Be by Jessica Zweig Book Summary
“Whatever! I do what I want!” - Eric Cartman
Overall this book was supplemental to a mindset shift that I had already made. It was backing up my actions to get off of the “what ifs” or “I coulds” and into I can and I am. Years had passed me by looking at YouTube as something that I could do, but excuse after excuse kept me from starting. Fear of what people would think, would I get made fun of? In the end though all you can realize is that if you want to do something, Youtube, photography, writing, because it makes you happy then just do it.
No One Cares
Obviously this is easier said than done but one thing that stuck out to me was the chapter on No one cares. It is true. 7 months into YouTube and over a year into having a blog would you like to guess how many people that I know in real life have come up to me asking about a video or post that I made? Thats right. ZERO.
The biggest secret about personal branding is this: no one cares. Building your brand is an act of service, not an act of ego. Remember that people inherently care about themselves, and that's ok. Be the type of brand (and person) who reminds your audience, clients and customers of their own power and potential.
Other people are so busy with their own problems, kids, finances, house, work, they don’t have time to think about you, especially outside of work.
Once I finally did put myself out there I was flooded with this no response, that was the key. This is what I needed to keep going. It gave me the confidence for when I do get critics to have the mental fortitude to say “so what”? My content is not aimed towards the masses. There will be people who dislike it. There are many people like me though who will gravitate towards my style and content that I enjoy making. The internet is not about pleasing everyone, despite what the trolls and haters want you to think. Feedback is just feedback. You decide what to do with it and how to respond.
If someone comments on your video saying “this was the most boring video ever”, there may be some truth to that. The other side is…they have 0 videos. Their first video, or 10 or 100 will be shitty and boring too. But they haven’t even worked up the courage to post and are tearing down someone who is at least trying. Think about how sad that is.
Now that I have first hand experience making videos, heck even before that, I wasn’t tearing people down. If I didn’t like something I would just move on and go about my day. No comments saying “you suck”, no thumbs down, I would click off and move on. I am more likely now to do things like opposite. When I see something well done and well produced, I know the time and effort that went in, so I am more likely to give it a thumbs up, subscribe/follow and leave a good comment.
As I try to build my own community, I am open to conversations and try to reply to all legitimate comments or replies. Even some harsh feedback that I need to hear has spawned good back and forth(surprisingly). I understand at some point the sheer volume makes this impossible, so I am making the most of it while I can.
We are all just human
I want you to trace them back to where and when they started. Look them up on Instagram and scroll all the way down to the beginning of their feeds and look at the quality of content, as well as the engagement. Head to their Wikipedia pages and find their career history. Study their time lines. Google their images and find photos dating back to five, ten, twenty years ago. What do you notice? You will see that they all started small. But above all, you will notice that they simply started and did not stop.
I’ve done this example with a few of my favorite YouTubers. MKBHD has kept his entire backlog of videos up for everyone to watch. You can see exactly where he started and if you wanted to, could watch the entire progression unfold. Go back and watch just a few of these videos from various time points. You’ll realize, he’s just a guy, who has worked hard at this craft, for a very long time. There is nothing unique or special about him, just a dude passionate about technology who kept making and improving videos a little bit at a time.
Maybe the one thing I disagree with in the book is that your professional and personal brand are the same thing. I think if you are trying to tackle different industries or audiences I’m not sure this is entirely true. Using myself as an example there is 100% a difference between the engineer in the office and the person outside of the 9-5. Sure my values are the same and I am the same person, but these two different segments of my life right now are treated differently. At least for me it is a necessity to keep some separation between the two based on the nature of the work.
Consistency
One thought that I do too much, early on she describes consistency.
1. Consistency—picking your lanes (i.e., your content types, your social channels, your tactics) and staying the course versus jumping all over the place
I started out thinking, I need to be on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Threads, Facebook, a podcast, blog, website and more(not TikTok, despite its “amazing power to grow”) I don’t care. Anyways, I had effectively paired that down this year to get my feet under me. I narrowed in on YouTube, specifically long format videos and Threads as my two main platforms. I am active on these daily and find it easy to post and engage with users. I specifically stopped making shorts for a period of time, cutting down my long format videos into shorts was tiresome and did not yield great results for the work being put in. I hav since started utilizing AI to help me with this process, because while I think it is still better to make unique content for short form and not just cut down long form, I recognize that YouTube and other platforms are pushing short form hard to compete with TikTok. This will help me at least show up and hopefully help discoverability a bit.
The differences in content required between YouTube though and instagram left me in a place where my instagram account is all but dormant. Reels growth has been stagnant, and the sheer volume that is required to stay relevant and show up on instagram is too much for me at this junction. I post on there still when I have a good idea, but consistent it is not.
At least with YouTube I am good for 1 long form video a week and can see and feel myself improving on camera, getting more comfortable, delivering information better, editing better, etc.
Threads is similar, I find myself easily able to hop on and post at least a thought per day and interact with other people in the feed. I’ve curated my Threads feed to what I want to see and it is a great experience so far.
Freedom
I’ll leave you with my ultimate goal in all of this is freedom. Financial freedom and time freedom. I continue to learn, read and explore new things to help develop my skills to progress my career and my well being, such that I can swap out the time/money trade and start buying back more of my own time to do things I enjoy in this short life.
Today, after nearly four decades here on this planet, my definition of freedom is, well, rather basic: it means simply being who I want to be. This looks like living a life on my own terms, without the fear of judgment from other people. Period.
