We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonathan Paula a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jonathan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
After graduating Emerson College with a B.A. in TV production in 2008, I immediately went to work editing political campaign commercials during that year’s election cycle. But in parallel, my YouTube channel kept growing and growing. I’d work 9 hours a day downtown in Boston, come home to my apartment and work on the next episode of “Is It A Good Idea To Microwave This?” until I needed to sleep… and then repeat. When the election cycle and related projects winded down the following Spring, I was let go. It was then that I had a choice to make: look for more full-time, “traditional” employment, or put all of my eggs into this YouTube basket, and make a go of it. I choose the latter, of course – and the rest is history. It was certainly a risk, especially since my channel was only making around 1/3rd of my actual job at the time. But having all that extra time to devot to new content and show ideas really helped the channel explode. 2010 – 2013 were my biggest and most explosive growth years on the site.
Knowing what I know now – had I opted to live at home that first summer after college, I could have saved on rent, and gone straight into making YouTube work full-time… but timing is everything, and who knows if my content would have been as well received if I made that full-time “push” a full year earlier.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve been a professional video editor since I started filming weddings my sophomore year of high school. 25 years later, and I’m still pursing that dream, working full-time as the Director of Multimedia and Virtual Events at a small tech/sales company in southern NH. Having personally edited and created over 5,000 individual projects and videos over the years has instilled in me the innate ability to accurate assess a client’s needs in regards to tone, style, and vibe. Whether they’re looking for a “viral TikTok” or a polished TV commercial – I know how to bring their ideas to reality.
For me, I’m probably most proud of my own work – the projects I wrote, directed, stared, and edited. My long-running “Movie Night” show on YouTube is something I’m particularly fond of – and with 16+ years of episodes and 49+ hours of content it’s also the biggest on-going project I’ve created. I take pride in creating the show at a TV-ready level, even if it means my content takes 10x longer to produce than my peers for similar ideas.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When algorithms shifted on YouTube, and my wife and I welcomed our first daughter in 2018 – it became clear that an entire family relying on a single income as violate as YouTube AdSense would not fly. So after ten years away from traditional employment, I went back to “work,” leveraging my success as a video operator and “viral hit-maker” — as one publication described me — to pivot back to a more traditional job where all of my skill-sets were sought after and valued. I parlayed that position into a new role at a different company only a year later, and two years after that was already earning more in guaranteed salary than even best months on YouTube.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
When someone approaches me either online or in-person to share that something I made years ago helped them get through a tough time in their life, or bond with friends, or get them interested in video production – that always makes my day. Truly humbling experience when someone explains their entire career path exists because you inspired them. I love that not just because of how wonderful that sentiment is, but because I also love meeting new people and hearing their perspectives. The online video community is a relatively small one, and meeting friends and peers in that space and annual conventions was always a highlight for me for exactly the same reason.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.youtube.com/@Jogwheel
- Instagram: thejonpaula
- Facebook: JonnyPaula
- Twitter: JonPaula
- Youtube: Jogwheel
