How Muselk went from law school to building a YouTube empire Instagram: MuselkElliott \u2018Muselk\u2019 Watkins has that story you\u2019ve heard a number of times: a law school drop-out, he decided to take the plunge into content creation. Now more than half a decade on, he\u2019s one of the biggest faces on YouTube, and his empire reaches millions daily. Muselk had a career in law sitting for him on a silver platter when he decided to make the full-time plunge into content creation. YouTube had always been that thing he could try and do, but it\u2019d be impossible to make it, right? Looking back to those early days in 2014 to now, it\u2019s funny to see how things have changed for Watkins. Being in the right place at the right time with the right attitude, Muselk turned thousands of fans into millions practically overnight. It was never the plan for Watkins, who was nearing the end of his law degree in Australia. However, it\u2019s a lot better than shuffling through all those legal documents \u2014 even if the first initial step was daunting. \u201c[I knew I could do YouTube full-time] when I was getting about half the minimum wage and was looking at making minimum wage as a goal,\u201d he explained in an exclusive interview with Dexerto. \u201cEarly on when you start getting that momentum behind the channel and you can feel the growth, that\u2019s when I knew I could make it full-time.\u201d First it was Team Fortress 2, then Overwatch. However he\u2019s exploded alongside Fortnite since 2017. With an intense daily upload schedule (for a time) and pure down under Aussie charisma, he had the foundations to thrive, and the formula to catapult into stardom. In those early days, it was great seeing the numbers climb. The Silver plaque becomes a Gold button, and the accolades roll in. No matter the success though, the grind eventually takes its toll. \u201cI used to struggle with it quite a lot when I started. I was doing 7 days a week, 16 hours a day \u2014 and I\u2019m not exaggerating because I was recording videos, editing them, creating thumbnails, uploading and releasing them,\u201d he said. \u201cThese days I\u2019ve got a good team around me that does a great job of that, but I\u2019ve also told myself that the daily schedule isn\u2019t everything. I try to not stress too much anymore and convince myself that after doing it for so long, it\u2019s okay to miss a release here or there. It\u2019s about balance.\u201d He\u2019s put in the hard yards though. Now it\u2019s a case of making sure his throne is nice and shiny for the years to come \u2014 and that future is a long one if Muselk has things his way. View this post on Instagram Following the trends Muselk\u2019s entire career has been based on trends. While it started out with Team Fortress 2 shenanigans, the Valve shooter was quickly replaced by Blizzard rival Overwatch, which took the world by storm in 2016. Overwatch is where Muselk built his foothold on the creator space. His wacky videos with a healthy dose of experimenting in a time before the workshop went viral. It also helped he was semi-decent at the game too, brushing shoulders with pros and top players constantly and competing at OWWC. However, as Overwatch fell off, Fortnite was just starting. It was a perfect situation \u2014 Muselk could continue to focus himself on content creation instead of having to contend with the idea of returning to university. \u201cI got kind of lucky with the timing of every game I\u2019ve ever really covered,\u201d he laughed. \u201cWith TF2 for example, I was making videos on that for three years before Overwatch. By that point, I started to run out of content. You\u2019ve got a set number of lego blocks, and you can rebuild it in a certain number of ways, but you start back tracking on things you\u2019ve done. That\u2019s what happens when you do daily videos for a couple of years \u2014 I\u2019ve done everything, there\u2019s no video idea you haven\u2019t already covered. \u201cI was blessed to always have a new game to move into. In games like Overwatch they never add content. With Fortnite they do a pretty incredible job in keeping things fresh and adding new content, which gives you more videos.\u201d That doesn\u2019t guarantee the success of Fortnite now and into the future though. Chapter 3 has been mega successful for Epic with their seemingly-infinite crossovers with everything from Marvel to League of Legends. That could all crumble overnight \u2014 it\u2019s the cutthroat nature of the industry. Attention spans are short. Trends fleet in and out. In 2020 it was Among Us. The next viral sensation probably isn\u2019t even out yet \u2014 or might only have a few hundred viewers on Twitch and a small, dedicated YouTube audience. While Muselk professes work-life balance, the nature of the industry is high-stress, and you have to be constantly chasing the next trend else you\u2019ll end up becoming irrelevant. \u201cObviously I love doing what I\u2019m doing, but I think it\u2019s hard because you\u2019re always on the lookout for cool new things you can make content with,\u201d he admitted. \u201cThe good thing with the games industry is you never know when that\u2019s going to come. I could see it with TF2 to Overwatch, but most games that end up taking over the world \u2014 very few do you see coming. Minecraft, Fortnite, Among Us, every game that becomes a viral content sensation always comes out of nowhere. \u201cSomething like Call of Duty is never going to go back to its highs, so the next hit usually comes from nothing.\u201d If he was to place his bets on something though: \u201cProbably like GTA 6, but god knows when Rockstar is going to release that.\u201d The future of content creation Muselk has grown past content creation, now heading up the Click Management talent agency in Australia. The brand has gone through numerous renditions over the years, including a gaming house that ended after just a few months, but it achieved one goal Watkins set out on after making his name on YouTube: giving opportunities to future Australian stars. \u201cWhen we first started it, the goal was to push YouTube content in Australia. There was literally no one [helping] and if I talked to others, they\u2019d say the same. It\u2019s been very rewarding to build out a service and do things that are helpful to a creator starting out,\u201d he said. It\u2019s not just the games that are evolving though. It\u2019s the platforms creators are promoting themselves on. Muselk isn\u2019t much of a livestreamer \u2014 although he is increasingly getting involved and professes a lot of respect for those who do it full-time. However, the future is in short-form videos like TikTok or YouTube Shorts and not the 10-minute algorithm pleasers. \u201cThe explosion of TikTok and shorts and all those things really plays off the ADHD we\u2019ve all got today, but it\u2019s definitely becoming a huge medium. All the content platforms are starting to realise this is what everyone is making and watching, and the space is really evolving,\u201d he explained. For Watkins, it\u2019s easy to look back in retrospect and admire the rise and rise. The end result has been the result of hard work \u2014 and a bit of luck \u2014 but there\u2019s no intention of slowing down anytime soon in the creator space. However, there was never the expectation to make it here, which makes the success that much sweeter. So, if he could go back to the start and tell his younger self something, he wouldn\u2019t give too much advice in making it big. He just wants to enjoy the ride again, just like he\u2019s done for the last eight years. \u201cThat\u2019s hard. \u2018Holy sh*t, what a ride, strap in\u2019 is what I\u2019d say, probably something along those lines,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How Muselk went from law school to building a YouTube empire Instagram: MuselkElliott \u2018Muselk\u2019 Watkins has that story you\u2019ve heard a number of times: a law school drop-out, he decided to take the plunge into content creation. Now more than half a decade on, he\u2019s one of the biggest faces on YouTube, and his empire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}