The message above is one I've gotten a lot over the past year from young Irish students who want to get started in the creative field. I'll share how I progressed through the years as I know a large number of my followers are from my art and NFTs in recent years.

I did a Business & Management degree at DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology) but I never went on to use my degree for a job. I did all the marketing and entrepreneurship modules. It's a good degree, but I feel most topics on the curriculum fail to keep up-to-date.

I know it will sound crazy to people to get a degree and not use it but education is heavily subsidized by the government in Ireland, so the majority of people go to college/university of some sort.

I'm 100% self-thought in everything creative. From learning Photoshop at about age 14 to all of the Adobe Suite and various 3D software like Blender. I learned everything I know through YouTube tutorials.

The only thing I used my college degree for was to get a J1 visa to the USA. It’s the number one thing I keep telling young Irish people to get the J1 visa and get the fuck out of Ireland. Even if it's just for a few months to broaden your mind. You're one of the few people in the world who can get a USA work visa so easily once you're an Irish student. You won't regret it!!

I was always very creative, I'd been using Photoshop since I was about 14 and I started video editing during college for fun to help with presentations. After college, I decided I'd move to Los Angeles on my own to work as a creative. I had no job or no idea what I was going to do. I built a website as my portfolio and I had a variety of different videos, graphic designs, and artworks I'd created over the years. I always advise people to build a website as a portfolio to showcase their work and act as their resume. Yes, social media is very important but a creative website with your own domain name will make you stand out a lot more.

I somehow managed to land a job on my first day as a video editor for a YouTuber in Downtown LA and I ended up working with him for 14 months; it was the greatest experience of my life. It was this experience in LA that completely shifted my mindset in so many ways.

I had such a fixed mindset from Ireland in thinking I needed to be qualified to do something for a career. No one gives a fuck about your college degree outside of Ireland. The fact I moved to LA on my own and was willing to work was enough for me to get interviews. I was never asked once what I did in college.

My whole work ethic changed in LA as I was surrounded by the most driven and dedicated people I've ever met in my life. I witnessed firsthand what it's like to actually put in the work and achieve your goals. I worked non-stop including Christmas day, New Year’s, etc. We never took a day off for about 8+ months I'd say. Some days I was in the gym at about 2 AM to get a workout in before work as I would often be working for 10+ hours a day. There's no way you could live like that long-term but you can put in 1-2 years of intense work and you'll be amazed at the outcome.

I understand now that you are never stuck in life. You have the whole world in the palm of your hand with your smartphone and can change your life with it. I could open up YouTube right now and search "how to get started with gardening". I don't know one thing about gardening but I know I could learn. If I dedicated about 5 years of my life to working on it every day I bet I could become a notable gardener. I now understand the level of work required to become great at something. (I'm not becoming a gardener I promise it's just an example :D).

I still meet people today who say they aren't where they want to be in life and I see them going out at the weekends, taking days off, and going on holidays. How the fuck can you do that when there's stuff to do. Makes zero sense to me.

I applied for the H1B visa while in LA and got selected in the visa lottery. This is a visa for foreign college graduates to work in the USA in a specific sector related to their college degree. I spent thousands on lawyer fees to ultimately get denied after a year of appealing the application. The US Emigration felt my role as head of content for a YouTube channel had no relevance to my college degree. I was devastated at the time but grateful it happened now and the path I took.

I remember the day I got my rejection letter. I went online and filled out all the paperwork to open a business in Ireland and had them mailed by lunchtime. It was the sign I needed to go full-time as an artist in Ireland. I was determined to succeed. I did everything from photography, video edits, and 3D music visuals, to graphic design. I was also selling my artwork and photography on the side on print-and-demand sites like Displate and Redbubble but it was impossible to make a living off the commissions on these websites.

After about 8 months of working with a variety of clients, I got contacted by Will Smith's social media agency called Westbrook and I worked on a number of really cool projects including going on tour with Tiësto to working with his company JUST Water.

I was convinced I was now going to have a big break and get some huge clients moving forward but then the pandemic hit.

I started to create more music visuals as I lost my in-person client work and gained the attention of mau5trap. This led to me working with a number of their artists including deadmau5 and Example and building a great relationship with their whole team which ultimately led to all my music/art NFT collaborations as they entered the NFT space at the same time as I did.

It was while researching new websites to sell my artwork that I found out about NFTs and crypto in 2020. That completely changed my life in being able to make a living solely off my art from then on.

My career as an artist has taken so many twists and turns and I'm so grateful for them all and where I am in life now. It's taken me years to get here but I couldn't be happier. Everything I learned through my business degree to all the social media content I created all payoff today in building my own brand name as an artist. It's been a great journey so far.