Looking well-pleased on my first day back at school after summer vacation
Then there were the heavy decisions that I was constantly being asked to make in my educational experience, usually during what felt like the worst possible moments in life. When I was fourteen, for example, my GCSE options came around. I was athletic and creative as a kid. I wanted to do PE, Music, and Drama because I was passionate about those subjects. But the exam board restricted me to only one. They limited my “expressive” options, as they did for all kids. The education system wanted me to focus on subjects across the board, like History and languages. It was a real nightmare.
Great, I thought. You’ve shot down two of my three dreams in one swoop and I have to pick one. Talk about pressure.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had so much other stuff going on in my head, such as discovering girls, new body hair, a changing voice, and all the other crazy hormonal challenges that came with being a moody teenager. There were also massive expectations weighing on me from my parents and teachers at school. I felt constantly squeezed to make the right decisions, to make the right grades. Making mistakes and learning from them didn’t seem to be an option.
I didn’t feel ready. I was being asked to make adult choices when I was only a kid, and I quickly understood why so many people become tense in those complicated moments. It felt like a massive headache, one that was set to change my life forever (or so I was led to believe), and there wasn’t a great deal of advice or support to lead me along the way. It must be even worse for teenagers with other stressful dilemmas on their plate, like coming to terms with their sexuality or dealing with depression.
Looking back, I felt constantly disoriented at school and college. I was forever losing sight of what I wanted to be, whether that was an accountant, a musician, an actor, or a basketball player. (I know. Random, right?) I was a pretty good ballplayer and I’d considered getting a scholarship to an American college for a while, which is where you get to move to the States on a special program if you have the right grades. Once there, I’d get to play basketball and have a proper education. What a result that would have been.
That idea later fell away when I tried to pursue a more traditional work route into accountancy, though I’d really only been pulled into it because pretty much every family member—Mom, Dad, both my uncles—were certified accountants. While I was at college Dad had told me that I could join his friend’s firm when I’d finished, rather than going to college and studying for a degree. I’d get paid and I could do my professional exams at the same time.
“You’ll get a salary to learn,” he said, which sounded like a better idea than actually paying for an education myself.
But something else was taking shape that would change my life forever. A technological revolution was kicking off. I had discovered YouTube and vlogging, and the exciting possibilities that came with it were blowing me away.
These days YouTube is obviously a huge deal; it’s one of the biggest sites and apps online, and it’s probably why you’re reading my book. Over a billion people visit it every month—that’s a seventh of the world’s population—and, at the time of writing, 300 hours of material are uploaded on the site every minute. The numbers are mind-bending. But back in the day, when I first started uploading videos in 2006, it was a very different place.
I was fourteen, and there were probably only a handful of videos on YouTube. I followed vloggers called Charlieissocoollike, Nigahiga, and Shane Dawson. They really inspired me to be creative and to upload material, so I started putting up music videos from around the web that were only available in the U.K. for kicks. I would find footage of bands I really liked, and I’d stick it on YouTube. I was also piecing together sports-highlights packages and uploading them. It was amateur stuff, and I was forever getting hassled by various media companies over copyright issues, but it was fun.
Screenshot from my first YouTube video on my channel —January 2010
It was successful, too. Some videos racked up 14 million views, which would still be considered amazing now. Back then that number was unbelievable. One basketball video pulled in 100,000 views, which gave me a huge rush; a music video I’d illegally streamed drew in 250,000 hits. These were big numbers, but the funny thing was my friends thought I was a bit sad.
“Dude, what are you doing?” they’d say at school. “Putting up other people’s work is so lame.”
I knew it could have been a gray area, legally, and I certainly wouldn’t advise it now. But I could see potential online. I was drawing in thousands of views for random things I was uploading. I set up a channel of my own called MarcusBrapZap (I’ve no idea where that came from) and uploaded more covers. Then one day, out of the blue, a guy offered to pay me if I annotated my videos with his advertising links. I’d put them on my page, people would click on them, which would then upload one of his websites, though it was nothing too questionable, I’d like to point out. In return he’d pay me a monthly fee. At first I was suspicious. I had no idea what it all meant, but I went for it, and before long money was rolling into my PayPal account.
Yeah! I’m sixteen, making money from my videos! I thought. Pretty cool!
My parents were totally confused by it all. Deep down I think I was, too. I was turned on to making my own videos soon after when people started commenting on the profile photo on my channel. They wanted to know what I looked like for real. They wanted to see the person behind the photo, so one day I caved in and did a Q&A, which felt weird, a bit awkward, but people seemed to like it. Loads of positive comments appeared under the video, and a lot of them were telling me to start a new channel. So, inspired, I set up Marcus Butler TV.
I started fooling around. I made videos where I ranted about issues, such as friend-grabbing groups on Facebook. You know the kind of thing: people saying, “Oh, I’ll turn myself into Voldemort from Harry Potter if I get fifty new friends . . .” Real lame stuff. My setup was really basic; I had a crappy camera on top of my computer, which wobbled off sometimes, falling to the floor. People could also see my messy bedroom in the background. But as I moaned and made fun of of different issues, the positive comments kept rolling in.
I loved it. I was having fun. A lot of the other guys on YouTube were already up and running by then. People like Alfie Deyes had started around six months before me. Tyler Oakley was doing his stuff. The only person who wasn’t around then was Joe Sugg. Me and Alfie met up after a couple of months of being into it, because we both lived in Brighton. We were friends a year and a half before meeting anyone else, and we’d decided to hang out and make videos after chatting to one another on our pages.
My first-ever display picture for my YouTube channel (what was I thinking!)
Online, I upped my game. I started mocking myself. I did the FML Smoothie Challenge, a disgusting task where I went into the kitchen and put as much random stuff into a blender as I could find. I grabbed orange juice, raw eggs, mustard, and ketchup. I mixed it up in a blender and gulped down the whole lot in one go without puking. Gross. Don’t try this at home! It was all really stupid and just something I was doing for fun really, but some of my videos were getting 30,000 views. It was insane.
Screenshot from my FML smoothie challenge video. Rank.
Around this time I applied for a YouTube Partnership. That might sound like a huge deal, but it just meant that I could make some extra money from the page, and with only 700 subscribers I was definitely expecting rejection. But one day, while I was in a PE class, YouTube contacted me with an acceptance e-mail. They were asking if I’d like to be one of their partners. Loads of people had been signed up at that time, not that I knew, and I was so excited. When I received their e-mail I was on top of the world; I thought, How cool is this? I’m going to get paid for doing something I love. I was so excited and almost ready to quit my part-time job.
In reality, I wasn’t getting anywhere near enough to give up the day job. Still, I was having fun. After I’d hit 7,000 sub
scribers, I went traveling with my best friend, Max. We had just left college and were about to start new lives, so we decided to go to Australia for two months. At the time I was about to begin working at Dad’s friend’s accounting firm. I was making new videos every week, but it was still a fun thing rather than a serious concern, which was probably why I didn’t think about taking a laptop with me. I had no idea just how much impact my posts had been making until I started checking my channel. Every time I went to an internet cafe, I was getting messages from people wanting to know where I’d been. It wasn’t loads, but enough to make me reconsider what I was doing.
Wow, I thought. They’re saying they miss me and my videos. This isn’t cool having two months off and not doing anything. I need to get back in front of the camera. . . .
When I got home, I knew I had to make more of my YouTube ambitions. Something big was happening online—the accounting work was secondary in my head—so at every opportunity I made vlogs or messed around with visual effects on my laptop. Incredibly I later won a YouTube competition called Next Up—an event that promoted the work of young YouTube creatives, and they were looking for the next “25 Online Stars” from across Europe. I scooped $20,000 for a crazy freeze-frame video where I put together loads of different visual effects I had taught myself.
Feeling like we’ve just conquered the world after climbing a rock in the outback of Australia
Me and Max exploring Grampians National Park in Australia
It was crazy. In the end I decided to give up on accounting—it wasn’t for me. I got a job with a software firm and planned to travel the U.S. with Niomi the following year. For a little while I’d considered going against all those gut feelings about my suitability for higher education. I’d got myself accepted into the University of the West of England, and I was going to take the debt head-on and study for a degree in Business and Marketing.
But my thoughts on that were changing, too. I had won all this money, my YouTube channel had started picking up thousands more subscribers, and I was at the forefront of an internet phenomenon. Suddenly I had found a new purpose, and without the need for exams, studying, or tuition fees. I was going to be a YouTuber. Talk about getting a lucky break.
HOW TO GET THE LIFE YOU WANT (AND HANDLE PRESSURE ALONG THE WAY)
Look, I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably reading this, scratching your head, saying, “Marcus, it’s all right for you, stumbling into YouTube success, winning $20,000 competitions along the way. Like that’s ever going to happen to me.”
Trust me, I know I’m lucky. I know I was in the right place at the right time and I’ve since realized that my stroke of good fortune doesn’t happen every day. But the point I’m trying to make here is that I got to where I am today by not freaking out about school, exams, or college too much. I located a dream target and I went for it, and I didn’t need qualifications or a university education to achieve it.
Before we go any further, I understand that for a lot of people qualifications are important. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, for example, you’ll need to pass the big exams. Being a student can also be one of the most pivotal and exciting times of your life. I remember going to the University of West England to stay with Niomi. She had an amazing time there and met lots of friends that she will stay close to forever. She also got the education she wanted to drive herself forward in life. Most of my mates from our group of friends went, too.
If that’s the life choice for you, then go for it. You’ll need to study hard and make some serious grades, but it’ll be worth it. However, for others—people like me—it’s important to realize that exams aren’t the be-all and end-all, no matter what your teachers might say. And for those of you reading this who are having to take exams to achieve your life goals, remember this: if you fail them, you can always take them again.
I guess that’s important to remember when dealing with the one thing everyone has to handle in their life—pressure. It hits us all, no matter who we are, or what we want to achieve. Pressure to succeed. Pressure to conform to what your school wants you to achieve. Pressure to get the right grades. Pressure to follow a certain road map to success. Pressure to be happy. Pressure to fit in with your peers. These are just some of the issues that teachers or lecturers don’t always help you to manage at school or college.
I’ve experienced various pressures throughout my life so far, and I want to help you to handle the times where pressure is heavy, because although it feels lonely, everyone goes through it. And if you can navigate the stress, you’ve got a greater chance of getting the life you want while following your dreams through to the end.
LESSON #1: CHILL OUT
That would be the advice I’d give to my younger self. Back in the day, I had teachers constantly putting pressure on me to pass exams. To ace essays. The consequences for failure, I was told, were huge. I remember we even had days in college where we learned how to fill in our university application forms. Think about it: a big bunch of kids, all of them different, all of them with unique hopes and personalities being squeezed through the exact same university application system. How does that work?
I hated it. And because I wasn’t used to handling pressure, when it hit me it was hard to nail down. It spun me out a little. I was feeling a lot of strange emotions, but I didn’t know why. Things only got better once I’d pinpointed the cause of my stress, which was the pressure to go to university—and it was coming from other people, not me.
For you, the source of your anxiety might be something else, but the key thing I recognized was that once I understood the cause of my issue, I could deal with it. Was I stressing myself out too much? Was it all caused by other people?
Once I worked out what was bothering me, I talked to someone about it, in this case my parents. I told them I wanted to make a go of YouTube, that I didn’t think university life was for me. I don’t think they really understood what YouTube was at first, but they could see I was getting positive attention. They saw that I was passionate about it, and so they supported me. I was very lucky in that respect.
But talking helped to ease the pressure. I was getting stressed out about what would happen if I didn’t go to university. I worried my life might not work out in a way that I wanted. Once I got it off my chest, I felt better. I think too many people allow pressure to build up inside them. Eventually they explode because it gets too much for them to handle. So get it out through talking before you fall into an unsettled state of mind.
Here’s a funny story about pressure and how it can freak me out. There was an upcoming intramural swimming event at my school and I was one of the very few people in my house who could make it up and down the length of a pool without drowning. Because I was fairly good in other sports, people assumed that I’d be a good swimmer, too, even though I was probably just average. So, one afternoon, the teacher organizing the event approached me after class.
“Marcus,” he said. “I hear you can do the hundred-meter medley. Fancy racing in the gala?”
“Well, sir, I’ve never swum anything like butterfly, but I can do the front crawl.”
“Perfect!” he said. “You’re in! Oh, by the way, one of your competitors swims for England.”
My stomach sank. Cool, no big deal then, I thought. Maybe I’ll call in sick that week.
When the day of the competition came around, I had honestly forgotten about the race, and I’d left my swimming trunks at home. That wasn’t going to stop it happening, though. From thin air, a tight pair of Speedos appeared. They had probably been dragged out from the lost and found, thrown away by some poor kid out of embarrassment most likely. I was thirteen and going through puberty. Standing up in front of the whole school in a little pair of unwashed swimming trunks on a freezing-cold day was not going to enhance my rep as some kind of “player.” It was awful.
Right, everyone’s watching me, I thought, as I got to the pool. I’m up against someone who swims for England and I’m the wors
t swimmer out of all these kids. Plus I’m in these ridiculously tight trunks that have been worn by someone else. Aaaaaagh!
I wanted to get out of there—and fast. I felt sick, scared, and tense. I would have done anything for the ground to have swallowed me whole. It was the kind of awful moment that still gives me nightmares today, and I wouldn’t have wished it on my worst enemy. Unsurprisingly I came in last, and I didn’t live it down for ages.
In hindsight, I should have been strong enough to explain my concerns to the teacher. If I’d told him that I wasn’t good enough to compete, I wouldn’t have got myself into that embarrassing mess in the first place. And I definitely wouldn’t have had to stand in front of the whole school while wearing the worst swimming trunks in history.
LESSON #2: IT’S OK TO DREAM
The educational system is great for people who want to be an accountant, or an architect, or a surgeon. But what if you want to be something a bit more creative or vocational, like a painter, or a photographer, or a plumber?
I’ve learned that it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking negatively about your dreams. Something like, I love acting, and I’m great at it, but no one notices me. I don’t get any educational rewards for it, and people are saying it’s not a real job. So how am I meant to succeed in life?
Resignation follows soon after. You think that maybe it’s not the path for you. There’s pressure to follow a more traditional educational route—Math, say—and suddenly that more exciting dream has gone, maybe forever.
When I was younger I wish there had been an accessible voice, a friend or family member who could have told me, “Look, there are other options. Life isn’t just about the things you’re being told by teachers. There are other ways of living. It’s not all about school, getting to university, getting that career. You’re allowed to work out what makes you happy.” Had I known that, I would have been a lot less worked up.
Hello Life! Page 11
