Elzthewitch: How a lifelong hobby propelled her to stardom

The Journey To Youtube…

To be honest, the initial wave of Youtube passed me by. The growth and popularity of it really took off whilst I was at university and during that time, my sole focus was on passing my exams. So, there was a five to six year period where I was completely out of the loop with everything – even video games! I first picked up a Playstation 1 controller when I was about eight years old. I fell in love with Final Fantasy VII at the time and continued gaming for a good few years but even that had to be put to one side when adult life came knocking.

Technology has always been my speciality so once I got my degree in IT, I went into a job at IBM where I would do all their project management for banks and although I was good at my job, it gave me the stability that everyone looks for and everything was going to plan, I just had this feeling of being slightly underwhelmed by it all. Despite working so hard to get there, I ultimately came to realise that this wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. It felt like, up until that point, I’d done everything to please those around me – my parents, teachers at school – doing all the things that people expect you to do and I just felt flat. I wasn’t enjoying myself.

I’m the kind of person who likes to stay busy and motivated, and at that time in my life the 9-5 just wasn’t serving me so I made a massive decision. Having saved up for six months, I handed in my notice and completely switched up my career. In 2018, I made my first appearance on Rinse FM where I was given my own talk show. Presenting was something I’d never experienced before but I just fell in love with it! Being able to talk and communicate with people was something that, until then, I never thought I would do. I’ve always been quite an introverted person but there’s something about talking into a microphone or to a camera that just feels different.

If I was going to make this a viable career though, I needed to stand out because it’s such a saturated market that can be really difficult to break into. It took me about 4 months of racking my brain and by this point, my savings had pretty much run out. One morning, I was laying in bed at 3am stressing about my life choices when suddenly it hit me; I’m a gamer! I thought back to that eight year old playing Final Fantasy VII. That’s what I’ve always loved and that’s what I needed to get back to! I call myself an undercover geek. I’m a tech nerd and I love gaming but you wouldn’t necessarily expect that from me so that was my USP – squashing the stereotype of what a female gamer is.

After researching the market, I spent the next four months completely fixated on every aspect of what it takes to create a Youtube Channel; from sorting out my branding to learning how to edit videos and even how to make a computer. All of this before officially launching my own channel.

Youtube As A Business…

First and foremost, I absolutely love what I do. Gaming has always been something that I’m passionate about and to be able to take something that I love and apply a business approach to it has been so crucial to me in avoiding complacency which is something I’m terrified of doing. With my background in IT and then moving into a project management role, the demands were always so high. You’re managing people, you’re having KPIs (key performance indicators), reviewing your progress – it was all such valuable experience and ingrained this sense of structure into my brain which is why I’ll never regret those years of my life. Even to this day, I’ll wake up at 6:50am, go to the gym, have breakfast and then give myself the whole day to focus on my work even though technically, I don’t need to do that.

I think approaching Youtube, or any sort of content creation from a business perspective has given me an advantage in so far as it allows me to take a step back and ask myself “what do I need to do to keep this going?”. Not a day goes by where I’m not thinking ahead. It would be very easy to rest on my laurels and assume that I don’t need to work today because everything’s going great, but if I were to maintain that mindset on a daily basis then, six months from now, things won’t be so great. It’s up to me to keep that momentum going.

Moving Into Sport…

My life is all about challenging myself. I used to be a really anxious person but one piece of advice someone gave me was to just be open to new things. It’s usually better to say “yes” to an opportunity than to turn it down because it ends up building into this big mental block that you’re scared to confront. So, once I was confident with Youtube, I tried my hand at presenting. Football was never something that I thought I’d move into but I believed in myself and managed to progress in that field. One of my first big presenting jobs was actually on stage at the O2 hosting the FIFAe World Cup in 2019. My segment was only one minute long but it was a completely new experience for me – I was wearing an earpiece, talking to camera with a live audience in the building. It was all very surreal and mentally, I just had to envision myself sat at my desk, in my office because that’s the environment that I became so familiar with. Live streaming doesn’t make me nervous at all because it’s so easy to forget how many people are actually watching you, but when you can see all their faces, there’s no hiding.

Since then, things have just got bigger and bigger and I’ve had so many great experiences in football. Last year, I was out in Istanbul for the UEFA Champions League Final which was amazing! I got to see Man City lift the European Cup and then I flew back to Manchester to host backstage at the players’ treble parade. This is honestly bucket list stuff but again, I’m not content unless I’m somehow challenging myself. That’s why you may have seen me making some content for Boxxer at the fight between Joshua Buatsi and Dan Azeez. Similar to football, I’ve been interested in boxing for a long time but it’s not something I’m particularly knowledgeable about… yet. I’m under no illusions that the boxing world can be pretty militant about presenters knowing their stuff – you can’t fake it. They’ll spot you a mile off. But this particular opportunity was proposed as a kind of behind-the-scenes peek into what it’s like at a Boxxer event. Taking the viewer on a bit of a journey and chatting to some fighters. I think that’s a really good way of getting into a new space without making any claims of being the most informed person ever as soon as I walk in the door.

Barriers In A Male Dominated World…

This is something I’ve experienced throughout my life. Obviously, most people will either know me from my gaming channel on Youtube or the work that I’ve done in football. Both of these industries are very male dominated and they came with a lot of hurdles for me. As I’ve said, I’ve loved gaming since I was a little girl but even then I’d get questioned as to why I was into it. None of my female friends were gamers so in the end it just became something I never spoke about with anyone until I got older.

Becoming an adult and starting to create content around gaming, people would say “she doesn’t look like she’d be into video games”. Gaming was starting to gain a lot of popularity online so I think the assumption was that I was jumping on the bandwagon just to get followers or just to appeal to men. The possibility of me being an actual gamer with a real passion for it was lost on some people and so I found myself having to prove my worth a lot of the time. Proving that I have just as much gaming knowledge as anyone else and that it was a genuine interest of mine.

This leads on to one massive issue in the gaming community which is the abuse that women suffer from strangers online, especially over the voice chat, simply for being a woman. It’s something that I try to shine a light on as much as I can and I had the privilege of working with Sky in their #NoRoomForAbuse campaign which really highlighted the extent of a problem which so many female gamers out there can relate to.

When it comes to football, I’ve always been very transparent about the fact that I wasn’t very knowledgeable about it when I first started working in the sport. I’d always had an interest in it but not having that confidence in my own knowledge made me second-guess myself at the start. I’d let people’s opinions get to me. You’d think coming from the gaming world, I’d have been prepared for similar kinds of issues in football but to be honest the scrutiny that is on you as a female in men’s football is a completely different world – especially now, as certain voices are putting a spotlight on it. There’re a lot of men online who think that women don’t belong in the sport. Again, I’d have to prove my knowledge with these niche facts just to satisfy someone else, and then when I did that they would resort to “you’re only there because you’re good looking” or “you’re only there because you flirted with someone” – it’s just constant. And although I delve into football, it’s not my full time job so I can only imagine what it’s like for female presenters or pundits who have to deal with that on a regular basis.

In my life, it seems to be one thing after another but I’ve thrived off people second-guessing me. I love proving people wrong so ultimately I don’t let it affect me. I know what I’m capable of and that’s what’s got me to where I am today.

Advice For The Younger Generation…

The first piece of advice I would give to anyone who wants to create content is to literally just start! I think people tend to worry too much about being perfect or comparing themselves to other creators who’ve been doing it for a decade. Don’t look at what other people are doing too much. Your first video probably won’t be as high quality as the creators you watch but you have to get the ball rolling. For me, my first video was terrifying! I was so nervous and I did put it off for a while because taking that leap of faith can be scary. Once you do it though, you learn on the spot. They say when you’re learning to drive a car, you don’t really learn until you’ve passed your test and you’re on your own in the car – content creation works in the same way. You can do all the research, look at other creators, play around with video ideas but you won’t actually learn anything until you start uploading and seeing results from your videos. You really don’t need the perfect setup, and the perfect camera – you just need to get your content out there.

 Something which I’ve talked about a lot here is the opinions of others. Everyone on social media has an opinion about everything and they love to share it. I think it’s so important not to listen to those outside voices. I know it’s a lot easier said than done but just always remember that you are where you need to be and the most important thing is that you like the content you’re making. If you’re happy with the content, if you’re enjoying what you’re making and you believe that the content is good, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks – just do it for you! Don’t be embarrassed about it. Don’t worry about other people’s opinions. I often find that a lot of the time, people’s negative opinions are just a reflection of their own feelings and their own lives so you’re much better off blocking out the noise or, even better, flipping it and using it as motivation to prove everyone wrong.

What’s next for Elz the Witch?...

In the last few years I’ve done a lot of presenting so at the moment I’m taking some time to focus on my online presence again. I feel like it’s very hard to balance the two but everyone knows how much I love creating content. I’m just upgrading my whole setup at the moment and continuing to stream twice a week.

I’m really excited because this year, I’ve been asked to be an ambassador for Playstation which is something I would love to go back and tell my eight year old self! She wouldn’t believe it! My whole life has revolved around the Playstation 1 and Final Fantasy VII so this is an enormous privilege. I’m doing various campaigns this year but one of the main ones will be The Road To Wembley for the UEFA Champions League Final (fingers crossed Man City are in it) so it should be another really exciting year!

You can catch Elz the Witch on her Youtube channel and across social media at @ElztheWitch or listen to her radio show on Kiss Fresh every Saturday from 4pm.