Patricia Bright - Heart and Hustle

Now the good news

Haven’t put you off yet? Good! Because, despite all the risks, I absolutely love working for myself and running my own business, especially one based around social media. It’s true – being an entrepreneur is not easy and it’s not for everyone. But for those who do want to be their own boss and are willing to put in the work, it’s incredibly rewarding. The career I’ve built means I get to go to wonderful places; I get to try new products and test everything out before it hits the market; and I get to create my own product-based businesses, all because of the relationship I have with my online community. And most importantly, I get to share what I enjoy every single day with people who actually want to hear it. That’s crazy!

Those are the highlights for me. For others it may be the autonomy they enjoy, or the flexibility in terms of organising their life outside of a traditional office. In fact, there’s research showing that, despite not knowing where the next pay cheque is coming from, self-employed people are happier than employees. A recent study from the universities of Sheffield and Exeter involving 5,000 people from around the world found that those who worked for themselves ‘were not only amongst the most engaged but also experienced greater opportunities for innovation, achieving challenging targets and meeting high standards’. 1All that, plus you get to dodge the rush-hour commute #WINNING. Even if you don’t want to go it alone – or not yet, anyway – lots of what I’m going to tell you still applies. Because, really, you’re always working for yourself and your future (whatever your manager thinks).

How I started (stumbled into) being an ‘entrepreneur’

So, as you already know, I got my start in the City. I had a good salary, but meanwhile I continued my hobby of posting YouTube videos on the side. In time, I started making a small amount of money from the adverts played alongside my videos here and there, which was a nice bonus. I remember when I received my first payment from Google AdSense (I’d signed up to their programme that puts advertising on your content) of £60! When I saw it on the computer screen, I was so happy that I could make a little extra cash for drinks and so on, simply by doing something I enjoyed in my free time. I’d only been going for a year or two, making videos on fashion, beauty and makeup, and at this point I still didn’t expect this to be my main business. If anything, I was spending way more on clothing, makeup and camera equipment than I was making, as I enjoyed it so much! I remember one of my early requests, as a present from my hubby, was for a new camera costing around £200, which felt like a lot at the time. Back then, my friends and family were surprised that I was spending so much on something that was, after all, just a hobby. Little did they know that I was investing in my future.

After a while that £60 turned into £600. But I was totally naive, and didn’t know to tell the taxman about it. I was just enjoying the additional income. I found out later that not declaring this extra income would come back to bite me in the butt … but for now I was blissfully unaware. My career continued to move forward, and despite being made redundant from my first job during huge staff cuts, I was able to move on to working as a consultant in the City, then within an international financial institution.

But, even though I was becoming more and more settled in my career, the hobby that I’d been busy with in the evenings and every weekend for the past few years had begun to make me £2,000–£3,000 every month, and I was starting to receive offers for work and collaborations from companies and brands. Almost without meaning to, I’d developed my hobby into a fully fledged side business that was close to matching my City salary!

My first big deal

I remember when I booked my first four-figure deal with a brand. I didn’t have a specific fee or rate, and there was no rulebook or precedent that I knew of in terms of making money online. I’d been used to charging a few hundred pounds here and there to partner with brands, which I was happy with (considering that I’d been making all my content for free prior to that). Then one day I was approached by a production company who wanted me to make some videos for a fairly big brand. I remember the lady from the company saying in an email that they only had ‘3’ for the work, which I took to mean three hundred pounds. While I would have accepted that, the hustler in me said I wanted ‘4’. She responded to say that she couldn’t manage ‘4’ but that she could offer £3,500! The whole time she’d meant £3,000! By accident I had stumbled into finding out that I could potentially make enough out of this hobby to turn it into a business. That deal, coupled with my Google AdSense income, meant that was the first month I actually earned more than my monthly salary. My revenue was growing!

That experience was a real eye-opener. When I got married to Mike, what I generated through my channel contributed to the budget for our wedding, and went towards the deposit on our first house. But I wasn’t getting too carried away. I wasn’t prepared to leave the prestige of my City job, or the potential to be a senior manager or even partner, for a quick buck. I decided that I would keep up my hobby posting videos online on the side, while also maintaining the steady income and security from my day job … I was ‘multi-hustling’.

And I was learning so much along the way. As more work came in, I began to standardise my process by auto-responding to emails, creating a rate card, and putting aside set times to manage the business side of my social media profile. Before long, I was booking three to four projects a month, and making double to triple my salary, but I was still scared. I couldn’t fathom a future where I was reliant on myself and not a boss or stable company. What if it all disappeared? I knew that once I left my industry to do something completely unrelated it would be extremely difficult to ever go back. I wondered what my parents would think, what the bank would think, what my friends and colleagues would think. But the numbers didn’t lie. I could see this was a viable business. I didn’t know what the future was going to hold, but something told me that if I was smart about this, I could make it work.

Not just a leap of faith

I’m a fairly risk-averse person, and I like to make calculated decisions. Leaving a stable job to build my business online was not done on a whim. But I could see my revenue growing more and more. My calculations, based on the data that I had, indicated that I would continue to grow in the future. Planning for the next five years, I weighed up the pros and cons for pursuing my business, or staying in my City career. My business won. I made the decision then to become a full-time YouTuber (more on exactly how I got there later). Even now, I find it amazing – crazy, even! – that I was able to turn my secret hobby into my business. It came from a genuine place of passion and love, with no expectation of financial gain. When I first started there wasn’t even the option to make money in this industry. But I realised I could build a long-term future doing something I was happy to work on day, night and weekends, for ever and ever.

Finding yourgrind

You might be thinking, What exactly am I going to do if I want to go it alone? I’d better follow my passion, right? That’s what you hear all the time. But hold up a second. Because …

Passion isn’t everything

What’s your passion? Speaking candidly, I’d confess that my passions are sleeping in late, watching TV and eating food. I’d watch Netflix all day if I could! But you can’t make a living watching telly (let’s call the guys on Gogglebox the exception that proves the rule). You have to find something you like to do in life, but you need to acknowledge reality at the same time. And that’s a philosophy I’ve always followed, from choosing my first job after university to deciding to become a full-time YouTuber and influencer. That doesn’t mean abandoning your dreams – in fact, it’s the total opposite – but it does mean acknowledging the circumstances that you’re in and which lie ahead, rather than blindly ignoring them. That’s why, rather than telling you to focus on finding your passion in life, I’d say focus on finding your grind.