I haven't been active in the community; instead, I’ve focused primarily on editing. Over the last two weeks or so, I’ve secured $7,500 worth of deals, not one-offs, but retainers. The best advice I can give for achieving this is to build a personal brand. Film yourself and share your insights and your work. This generates inbound leads, and your outreach becomes much more effective when people check out your profile.

Every Wednesday, I come up with some editing sauce and we dive deep into it with the boys Usually these Masterclasses are exclusive to the paid FTE community, but this time you can join us... See full info here → https://masterclass.full-time-editor.com/ See you tomorrow, – Artem

I’ve been editing for two years now. Most of my clients were low-paying, or the jobs were just plain bad. That’s why I quit editing in August 2024, thinking I’d never get paid more than $150 per video or work fewer than 4 hours a day—if I was lucky. So, I spent the entire summer just playing video games and doing nothing with my life. I felt this void inside me, like I had no purpose. Life felt static, like I was on repeat, chasing quick dopamine hits, doing meaningless stuff. One night, I tried something different—I stayed away from all devices, didn’t talk to anyone, and just sat in my bedroom thinking about the last few months. I got angry, realizing I had wasted almost three months doing absolutely nothing. The next day, I sat down at my Windows PC, deleted every game, removed every friend on Discord who played games, deleted my YouTube account (because I kept watching gaming content), and got rid of everything else that was holding me back. For a few days, I was bored and didn’t know what to do. But then, I decided to open After Effects and Premiere one more time. The feeling I got was like freedom—like I broke out of the jail that had been holding me back mentally and physically. By the end of October, I had made my first video in months. It was something I’d never done before—I didn’t take inspiration from another editor like I used to. I just created a clean 3D animation and motion graphic from scratch. I uploaded it to Twitter, and it got double the likes, double the comments, and almost double the views. That was the moment that flipped the switch in me. I got hooked. I started reading books, watching videos, creating crazy “CEO” routines—waking up at 5 AM to work before school, grinding after school until my eyes couldn’t stay open. I was doing everything I could to improve my editing and make more money. Since then, I’ve become a bit more chill about the whole grind mindset. Artem really helped me—not just with editing, but also with realizing that I’m human too. One of the biggest things he helped me understand is that having a work-life separation will actually help me in the long term.