Meet Luca Knibbs

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Luca Knibbs. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Luca below.

Hi Luca, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

During my first year or so working full-time in the creative industry, I’ve found that feeling of imposter syndrome isn’t exactly something that you can just get rid of; it’ll most likely follow me through the a large portion of my career. Finding ways to understand the feeling and manage the resulting emotions, whilst not allowing it to stop me from achieving my goals, has been the most effective method I’ve found to keep imposter syndrome under control.

In college, I was lucky in the sense that I had mentors with prior experience in the industry and who were very open about the struggles that they had faced along their own journeys. A topic that I recall popping up time and again was that of imposter syndrome. More specifically, the fact that it’s something everyone feels at certain points throughout their career.

My own personal struggles with imposter syndrome usually come from the fact that, as I’m more often than not the youngest person in the room during meetings or filming sessions, I’ve found it very easy to resort back to that mentality of: ‘I’m on a lower professional level than those around me’ and ‘I don’t deserve to be here’. Whenever I find myself subconsciously reaffirming this ‘imposter’ mentality, I try to reassure myself of the fact that I haven’t just found myself where I am. I’ve worked hard at refining a skillset and have developed enough of a professional relationship with the individuals whom I find myself working alongside to be here, no matter the number of years of experience I have.

I think that the ability to motivate yourself and maintain a high level of personal confidence really is the most important thing in overcoming imposter syndrome. However, I’m certainly not trying to say that it’s a good thing to disregard experience entirely; those who are seasoned in a certain craft have spent time learning the ins and outs of what it is they do and deserve great respect for the amount of knowledge they’ve gathered over the years. Advice from someone like this can be invaluable, and going out to make connections and learn from them really is crucial. I also think that it’s vital for us to believe that our own ideas can be as brilliant as someone with double the amount of experience as us, so it’s greatly important to fight that feeling of inferiority to the best of our abilities.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m 20 years old and freshly out of college, with this past year or so being my first working full-time without being enrolled in any form of education. I worked as a social media manager and then as a user interface designer for a virtual tour company that goes by the name of EyeSpy360, before leaving to pursue my dream of becoming a full-time videographer and video editor.

Since then, I’ve gone on to set up a video production company called Elm Visuals, with the help of Eddie Zivkovic, a good friend of mine from college. So far this year, we’ve had the chance to work on a range of projects which include short films with London Wildlife Trust, motorsport content with multiple racing clubs at circuits such as Silverstone, and matchday content at stadiums such as The Hawthorns and Loftus Road.

Ever since I started editing videos in secondary school, my dream has been to be able to create video content for a living. After taking the plunge into self-employment earlier this year, I’ve been working as hard as I can at building a foundation to make sure I’m able to achieve what I set out to originally. As the main motivation has never been monetary, but instead a desire to create something high in quality that really resonates with people, I think it’s allowed me to work harder without burning out.

Whilst we’re still at the early stages, Elm Visuals has begun to grow into something I’m proud to be involved in. It has found a style of video production that there seems to be a market for but, most importantly, retains the core reason as why it came about in the first place: to help people portray a message and set of emotions through the medium of video.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three abilities that I believe have helped me out the most in my journey so far would have to be: having a good work ethic, having a willingness to be persistent and, something that I’ve had to learn over the last year, the ability to properly structure a day without any outside guidance.

I believe a good work ethic comes not only from a determination to push through hardship or boredom, but from finding something that you’re happy to put the time towards. Finding motivation to keep going will always be tough but it’s made that much easier when you know your effort is going towards something worthwhile.

Persistence is also extremely important in getting what you want. Both in terms of how you deal with setbacks – whether you take them as motivation or let them deflate you – and how far you’re willing to go to achieve your goals. For me, the problem around persistence that I had to focus on rectifying, stemmed from the worry of appearing annoying if I was too ‘pushy’ when trying to find work or gain experience. Cold emailing and cold calling were practices that I really had to build myself up to begin engaging in.

Finally, structuring my days without a ready-made timetable has been a difficult skill to learn. When I was employed full-time, I knew I’d have to get up just before 7 if I wanted to make it to the gym before work. I knew I’d have 3 hours to relax before bed, once I got back home. Now it’s my responsibility to decide what jobs are most important to get done each day, to then decide how long they might take and build a to-do-list or mini-timetable of sorts to structure my own day around. I find it’s extremely important to know what you’re doing each day, otherwise it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or directionless.

What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?

My biggest area of growth over the past year would have to be in relation to my confidence. Throughout my school years, I had pretty overwhelming social anxiety and, unless surrounded by good friends, generally kept myself to myself.

Certainly the most intimidating part of starting a business of my own has been the vast networking requirements. In the past, meeting new people was something that I generally always avoided when possible. However, I learned quickly into my journey of growing Elm Visuals that this was not going to work if I wanted to achieve what I had envisioned for the company.

Slightly cliche, but the hardest time is always the first. The first meeting with a client was extremely nerve-racking, as was the first networking event, as was the first cold call. The more you repeat these things, the easier they become. Whilst many of these things can still be intimidating, I always try to envision where my confidence will be in another year or so from now, should things continue the way they are.

In this sense, I believe that Elm Visuals as a project has almost done more for me than I’ve done for it. Everything I’ve put into it, I’ve got something of equal value back; it’s most definitely a cycle that I’d like to continue.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://elmvisuals.co.uk
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elmvisualss/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElmVisuals
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elm-visuals/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ElmVisualss
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ElmVisuals