TJ Walker argues that creative success is unpredictable, using Bethany Gaskin as an example. She makes millions from mukbang videos by experimenting with formats, staying on camera consistently, and improving over time. Walker says creators should test ideas, accept slow early growth, and build direct audience relationships.
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Many decades ago, Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman said, nobody knows anything. Now the longer quote is, in Hollywood, nobody knows anything. He was talking specifically about what movie, what entertainment property would be successful. He said it's all kind of a guess. You can make educated guesses, but until a movie is released to the world, you never know what's going to be successful. It could be what you think is the worst possible thing and it's a huge hit. Could be something you think is a surefire Oscar winner and total bomb. It was true then, it's true now, but it's true in a much larger sense about anything that you create, any creative product, anything you speak about. Now this lesson really came home to me within the last week. Major front page profile in the New York Times of a woman, Bethany Gaskin. She is a YouTube star. She speaks on YouTube. Now that might not surprise you, but her specialty is something called mukbang, where people simply watch you eat food. Folks, I'm not making this up. When I read the story, I had to check it out. I didn't believe it. But this is a perfect example of something that most people certainly I would have said this is a horrible idea to devote time and energy creating content for a show that just features you're speaking for a minute or two about what you're eating and then eating food in front of people. I would have said, horrible idea. Never work, never. No one would watch this. And I would have been 100% wrong. So when Goldman says nobody knows anything, he's talking about me. I know nothing. Guess what? You know nothing too, about what's really going to work. That's why I do think it's critical to constantly being, experimenting, constantly put out new ideas out there, try different venues for speaking, presenting your ideas, packaging your ideas. Now, I'll link in the description below to this woman, Bethany Gaskin's YouTube channel. You can check it out for yourself. Now, here's what's amazing. She's made millions of dollars from this. And if you put together all of her views for a couple of channels, she's on her way to about a half a billion, billion views of people watching her speak and eat on YouTube. When you think about it, she's probably one of the most successful speakers in a sense in the world today based on how many people watch her speak and how much money she makes from all this. Absolutely astounding. Here's the thing. You could take the top 1,000 public speaking experts, media training experts who put out content and have their own channels on YouTube. I doubt all those views combined would add up to the views this one woman is getting now. I'm not trying to convert you to her channel. I've seen it. I don't think I could ever watch it again. It's not something I think I would watch even if you paid me to, other than the initial interest of what is it? But let's give this woman credit. She took the initiative of trying something, trying something new, putting her face on camera, which is something that most people in the world, even if they have fancy degrees and all sorts of credentials, are too afraid to do. They're too self conscious to do. This woman said, I don't care if I don't look like a typical TV newscaster or university professor. I might not be as polished as other YouTube celebrities. I'm just going to do it. And she did it. And you can see it's definitely not what you would see on typical network fare. But her audience is astounding, astoundingly large. And she's making money. And in a sense, I don't know her personally and she's not a client of mine, but she is living the 21st century dream. She's making a lot of money, has no boss, has no clients, works from home, gets to put out her vision of creativity, creative output, has lots of fans, has control over her schedule, has intellectual and creative control over a product that she's creating, and seemingly has an ideal life. Again, I wouldn't want to make a YouTube channel of people watching me eat, which is not what interests me, probably doesn't interest you, but I want us to go deeper and look at what we can learn from someone like Bethany. She wasn't afraid to try something new, she wasn't afraid to get on camera, she wasn't afraid to experiment and she wasn't afraid to stick it out. I guarantee you she didn't have a million views the first day she put up a video, or even the first week, or probably the first month. It took time. She honed her craft, she increased the production values, she got even more comfortable speaking on camera and now she's got a little mini empire that I think awful lot of people in the world would die for. So that's why I think it's important to look at other creators around there who are speaking. And that's the starting point when she comes on with her video. The starting point is her speaking, talking about what she's going to eat, aspects of her life and then. Sounds ridiculous. You still might not believe me. Check the link below. If nothing else for a couple seconds, the bulk of the content is her eating. This is not your role model as far as content, but this is your role model I think, as far as someone willing to experiment, do new things, reach out to new audiences, and then really deliver something audiences care about and to make a meaningful business out of it. And in some ways a meaningful life too. So check it out. I'm TJ Walker. If you're looking for more tips on how to be a better speaker, check out all the other videos on this site. If you want even more, check out the links to the online training if you want to get deeper in your skills and the best of all possible worlds is call me up and schedule a one on one or group live training session. Thanks.
