How the Second Month of Being Self-Employed Went.

A month full of fun, insights, and above all, lessons for the future

Just like that, the second month of our research – If it’s possible to turn your passions into an income – has already come to an end. This month was the shortest one of the year and it has flown by.

Good things that happened this month:

  • We reached out to the brand Decathlon to see if a possible collab was possible. (Their response was negative, but encouraging)
  • We went on a backpacking trip to Ireland and captured (almost) everything.
  • Had our first two interviews for our Passion In Focus project!

Not-so-good things that happened this month:

  • It was a bit overwhelming to film a lot while traveling, especially with all of the Irish rain.
  • We ordered a DJI Osmo Pocket, but the delivery date keeps on getting postponed. Because it didn’t arrive on time, we had to pack two significantly heavier cameras on our backpacking trip. A shame, because when backpacking, every gram (or ounce) counts.
  • We lost some subscribers on YouTube.

This month, we got a bit caught up in a very important trip. We went on a hike through Ireland from February 13th to February 20th. Although this trip was entirely focused on our channel and will yield some beautiful content, it also provided us with some insights.

The first thing we both realized is how difficult it is to travel, film, and capture everything in a way that is clear to the viewer afterward. We are aware that we still have a lot to learn about storytelling, but fortunately, we are very interested in this skill. There will be a detailed article and video about our trip later, but in this blog, we mainly want to focus on the new steps taken in our mission toward independence.

Unfortunately, we’ve taken very few steps this month, if any. At least not toward independence – we’ve certainly taken plenty of actual steps. Before we left on our trip, we contacted the retail chain Decathlon to inquire about a possible collaboration. Although the response we received was incredibly kind and encouraging, it was still a negative response. Thanks to the kind lady who responded to our email and left us with a positive feeling.

Slow Growth

This month, there has been hardly any growth in subscribers/followers, on the contrary, we have to fight hard not to see the number of followers decrease every day. This was not what we had hoped for. Perhaps it was a bit naive of us, but somewhere we thought that once people subscribe, they would remain subscribed, but that’s not the case.

The realization that this is a competitive market and we have to earn people’s attention has therefore really hit home. We are aware that we had a bit of a downturn this month. In the beginning, we were growing very rapidly, and we couldn’t keep up with making ‘thank you for … subs’ videos. But now the hype has died down again. Friends and family are no longer as surprised or curious about what we do, so we have to search for our actual audience. A difficult but equally exciting task.

Setbacks

We currently have so much content in our portfolio, but we only have four hands and not endless time. We often find ourselves having to catch up on a lot of work, which means we often postpone working on longer content. Despite posting at least twice a week, these are often just shorts instead of longer content that might linger with our viewers. We desperately need a lot of watch hours before we can earn money on YouTube, so it’s important to also post longer content on our channels. Unfortunately, editing these videos takes up a lot of time and it can’t be rushed.

In Ireland, we came to a pleasant but difficult realization. The second month is already over. We realize that what we’re doing is absolutely making us happy, and we can express ourselves creatively better than ever before. But as long as we’re not earning anything from it, unfortunately, there’s still no future in it. So it’s a very conflicting feeling for us. We want and will definitely continue, but we also really need recognition for our work. Our savings keep shrinking, and unfortunately, our followers are doing the same for now. 

Challenges and Realizations

What we can be extremely grateful for is the fact that this month we had our first interviews for our Passion In Focus project. One with Luc Vanlaere and one with Marie-Louise Wilderijkx. Luc has been able to make a living from his passion for the harp and Marie-Louise was able to turn her passion for dancing (ballet) into an income. During these interviews, they unconsciously encouraged us to keep going with what we believe in. Thank you, Luc and Marie-Louise, for the great interviews and for sharing your stories with us and the viewers (the videos are on our YouTube Channel).

New Month, New Challenge

This month was all about meditating and finding our inner peace, a task that was a lot harder than expected. If you’d like to know more about the benefits of meditating and how to start, make sure to read our latest blog post. If you want to know how our challenge went and what we learned from it after a month of daily meditation, be sure to watch our full video!

Future Plans

We’ve already made plans for the next month. As mentioned, there’s still a lot of great content coming up. We’re going on another hiking vacation (this time closer to home), and we’re taking a city trip to Budapest. All fun things, but there’s also a more serious side to it. March should be the month in which we start treating our passion as a job. We’ve already scheduled several brainstorming sessions on how we can scale this up and start making an income as soon as possible. We’ll actively look for collaborations, sponsorships, and hopefully, knowledge to learn more. 

If you’re someone who resonates with this story and can help us in any way, don’t hesitate to contact us. We appreciate every form of help. Be sure to keep watching our videos and reading our blogs to find out if maybe next month we’ll earn our first penny.

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