Andy’s E.P.I.C. Story

My name is Andrew (shortened it for the channel). I’m from Manchester, England. I’m somewhat musical; I can play drums, piano, a little bit of guitar and that’s about it at the moment. I’m old, would very much like birthdays to go backwards from here on out and when you post this I’m either 26 or 27; I have a birthday coming up at the time of answering this question lol. I like to create where I can, explore new places, see new things, love me some history and that is about all she wrote really.

Why did you start a YouTube channel? What is your mission behind it?

For a while I have wanted to start a channel. For years I have watched people and said to myself, “I want to do that, I want to do that as a job,” and I had one before the one I have now but it was a mess haha. It was a waste of time and I didn’t know what I was doing and we won’t talk about it lol. So fast forward to 2017 I think it was? and I had just decided I had had enough of being stagnant in life, doing the same old thing, and decided I was going to change my life. Now then, I have a book somewhere and it has all the ideas that I had written down up to the point of me creating the channel and I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do because I thought if I’m going to start a channel again, it has to be the one, it has to be the right one. So I came up with a few names and I thought, I’m changing my life, why not document it? And after that epiphany, Andy’s Diary was born.

So my whole agenda behind the channel then was to document my life so I could look back and see my personal growth so that in times of struggle I could remind myself that I am no longer who I was and I am changing daily. But then people started to tell me how much they were encouraged by my videos and how they had never thought about things like that before and it gave me motivation to start to document even the harder times. The times where I didn’t want to film, the times where job searching was beating me up because I wanted to be relatable. I wanted to show that I’m out here struggling and if you are too then I’m here for you, I’m here to be that relatable person to you, I’m here to be the person that gets it, you know what I mean? And then it just built up from there. Started making awesome connections on twitter with people like yourself and it became more than just my video diary, it became a tool for everyone who needed it and I am truly thankful to what it has become and what it will become in the future.

Tell us a little about your journey of discovering & understanding more about who you are and learning to embrace who you are.

I’m going to start by saying I still have a lot to learn, and I still have a lot of growing to do. I’m pretty happy with who I am at the moment and it’s a long way from who I started as, but I have a long way to go. I put a post on twitter maybe last week? I can’t quite remember but it was about the fact that I was pretty happy with who I am at the moment. I had a moment on the way home from work that day about how far I have come and how I should be happy with who I am, and I was in a good mood to be honest with you, but I just thought, yeah, we should be able to recognise when we feel good and we should be able to be happy with our progress. Too many times we measure ourselves against other people and I am guilty of that myself and it is tiring.

We should be thankful of our uniqueness and our individuality because it’s what makes you YOU. It’s what makes us who we are, so the journey to me getting to this point has taken over a year of down days, a year of “I’m not as good as them” moments, but I made it here, and I have many more miles to travel but I’m here and I’m thankful that I made it. So to anyone reading this, just be thankful for what you have in this moment because you will make it, you are never the same person twice, you’re forever growing, embrace the now and don’t look too far ahead.

What does “authenticity” mean to you?

Authenticity to me means staying true to yourself first and foremost but staying real to other people too. When you reach a point where you have influence, and please, I’m not blowing my own trumpet, please don’t take this the wrong way, but recently I’ve realised that because of the amazing people I’ve met along this journey, they see me as somewhat influential, you know what I mean? Maybe I’m not saying that right. I don’t know how to put it, but a lot of people on twitter know me as the one who supports people and the one who builds people up, and that is me off camera and off twitter. I am the same person away from twitter as I am on twitter and I think that can be hard to get across online sometimes. People are always deceiving people and I just want people to know that if you met me off twitter, you would see that there is no difference. So to me authenticity means keeping it real, being that same person no matter what the environment. 

What are some areas of your life that you feel you have grown the most in?

Twitter has taught me so much by meeting various people from all over, and I think on this journey so far I’ve grown to approach things differently than I would say 2 years ago. I’ve grown in understanding and love, in all honesty. There are a few people that I am so thankful for from this journey so far, and if I never reach the end goal of making this my career, then I’ll be truly grateful that I have what I have because there are SO many amazing people that I know now that I couldn’t be without. They have changed my life, and it sounds crazy to think that a social media platform can do that but it really can! It can bring you to people you probably would never have made contact with if it weren’t for twitter, so I am very thankful for what I have.

I think another thing it’s taught me is how quickly you can influence other people. Going back to what I was saying about my channel and sharing my journey and stuff, the fact that one minute you can feel like it’s just you and then the next, you have people who are taking on board what you are saying, they’re taking it in and learning from you and I LOVE that, I really do. One thing that I wanted from my channel is that it would affect people in a way that it would encourage them and it would motivate them, and when you reach a point where you have that influence with people, you have to treasure that. It blows my mind on a daily basis how much I have affected people. And again, that isn’t from a cocky point of view or anything like that, but I get some amazing messages from people about when they’ve seen one of my posts of encouragement and how it’s had an impact on them. Or when people tag me in posts with things like “this is a person you need to follow” kinda thing. I’m just some guy from some town near Manchester just being me you know what i mean? And people think that of me and I really can’t get my head around it. There isn’t enough words to say how much I appreciate everyone I’ve met, there really isn’t. And I will never ever take that for granted. I am so unbelievably thankful for each and every person on this platform.

What was one of the biggest obstacles you faced? How did you overcome it?

I think one of my biggest obstacles I faced was comparing myself to others and being impatient. Only now, have I reached the point where I know that I am individual and if I want something, I have to put the work in, it won’t just come to me overnight. I have taken countless breaks from youtube for various reasons, some I won’t talk about, but one of the big constant ones was comparison and being impatient. I’d look at people who were growing and doing things and making things work and I would think “I’ll never be like that,” “what’s the point in trying,” and that has caused me to stop uploading, stop interacting many times. And to be honest with you, it’s a big obstacle to get over because when you’re seeing people achieve stuff daily and you can’t even manage to find the strength to record a video, it’s extremely demotivating.

And that has gone on quite a bit especially in the first year of my channel. I was so sporadic with uploads, I had a schedule then I didn’t, I had video ideas that wouldn’t go past 1 upload and stuff like that, it was quite chaotic to be honest with you and it’s only now since a growth spurt that it feels like I’m in the right space. It feels like the timing is right for everything I want to do. It feels like everything is how it should be.

And one thing that I think helped me with that was not only the amazing friends on twitter, but my family helped me a lot. My parents are probably my biggest supporters in all of this. My dad especially. He is constantly giving me ideas for videos, he’s always encouraging me to try different places because it would make for a good vlog and that sort of thing. And to see that, to see him be like that just inspires me day in day out to keep creating. If not for everyone else but for him, if everyone abandoned me and my channel, I would still upload videos just for him because he’s the first to watch them when they go live, the first to share them with other people and that’s one major thing that keeps me going.

Another thing that kind of inspired me to take it seriously was I have a cousin whose boyfriend has nearly 1 million subscribers from uploading videos of his dog. And I was at my other cousin’s wedding recently and got talking to him and the one thing he kept saying was consistency. Consistency is key if you want to take it seriously and that has kind of spurred this new drive of motivation for my channel and it has inspired the schedule which I have now. And so far it’s challenging me to stick to a deadline, to see how I work under pressure and it’s allowing me to use those skills and transfer them to my life outside of youtube and that is one thing I’m really thankful for.

What is one of your biggest motivations today?

haha I kind of answered it in that previous question, but definitely my parents and especially my dad. I won’t go into all the details again but yeah one thing I didn’t mention is that he’s been talking about making a channel for a while and I think it’s only since I have started one, that it’s kinda got him thinking about what he could do with his. And like I said earlier, he is always talking about places to go for videos, so much so to the point now where he’s planning all these fishing trips with me to various places (that’s a sneak peek of what you can expect next year) lol. But yeah, there’s talks of him getting a gopro and making videos of that and I’m just so happy and thankful for the constant encouragement he gives me on a daily basis because if it wasn’t for him and my mum, the channel probably would still be lay dormant to this day, waiting till “I was ready” to upload again, so my parents mostly but especially my dad, big love to him for continuing to be who he is today.

What have been some of the most rewarding parts of your hard work?

I told you I could waffle haha. I kinda covered this a bit in a previous question, but one of the big things I have noticed recently, and this isn’t a flex by all means, but my twitter notifications have been through the roof recently everyday and that’s from people encouraging me, saying how much I encourage them, etc. because now that I am in a good place, I want to share that with people so I have started testing daily tweets of encouragement. For example, things like “goodmorning you awesome lot, go and smash today, you got this” sorta thing and coming back to twitter after work and seeing things like “this is awesome” or “we need more of this” and things like that is what I love to see because it really does make my heart smile that people are receiving what I’m giving back, if that makes sense? Like I’m not doing this for self proclamation or ego or anything like that, I encourage people because I genuinely love to see it on my timeline, so to see people be invested in what I’m saying and taking it onboard, is what is most rewarding for me.

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Thank you, Andy! Thank you for sharing your story and setting such a great example to us all! I really appreciate who you are and you have so often been a huge encouragement and inspiration to me! Keep being you! We’re excited to see what comes next on your journey!

You can find Andy on YouTube and Twitter.

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