We had the good fortune of connecting with Emre Tichelaar and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Emre, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I saw a huge need for there to be a local producer of videos, who created great videos for a fraction of the cost of the larger corporations. This is how my business was started, we make high quality, low budget videos!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The journey so far has been anything but a smooth road. To begin with, making weekly videos is a huge time commitment, one video takes at least 15 hours to complete. That is not even counting, countless hours of coming up with content ideas, promotion, doing live streams, etc… Due to this time commitment, I have had to choose between spending time with family and friends versus working towards the dream of one day doing YouTube full-time. This vision seems very far-fetched to my friends, who to them I am “just making videos” and to the parents who don’t understand the time we are living in. Therefore, it is long-nights of editing and watching friends going out or doing fun things while you sit in solitude editing. It can get very lonely and gets rough sometimes. Lastly, because of the time commitment needed for each video, it often is impossible to have others help with creating a whole video since nobody will ever care about your dream as much as you do. However, recently I have started to slowly find the right people to ask for help and bring on videos. In addition to this there is always a question, should I study for school to secure that A in this class or do I maintain just above the minimum GPA needed for my scholarships, and spend all other time building the channel? To end off with, doing YouTube, a very low-paid job as pretty much your, well, job, gets pricey. Right now I think I am shelling out $400 a year just on subscriptions to my audio-library, stock-footage site and editing programs. But keeping costs down is also not too easy. It’s rarely the smoothest when I am working with my very old computer that can barely handle to more intensive things I am working on. Often I will have to wait a couple of seconds for my mouse clicking to register. It is a tough road, but if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
City Centre near Memorial! It’s a tiny, often overlooked piece of Houston that is fantastic!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
James Brown and his brand EncourageX is all about showing us that we are worth it. Over the last 15 years, he has been on the search for a better way to encourage the people we care about in a more personal, authentic, and consistent ways. Through this, his company was born, whom I work with extensively. However, through working with him, he has encouraged me in all the aspects of my life and is a true mentor!

Instagram: Instagram.com/Emerrias
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/etich/
Twitter: Twitter.com/Emerrias
Facebook: FaceBoook.com/Emerrias
Youtube: YouTube.com/Emerrias

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