We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Benin Rubayita. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Benin below.

Benin , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I want to excel in different fields. growing up we are told to pick a career. Not careers. Just one career. I feel like i can make it in more than one career and i would be holding myself back if i only did one thing.I want to be a director, i want to make funny short form content videos, i want to be a youtuber and i would love to create an app one day.My goal is one day someone hears my name and says ” oh you know Benin! i just saw a commercial he directed!” and some else says ” he directed a commercial? i was talking about his new vlog on youtube! ” and then someone else says ” you guys know Benin! he makes the funniest creatives tik toks!” i want to make my name in different fields. I don’t want boundaries! One time i heard this speech from Denzel Washington where he said ” Imagine you are on your deathbed and next to you are ghosts. the ghosts represent your unfulfilled potential,the ghosts of the ideas you never acted on. the ghosts of the talents you didn’t use. They say ” we came to you because you could’ve brought us to life and now we have to go to the grave together.” When i die i want to make sure there’s no ghosts of unused talent i had

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Benin Rubayita, i am 22 years old and i am a freelance videographer and content creator. I was born and raised in East Africa in a country called Rwanda. I moved to America in 2013 on christmas. I started making videos when i was in 8th grade. I started with vine then vine was no longer available. In high school i started making youtube videos. When i graduated high school i went to community college and i realized i spent most of my time in class editing videos instead of learning so i quit going to college. it wasn’t for me. I stopped going to college around 2020. During that time i had never offered video services to anyone else other than myself. There was a division 3 school near me called Thomas More and one day i saw that their mens basketball team had a photographer and a videographer but the women’s basketball didn’t have either. So i reached out to them and offered to do video for them for free. at first they were hesitant but they finally accepted. i did one video for them and they were so happy with the results that we worked together the rest of the season. This is one of my biggest accomplishments. One of the student athletes came to me and thanked me for making videos for them because her mom was never able to come to the games as much because she lives far but now she can watch her and see videos of her hanging out with her team.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My goal is to be able to go full time being a creative. Currently i work at a warehouse mon-fri and freelance during the Weekends. working another job is a love hate relationship. On one hand it gives me money to able to to afford equipment when freelancing isn’t bringing in money but on the other hand i spend all of time working and being tired that i wish i was able to give my full attention to making videos. creating videos is something i really enjoy and everyday i work on getting 1% better.I want to able to get enough work that i can create a video production company and be able to employ other creatives and we can all work together to put together the work we can. I want to build a name in diffrent video fields. Behind the camera and in front of the camera

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One of the biggest things I had to unlearn was criticizing myself. One of the most of famous quotes is that comparison is the thief of joy. I look other peoples work and wonder why my work doesn’t look as good as theirs or even feel as good as theirs and i start criticizing myself a little too much. Which is not good because in this freelance world not only do you have to believe in yourself but you have to be your biggest fan if you want this thing to ever work out. there’s a lot of high moments but also a lot of lows. I spend a lot of time thinking on how i can better my skills wether it is the video skills or working on how to increase customer acquisition or being able to retain past customers for future work. i am 22 and it is a young age to be a business owner but i treat my business as if it a multi million dollar company. Every penny i get from freelancing i throw right back into the business.Another lesson i had to unlearn is the hustle culture. If you check social media you will see that everyone and their momma wants to be a business owner and the number one advice given is that you have to work your butt off and put in a wild amount of time. Hustle culture almost makes it seem like it is a weakness to find work life balance. It convinces us that we need to work 80 hours a week if we ever want to make it. I used to be all about that but i realized that hustle culture is a one way ticket to burn out and hating something you started doing out of passion. Now i take breaks and don’t feel guilt about it. I take time to make sure i don’t do anything but rest and enjoy my day. watch a movie or go work out. If we spend every second of our life working then we are nothing but machines.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: film250video
• Facebook: Benin Rubayita
• Linkedin: Benin Rubayita
• Twitter: benin_2000
• Youtube: benin250

Image Credits
frist picture in a geen long sleeve taken by @shotbyLH second picture in black and white taken by rooted creative picture holding the camera taken by me picture of me walking taken by Eden Davis