right before college started.

So inspiring. This man is nineteen, by the way, folks. Fresh out of high school, with over a million fans. It’s never too late to hop on this creator train - you might be surprised how quickly you arrive.

Danny: Wow. How do I articulate this? It’s like you were created in a lab pretty much. It's like, all these factors that go into creating the best type of content for TikTok. You just tick all those boxes - short, digestible, visual, no language barrier. Obviously, you're putting so much care and time into them, but also at the same time, you can churn them out, which is unbelievable. It's why everything you post is successful.

I know in the past you've had your girlfriend or your family appear in the videos. Would you branch out into building a team, or a crew?

Recider: Yeah, I've definitely wanted to do that. And I've actually just started working with a friend from college who's kind of helped with a little bit of production like setting up lights and stuff. I have thought about working with other people, but also I do want the videos to be really easy and quick to make. And I feel like the more people I bring in, then the longer it takes.

Danny: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I've always felt like it makes sense to branch out eventually and expand into getting a team who’s whole job is to focus and dedicate itself to you.

But then when I think about that in practice, I get very awkward about that. I think it has to be something that you do alone in your bedroom. Like in a dark room where no one can see you. And then they see the finished product. They're like, oh, that's cool. But if anyone sees it at the beginning, it can be embarrassing.

Recider: Yeah, no, definitely. Especially because I'm making TikToks, which I feel that's still [taking] forever for people to accept, like being a YouTuber is an actual job. And I feel like being a TikToker just sounds ridiculous right now. Like it's not as accepted, at least where I'm from. Like being a TikToker is a legit thing, but I still feel kind of goofy, I guess.

Danny: You're a filmmaker, first and foremost. You're more than the platform that you post on, a hundred percent. You're making art. So you've just gotta lean into that.