SUBSCRIBE
081
07/01/2026

Bottlenecks and Broomsticks

Just make the video.

Alright!

Happy new year and all that. I hope you enjoyed the festivities and I hope you didn’t leave your tax return to the last minute… oh you did? Ok then get to it!

I don’t know if you follow me on instagram but in the run up to Christmas I tried to play the game. I really tried, I did.

Rewind… I listened to Georgie Mitchell (Georgina Rose Events) talk at FedWed Bristol about TikTok. She’s got about a zillion followers on there, and gets loads of views and gets free stuff and all that. Basically she’s played that game consistently and is winning.

Anyway she had a couple of lines that struck a chord with me:

1) Just make the video.

2) Each video is a lottery ticket, and why wouldn’t you just get a ticket?

So yeah. I tried to get some tickets.

I didn’t win the lottery. I’m sad to tell you that. TikTok eventually reduced me to under 100 views a video – that’s basically TikTok telling you nobody thinks you’re either interesting or funny so either do better or go home.

So I went home. To Instagram. And it was nice. My videos actually got views there.

I was about to say ‘but here’s the thing’ but unfortunately that’s now a dead giveaway of chatGPT writing, so I won’t say that.

But here’s the thing…

My videos only got shown to other photographers and videographers, all my engagement was from other photographers and videographers, and all my new followers (not many by the way – I lost as many as I gained) were other photographers and videographers.

I told myself I’d do 90 days, every day, stubbornly.

I didn’t do 90 days. I did 52 or something, then stuttered over the line with a couple of final videos before the new year. I’d had enough and honestly I grew to absolutely hate it.

I’m telling you this because I learned something, and this newsletter was always about me learning something and telling you about it, so this is that.

Did it work though?

So what did I learn?

  1. My idea for daily, easy, low quality videos didn’t work.
  2. On an account like mine where virtually all historical engagement is from industry peers, Instagram thinks that’s my audience and so doesn’t push my content towards an audience who might actually book me.
  3. Reels ABSOLUTELY get you more views from non-followers than posts.
  4. I felt like an absolute prize idiot every single day.
  5. I crafted a process to make my daily video in under 30 mins including set up, filming, editing, captions, optimising for instagram and posting.
  6. Eating 20+ boxes of mince pies makes the new year diet absolutely beyond necessary and the sugar withdrawal is real.

Remove the Bottlenecks.

So let’s talk about the bottlenecks and why removing them is absolutely key if you’re gonna do this consistently and not give up.

For me making those videos the bottleneck was setting up my camera, microphone and lighting. So I set everything up in my home gym right at the beginning of the experiment and I had a couple of fixed points in there (C-Stands) and a tripod, all with a smallrig quick release on, so I could quickly set up multiple shots. That meant the filming was rapid.

The next bottleneck was coming up with an idea every day. So instead I came up with a concept at the beginning (attempting to create a topical up to date hook) of “the never ending list of questions that chatGPT thinks you should be asking your wedding photographer” and every day I told it to give me a new question. It suggested ‘what if it rains’ about once every 3 days so it was a bit of a struggle, and I eventually optimised that bottleneck by one day sitting with chatGPT and making a spreadsheet of the 90 questions I’d answer in my 90 day trial period… and sometimes inspiration would strike and I’d come up with a concept/question of my own.

The last hurdle wasn’t necessarily a bottleneck, but posting the first video on instagram was GENUINELY one of the hardest things to do because I knew people I know would see it. That was one of the most anxiety-inducing days I’ve had in years. Palpitations, hyperventilation and cold sweats happened. And each day when I looked at the insights and saw that my video had been sent in a bunch of DM’s I knew that was people who know me sending to each other taking the mick out of me. But ho hum. That’s social media. That’s the game.

Go home you're boring.

So… it didn’t work for me probably due to my age, appearance and gender, combined with a lack of personality, charisma, humour and charm. But it may work for you. So try it. It’s character building, innit.

Funny aside story… the lottery ticket thing… When the national lottery first launched (yeah I was there) my mum asked me to pick 6 numbers for our ticket. So I did. And if you know me at all, you wont be surprised to know I put a lot of thought into those six numbers. So much thought that I never forgot them, and my slightly paranoid brain means that to this day I still play those numbers every Wednesday and every Saturday on a direct debit.

Maybe that’s why the lottery ticket analogy cut so deep.

What’s that? How much have I won by playing my numbers twice a week for the best part of 30 years?

Sorry I’m just going through a tunnel…

Thanks for reading, hopefully I’ll send more of these in 2026 than I did in 2025.

Adam

PS – You can watch Georgie’s full TikTokTalk if you’re a full member of FedWed.