My Story
Mr. Williams is staring at me from across the room.
I'm 16, at the back of the class, editing on my phone. Tone curves. Split toning. A photograph I took at the zoo last weekend with my dad's camera. The teacher is walking toward me and I'm already calculating the consequences. Detention, probably. Phone call home. Maybe both.
He takes the phone.
End of class, I walk up to collect it, tail between my legs. He looks at the image. Then at me. "Will, who took this photograph?"
I said me. Explained the zoo, the borrowed camera, the buttons. He said okay, okay, okay. And then he gave me a challenge. Three photography tasks. Come back with the images. Don't text in class again.
I walked out without a detention. And with something I couldn't name at the time: permission to take this seriously.
My three older sisters went to Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard. And there I was with a camera in my hand saying this is it for me.
The next two years, I shot anything that would let me. School portraits. Weddings. A bakery down the road. By 18 I'd launched a production company. By 19 I was in Edinburgh. By 20 I was on trains between Scotland and London, shooting for a startup CEO, not really sure where any of it was going.
Where it went: a referral to a man called Jack Sylvester, co-founder of Diary of a CEO. He was looking for a filmmaker for a new channel. Seven days a week. Film everywhere. Document an entrepreneur in real time.
It sounded like the thing I'd been building toward without knowing it.
Then he asked where I was based.
Edinburgh.
He said: oh, damn.
I spent two hours on the text I sent after that call. It went something like: this opportunity is more important to me than my degree. I'll relocate next week. Please know my priority is to start.
Wednesday I sent it. Wednesday the offer came. Friday I dropped out. The Wednesday after, I was in London.
Three years. 54 flights in 54 weeks. 50 episodes. 13 million views. Boardrooms, greenrooms, stages, 2am car rides. I was in the room for all of it.
But that isn't what I learned.
What I learned is what most people never see. The handwritten notes the night before. The ten-minute pause before walking on stage. The version of the person no audience ever meets. The quiet, private work that makes the public moment look effortless.
That's the thing I found I cared about. Not the polished output. The engine room behind it.
I left in 2025. Not because anything went wrong. Because I'd learned what I came to learn, and the next version of the work had to be mine.
Now I run my own Youtube Channel, Will Perez, and focus on telling exceptional stories; with brands, people, places and more. I operate as an embedded storyteller studio for founders, artists, and brands who want the real version of their story told. I document what I'm building in public through BTS with Will where I work as a creator
Will x