Steven Petrov
The Paw Print
The true story of Jamal Edwards
Jamal Edwards, a 23-year-old Englishmen from West London, started a media empire through YouTube, which currently has a net worth of over 8 million British pounds. Most of us have never heard about his exceptional accomplishment, but his story deserves to be told so that young entrepreneurs see that their dreams can become a reality if they are persistent enough and never fear a potential failure.
Starting from a poor neighborhood in West London as a 15 year old amateur in social media, marketing, directing and shooting videos with no previous experience, the young Englishman used a cheap and amateur camera to start recording his friends performing and uploading the videos on YouTube so that the performers could access them easily. It would eventually turn out that the Christmas present that he received for that year, the camera, would lead him to owning the 8-million pounds and being the owner of the one of the most popular channels on YouTube, SBTV.
Jamal slowly progressed from recording only his friends to finding talented musicians who were on their way to succeeding in the Music World. Once he realized the business opportunity in front of him, the creative youngster went even further with his idea and passion. Jamal was keeping track of where and when some of the famous musicians were having a concert or show and was waiting for them in front of the clubs or halls just to make a 10-20 second video. This led to the slow but sure popularization of Jamal’s channel, SBTV, and it was not too long until the young entrepreneur contacted YouTube, for monetizing his online traffic through advertisements. The most popular online site for video sharing declined, on 3 occasions, Jamal’s request for a percentage of the advertisements on his channel, with the argumentation that YouTube was not sure if his videos were authentic and if he had plagiarized from somewhere else. Jamal’s persistence and dedication paid off in the end, after he was able to prove the authenticity of the videos and materials on his channel. His first paycheck was for 200 British pounds, for which Edwards says that was extremely excited. The SBTV has grown to a big online media company throughout the last couple years, and its founder has no intention of stopping the company’s development or just quitting with his current fortune. Jamal says that his next goal is the endless US market and believes that SBTV will continue its exponential growth.
When asked about his life and what it took him to become successful, Jamal talks about how it all comes down to your faith in your own abilities and the elimination of any possible fear of failure that you might have because the real failure would be to not try to do what you truly desire.
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