Meet Yahir Ponce

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yahir Ponce. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Yahir, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?
Being a creative person can be challenging sometimes, specially because you have to keep that spark of creativity going for as long as you can. Something that has helped keep my creativity alive has been music. I spend most nights locked in my room with my neon lights on, just listening to music and writing down all my ideas for creative projects that i want to do in the future. Music is a really important part in my life because it helps me visualize a story and make scenes in my head. If it wasn’t for music i would struggle to create a story.

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 knew i wanted to do something creative with my life ever since i was 14 years old. I saved up all my money one summer and bought my first camera, it was nothing fancy just a $200 Nikon from my local target. I would take my camera everywhere with me and film everything no matter how small it was. Being in high school and trying to pursue this dream of mine was hard because i wasn’t getting the support from my piers or friends and sometimes i would even get made fun of for making “Dumb little videos” I was never a bright kid when it came to school, i had really bad grades and constantly disappointed my parents. I hated being in class and spending all day in school, i was always thinking of how i would much rather be filming videos instead of sitting in a classroom. After I graduated high school i made the biggest decision of my life when i decided to drop out of college the night before my very first day. I knew i didn’t want to waste my time in school because i wanted to do something creative with my life. This was incredibly hard for me because i didn’t get the support from my parents and i felt like i really let them down, but i had dreams and a plan so i made it a mission to make them believe in me and support me. Now that school was no longer in my way, i dedicated to use all my time to make videos and post on social media for everyone to see, I was starting to get traction on my account and i reached an audience of 100 thousand followers on tiktok and that was the take off to my career. Shortly after i got a job as a videographer and editor for an upcoming youtuber in la and luckily because of that job i was able to buy my very first car at age 18 and this was a great accomplishment for me because Los Angeles is a very populated city and having no transportation, i would take 2 buses and 1 train just to get to work. After doing that job for a few months, i was offered an interview for a well known youtuber named Brent Rivera and shortly after i got a job with him and his company Amp Studios. I became the creative director of the youtube channel “Amp World” and after 2 years i was able to grow the channel from 1 million subscribers to now 4 million subscribers. I landed on my feet after a long journey and a lot of sacrifices, i was finally able to prove to my parents that i could make something out of my self without having to be in school, Creating stories and making videos is my deeply passion and it is something that i want to do for the rest of my life. The dream and goal one day is to make movies and tv shows. I won’t stop now and I will continue to work harder until I see my name on the big screen.

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?
1. Don’t let the opinion of someone else define you or your work. 2. Have fun with it (Don’t take it too seriously all the time)
3. Never stop creating

One thing I learned in my years of doing this is that people will always have an opinion or something to say about you and your work, don’t let that define or change you in any way, shape or form. Not everyone will see your vision or support your decisions. Don’t let that stop you from moving forward and pushing past your imagination. Don’t take it to serious, have fun with it because at the end of the day you’re making it happen for yourself and yourself only. Never stop creating or producing work.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Yes! I am always interested in collaborating with many like minded creatives/people. This can even be on something small like a photoshoot or video shoot, if you have a vision and want to make it come to life, let me help you! You can reach out to me on the platforms below:
Instagram: Yahir.films
Email: [email protected]

Contact Info:

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