How I went from a kid posting random videos online to building a life around creativity, community, and freedom. And why I think the consumption epidemic is quietly robbing people of their lives.
You have a camera in your pocket, access to practically every piece of information ever recorded, and the ability to reach someone on the opposite side of the planet within seconds.
And what do we do with this technological miracle?
Watch a stranger organize their refrigerator for 47 minutes.
What a time to be alive.
I've been creating content since I was a teenager. Before I had a business, before anyone gave a damn what I had to say, before I had a clue what I was doing. I was curious. I wanted to share things, experiment, and connect with people.
That one decision to start putting things out into the world rather than endlessly watching everyone else completely changed the direction of my life.
Today, I've built an audience of over 360,000 people, reached hundreds of millions through my content, coached hundreds of clients, traveled the world, built businesses, and helped create an off-grid retreat sanctuary in the mountains of Guatemala.
All through a little rectangle connected to the internet.
Fucking bizarre when you think about it.
But this goes much deeper than growing an Instagram account. I want to talk about what happens to your life when you stop being a spectator and actually start participating.
The Consumption Trap
Open Instagram.
Someone has a better body than you. Someone's traveling somewhere you want to go. Someone just made $100,000 in a month. Someone's explaining the ten habits you absolutely MUST have before 6 AM, while you're lying in bed at 9:47 with drool on your pillow.
Swipe.
Another video. Another opinion. Some guy screaming about seed oils.
That last one might be me.
Before you know it, you've spent an hour absorbing other people's thoughts, experiences, arguments, jokes, and accomplishments.
What did you actually make during that hour? What did you build? Who did you connect with? What new skill did you practice?
There's nothing inherently wrong with consuming content. I watch videos, listen to podcasts, read books, and learn from people online. But there's a difference between consuming something that feeds your life and using content to avoid participating in your own.
The algorithm doesn't care which one you're doing. It gets paid either way.
My Story Started Long Before Anyone Was Watching
I made my Instagram account back in 2012. I was a teenager growing up in Missouri, playing soccer, running track, going to school, and doing typical teenage nonsense.
No brand strategy. No marketing degree. No sophisticated business funnel leading people toward my life-changing $997 course on how to breathe through your nose.
Just a kid with an internet connection.
A few years later, I started taking health seriously. My family had been through some intense medical circumstances, and watching people I loved struggle made me question the way we were living.
Why were so many people exhausted, unhealthy, disconnected, and dependent on systems they barely understood?
I started experimenting with nutrition, strength training, movement, meditation, sunlight, breathwork, and sleep. I was studying nutrition and kinesiology, working jobs, and slowly realizing I didn't want to spend my entire life following a script someone else wrote.
Around 2017, while attending community college in St. Louis, I was taking heavy course loads and working roughly 20–30 hours a week. I'd wake up, study, work, train, and somehow still find time to share things I was learning.
My early content wasn't polished. Some of it was probably ridiculous. Good. That's what being a beginner looks like.
I didn't wait until I had the perfect body, perfect knowledge, perfect camera, or perfect personality. I shared what I was learning while I was learning it.
Eventually, those random posts became conversations. Conversations became relationships, and those relationships opened doors to coaching clients, business opportunities, partnerships, and friendships around the world.
Somewhere along the way, I realized the internet could be used to build a life I genuinely wanted rather than becoming another place to escape the life I had.
Creating Changes the Way You Think
When you spend your time consuming, you're constantly reacting to someone else's ideas. Someone chooses the subject, frames the argument, and tells you what's important. You absorb it, agree or disagree, feel something, and scroll onward.
Creating forces you to notice things, organize your thoughts, and communicate them in a way another human can understand.
A walk through the jungle becomes an idea. A conversation with a stranger becomes a story. Something that pisses you off becomes a video.
You start paying attention to the world differently because you're developing your own perspective rather than endlessly borrowing someone else's.
And no, you don't need to post every thought you have. Some thoughts deserve to remain between you, God, and the unfortunate person sitting next to you on the bus.
But expressing yourself regularly is a skill. The more you practice, the better you become at understanding what you actually think.
This is one of the reasons I love content creation beyond the financial opportunities. It's forced me to become a better communicator, question my ideas, and develop a clearer understanding of what I believe.
Your First 100 Posts Might Suck
Beautiful. Make them anyway.
I see people spend six months researching how to become a content creator without creating a single piece of content.
They study algorithms, buy microphones, watch lighting tutorials, and spend $300 on some little contraption that holds their phone at a 37-degree angle.
Then they don't post because they're worried someone from high school might think they're weird.
Brother. Someone from high school already thinks you're weird.
Who cares?
When you first started lifting weights, you weren't benching 315 pounds. When you learned to ride a bicycle, you probably ate shit a few times. And when you first started talking to someone you were attracted to, you may have temporarily forgotten how language works.
Creating is no different. You improve through repetition, feedback, experimentation, and the occasional public embarrassment.
I've made thousands of pieces of content over the years. Some reached millions. Others disappeared into the digital abyss like a fart in the wind.
Both taught me something.
A poorly performing post is information. Maybe the message wasn't clear, the introduction dragged on, or the topic simply wasn't interesting to the audience that saw it.
Adjust. Experiment. Keep going.
Nobody gets good at creating by endlessly preparing to create.
I Stopped Trying to Sound Like Everyone Else
Early in my journey, I watched successful people and naturally absorbed bits of their style. Certain hooks, phrases, and ways of speaking. That's normal when you're learning.
But copying what works can eventually become a creative prison.
You start calculating every sentence.
Will people like this? Is this controversial enough? Should I say it differently so nobody gets offended? Will the algorithm reward it?
Eventually, you're spending more energy managing people's possible reactions than expressing what you actually think.
I started having more fun when I leaned into my own personality. Making jokes, sharing strange experiments, talking about nature, nutrition, sovereignty, community, and the absurdity of modern life.
Sometimes being philosophical. Sometimes making an absolute fool of myself. Sometimes both in the same 30-second reel.
I'm interested in health, but I'm also interested in enjoying being alive.
If I can't laugh at the ridiculousness of existence, what am I even doing?
Your personality is part of what makes your work interesting. Let people experience the actual human behind the camera.
One Piece of Content Can Change Your Entire Life
You post a video that takes ten minutes to make.
A stranger watches it in another country. They send it to a friend. Someone reaches out. A conversation starts.
Six months later, you're standing in another country with people who would've been complete strangers if you'd kept that thought to yourself.
I've experienced this repeatedly through coaching, brand partnerships, retreats, collaborations, speaking opportunities, and friendships.
Some of the relationships and experiences I value most began because someone found a piece of my content.
Think about that.
Something you create while sitting in your bedroom could reach someone who becomes your future business partner, client, friend, or community member.
There's no guarantee it will. But if you never create anything, that particular opportunity doesn't exist.
And this is where people misunderstand the value of having an audience.
A million views can be exciting, but ten views from the right ten people can change your business.
I've seen what happens when a small audience genuinely trusts someone. You don't need celebrity status to make a living helping people. You need something worthwhile to share, a way to help, and enough consistency that people know you actually exist.
You Can Build a Business Around Something You Genuinely Care About
I never wanted my entire life revolving around climbing some corporate ladder, asking permission for two weeks of vacation, and waiting until retirement to experience freedom.
I wanted to work with people, teach, explore, create things, spend time outdoors, and travel without having to justify it to a manager sitting in a fluorescent office.
Content helped make that possible.
I began coaching people around health, nutrition, movement, and lifestyle. Over time, that grew into different offers, communities, retreats, affiliate partnerships, and businesses.
Today I run Vital Camp, a community for people building health-focused brands and businesses while learning how to communicate, sell, coach, and create.
I've watched people start sharing their knowledge, grow their audiences, sign their first clients, and realize they could actually get paid to help others.
That's one of my favorite things about this work.
Someone who's spent years studying fitness, nutrition, breathwork, movement, or holistic living can finally turn that knowledge into something useful beyond their own head.
You could know more about your subject than someone with 500,000 followers. But if you're invisible, nobody knows you're there.
That's worth thinking about.
And it's why I built Vital Camp in the first place. I wanted a community where people could learn the practical skills of creating content, finding clients, building offers, and making a living doing something meaningful.
If that's the direction you're heading, you can explore Vital Camp here.
Stop Confusing Consuming Information With Making Progress
This might sting a little.
Watching business videos isn't building a business. Watching workout videos isn't training. Watching someone meditate isn't meditation.
And listening to seventeen podcasts about becoming a better communicator doesn't replace opening your mouth and having a difficult conversation.
Information can help, but eventually you have to do something with it.
I love learning. I've spent a ridiculous number of hours studying things that interest me. But knowledge becomes much more useful when it passes through actual experience.
You study nutrition, then experiment with food. You study movement, then move your body. You study content creation, then create something.
What a revolutionary concept.
At some point, another educational video becomes an extremely sophisticated excuse to avoid beginning.
My Simple Approach to Creating Content
If I were starting from zero again, I'd make this painfully simple.
Start with subjects you genuinely care about. Things you've studied, experienced, struggled with, or become unusually curious about. You don't need to be the world's leading expert, but you should have something useful or interesting to contribute.
Document what you're already doing. If you're training, share something you learned. If you're cooking, explain what you're making. If you're building a garden, show the process. If you've spent years overcoming a problem, talk about what actually helped you.
You don't need to invent a separate life to become a creator.
Post consistently enough to learn. I'd start with several pieces of content each week. Pay attention to what sparks conversations, gets shared, and attracts people who genuinely care about your subject. One poorly performing post means very little. Give yourself months of practice.
Actually talk to people. Respond to comments, start conversations with people who engage with your work, ask questions, and build relationships. I've always found that the relationships behind the numbers are where some of the most interesting opportunities develop.
Make an offer when you have something valuable to offer. Coaching, a community, a workshop, a product, or a retreat. Something that genuinely helps people solve a problem or experience something worthwhile.
You don't have to turn every hobby into a business. But if you want to make a living sharing what you know, learn how to communicate the value of your work and invite people into it.
And one more thing: use your stories.
You don't need to spam your audience with twenty-seven updates about your breakfast. One clear story every day or so, sharing something useful or inviting people to work with you, can open conversations that lead to clients.
Simple works remarkably well when you actually do it.
What Creating Gave Me Beyond Money
I live in the mountains of Guatemala now, surrounded by jungle, lake views, animals, friends, and people working on things they genuinely care about.
I've helped develop Maestro Valley, an off-grid sanctuary where people come together for retreats, movement, nourishment, and experiences that pull them away from the constant noise of modern life.
That's a pretty strange outcome from posting health videos on Instagram.
But the most valuable part isn't the follower count or revenue. It's being able to participate in a life I deliberately helped create.
I've made friends around the world and had conversations I never would've encountered growing up. I've learned how to communicate, sell, organize, teach, lead, and build things.
And I've been forced to examine my own ideas because I'm regularly expressing them in public.
Sometimes I change my mind. Sometimes I realize I was wrong. Sometimes I become even more convinced of something after hearing the arguments against it.
Good.
That's part of developing an actual perspective.
Don't Become a Slave to Creating Either
There's another trap worth talking about.
You can escape endless consumption and immediately become addicted to producing content.
Now instead of scrolling for four hours, you're checking analytics for four hours.
Congratulations. You've simply moved to a different room in the same digital prison.
I've experienced periods where creating became too tangled up with performance, numbers, expectations, and the pressure to always have something to share.
A beautiful sunset becomes a reel. A meaningful conversation becomes a hook. A moment with friends becomes a marketing opportunity.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is put the damn phone away.
Go swimming. Make food. Sit around a fire. Have a conversation nobody records.
I've built much of my freedom through the internet, but I don't want to spend that freedom imprisoned by it.
I want my content to reflect the things I'm actually doing and experiencing, which requires having a life outside the damn screen.
Imagine What You Could Create in the Next Year
Think about how many hours you've spent consuming content over the past twelve months.
Now imagine taking even a portion of that time and putting it toward something you care about.
A hundred videos. A newsletter. A small business. A book. A community. Learning photography. Making music. Building furniture. Growing food.
You don't have to become an influencer. Honestly, the world probably has enough people filming themselves drinking coffee.
But everyone has the capacity to make something.
There's something deeply satisfying about looking at your life and seeing evidence of what your hands, mind, and imagination have brought into existence.
I spent years creating without knowing exactly where it would lead. I still don't know where it'll lead next.
And I'm genuinely excited to find out.
So maybe close the app after reading this and make something you've been thinking about for months.
Even if it's terrible.
At least it'll be yours.
Want to Build Your Own Health Brand and Business?
I created Vital Camp for coaches, creators, holistic practitioners, and people who want to make a living sharing what they genuinely care about.
Inside, we work on content creation, storytelling, growing your audience, finding clients, improving your offers, and building a business that gives you greater freedom over your time and location.
Hundreds of people have already joined the community to expand their message, create better content, and turn their knowledge into actual income.
You'll find weekly live calls, 100+ educational videos, monthly challenges, community conversations, and real-world strategies I've used while building my own brand.
If you've been sitting on an idea, studying everyone else's success, or wondering whether you could actually build something of your own, come surround yourself with people who are doing it.
