10 Lessons from 10,000 Clips

Lesson number one from shooting over 10,000 clips of myself on camera is that I'm going to suck at first with most things, and that's okay. 10,000 of anything is a significant amount of time dedicated to a particular skill, moment, or set of behaviors. Filming is unique in that I am literally watching myself do the thing 10,000 times. It fundamentally provides an appropriate volume to actually judge whether you've improved or not.

I often receive questions from people who haven't posted more than 100 times on Instagram, and they say, "Hey, I don't really know where I'm going, and I don't seem to get any traction." Yes, I understand… (and also stop thinking you’re going to be amazing “overnight”). I've posted well over 2,000 times across all my platforms, and I STILL have a long way to go. 10,000 clips gives you a great perspective on how bad you are at first, and that's okay.

I have translated that mindset to other things. In business, life, and soon with a new baby… I’m GOING to be bad at a lot of stuff. However, if 10,000 moments of filming has taught me anything, it’s this: no one gets anywhere meaningful without sucking first. All of us had to learn how to crawl before learning how to walk… and we sucked at walking for a while. I just keep in mind that the sucking (and subsequent learning) is the thing I MUST walk through before I get good at something. 

The Dunning Kruger Effect is a REAL thing. It’s most often depicted as a graph which I’ll leave below. In a sentence, it can be summarized as: A cognitive bias where those with limited competence or knowledge in a particular domain greatly overestimate their own competence or knowledge. Basically - beginners or amateurs often think they’re way better at a thing than they actually are compared to the REAL experts. 

When I first began filming myself in 2020, I thought I was getting the hang of filming, lighting, camera gear knowledge, and all other things YouTube. After the first six months of this process, I thought I had everything down: how to set up shots, what lighting I should use, and what made an interesting story line for a video. I bet you know where this is going… 

I was absolutely, unequivocally, unforgivably naive and wrong about ALL OF IT. Yep. Every. Single. Thing. (And for those camera/cinematography nerds out there - I didn’t even know that a log color profile existed, I thought each company that produced cameras had their own “look” that you could choose from… HA). When my ego finally came crashing down and I realized the sheer volume of knowledge I did not know, I vowed 2 things to myself: 

Since those miserable moments in late 2020, these two promises have served me well.  

For some of us athletes, videos and photos of ourselves doing sport is one of the most pleasing things for our ego. I’m the first to admit I had our team photographer’s personal phone number so I could get game photos and videos of myself as soon as she was done editing.

However, after 10,000 times clicking the record button on my cameras, at least 2-5% of them looked super fucked up to me. I’ve had conversations with other creators and people with social media brands and they’ll tell you the same thing: we ALL have moments where we look at footage of ourselves and gasp at the ogre on the screen. For me, it was the way I communicated. Watch the first 5 seconds of this video and you’ll see why. I’m literally shouting at the camera with no one else around… Makes me laugh out loud every time. 

I am lucky enough to know some amazing creators with more than 20x the number of subscribers as I have… even THEY are insecure or uncomfortable with how they look on camera sometimes. It happens to everyone. Just keep going.

See the example above (link) of how I used to communicate on camera over half a decade ago. It was horrible, choppy, loud, and wordy. Now in 2026, I am more confident in my ability to articulate my ideas to you all on camera and in written form. 

I have friends who graduated from Whitman (my alma mater) with degrees in film studies, acting, and other public facing communication degrees. Each of them has their own medium and while some might be better in written or photo content creation… I’d back myself communicating on camera or in front of a crowd any day. 

If any of you reading this are compelled to communicate more effectively, film yourself speaking about something you care about, re-watch it, and take notes on a transcript. You’ll learn where you pause, what word choices you use, when you need to be more or less wordy, and perhaps most importantly: how your body language interacts with the words you are saying.

“Noah, why are you so good at communicating your ideas?” - I picked up a camera and posted Youtube videos for over half a decade so I could get judged by strangers. It’s the best way to learn. 

True confidence comes from within you, not outside of you. External validation might feel good, but it is fleeting, impermanent, and often highly subjective. Internal confidence is a true belief in your fundamental abilities / skills. 

If I’m beginning a new task (like filming myself), my mindset is: I believe in my ability to show up every day, learn quickly from my mistakes, and seek out the right people to help me along my journey. 

If I’m an expert at a task (like filming myself), my mindset is: I believe in my ability to utilize all the skills I’ve built over more than half a decade of work, my creativity, and my ability to step back and recognize that I may not be perfect.

Fuck yeah. 

Easier said than done, though I will say doing something 10,000 times gave me all the internal confidence in the world to show up any day of the week and be the best version of myself. Want to gain TRUE confidence? Show up so many times you have to try HARD to mess up or do it wrong. 

Have you ever had a day when something you’re trying to do takes FOREVER!? Yeah… Me too. ​​That said, I reckon you'd probably get faster and more efficient at that thing if you did it 10,000 times. 

In the early days of filming myself for my YouTube channel, it took me at least three or four takes before I was happy with something I had on camera. Over time, I got frustrated with how long everything took me to film, and it forced me to be more concise, more efficient in my communication, and also happier with “this is good enough” as opposed to “it has to be perfect”. 

These three outcomes have served me incredibly well and have helped my communication naturally get more effective over time. Now in 2026, I can usually go through a rough outline or script and film a video in one or two takes. Go get reps, learn, and you WILL see refinement and efficiency in your communication. 

Like I was saying earlier, shooting in S-Log on my Sony camera was a revelation I didn't know that I didn't know. It used to take me eons to film a single day's worth of content because I was caught up in trying to use all the fancy settings and shoot in manual mode, which I thought was the "pure" thing to do. 

However, like the previous lesson, my workflow had to get more effective as the business started to grow and I had to put time into other things. There's also an element of effort level as a barrier to entry that doesn't exist when you shoot on auto. Even though most camera enthusiasts will gawk at you and say that you're not doing it right, it's taken them ten years to put a single piece of content together while I can produce 10 pieces of content in about five minutes using all auto settings… 

I believe there's absolutely a time and a place for fancy settings, particularly in a studio like mine where I can control all of the lighting and the visual effects. But generally speaking, I'd rather shoot in auto and keep the barrier to entry super low so that I can create the most valuable and entertaining content possible.

The lesson here is fundamentally: Keep the barrier to entry for being consistent as low as possible. 

This lesson translates to communication as well as tactical advice for shooting on camera. A lot of people find it very difficult to talk effectively to the camera despite there being no one in the room. This comes from picturing a huge stadium of people behind that camera watching and judging your every move, leading to paralysis or a lack of clarity in thought. 

One of the most valuable skills I have found is imagining a single person or a very small group of friends sitting behind the camera. That way, when I'm talking to a lens, it feels like a conversation. This is reflected in all of my content across my socials. I've even received multiple comments over the last five years from people who love how it feels like I'm just having a conversation with them in my videos. That is, of course, the entire point. 

As you become more personalized and start communicating as if you're only talking to one or two people, you'll find that there's a more concentrated avatar who is genuinely interested in what you have to say. Not only does your communication improve significantly, but you'll also discover true fans in the areas where you're directly communicating. 

From a marketing perspective, talking to a specific person is much more effective because you're communicating with that single avatar. This avatar will have attributes that others can relate to, as opposed to trying to talk to everyone and overgeneralizing, resulting in talking to nobody. “If you try to talk to everyone you end up talking to no one”. 

The excited feeling I get watching my favorite YouTubers when their videos pop up on my feed is the same experience that other people have about me, which is a deeply humbling feeling. It only started to occur to me that this was the case in the last couple of years when young players started coming up to me at Ultra or in public. 

I had a particular example of a young kid who was probably 13 or 14 years old and almost couldn't even look me straight in the face because he was so nervous to talk to me. His mom then proceeded to tell me that he had watched all my videos, that he talks about my stuff all the time, and that he wanted to be like me when he grows up. 

This type of stuff is not only incredibly humbling, but it's also inspirational. I was once a young player looking up to the Michael Cunninghams and the Matt Sheldons of the world, along with some other non-football YouTube channels. Now, with over half a decade's worth of experience in the industry and creating content, I have the opportunity to inspire and be a role model for other people saying the same thing about me. Feels pretty special. 

Everyone knows the old cliché that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. I think part of this actually comes down to the role of humor and the importance of making fun of yourself. Not necessarily in a self-deprecating way, but just having fun with yourself when you do something you want to be good at. Adding humor into the content creation process, whether you post it or not, is the fundamental way that content creation is sustainable over the long run. 

I believe there are moments in the content creation process where I'm going to screw up. I'm going to say things that I don't mean to, and I'm probably going to trip over my words. Nowadays, I don't care at all if any of those things happen. I make it a point during filming sessions to pretend like my editor Kelvin is in the room with me. I actually break the fourth wall during filming and make some silly joke or comment about how I'm such an idiot or how I messed up during one of the filming sessions… It helps take the pressure of performance off my chest.

At some point, I think the only sustainable way to create content long-term is to do it for the outtakes. Creating content can be incredibly serious, fun, happy, and sometimes really sad and frustrating. However, keeping humor as a part of the process and consistently making fun of yourself in a constructive and humorous way is the key to making this content creation journey sustainable in the long term.