At 35, I had gone back to college to finish my accounting degree.
I had started years earlier, when I was much younger, but life happened and I never finished. So there I was in my thirties, going back to school because I still believed the path in front of me was pretty clear.
Get the degree.
Keep climbing that corporate ladder.
Make a good living.
Buy a house.
I was very good at that version of life.
What I absolutely did not see coming was that years later, I would be standing in my kitchen surrounded by stacks of envelopes, art prints, cameras, sponsor contracts, editing timelines and all the other slightly chaotic parts of a business I never knew I was going to build.
If 35-year-old me could see one of my workdays now, I think her first response would probably be:
"Finally your back to do something creative" and the second response would be "How did you do that????"
That sounds exactly like me.
If I see an end result I want, I immediately start trying to figure out all the steps between here and there.
The funny part is, with this career, I never got the roadmap first.
I built it while I was already walking through it.
Watch the full video here:
I did have a plan. It just wasn’t this one.
When I left corporate life, I wasn’t completely winging it.
I had saved money. I had years of experience in finance and accounting. I knew I could consult, so that became the bridge.
For a couple of years, I did consulting work while YouTube quietly grew alongside it.
And I think that part really matters because sometimes career changes get told as these very clean before-and-after stories.
One day you have the old job.
The next day you leap into the new life.
Mine did not look like that. There was overlap. There was experimenting.
There was a lot of learning.
There were also some very bad camera movements. Like really bad!
I mentioned this in the video, but my early footage was rough. I had a camera with no stabilization, I moved it way too fast, I didn’t hold my shots long enough, and people actually told me my videos made them feel sick.
Not exactly the feedback every new filmmaker dreams of.
But they were right and I listened.
That ended up becoming one of the patterns that helped me most.
I would notice what wasn’t working, figure out why, and try again.
That part of me came straight from my old career.
The skills I thought I was leaving came with me
For a long time, I thought of my corporate career and my creative career as two completely different lives.
They really aren’t.
I still use so much of what I learned back then.
I use the accounting brain.
I use the planning.
I use project management.
I use contracts, budgets, systems, calendars and spreadsheets.
Give me a spreadsheet and I will still happily disappear into it. I'm not kidding. I'm a complete geek with spreadsheets and analyzing numbers. Weirdly .... I love it!
The difference now is that those skills support something much more creative.
I can spend part of the day reviewing a sponsor contract and the next part painting artwork for The Story Post.
I can look at YouTube analytics in the morning and spend the afternoon thinking about what color paper belongs in next month’s envelope.
That combination is probably what surprises me most.
I didn’t throw away the old version of myself.
I just finally gave the creative side of me more room to breathe and expand.
What actually helped me make the transition
If I could hand 35-year-old me a short note, I don’t think I would give her some huge motivational speech.
I think I’d tell her a few very practical things....
Save enough to give yourself some breathing room
You didn’t leave corporate with zero cushion. You saved money first so every decision didn’t have to come from panic.
Use a bridge instead of forcing a giant leap
Consulting gave you income while YouTube was still growing. You didn’t need the creative business to support you immediately.
I’m glad I gave it room to grow.
Learn the next thing you need, not everything at once
Camera work. Editing. Storytelling. Sponsorships. Contracts. Analytics.
You learned each part when the business asked you to learn it.
That still happens.
There is always something I do not know yet.
Listen to useful feedback, even when it stings
People literally told you your shaky camera work made them feel sick. Not fun to hear, but you used that feedback to improve your filming and equipment.
Bring your old skills with you
This might be the biggest one.
Even if the next chapter looks completely unrelated to the last one, you bring yourself with you.
The discipline came with me.
The financial knowledge came with me.
The curiosity came with me.
The part of me that sees something and thinks, okay, how do I figure this out, definitely came with me.
That person has been useful in every version of my life.
Give the new path enough time to become something
YouTube did not instantly become your career. It developed over years while you were still figuring out your style, voice, business model, and what kind of creator you actually wanted to be.
Follow what keeps pulling you in
You kept noticing that the creative work felt more rewarding and that you wanted to spend more of your time doing it. That mattered.
The creative part I didn’t know I was missing
I had this creative itch when I was younger, but I didn’t really have a place for it in my career.
Now I do.
I get to tell stories.
I get to make things.
I get to paint.
I get to have conversations with people I may never meet in person but somehow still feel connected to.
And The Story Post has become another piece of that.
From choosing the monthly theme to designing everything and eventually stuffing the envelopes, I put a lot of care and love into each envelope.
I know that sounds a little woo-woo, but I am okay with a little woo-woo.
I like knowing something I made here in my kitchen is eventually going to land in someone’s mailbox.
Maybe it arrives on a hard day.
Maybe it is just an ordinary Tuesday.
Either way, I want to put more kindness into the world than negativity.
That has become a pretty important part of what I want my work to do.
If you’d like to see what I’m sending out each month, you can learn more about The Story Post here: https://www.amberjbaldwin.com/storypost
I still think 35-year-old me would want all the steps.
She would probably have a notebook out before I finished explaining it.
But I think the thing she would eventually have to accept is the same thing I did.
Some of the steps only show up after you start moving.
And for once, I am pretty glad I didn’t know exactly where I was going.
Leave me a comment below and let's keep the conversation going. Is there a time in your life where you feel this is relevant to you? A new career pulling at your hear strings? A different path that scares you but feels intriguing?
Resources Mentioned
Automatic paper folder: https://amzn.to/3VfbCVb
