00:00So my name is Tarek, I'm at the life of Mr T on TikTok and on my social media.
00:05I'm from Sheffield, I'm born and bred in Sheffield, I've lived here my whole life.
00:09I left Sheffield when I went to university and when I graduated from university but eventually
00:15came back here and so back in my hometown and yeah it's my favourite place, I love Sheffield.
00:21So it's not a career I ever expected I would be in, prior to being on social media I worked for
00:27a building society in mortgages so a completely whole different field of work and I actually
00:33loved that job. If anyone ever asked me if I was going to leave that job to do something like what
00:37I'm doing now I probably would have said never because I genuinely absolutely loved that job
00:42but events happened and kind of it just naturally happened for me. The kind of way I got into
00:50TikTok and kind of social media being my full-time job now where that I started sharing
00:55kind of my life and struggles that I was going through with like my weight and mental health and
01:01I thought if I could just help one person by sharing what I was going through then it'll be
01:06worthwhile and before I knew it I started my account with you know zero followers and within
01:12a couple of months I was like got to my first 10,000 followers and then it went up and up and
01:17up from there and I was just like how is this possible like it's amazing people were just
01:21kind of resonating with me and and the content I was sharing they were kind of connecting with
01:28and I found my audience and they were loving what I was sharing and it kind of just spiraled from
01:33there to what it is today which has literally changed my life. The reason that I knew that I
01:37was about to make it work were that my income become consistent and it was just growing bigger
01:42and bigger and actually I knew it was going to be financially viable because there was a month
01:47where I earned my annual salary from my nine to five job in in one month and and that one month
01:53changed my life and continues to do so and it just continues to grow from there so people don't
01:58realize social media is a real job and you can make a lot of money from it and if you're consistent
02:02and you share high quality content and you find your audience of who connects with the type of
02:08content you create then then you can absolutely make it into a career and make amazing opportunities
02:13from it you know I had a tough time in Sheffield growing up actually especially as a gay male
02:17you know school wasn't the most pleasant experience for me with bullies and and kind of
02:23going through all of that and coming out as a gay man at that age in school and secondary school
02:29and stuff so I do feel that that has helped me grow the resilience that I've got today though
02:34because it's helped me kind of become thick-skinned if you like and you you have to be when you're on
02:40social media there's a lot of there's no filters for a lot of people on social media so
02:45you have to be thick-skinned and and kind of I think all of those experiences that weren't pleasant
02:50have helped me kind of shape what I am today and actually make me become a stronger person
02:57and that's been amazing but my school and kind of my teachers and and the experiences that I had
03:02there I'm still in touch with some of them you know they they've they inspired me and so
03:07everything that I do I just hope that I can inspire other people to
03:11believe that actually if they want to achieve something if they want to you know do what I've
03:16done or if there's other creators that people follow online where they aspire to be similar
03:20to them then it's possible like if it can happen to me it can happen to anybody.
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