@erekosima43 on why taking risks with a plan beats chasing perfection

Lawrence Erekosima's Top Tips for Creators:

• Take risks…but have a plan
  
  "I think every creator needs a plan. I have a spreadsheet of every single thing I want to do mapped out — research points, links to viral content in my space, music I want to use. As long as you're executing that plan, that's success."

• Prioritize consistency over frequency
  
  "A bunch of Instagram gurus say post 365 days a year and as much as possible. I don't believe that. I post once a week, and it's high quality. You want consistent, good content — not burnout. And the good thing about a series is that it's bingeable. People can go back and watch everything."

• Just start — perfection is a trap
  
  "I've been wanting to do this since 2020. Finally, I told myself around October of last year — we're gonna plan this trip and just force it. The thing I'm most proud of isn't any specific episode. It's that I started. If you chase perfection, you're just gonna burn out."

Most people have a bucket list tucked away somewhere, maybe scribbled in a notes app or just living in the back of their mind. Lawrence Erekosima decided to turn his list into content.

Lawrence’s travel series, 100 Things Before I Die, follows him as he checks off increasingly wild adventures — from scaling a sky ladder to exploring China to running with bulls in Spain. The episodes are cinematic but simple, thrilling but personal. And they've resonated fast. Since posting his first reel only a few months ago in March 2026, Lawrence has grown his community to over 500K followers. His audience has shown their passion through their over 8 million interactions which includes shares, DMs, and suggestions in the comments on where he should go next.

We spoke with Lawrence to learn more about his creative approach and how he stopped overthinking and just started posting.

Calculated courage

Even though Lawrence gained followers quickly from his very first episode, it wasn’t without initial adversity. At the beginning, as Lawrence explains, “I definitely had to get out of my head. With self-doubt, the only way to deal with it is action. So you have to work. You have to move forward. And once you do that, then you realize, ‘Oh, okay, it's not that bad.’”

He further elaborates, saying “Most people see it as an overnight thing, but it was months and years of preparation and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. You know, I've had a lot of things on my bucket list that I wanted to do for years. All I had to do was start posting.”

What's most striking about Lawrence's approach is how intentional it is. Before he ever published anything, he spent months researching other creators, mapped out over 60 episode concepts in a spreadsheet, and studied how he could make his reels bingeable. He knew he wanted to develop a series after noticing top performing creators didn’t rely on one-off viral hits but rather built structure around their ideas.

For Lawrence, he also wanted to make sure he stayed consistent. “I didn't want to post, and then, you know, drop another reel two months later and then just continue that cycle - which is why at the end of my reels, I tell people about my next video so it holds me accountable.”

The creative formula

Lawrence doesn't leave creativity to chance. The beginning of his reels follows a structure: a hook to draw initial interest from viewers that are scrolling, a loop to keep people engaged, and then the series title with added context. "If I had to choose one thing that was most important, it would be storytelling. I think storytelling is three things: educational, entertaining, and emotional. With that, you should be able to tell a story about taking out the trash. I try to educate, entertain, and evoke some type of emotion in every reel," he says. "That's my creative process."

His editing style is minimal — something he credits, with a laugh, to still being a beginner editor. But it works. The simplicity keeps things authentic and gets straight to the point, which matters in a world where audiences can sniff out overproduction instantly.

Lawrence sees reposts as the ultimate signal of quality. "If someone thought enough about my content to repost it on their feed," Lawrence explains, "that means I did a good job."

Why Instagram?

Lawrence leans into some of Instagram’s newer features as part of his creative process and is a fan of Instagram's Edits app for music-driven storytelling and trial reels for experimentation.

"With trial reels, you can get amazing reach from people who would have otherwise never seen your content," he says. He uses trial reels to gauge how a piece of content will perform before it hits his main feed — testing content with different hooks and titles.