TJ Walker spent 30 years trying different formats: radio, TV, podcasts, books, YouTube. Online courses on Udemy became his best fit, generating steady income and engaged students. He says the key is experimenting relentlessly, then pivoting away from what doesn't work.
Very few people are great at everything, at every medium. There are exceptions. Oprah Winfrey here in the United States, Howard Stern in the United States. There may be someone in your country who is a really, really famous TV talk show host, radio host, author, and is in all media. But in my experience, that's the rare exception. Some people are lucky enough to be good in one thing and one thing only. Now sometimes they get such a level of fame they can leverage off of that and be successful. Have a radio show and 10 million people listen to you every day, well, then it's going to be easy to sell books. You could be a successful author. But for most of us, it's not that simple. My advanced tip to you is keep experimenting with different media formats until you find the one that works the best for you. Doesn't mean you ignore the others. But throughout my career over the last 30 years, I've been in basically every single medium you can imagine, other than making movies. And yeah, I've been in a few documentaries. But as far as creating and making it, I've not tried to make any movies, thankfully. But I have hosted talk radio shows on seven different networks, hosted my own, and produced my own TV talk shows. I've been a pundit on every kind of network. I've had my own podcast, I've written numerous books, started blogs, started many websites. Some of them had a little bit of success and some of them, frankly, were not successful at all, were canceled or couldn't attract advertising. What's my point in all this? Keep trying things. I've had YouTube channels since almost the beginning of YouTube. And it's not that I ever had Justin Bieber style audiences and billions and billions of views. But I had a little bit of success there. I get business. People hire me just because they've seen particular videos they like of mine on YouTube. So I would put that as kind of using a baseball analogy. Forgive me, those of you who like baseball or prefer cricket. It's sort of a single meaning. It's not a big, huge success. It's sort of the minimum level of something that could be called a success. That's kind of where I would call my YouTube career. I get business, I get credibility. Sometimes people hire me to star in a video just for their organization. But for the most part, I'm not a YouTube star. But I continue to experiment. I experimented with online training, audio and video since way back in the 1990s and many of those early ventures failed. But now here I am on YouTube and Udemy specifically, which is where you're watching me. And I do feel like I have some actual success. I have thousands and thousands of minutes of people watching me on Udemy. I get responses every single day. I have people paying for my courses every single day. I have numerous best sellers here. So I've found a medium that works for me and it finds an audience. Udemy might be a good format for you, online training. Might be, whether it's your own platform, thinkific, others like that, maybe it's YouTube. My point is, if you really want to be advanced with the media in your skills, in your career, you need to keep experimenting and trying things. And sometimes it could be one particular medium, like podcasting, and it just takes three years before you find an audience. And ultimately it really takes off when you do well. Other times you have to try something, give up, move on to something completely different. I can't guarantee you success, but I do think if you have a real passion for something and you have insights that other people don't have, and it's a subject matter that people care about, doesn't have to be as big a field as weight loss or finance, but if you have some subject matter that people care about, eventually you'll find a medium that works for you. And the key is you can't just give up easily. But the other key is you can't keep trying something that just doesn't work for. Many years ago, I was a political talk show host, and I hosted on TV networks, radio networks, and I pushed and I pushed and I pushed, but after about 15 years and practically starving to death, I had to realize, this just isn't going to work. And it's not that I just stopped and said, well, let me go be a baker for the rest of my life. No, I pivoted and I changed and I tried different formats, things like YouTube, podcast, and now online training. So that's my advanced tip to you, is you've got to keep experimenting until you can find an audience that you're happy with and you feel that there's something meaningful going on, doesn't mean you have to make billions. But for me, I really enjoy this format right here with Udemy because I get messages from you every single day and your colleagues, your fellow students every single day. I get feedback every single day from people saying I helped them get their job or they're get their promotion. I get questions every day from people asking my expertise, and I get reviews every day, thankfully, Most of them 5 stars of people saying I really help them. So of all the media outlets I've tried in the past, this is the one that has resonated with me the most. Again, it might not be for you. The point is, keep experimenting. Don't give up. If you want to be a master at this, and you may have to stop anyone if you're not getting any traction, but then switch to another one, and that's the advanced tip.
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