Like many content creators, Zhong has forged his own path to digital success. We interviewed Zhong to unravel some of his personal details and learn how he works behind the camera.
Zhong, tell me a bit about yourself?
So my name is Zhong (I’m Chinese by the way). I’m currently 19 years old and I was raised in China until I was 7. Following that, my mother and I moved to Scandinavia. To be more precise, we actually moved to Denmark then to Sweden. One day when I was studying and learning in Swedish, I decided I wanted to see myself neatly dressed up in a suit and go work as a banker. Most kids would say that’s stupid right? But to me, that was my boring future goal. Later on in high school I started making videos when I about 18 years old. I actually ended up dropping out of high school to make more videos and to travel around the world learning from other online creator friends that I had made at the time.
I would say I’m a calm person, even though at times when you watch my videos you wouldn’t think so. It’s because I like to make videos with plenty of high energy. When you create something entertaining or funny for other people to watch, it should have good energy.
How do you organise your time?
I try my best to be as organised as possible. Because I have weekly goals such as posting 3 times a week on my YouTube channel and on my other social media platforms. But YouTube is harder because you need to have good ideas and I order products for my videos. That takes planning and advanced preparation ahead of time so it can be recorded and edited days before the actual publication date. I really have to make sure I plan everything days before. I always plan at night then film during the day, so I suppose that’s how I really organise my time and everything.
What do you think is your greatest strength?
My greatest strength is probably that I never give up on something I’m really interested in. I like to do a lot of research into things I find really interesting and I always want to improve and keep growing. I hate standing still.
How do you get ideas for the content on your Instagram profile or in your YouTube videos?
To start creating my ideas, I talk to my roommates – and they also make videos. We’ll talk about what’s trendy and what we can do to improve to spin off an idea. Sometimes it means we just make a trendy video if we really don’t have clear ideas.
We also watch other people’s videos for inspiration. Since so many ideas have already been taken in the video production world, you just have to either make a video better or create a fun twist from that initial idea.
Here is one of the videos picked by our editors:
What has been your most successful post or video? Why do you think it was appealing?
I think it’s the challenges and pranks I do with my best friends. Everyone has close friends and they like to see us messing around with each other doing stupid stuff because you wouldn’t really do that if you weren’t making videos. I mean, I guess you might do small pranks on each other, but not to the same scale present in some of our videos since we actually spend decent amounts of money on it.
How do you attract new viewers?
It’s hard to say. You’ve just got to hope that YouTube or Instagram pushes your content out to others. That’s how you do it. Short and simple, there are no tricks to it really.
Where do you see yourself in the next five years
In 5 years, I really hope I can be happy because I’m not currently happy with where I’m at and I think I can do better and work harder.
I'm a New York-based journalist covering business, celebrity and entertainment news at Josep Vinaixa. I hold a master's degree from New York University of Journalism.