Back in 2012, our YouTube video of a guy swimming with his pet polar bear had featured (very briefly) in Google’s Year in Search zeitgeist video. It was a huge deal for our tiny company.
And because the video was getting watched a lot, we started getting monthly cheques from YouTube.
The truth is that running a business is like surfing. It's a lot about turning up consistently, making choices about what to try, carefully timing your efforts and learning from your mistakes.
But, as long as you make it back to shore, you live to surf another day.
Buyers want new suppliers to offer them something that is high risk enough to also be high reward.
Once I figured this out, I managed to get work with new customers time and again by offering them content that wasn't available via anybody else which also had breakthrough hit potential.