#31 Tom Buck
Listen to Tom’s Story
This week Ben talks to YouTube creator, Tom Buck. A self-proclaimed lifelong A/V nerd, who uses YouTube to help others level up the audio and video quality of streams, podcasts, and videos. He started his YouTube channel in 2017 and it has now grown to over 70,000 subscribers and is his full-time job!
In this week’s episode of Create More, Ben is joined by audio and visual specialist, and YouTuber - Tom Buck. “I am now a full time YouTuber as of March of 2021 and so that's where most of my time is spent - on my YouTube channel - where I make videos that really aim to help people level up their audio and visual skills, podcasting skills - basically anything to do with kind of like the world of being a one person crew, where you're filming, editing and distributing stuff on your own. I love that stuff - prior to that I was a high school teacher, I taught for 11 years and I spent nine of those years teaching digital media and then I've been loving this stuff for my whole life and now it's my job and that's honestly amazing!”.
Tom Buck’s Youtube channel now boasts over 70,000 subscribers - but balancing a full-time job with YouTube was not easy. “I think most people who are making stuff on their own they're not in a position where that's what they're doing full time - they're trying to balance it with family and life and work and also this thing that you're prioritising and that's kind of what happened for the last year and a half I would say probably it was like having two full time jobs! It was just like I knew that wasn't sustainable it was gonna run me into the ground but it kind of came between like well I have my job that's supporting me and I have my passion thing on the side but I'm in full control of and I just knew the job made sense so I wasn't going to just throw that away cos I needed that but I wasn't going to let go of my thing because that's what I really cared about and that's what I was in charge of - my thing is my thing and I value that a lot”.
“It’s hard to make the leap- it took me up until about a year ago before I actually admitted out loud that this is something I would want to do as a job”
Prior to YouTube, Tom was a digital media teacher, and it was a big step for him to go YouTube full-time. “It took me up until about a year ago before I actually admitted out loud that this is something I would want to do as a job if possible and that was a big leap as it was in the back of my mind like yeah if the channel blew up and I had millions of subscribers and was making all that kind of money then it would be an obvious choice but when you're not at that point you think maybe in a couple of years this could be something and just admitting that to yourself that you would take that opportunity was a big step and was scary just to even just admit that to anybody and then after that is when just coincidentally things started happening where the revenue from the channel started getting kind of close to what I was making from my job and then started sort of equalling it and then started like squeaking past it a little bit”.
The support of Tom’s wife and fellow YouTuber, Heather Ramirez, has been a large part of his recent success. “Oh my gosh - having a supportive partner in something like this is huge and it's funny I think it was something that endeared me to your show right away is cos her main YouTube channel is HeatherJustCreate and her slogan is “Just Create More” and so when I saw your podcast I was like this is perfect! She quit her job in 2016 but she did the opposite route of like ‘I'm leaving my job and I'm going to document that journey from zero to wherever this goes - so total opposite strategy of what I did. We met right at the time that I started my channel I was poking around a little bit and she was one of the first people to kind of give me permission - not that you need permission but when you're thinking of doing something like this and you're feeling like this might be a little goofy or a little weird and somebody you admire shows up and says no you should do this it's a great idea it's cool do it it's just kind of nice”.
“With making audio focused videos - I was like ‘hey, here's a little part of the conversation that I can actually add something to’ and I think that has really helped the channel”
Over the past year Tom has found success focusing on the audio world of YouTube.“Things really shifted positively when I started focusing more on like audio related stuff - so microphone's, podcasting and when I started focusing more on streaming setups - how to have a good looking zoom call - that kind of stuff, which was cool cos it's the stuff I was doing that stuff I I'm interested in and people seem to like and obviously in 2020 a lot of that was really relevant. Once I sort of figured out like here's a thing cos I loved cameras but there's so many YouTube camera channels with people who are like more skilled than me - more technically knowledgeable than me but with this I was like ‘hey, here's a little part of the conversation that I can actually add something to’ and I think that has really helped the channel”.
On YouTube - content feedback is never hard to come by. Tom explains the impact of negative YouTube comments. “I’ll beat myself up if something was bad like - I'm aware! I try very hard to go like ‘OK if someone adding to the conversation’ or are they providing a different viewpoint or they being constructively critical if so like come on in let's talk - if someone is just being mean I just ban them and I'm going to think about it. Like you know if you get ten positive comments and one negative one your gonna focus on the one negative one - I wish that weren't the case, I've gotten to a point where the negative stuff does bother me but it bothers me less so it'll bother me for like 3 minutes instead of the whole day!”.
“Whatever it might be - have your own thing that you're in charge of because you don't know where it will go, and potentially it could build connections, it could build something where when you need that life boat - you can make the leap”
Tom values the sense of community amongst his following over big numbers and subscriber counts. “I used to think that you needed the biggest numbers to succeed and to do this stuff full-time but you really don't like if I had really wanted to like if I had lost my job I probably could have done this full-time at around the time my channel was at like 25,000 subscribers and it's still like you know when you're just starting out a number like that feels very far away but it's definitely attainable and you know if you have 100 people who are who are just absolutely into everything that you're doing like you can actually earn a living from something like that it's that's much more in reach of the average person than trying to get the biggest numbers in the world”.
Having a creative interest outside of normal work was incredibly important to Tom. “The crazy thing is when the time came when I gave my notice to my job - the number of people I talked to afterwards, teachers, administrators, like some high-level people - every single one of them said like ‘I wish I could leave too, you're so lucky you have something I want to leave but I have no options’ -and I was shocked. I was shocked at the number of people that said that and it just showed me how important it is to have your own thing that you're doing on the side whatever it is – podcast, video stuff, baking delicious desserts - like whatever it might be have your own thing that you're in charge of cause you don't know where it will go, and potentially it could build connections, it could build something where when you need that life boat you can make the leap - I'm really happy that I did”.
Thank you so much to Tom for coming on to the podcast. Check out his YouTube channel here.
Ben Stuart • Joseph Caden • Create More • 2021