- Uh, real quick before they start, I'm gonna get into a really emotional story in a second. But I just got this little
tool, I bought this-- it was way too expensive for what it is. But I really love it. So you know how you
always like need a coin to attach like the tripod plate to? I got this tool that literally one of the little pieces right here is just for the tripod plate, finally. How has this not been on everything thing? I used like the edge
of like knives, I tried to get like my nail. I almost break my nail
every time being like, "Uh, just a second
client, o-one second, just using my nail". I'll link this below. It's not relevant to the story I'm about to share at all. I just, I love it. I'm excited about it, so yeah. Smallrig, thank you for doing that. Okay, so a few weeks ago on Instagram, I shared this story essentially explaining the first time I had my real big, uh, this might be the first video where I'm gonna swear. But we'll probably bleep it out. I-I (beep) up big time. Like, really big. To give some context, I was 19 years old at this time. My dream was to be a videographer and travel the world. I'm
sure there's a lot of you out there that have the
same ambitions as well. Y'know, you wanna go out there, you wanna create travel, content, have the chance to experience life outside of the place that you live. Uh, so, I really wanted to do this and through a friend, I somehow ended up at this, like, TV company and then I had an interview and they were like, "Chris, do you want to be the head videographer for a travel cooking show?". And I was like-- i-in
the meeting, "I'll be like, well I'll, uh, I'll review that with some of my colleagues".
But in my head, I was like, "OH I MADE IT! FINALLY! IT'S HAPPENING! (mumbles)". So yes, so I had this opportunity to go to the Yukon in Canada. It's like the really cold place. We were gonna go up there for a week and we were gonna shoot a whole television show, with this like high celebrity chef. We were gonna make this
episode where essentially we would like, collect all the different ingredients and then he would like make a meal, for the head of the government there. Which is-- that's a lot of pressure for a 19 year old. At that time, the only experience I really had was with DSLRs. I had a Canon 7D, with the 50 mm. That was like the package that I had. And that was all I was
really used to shooting. I had enough of a portfolio that the guy that was producing this
television show said, "Chris, you're good enough for this". So, he's like, "Here's this massive, big, fancy camera, with built in NDs and all this other fancy things". I didn't know how to use
but I just said, "yes", to the opportunity
because I really, really, wanted to do this. So, fast forward, wer-we're up traveling through this whole area. This one day the producer went and like changed a bunch of the
settings on the monitor. He's like, "Oh, hopefully
you can figure this out". Thi-this is where things
kinda took a bit of turn. So later that day, we
travel for three hours, outside of the Yukon, to
this like remote village. Where we're gonna go
visit this guy that owns a goat farm and he makes goat cheese. The kicker is that he's also blind. I don't know how this
works, but we interviewed this blind guy in the middle of the Yukon. And I was supposed to shoot it while we collected goat cheese. Y-you can't make this stuff up guys. This is too specific. So yes, we shot this entire scene and would you believe it? When I
went to go look at the footage, when we went back
afterwards, I had exposed everything from the monitor. But on the actual clip, everything was over exposed and basically
that entire day's shoot was not usable
and because that entire day's shoot was not usable, the whole storyline for the entire
episode was basically destroyed, because it was a very crucial part to the episode. And I was the sole-person responsible for destroying an entire
production, an entire episode where it was getting
distributed on television to thousands, hundreds
of thousands, of people. How we wasted the time
of people, how we wasted the time of a head
celebrity chef, producers, an audio guide, transport
people, the tourism board that had helped
support this whole thing. Me, 19 year old, Chris,
(goat noises), up royally. Like, so bad, that when I got back home, I had sent my invoice along. And i-it never got paid and I never got an email back. Which is another whole issue, but that, my spirit just was like, "Ugh". Actually no joke, at that time, I felt the entire weight of that. I think now I feel even more of the weight of the context. But at 19, I literally felt horrible. I wanted to just go into my room, cry under the pillows for hours and then my parents would come in,
be like, "What's wrong?", and I'd be like, "Nothing.
I didn't overexpose a shot for an entire episode
of an entire television show and ruin the goat cheese
farmer blind guy's thing. That wasn't me". But it was me, I was that guy. As you can you see, you know, that was a horrible situation. I literally thought I had ruin my chance at my dream job. I thought, I was given this one opportunity, this was it. The next location was Bali. I-- we were gonna go to Bali in two weeks and I never got the email
being like, "Hey Chris, wanna come to Bali?". I didn't get to go to Bali. I wanted to go to Bali and now I wasn't going to Bali, because I'm horrible at camera operating. I-I literally felt the entire weight of that situation. I didn't know how to
handle it at the time. But I would just start
working my way through it. What I kinda learned
from that situation was, number one, I had to get better at the technical skillset, I had to get better at being a camera operator. And number two, if I still wanted to be able to travel and do
this, I would have to work hard on both my personality, my ego. So really, what I was
ultimately doing from that situation, is that
I had to learn from it. I either could've stopped
there and been like, "Well, that was my one chance. That was the only chance I had to travel around the
world as a videographer. Cool, I guess I'm just gonna move onto another career". That could have been option number one or option number two, is that you try to see the silver-lining in it. You try to see that, yes, I screwed up. We all make mistakes, we're all gonna fail at some point in our career. But this is not the thing makes or breaks our career. This is one thing that happened. So use that as a massive
learning opportunity. Which is ultimately what I did. So I started building up my skillset. I started building on my personality, my ego and eventually two years later, I was presented for that time another opportunity to go and
travel around the world and get to shoot something. It may not have been on the same scale as a television show, where we were traveling around for months at a time. But it was another shot and I took that opportunity very seriously. I made sure I was ready for it. Fast forward a couple years from that, we now get to travel around the around the world. We now get to make content
with tourism boards we've worked with. Scotland, we've worked with Iceland, we've worked with all these
amazing countries and clients where we get to do that. So that, I could've
just-- it could've just ended there. Imagine if I had just said "No". I would-- I would've been unhappy moving forward, I could've just stopped doing what I love. But I knew that, I could've just learned from that experience. And now, I just found out too, that one of my photos that we took
on one of our trips, was published in a magazine. That wasn't the flex, it-it's cool. But that's just to show
you that it's possible. It's not the only time
that's gonna happen. So, what I want you guys to take from this story, ultimately, is
that if you guys make a mistake-- which ultimately, you will, to assume will not fail
is to set yourself up for failure, i-it's going to happen. But just know that with the lows, also come the highs and those lows also make the highs amazing. Make sure that you learn
from those experiences. Make sure you find a
group of people around you that support you, that can
help you get through it. Don't just be isolated,
don't just be in your head and stuck there. Um, internalize it. Write those things down so you can come out of that experience with growth. That you've learned, that you can go and do those things. And just know that, if
you do make a mistake, it's not the only
opportunity that you have. You will be okay, you will get through it and although that one
isolated moment feels like the absolute worst
thing in the world. It's not. I just wanted to
share that story with you guys. I know this is a bit more of a like, raw and heartfelt kinda like one-on-one here. But jus-just know that,
um, the people that you see on Youtube, the people that you admire, th-the whoever it is, that your friends, the colleagues, th-the boss at your job, whatever it is. They make mistakes and the reason why they're in those positions is that they've learned to move on. I'll leave you with this
one like, uh, quote, that a friend of mine kinda always said, "Everyone starts at the
starting line of a race and there's a bunch of
hurdles in front of them. As everyone's running
along, you know, you'll see people around you hit the first hurdle. And maybe you hit the
first hurdle and you fall, but then you get back
up and you keep going, but you're gonna see
that some of those people are not gonna be able to
handle that first hurdle and they stop doing it. So now you're running the race with a few other people. The next hurdle comes
along it drops off more people and then maybe you hit that hurdle and you fall again. But the people that are successful are the people who keep getting up, they keep running the race. No matter how many times they fall". So go out there, fall a bunch and go and kick some ass cause
you guys can do it. I don't know if I'm
gonna do the little end thing on this but if you guys wanna do all that stuff youtubers, like it, y'know, the like buttons always nice. Subscribe button's always cool. Wanna hit the notification bell so you can see other sob stories of myself. Well then you can go and do that. I appreciate you guys, I love you guys. I'll catch you guys in the next video. Peace, bye. (ambient music)
