The Evolution of Creating Content: A Personal Journey

I started making content by filming myself cooking on my iPod Touch. YouTube was super new then, and I was one of the first people to start doing it. It was a small beginning, but it laid the foundation for my future endeavors in creating content.

As time went on, I found myself working at a country club in South Texas, where I would often film videos in my downtime. However, after seeing Tick Tock become popular, I decided to jump onto the platform as well. At first, my content wasn't quite taking off, and I was only posting videos every day or so. It wasn't until I made a video of cutting an onion that things started to change. The video went viral, and I saw a million views in just one hour. That's when I realized the potential of Tick Tock and decided to continue creating content.

I quickly blew up on Tick Tock, with my videos gaining millions of views within a short span of time. It was an incredible feeling, but also a lot of pressure. I was constantly pushing myself to create new content, often posting six videos a day. My strategy at the time was to ride the wave and see where it took me. I was hustling to make it happen, answering emails, editing videos, and trying to do as much as possible.

Looking back, I realize that my plan was always to funnel people from Tick Tock to YouTube. After a few months of success on Tick Tock, I started working towards getting more recognition on YouTube. I had been doing YouTube videos since 2013, but it wasn't until I transferred my content from TikTok to YouTube that things really took off.

One of the challenges of being a content creator is adapting to changing platforms and trends. Short-form content has exploded in popularity over the last few years, with Tick Tock leading the charge. However, the bar has also risen significantly, with more competition for attention and engagement. As creators, we need to diversify our content and find ways to connect with our audiences.

For me, short-form content is still a part of my strategy, but I'm now focusing on developing long-form content as well. The challenge is that viewers have different preferences when it comes to watching videos - some prefer shorter, bite-sized content, while others enjoy longer, more in-depth videos. As a creator, I need to find a balance between the two and cater to my audience's needs.

Ultimately, being a successful content creator requires a willingness to adapt and evolve. The landscape of social media is constantly changing, with new platforms emerging and old ones evolving. As creators, we need to stay ahead of the curve and be willing to try new things. For me, it means continuing to create high-quality content that resonates with my audience, while also exploring new formats and styles.

The Evolution of Creating Content: A Personal Journey

Using a platform was just like making music. You can always get on the right track and make good music but if you're not having fun then you are not creating any good music

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso the world of content is changing quicker than I think anyone can really comprehend at this point millions of people are flocking to platforms like Tick Tock to consume short videos and for someone who's been making long videos on YouTube for the last 10 years well it's a bit confusing so I decided to interview three of the most popular food creators on Tick Tock to hopefully get a better understanding of what the hell is going on all right so the first thing I'll say is I'm not an avid Tick Tock consumer I prefer longer videos but you know I do find myself swiping from time to time and also I'm not a big food content consumer on the internet because I find that if I watch too much other content it can start infiltrating my brain and can affect my originality on Pro home Cooks which I prefer not to do but at the same time you know I don't want to be the old guy at the party I got to keep my finger at least a little bit on the pulse so I try to understand what's going on and from my research I'm gonna break Tick Tock food content into four different categories number one is just original to tick tock we're talking born out of the tick tock algorithm womb so original to this platform and you won't see it anywhere else number two is storytelling content where you have a sort of narrative storytelling over food being made number three is ASMR content just quick food in your face with a lot of sound effects I'm sure you've seen it many times and number four is personality based content basically what I'm doing on YouTube where you have a mix of personality and food content together a love child but the short Farm version of that so a great example of unique to tick tock food content is cooking with Linda who I'm sure a lot of you have at least come across at some point her content is so original and it's really come alive through the explosion of tick tock let's just stroll through to find one of our 95 million views is Jesus Christ it meant my low expectations yes yes yes she's got a mix of a lot of things you've got personality you've got a little ASMR you've got animations effects we're getting there a lot of entertainment value three the taste of the bread the mixes and it's all within a short package of 42 seconds another great example gent Bentley his dad was an Iron Chef so he does a lot of content with his dad which is actually its own category on Tick Tock you see a lot of child parent Duo content where you have the younger person who understands how this works like this guy who was an iron chef and he'll do like really expensive fruit taste tests just a perfect short package of content he also will do content like this where he just gives his dad a bunch of food and kind of puts him to the test for instance a piece of takeout pizza and tells him to like do some crazy with it and his dad just goes absolute beast mode making some crazy stuff again really well produced just someone who understands the platform really well and has capitalized off a cool niche so the next style of food content we're looking into is the narrative storytelling food content and a great example of that is rooted in spice so I've come across a few times as a New Yorker I could always find cabbage rolls year round but for some reason it just feels like a winter dish it's such a classic cozy meal that's so popular in Poland Ukraine Romania turkey Iran and probably so many other places so basically these creators have decided to pick a path rather than trying to pump all the specifics of the recipe and the story and the personality into one video she's making an extensive meal right here clearly but she's just choosing to really focus on the story behind the recipe or the story of the actual recipe so right here you're coming away with not necessarily the specific information to make this recipe but you can still get a lot of inspiration by seeing it made plus inspiration from the actual story behind the dish fish and this type of content works great on Tick Tock another great example of this is the Korean vegan and I actually interviewed Joanne and she's got a fascinating story because she was actually a trial lawyer for many years before she ever made food content I went to law school in 2001 became a lawyer in 2004 went vegan in 2016. I decided for myself hey I really need to figure out how to veganize kimchi how to veganize Coyote how to veganize tintankige these are the things that I grew up eating and I was unwilling to give up as a result of going plant-based my husband was the one who suggested well if you're gonna do that for yourself why not share it with people on YouTube it was just a diversion it was a hobby it was something to go to and you know work was slow or if I needed a little you know creative kick in 2017 I started sharing stories in my Instagram captions instead of the recipes and this was a very deliberate attempt to engage my Community with the idea that hey immigrant stories may be different from yours but that doesn't make them any less American where do you feel that things really started to pick up for you with the brand in 2020 I would say was when everyone was like talking about Tick Tock I have so many other social media accounts that are about food I want one social media account to be about politics and so for the first like month I would create these like stupid videos just talk about Donald Trump and the band So Yesterday ticked up finally sued Donald Trump in the government over Donald Trump's order requiring it to sell Itself by September 15th or be banned and then I posted the video of me making my mom's kanja Jordan which is a recipe in my cookbook it was just the sound of me cooking and my husband giving a piano lesson in the background the next day it had 600 000 views that was like insanity to me I had no idea that it would catch on as much as it did completely new situation for me so now you kind of develop this style has that been pretty much what you've continued on for the last two years yeah I have I mean as you know having done this as a content creator for many years if you continue to do the same thing without Innovation eventually people are going to be like okay I knew you were a guy I knew you were going there I've seen that over you know the last eight years of being on YouTube and I think on YouTube you know I grew up with all of these other creators around me in the food space and you know just seeing if they adapted if they didn't fall off growth and on Tick Tock I can only imagine it's even quicker how how do you how do you feel about you know sort of the the intensity of pace on the platform because that's a really great question the drop-off can be precipitous because the incline is similarly precipitous right like it just is like so fast and so if you're not ready to adapt to changes in the algorithm changes in the size of the community I mean when I started 10 million users were using uh something something like that you know uh Tick Tock now it's 150 million you know people are using Tick Tock what does that mean like you have to learn to adjust to that and if you don't yeah all of a sudden your the algorithm doesn't see you anymore I always say this I've said this to YouTube you guys are like mutual funds you just have to keep investing it's a slow burn and Tick Tock is Bitcoin it's you know you go yeah exactly where's your money from but yeah if you're a food Creator today do you think Tick Tock is that play place or is it a place specific for a certain thing like you're talking about it really depends on what kind of food Creator you want to be if you want to be a TV star then I would say tick tock is where you should be I see just because you know the most high that's you know the most clout it's going to be the most hype right I always say you're not gonna get famous off of YouTube You're Gonna Give It money off of YouTube If you want a business you go on YouTube if you want to become famous and and have a shot at television or some your own streaming show then you got to go on Tick Tock at the end of the day though people know when they see a Korean vegan video you know and that is something I'm very very proud of all right so up next we are talking about ASMR cooking content on Tick Tock so at this point everyone pretty much knows what ASMR is basically just intense auditory content and it works great for food because there is a lot of beautiful sounds and intense sounds when it comes to cooking and when you mix that with a one minute video it's a match made in heaven whereas on YouTube you do not see much ASMR cooking videos you see that eating ASMR content which I just do not get but on Tick Tock cooking ASMR is huge and a great example of it is this guy Sam eats I'm sure you've seen him he's blown up over the last probably two years this video is 134 million views on Ratatouille let's take a look Chicken and Waffles so it's very rhythmic to the beat almost and obviously it's just Quick Cuts as quick as they can be hearing all of the sound effects it's just super intense content and then also amazing visuals of course like he's making these beautiful dishes this fried chicken and that's how all of his content is going to be it's pretty much the same exact Style just different meals and another great example of this is Owen Han who I actually interviewed and Owen has a pretty interesting story because his food Adventure really just started a few years ago I was born in Italy mom Italian dad Chinese um so growing up we moved to the states when I was about six we would go back to see our grandparents in Tuscany really it was there that I fell in love with food senior year I meet um H Wu who is a food content creator now you're gonna watch me cook for myself it's easy salmon peas and herbs I loved food we just like hit it off started talking we started a pop-up literally ran out of an old fraternity house and we would just do these like weekly curated menus so what got you to make your first Tick Tock my roommate a troop blew up and he encouraged me to start these videos and I did it was shrimp toast and that was my first like mini viral moment I think I hit like a quarter of a million views in like a day or two and I was like holy this was cool the more I started like scrolling on Tick Tock to me personally that was what I was most drawn to I don't even know what's going on but I would watch people like restock their shelves watching non-food videos and then being like why am I drawn to this and it's literally because of sounds you come in with this style you start developing it you start going viral when when do you feel like you know there was more of a turning point and it's like oh wait okay this is kind of the path this is this is maybe a career I started off with that shrimp toast video it did decently well and so I was like all right I'm just gonna fill my lunch today which was a chicken bacon avocado sandwich and that was my first video to break a million so it's like okay like Within These two weeks let me just put out as much content and see like what could go on right after that chicken sandwich I did a steak sandwich and that broke 10 million and I was like all right we got something here let's go I always thought Tick Tock was like that dancing app or whatever I realized there was like so much food content on there I was like I didn't know this like was a thing and then the thing with Tick Tock is like you can grow so exponentially so much faster than these other platforms that it just logically made sense is it kind of like I'm just gonna focus on Tick Tock because this is where my community is this is where my videos you know find the most success we all want to transition to YouTube not permanently but we want to grow an audience there thing with YouTube is like you got to be really really consistent YouTube needs to know you're serious about this yeah like everybody talk to you that has the success or like dude give it at least like a year just be consistent and then like it'll switch and all of them will like start blowing up I will say like it's definitive that you have to change over time I've had to make many shifts in my career so you've had all of this success with this style is that something that you think about I'm a firm believer of like if it ain't broke don't fix it but in terms of evolving I've noticed just like I've started adding songs sometimes just because I feel like it makes the video better um and in terms of like a production standpoint I used to film with an iPhone and just recently I fully switched to a camera I got a brand new mic I got a whole new light source you constantly have to think of like ways like how can I make this better the quickness of success is that does that ever concern you I've just become numb to it like I broke 100K on YouTube but I have like no real long-form video and so I remember when I got the plaque I was like this doesn't really feel right you know what I mean I'm posting a YouTube short we're literally like I'm filming my like a sandwich on my lunch that like I put together and it's 10 seconds and it'll get like 100 000 views and I'm getting these subscribers knowing the amount of time it takes to put together a long form video why would I do that like if I just hone in on shorts this is kind of what I'm trying to get at to some degree I think that is a fascinating new um evolution of content there's another food Creator I follow and he he literally broke like a million followers on YouTube like the fastest I've seen like I think like within a month or something and wow his name is Blake like Blake Moran Cooks he literally throws cheese on the ceiling and whatever like it blew up it blew up on shorts has this crazy big following and then naturally you want to like try out long form and it's not even getting anywhere close to the numbers of the shorts but he still broke a million followers like I think he said like 3 million or something so in my head seeing that like it took me like eight years exactly like it's so what did it take him a month yeah and so like it was the same with like even the 100K plaque I was like what the like what are some of your more long-term goals you know where do you want to be are you living your dream right now or or you know what's going on inside the the head about yeah there's two big goals one sandwich like restaurant and then uh I think to have a show would be awesome down the road I don't know like 10 years do I really think I'm gonna be posting food videos on Tick Tock I don't know so the last category I'm calling just personality based food creators on Tick Tock basically what I'm doing just in short vertical form and a great example of this someone who I think is doing it great is this guy named Brandon or sad poppy as his handle and if you scroll through his videos I'll just click on one real quickly you get his personality and it's not like in your face like every video has to be over the top he has more of an ongoing conversation with his audience and I think if I was only doing Tick Tock that's probably what I would be doing because you're just gonna build a more organic audience and a closer connection rather than just throwing out content into the tick tock algorithm every single video you produce it's eggy it's really good so you get the education you get the personality you get a little bit of entertainment and you get really cool food creations and obviously being a personality a food-based Creator I appreciate this style on Tick Tock another great version of this is a guy named Matt or a cook named Matt it's his handle and I actually interviewed Matt and he's got a pretty interesting story because he was always working in food to kind of supplement his more creative lifestyle so he always wanted to make videos but he was working in restaurants since he was like 16 getting professional experience ultimately to just commit to doing content full-time making cooking videos I'm from South Texas I've been cooking in Texas like Austin San Antonio South Padre Island and Seattle look like a good place to land I wanted to go work for Chef Tom Douglas started doing pop-up dinners on the side how did you first get into making content me and my friends they film me cooking on my iPod Touch It was a Burger YouTube was super new then they have it and I sort of I guess started doing it again when I was working at a country club in South Texas and then I saw Tick Tock became a thing I got on Tick Tock I was like oh I already have a profile it was from musically and that's when I was posting videos like every day and it wasn't really working out and then after like a month I just said it and I just made a video of cutting an onion and that in an hour got like a million views I was like this is crazy so I just did it again I cut garlic and I just started cutting started cutting like a chocolate bar when I went crazy like 10 million views and I was just like cutting stuff every day I started posting like six videos a day on Tick Tock uh I just blew up on there okay so you start blowing up on Tick Tock are you just now riding this wave because the platform is getting huge and you're just kind of growing with it at the time I had recently gotten laid off in my Tick Tock started blowing up just kept writing The Tick Tock wave it was always a plan just like hustling to make it happen I'd be like in the walk-in editing answering emails like I was always like saying yes to things just trying to do as much as possible what now you're huge on Tick Tock what are your plans it was YouTube that I really like wanted to transfer to I'd been doing YouTube videos since like 2013. wow that's like when I started and YouTube is mainly that was the whole thing when I started Tick Tock so like I start trying to funnel people in and I started working because I mean after like a month or so I got Creator on the rise on YouTube so Tick Tock your whole plan was ultimately use this to funnel to YouTube yeah and I guess it's still a funnel because people just use it as a funnel strong suit of tick tock is that every video lives on its own like that video no matter if you have 10 followers or 10 million like that blow up that doesn't really translate to like a well-engaged audience unless you're like freaking Dixie demilio or something you know the problem sort of followed itself to YouTube why can't we see like the translation from shorts to long form they haven't quite figured that out yet so like as far as like YouTube shorts goes I feel like it's like the old Tick Tock days where you can like blow up really quickly like I can take an old video put a voiceover on it post it up and it just starts blowing up in a day it's crazy but that doesn't quite translate to me posting a long-form recipe is your like biggest goal to transition to long form content or is it kind of playing in between I think you gotta do both because the audience that wants shorts is the younger audience they don't watch long form videos and that's going to be your audience in the future whether it's five or ten years from now I don't think they're going to transition like I think that's how they wash they wash short videos you know so like that's why I'm thinking I gotta do both I gotta of course I gotta keep my bread and butter so I'm not going to neglect it but I want to just grow the long form over here as well it's just trickier to be a content creator today the level has gone up so much and also there's so many more creators I used to feel cool for being a YouTuber it was still a weird thing like a lot of people didn't know about it and now like within the last few years with Tick Tock it is like oh everyone's a content creator yeah it's it's weird but like even when people still recognize you it's also kind of odd because like there's so many people doing this how can they recognize you you know like maybe we're all just becoming more connected in a way now weather we're becoming more connected or not is a whole other topic to explore but I certainly agree with Matt that short form content is not going anywhere with this explosion over the last few years I think we're just really starting to understand how it works how it's connecting to people but it's clear that as a Creator the bar has just risen there's just more competition there's more ways to reach people and you do need to diversify your content and short form just needs to be a piece of your pie of content creation Now what percentage the pieces is totally up to each Creator and how their business works and how their content works now having said that I'll leave you with this let's make some bread foreignso the world of content is changing quicker than I think anyone can really comprehend at this point millions of people are flocking to platforms like Tick Tock to consume short videos and for someone who's been making long videos on YouTube for the last 10 years well it's a bit confusing so I decided to interview three of the most popular food creators on Tick Tock to hopefully get a better understanding of what the hell is going on all right so the first thing I'll say is I'm not an avid Tick Tock consumer I prefer longer videos but you know I do find myself swiping from time to time and also I'm not a big food content consumer on the internet because I find that if I watch too much other content it can start infiltrating my brain and can affect my originality on Pro home Cooks which I prefer not to do but at the same time you know I don't want to be the old guy at the party I got to keep my finger at least a little bit on the pulse so I try to understand what's going on and from my research I'm gonna break Tick Tock food content into four different categories number one is just original to tick tock we're talking born out of the tick tock algorithm womb so original to this platform and you won't see it anywhere else number two is storytelling content where you have a sort of narrative storytelling over food being made number three is ASMR content just quick food in your face with a lot of sound effects I'm sure you've seen it many times and number four is personality based content basically what I'm doing on YouTube where you have a mix of personality and food content together a love child but the short Farm version of that so a great example of unique to tick tock food content is cooking with Linda who I'm sure a lot of you have at least come across at some point her content is so original and it's really come alive through the explosion of tick tock let's just stroll through to find one of our 95 million views is Jesus Christ it meant my low expectations yes yes yes she's got a mix of a lot of things you've got personality you've got a little ASMR you've got animations effects we're getting there a lot of entertainment value three the taste of the bread the mixes and it's all within a short package of 42 seconds another great example gent Bentley his dad was an Iron Chef so he does a lot of content with his dad which is actually its own category on Tick Tock you see a lot of child parent Duo content where you have the younger person who understands how this works like this guy who was an iron chef and he'll do like really expensive fruit taste tests just a perfect short package of content he also will do content like this where he just gives his dad a bunch of food and kind of puts him to the test for instance a piece of takeout pizza and tells him to like do some crazy with it and his dad just goes absolute beast mode making some crazy stuff again really well produced just someone who understands the platform really well and has capitalized off a cool niche so the next style of food content we're looking into is the narrative storytelling food content and a great example of that is rooted in spice so I've come across a few times as a New Yorker I could always find cabbage rolls year round but for some reason it just feels like a winter dish it's such a classic cozy meal that's so popular in Poland Ukraine Romania turkey Iran and probably so many other places so basically these creators have decided to pick a path rather than trying to pump all the specifics of the recipe and the story and the personality into one video she's making an extensive meal right here clearly but she's just choosing to really focus on the story behind the recipe or the story of the actual recipe so right here you're coming away with not necessarily the specific information to make this recipe but you can still get a lot of inspiration by seeing it made plus inspiration from the actual story behind the dish fish and this type of content works great on Tick Tock another great example of this is the Korean vegan and I actually interviewed Joanne and she's got a fascinating story because she was actually a trial lawyer for many years before she ever made food content I went to law school in 2001 became a lawyer in 2004 went vegan in 2016. I decided for myself hey I really need to figure out how to veganize kimchi how to veganize Coyote how to veganize tintankige these are the things that I grew up eating and I was unwilling to give up as a result of going plant-based my husband was the one who suggested well if you're gonna do that for yourself why not share it with people on YouTube it was just a diversion it was a hobby it was something to go to and you know work was slow or if I needed a little you know creative kick in 2017 I started sharing stories in my Instagram captions instead of the recipes and this was a very deliberate attempt to engage my Community with the idea that hey immigrant stories may be different from yours but that doesn't make them any less American where do you feel that things really started to pick up for you with the brand in 2020 I would say was when everyone was like talking about Tick Tock I have so many other social media accounts that are about food I want one social media account to be about politics and so for the first like month I would create these like stupid videos just talk about Donald Trump and the band So Yesterday ticked up finally sued Donald Trump in the government over Donald Trump's order requiring it to sell Itself by September 15th or be banned and then I posted the video of me making my mom's kanja Jordan which is a recipe in my cookbook it was just the sound of me cooking and my husband giving a piano lesson in the background the next day it had 600 000 views that was like insanity to me I had no idea that it would catch on as much as it did completely new situation for me so now you kind of develop this style has that been pretty much what you've continued on for the last two years yeah I have I mean as you know having done this as a content creator for many years if you continue to do the same thing without Innovation eventually people are going to be like okay I knew you were a guy I knew you were going there I've seen that over you know the last eight years of being on YouTube and I think on YouTube you know I grew up with all of these other creators around me in the food space and you know just seeing if they adapted if they didn't fall off growth and on Tick Tock I can only imagine it's even quicker how how do you how do you feel about you know sort of the the intensity of pace on the platform because that's a really great question the drop-off can be precipitous because the incline is similarly precipitous right like it just is like so fast and so if you're not ready to adapt to changes in the algorithm changes in the size of the community I mean when I started 10 million users were using uh something something like that you know uh Tick Tock now it's 150 million you know people are using Tick Tock what does that mean like you have to learn to adjust to that and if you don't yeah all of a sudden your the algorithm doesn't see you anymore I always say this I've said this to YouTube you guys are like mutual funds you just have to keep investing it's a slow burn and Tick Tock is Bitcoin it's you know you go yeah exactly where's your money from but yeah if you're a food Creator today do you think Tick Tock is that play place or is it a place specific for a certain thing like you're talking about it really depends on what kind of food Creator you want to be if you want to be a TV star then I would say tick tock is where you should be I see just because you know the most high that's you know the most clout it's going to be the most hype right I always say you're not gonna get famous off of YouTube You're Gonna Give It money off of YouTube If you want a business you go on YouTube if you want to become famous and and have a shot at television or some your own streaming show then you got to go on Tick Tock at the end of the day though people know when they see a Korean vegan video you know and that is something I'm very very proud of all right so up next we are talking about ASMR cooking content on Tick Tock so at this point everyone pretty much knows what ASMR is basically just intense auditory content and it works great for food because there is a lot of beautiful sounds and intense sounds when it comes to cooking and when you mix that with a one minute video it's a match made in heaven whereas on YouTube you do not see much ASMR cooking videos you see that eating ASMR content which I just do not get but on Tick Tock cooking ASMR is huge and a great example of it is this guy Sam eats I'm sure you've seen him he's blown up over the last probably two years this video is 134 million views on Ratatouille let's take a look Chicken and Waffles so it's very rhythmic to the beat almost and obviously it's just Quick Cuts as quick as they can be hearing all of the sound effects it's just super intense content and then also amazing visuals of course like he's making these beautiful dishes this fried chicken and that's how all of his content is going to be it's pretty much the same exact Style just different meals and another great example of this is Owen Han who I actually interviewed and Owen has a pretty interesting story because his food Adventure really just started a few years ago I was born in Italy mom Italian dad Chinese um so growing up we moved to the states when I was about six we would go back to see our grandparents in Tuscany really it was there that I fell in love with food senior year I meet um H Wu who is a food content creator now you're gonna watch me cook for myself it's easy salmon peas and herbs I loved food we just like hit it off started talking we started a pop-up literally ran out of an old fraternity house and we would just do these like weekly curated menus so what got you to make your first Tick Tock my roommate a troop blew up and he encouraged me to start these videos and I did it was shrimp toast and that was my first like mini viral moment I think I hit like a quarter of a million views in like a day or two and I was like holy this was cool the more I started like scrolling on Tick Tock to me personally that was what I was most drawn to I don't even know what's going on but I would watch people like restock their shelves watching non-food videos and then being like why am I drawn to this and it's literally because of sounds you come in with this style you start developing it you start going viral when when do you feel like you know there was more of a turning point and it's like oh wait okay this is kind of the path this is this is maybe a career I started off with that shrimp toast video it did decently well and so I was like all right I'm just gonna fill my lunch today which was a chicken bacon avocado sandwich and that was my first video to break a million so it's like okay like Within These two weeks let me just put out as much content and see like what could go on right after that chicken sandwich I did a steak sandwich and that broke 10 million and I was like all right we got something here let's go I always thought Tick Tock was like that dancing app or whatever I realized there was like so much food content on there I was like I didn't know this like was a thing and then the thing with Tick Tock is like you can grow so exponentially so much faster than these other platforms that it just logically made sense is it kind of like I'm just gonna focus on Tick Tock because this is where my community is this is where my videos you know find the most success we all want to transition to YouTube not permanently but we want to grow an audience there thing with YouTube is like you got to be really really consistent YouTube needs to know you're serious about this yeah like everybody talk to you that has the success or like dude give it at least like a year just be consistent and then like it'll switch and all of them will like start blowing up I will say like it's definitive that you have to change over time I've had to make many shifts in my career so you've had all of this success with this style is that something that you think about I'm a firm believer of like if it ain't broke don't fix it but in terms of evolving I've noticed just like I've started adding songs sometimes just because I feel like it makes the video better um and in terms of like a production standpoint I used to film with an iPhone and just recently I fully switched to a camera I got a brand new mic I got a whole new light source you constantly have to think of like ways like how can I make this better the quickness of success is that does that ever concern you I've just become numb to it like I broke 100K on YouTube but I have like no real long-form video and so I remember when I got the plaque I was like this doesn't really feel right you know what I mean I'm posting a YouTube short we're literally like I'm filming my like a sandwich on my lunch that like I put together and it's 10 seconds and it'll get like 100 000 views and I'm getting these subscribers knowing the amount of time it takes to put together a long form video why would I do that like if I just hone in on shorts this is kind of what I'm trying to get at to some degree I think that is a fascinating new um evolution of content there's another food Creator I follow and he he literally broke like a million followers on YouTube like the fastest I've seen like I think like within a month or something and wow his name is Blake like Blake Moran Cooks he literally throws cheese on the ceiling and whatever like it blew up it blew up on shorts has this crazy big following and then naturally you want to like try out long form and it's not even getting anywhere close to the numbers of the shorts but he still broke a million followers like I think he said like 3 million or something so in my head seeing that like it took me like eight years exactly like it's so what did it take him a month yeah and so like it was the same with like even the 100K plaque I was like what the like what are some of your more long-term goals you know where do you want to be are you living your dream right now or or you know what's going on inside the the head about yeah there's two big goals one sandwich like restaurant and then uh I think to have a show would be awesome down the road I don't know like 10 years do I really think I'm gonna be posting food videos on Tick Tock I don't know so the last category I'm calling just personality based food creators on Tick Tock basically what I'm doing just in short vertical form and a great example of this someone who I think is doing it great is this guy named Brandon or sad poppy as his handle and if you scroll through his videos I'll just click on one real quickly you get his personality and it's not like in your face like every video has to be over the top he has more of an ongoing conversation with his audience and I think if I was only doing Tick Tock that's probably what I would be doing because you're just gonna build a more organic audience and a closer connection rather than just throwing out content into the tick tock algorithm every single video you produce it's eggy it's really good so you get the education you get the personality you get a little bit of entertainment and you get really cool food creations and obviously being a personality a food-based Creator I appreciate this style on Tick Tock another great version of this is a guy named Matt or a cook named Matt it's his handle and I actually interviewed Matt and he's got a pretty interesting story because he was always working in food to kind of supplement his more creative lifestyle so he always wanted to make videos but he was working in restaurants since he was like 16 getting professional experience ultimately to just commit to doing content full-time making cooking videos I'm from South Texas I've been cooking in Texas like Austin San Antonio South Padre Island and Seattle look like a good place to land I wanted to go work for Chef Tom Douglas started doing pop-up dinners on the side how did you first get into making content me and my friends they film me cooking on my iPod Touch It was a Burger YouTube was super new then they have it and I sort of I guess started doing it again when I was working at a country club in South Texas and then I saw Tick Tock became a thing I got on Tick Tock I was like oh I already have a profile it was from musically and that's when I was posting videos like every day and it wasn't really working out and then after like a month I just said it and I just made a video of cutting an onion and that in an hour got like a million views I was like this is crazy so I just did it again I cut garlic and I just started cutting started cutting like a chocolate bar when I went crazy like 10 million views and I was just like cutting stuff every day I started posting like six videos a day on Tick Tock uh I just blew up on there okay so you start blowing up on Tick Tock are you just now riding this wave because the platform is getting huge and you're just kind of growing with it at the time I had recently gotten laid off in my Tick Tock started blowing up just kept writing The Tick Tock wave it was always a plan just like hustling to make it happen I'd be like in the walk-in editing answering emails like I was always like saying yes to things just trying to do as much as possible what now you're huge on Tick Tock what are your plans it was YouTube that I really like wanted to transfer to I'd been doing YouTube videos since like 2013. wow that's like when I started and YouTube is mainly that was the whole thing when I started Tick Tock so like I start trying to funnel people in and I started working because I mean after like a month or so I got Creator on the rise on YouTube so Tick Tock your whole plan was ultimately use this to funnel to YouTube yeah and I guess it's still a funnel because people just use it as a funnel strong suit of tick tock is that every video lives on its own like that video no matter if you have 10 followers or 10 million like that blow up that doesn't really translate to like a well-engaged audience unless you're like freaking Dixie demilio or something you know the problem sort of followed itself to YouTube why can't we see like the translation from shorts to long form they haven't quite figured that out yet so like as far as like YouTube shorts goes I feel like it's like the old Tick Tock days where you can like blow up really quickly like I can take an old video put a voiceover on it post it up and it just starts blowing up in a day it's crazy but that doesn't quite translate to me posting a long-form recipe is your like biggest goal to transition to long form content or is it kind of playing in between I think you gotta do both because the audience that wants shorts is the younger audience they don't watch long form videos and that's going to be your audience in the future whether it's five or ten years from now I don't think they're going to transition like I think that's how they wash they wash short videos you know so like that's why I'm thinking I gotta do both I gotta of course I gotta keep my bread and butter so I'm not going to neglect it but I want to just grow the long form over here as well it's just trickier to be a content creator today the level has gone up so much and also there's so many more creators I used to feel cool for being a YouTuber it was still a weird thing like a lot of people didn't know about it and now like within the last few years with Tick Tock it is like oh everyone's a content creator yeah it's it's weird but like even when people still recognize you it's also kind of odd because like there's so many people doing this how can they recognize you you know like maybe we're all just becoming more connected in a way now weather we're becoming more connected or not is a whole other topic to explore but I certainly agree with Matt that short form content is not going anywhere with this explosion over the last few years I think we're just really starting to understand how it works how it's connecting to people but it's clear that as a Creator the bar has just risen there's just more competition there's more ways to reach people and you do need to diversify your content and short form just needs to be a piece of your pie of content creation Now what percentage the pieces is totally up to each Creator and how their business works and how their content works now having said that I'll leave you with this let's make some bread foreign\n"