A couple of months ago, I started yapping on TikTok.
Yapping? I hear you cry. What the hell is that?
Yeah, I didn’t know either.
I’d seen a girl on Instagram who’d made millions of bucks online selling a yapping challenge, so of course I had to go and investigate what on earth everyone was yapping about.
Turns out it’s incredibly simple.
You pull out your phone and talk.
That’s it.
No beautifully scripted reel. No clever hook followed by seven life-changing tips. No spending three hours editing a 42-second video and choosing the perfect trending audio.
You just turn the camera on and yap about whatever you want to yap about, then upload it to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or wherever else you fancy.
I wasn’t interested in joining a challenge. I just wanted to try it out for myself. My husband has been telling me for years that I’m a natural yapper (I’m choosing to take that as a compliment 🙃), so I figured I’d found my medium. 😂
There was just one slight problem.
I didn’t want to see my face on camera
I’ve made plenty of videos over the years and I’ve always been pretty confident on camera.
Then I got older and my ego kicked in. 😕
Suddenly I became horribly aware of my jowls, my wrinkles, the angle of the camera, what I looked like when I talked and all the other stupid things we can find to criticise about ourselves when presented with our own face on a screen.
So I started a brand-new TikTok account where nobody knew me. (Revolutionary right?)
But there was actually something very freeing about that.
No existing audience or friends wondering what the heck I was doing, and absolutely no expectations.
Nobody I knew was watching! I could just stick the camera in front of my face and talk.
So on 19th August, while wandering around Central Park in New York, I uploaded my first yap.
Since then I’ve uploaded 19 videos and somehow 350+ people have decided they’d like to see more of them.
The first one to get significant views and comments was one I recorded in Philadelphia about discovering I’d accidentally arrived in the birthplace of America.
Then I filmed myself floating around in the James River in Richmond talking about what a brilliant place we’d discovered. People started arguing about whether anyone should float about in the James River at all, which I’ve found hilarious and that’s now had several thousand views.
Then this weekend I yapped about going to an American Football match and the 2 videos I uploaded have had a combined 58,000 views! 😱
Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking Ellen-is-calling viral here. But for a brand-new account with a middle-aged woman wandering around America talking into her phone?
I’ll take it. 😂
More importantly, it’s so much fun! And this little experiment has reminded me of a few things I think are worth sharing.
Nobody cares about your face as much as you do
This has probably been the biggest one for me.
I was worried about looking like an ageing old hag on camera, but do you know how many people have commented on my age or in fact on anything to do with how I look at all?
Yep - ZERO!
Nobody has called the authorities. TikTok hasn’t sent me an urgent notification asking me to locate some Botox before uploading another video.
I’ve just got used to seeing myself again.
And with every video I’ve become less conscious of what I look like and more interested in what I’m talking about.
As I’ve said over and over in my notes and articles, confidence never shows up before you do something. It grows after you’ve done it enough times that the thing you were frightened of stops feeling important, and you start feeling competent.
Not everything has to provide a seven-step transformation
This has been an absolute revelation.
Seriously.
I’ve spent years creating content and always feel that I need to provide top drawer value.
Teach something.
Explain something.
Give somebody a framework, a strategy, a list of steps or something useful they can take away and implement.
My yaps don’t do any of that.
They’re literally me standing somewhere saying, “Look where I am. Isn’t this bloody brilliant?”
No 7-step framework to be seen.
And not only do people watch, they comment.
People from Philadelphia started telling me things about their city, and thanking me for visiting. People from Richmond commented on the (apparently dookie 💩) James River 😂. People in Williamsburg have been giving me tips on places to visit. Conversations started happening, not only with me, but between people in the comments.
Turns out people are interested in other people’s lives.
Who knew? 😂
And I’m just getting my head around “value” not always meaning teaching somebody something.
Sometimes it’s just entertaining them. Making them smile. Showing them somewhere they’ve never been. Sharing an experience. Starting a conversation. Or simply being a human being they enjoy spending a couple of minutes with.
I’m still processing that one.
Give yourself permission to experiment
This is probably the biggest lesson.
I talk a lot about experiments because they’ve saved me from making some spectacularly bad long-term decisions over the years.
We have this strange tendency to think that when we start something, we’re making a declaration of who we are and what we’re committing to for this life and the next.
I’m going to become a YouTuber - (as opposed to starting a YouTube channel)
I’m becoming a writer - (as opposed to publishing a book)
I’m starting a business - (as opposed to creating a product and selling it)
I’m going to post on TikTok every day for the rest of my god given natural life!
It immediately feels enormous.
Why do we do that to ourselves?
Instead why not just try something for 30, 60, or 90 days?
Give yourself enough time to get through the initial awkward stage and discover whether you enjoy the reality of doing it, rather than the idea of doing it.
I recently read about another creator experimenting with yapping and discovering she didn’t enjoy it.
Brilliant. That’s exactly what makes an experiment successful. Knowing what you do and don’t enjoy.
I’m discovering the opposite. I really enjoy it.
I’m also learning more about TikTok simply by being on TikTok, which is incredibly useful because it’s a platform I want to understand for my ecom brand This Big World.
And because I haven’t turned it into another enormous commitment, there’s no pressure attached to it.
When I have something I fancy yapping about, I yap.
The only thing to fear is fear itself
Most of the things I’ve worried about doing in my life have been considerably scarier in my head than they were once I started doing them.
Video was becoming one of those things.
I could quite easily have spent another year saying I wanted to get back on camera while waiting until I lost weight, looked better, felt more confident, had the right setup or suddenly woke up one morning looking 32 again.
Instead I opened a new TikTok account, started talking, and the fear (and self consciousness) disappeared much quicker than I expected.
So if there’s something you’ve been thinking about trying, you don’t need another plan.
You don’t even need to decide whether you want to do it long term.
Just give yourself 30 days.
Start the account. Write the article. Make the video. Try the hobby. Build the tiny business. Book the class.
See what happens.
You might discover you hate it, that you’re terrible at it (and have no desire to improve), or that it’s just not for you.
Or, as I’m finding with wandering around the world talking bollocks into my phone, you might discover you love it and it’s ridiculously good fun.
If you’d like to see my latest yaps, come and find me on TikTok. I’m currently in Williamsburg, Virginia, surrounded by colonial history, haunted pubs and enough material to keep me talking for quite some time.
As if I needed the help. 😂
Your turn
What’s something you’ve been curious about trying but haven’t quite had the nerve to do yet?
Maybe you’ve been thinking about starting a YouTube channel, writing a book, travelling solo, launching a product, joining a class, learning something completely new or doing something you’ve wanted to do for years.
Don’t make it a massive commitment.
What’s the smallest experiment you could run?
Could you give it 30 days? Upload one video? Write 500 words? Book one class? Spend an afternoon researching it? Take one tiny step that moves it out of your head and into the real world?
You don’t need to know whether you’re going to love it. That’s the whole point of the experiment.
Give it a go and find out.
And if you’ve got something in mind, share it in the comments. I’d love to know what you’re going to try.
More importantly, go and start, today if you can.
The world is waiting! 🌎
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