YouTube
While organizing my old Japan files, I came across this photo and it reminded me of one of my biggest regrets — 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐓𝐮𝐛𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫.
Google offered us a number of opportunities in the past. In 2016, they invited us to a YouTubers gathering in Japan to represent PH even though we weren’t active on the channel. They showed us around their YouTube facilities, and we had a great time.
A few months later, Google Philippines set a meeting with us to convince us to jumpstart our YouTube channel. They said there wasn’t that many travel video content coming from PH at the time. They offered all sorts of support.
They were really pushing us to create more videos on YouTube. 𝐖𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧’𝐭.
Why didn’t we? 3 things: One, because we were so uncomfortable putting ourselves in front of the camera or even just using voiceovers. I, for starters, was so conscious about my looks and my voice. Vins had his own set of insecurities, too.
Second, making videos takes a lot of time and resources. It would transform our travel experience. We didn’t want to be the type who films everything on our trip and not live in the moment.
Lastly, because we chose to stay within our comfort zone — writing more articles. It was working really well for us. So it wasn’t a bad decision per se.
But given how much we enjoy making YouTube videos now and how rewarding it has been, we really should’ve embraced videos right then and there.
I wonder what our channel would be like today had we taken it seriously at the time.
Na-share ko lang naman. Ang lesson siguro dito is, ‘pag binigyan ka ng tinapay, ‘wag ka nang maarte, kainin mo na lang. 😅