Don't Wait, Create: How to Be a Content Creator in the New Digital Revolution

By Erica Barry and Selina Ringel

What do Justin Bieber, Lilly Singh, and Andy Samberg have in common? They all launched their careers by creating content online.

In the past, the content we consumed, the celebrities we admired, and mainstream pop culture as a whole were defined largely by invisible gatekeepers, and the popular visual media space was shrouded i

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Aug 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637304082

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Don’t Wait, Create

Don’t Wait, Create

How to Be a Content Creator in the New Digital Revolution

Foreword by Selina Ringel

Erica Barry

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Erica Barry

All rights reserved.

Don’t Wait, Create

How to Be a Content Creator in the New Digital Revolution

ISBN

978-1-63676-492-4 Paperback

978-1-63730-407-5 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-408-2 Ebook

For my Mom and Dad, who believed in me and encouraged me to pursue my own dreams. Without their unwavering support, I may never have stopped waiting!

Contents

Foreword by Selina Ringel

Introduction

The Future of Media

New Voices and Representation

Just Make It

Cultivating a Creator’s Mindset

The Concept

Getting Paid

Distribution and Finding Your Platform

Building Your Network

Making a Career Out of Content Creation

Handling the Haters

Content Creation for Social Change

Conclusion

Appendix

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

—Walt Disney

Foreword by Selina Ringel

I am the writer, producer, and star of a feature film titled Single Mother By Choice, which will be distributed on a major streaming platform this year. If you told twenty-two-year-old me that I would be the writer, producer, and star of a feature film on my favorite streaming platform, I’d have called you insane. But here we are, after years of not waiting and creating. It happened to me, and it could happen to you too.

I have lived my whole life by the motto, don’t wait, create. Anyone can create; the execution is where we get stuck and, unfortunately, fear of failure is what stops many of us from trying at all or keeping at it to try a second time.

I have created and failed many times. I believe that success can only come from failure and encourage you to redefine what failure means if, like most people, you harbor this kind of self-doubt. Failure should be a positive word, not a negative word, because in the act of failing, you are learning. If you are too afraid to fail, it will be impossible to succeed.

I started my career at a young age as a producer. I received my master’s degree at the American Film Institute at the age of twenty-two (yes, I’m that nerd that skipped two years of school). I wanted so badly to get to the next part, to the winning achievements and the success of it all, that I worked extra hard to skip more things and move faster. Looking back, I realize that the key to creation is simply enjoying the process of creating instead of focusing excessively on the results. It took me years to learn that lesson, and when I finally understood this, things started looking up for me. It’s funny how life works that way.

When I was twenty-six years old, I felt so behind. I had graduated from AFI, created my own production company, 2Hands Productions, and was getting hired for super-small low budget productions. I couldn’t remember for whom I was creating. I had so many goals for myself; however, they all seemed far away. I had always wanted to make a feature film and had spent years pitching a script for a million dollars. All I would get in response were comments like, Well, how much money did your last feature make? How can I make my first feature film if no one lets me? Although the hurdle of experience required pervades the working world, historically it has been a huge barrier to success in media, and I was caught in the catch-22 of Hollywood.

Finally, I had an epiphany. I’m a producer; I know what things cost. I have the power to write something and make it myself. What if I didn’t need that much money? What if all I needed was my creativity and some favors and a lot of passion and excitement? Why did I need someone’s permission to create? Why couldn’t I give myself that permission? What if I focused less on all the roadblocks in my way and focused instead on the power and beauty of creating again?

And so I did, and that’s how I made my first feature film, The Best People, which eventually went through the festival circuit, was acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films, and is now available on Amazon Prime in the US and over twenty other countries.

But as life goes, there were constant ups and downs. After the excitement of The Best People, I hit another lull and decided I needed to get creative again. To explore new possibilities, I got into stand-up comedy and took classes at The Groundlings (famous alumni include Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Will Ferrell). I took an acting class in the name of fun and creation. Again, I was rewarded with beautiful things. At the performance night of my stand-up class, I was scouted through a comedy agent and started booking many stand-up shows at The Comedy Store, Flappers, and The Ice House. Then, at my Groundlings performance, a friend of mine said, Hey, I’m producing this digital series for the Duplass brothers. Want to audition? I thought that was crazy since I had not acted in years, but I thought, Why not? and so, I auditioned and then booked it.

You don’t know what you are capable of until you do it. And finding the fun in creating for yourself is the only way to find out. Taking a leap and participating in that one audition led me to many other projects, and it also led me to believe I could be a star in a feature that I could write for myself.

And there I went again. This time it was my husband’s idea. We had decided to start trying for a baby, and my husband said, With all this performance work you have been doing, how do we keep you performing while pregnant? What if we wrote a story that included your pregnancy and filmed it one month at a time in real-time? I miscarried in the middle of shooting this personal story, which added another layer of vulnerability to the project. I had never imagined something like that could happen in a million years, and it was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. When we were finally ready to try again, I decided to continue filming the feature, and then suddenly, we were struck by the global pandemic. When the world shut down, it just felt like everything was against us, like it was time to quit, but instead, we decided to keep filming and include the pandemic. This was one of the strangest things we have ever created because we had no sense for the end of the film, and we had to continue to film without any help to avoid putting our baby in danger.

The film is called Single Mother By Choice (SMC) and will premiere on a major streaming platform in November 2021, a dream come true. So, we did something outside of the box that was unique and different, and it was scary. But it paid off in the long run.

When I first met Erica, she had an idea for a digital series about young professionals working in management consulting. From day one, she was eager to put her concept into action and worked with me to help her move from stage to stage. The first thing I noticed about Erica was her tenacity. The second thing I noticed about her was her deep knowledge of the digital space and the world of content. She took copious notes and always jumped on all our calls in a great mood and excited to keep her project moving. It takes that kind of energy to make any project become a reality, and looking at creation with positivity is critical as a creator.

As I read her book, I loved all the personal stories. I especially loved reading about Issa Rae as I worked with her on a TV movie called Words With Girls shortly after I graduated from AFI. She had already shot The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and launched Color Creative, but this was before Insecure. When I look back, so many people from that project went on to do incredible things, but they put in a lot of hard work and the road was never easy.

What distinguishes people like Issa, who has achieved phenomenal success, from many of those who fizzle out is that Issa never gave up. Successful creators keep creating, embrace failure, use fear as fuel and it often pays off for them.

Erica’s book speaks to creating the kind of content you want to see in the world and being innovative about it.

As a creator, at times it’s hard to believe anything will work. It’s incredibly time-consuming, anxiety-producing, and it will expose your vulnerabilities. Erica’s book will show you how other people have created their content and catapulted their careers into the stratosphere. Seeing how others have succeeded and achieved