Taiwo Stanley Etinosa, popularly known as Dr. GD, spoke about his journey so far in the entertainment industry. He disclosed to the Guardian Life team how he has learnt and developed himself to be one of the best in the game of entertainment and content creation. Read the interview below.

How have all your work experiences contributed to your success today?
Experience they say is king and the best teacher, for, without experience, there is no success. 99% of everything I do at Dr. GD, I learnt them through experience. I never went to a film school to learn to make the videos I make today or tell the stories I tell today, rather I learnt them through trying. I made a lot of mistakes when I was just getting started in this industry and those mistakes are what I call experience, for they helped me become better at my craft and ultimately helped put me where I am today. With that said, it is safe to say that experience has greatly contributed to my success today.

What influence does your upbringing have on your career journey?
Growing up was fun and tough at the same time. But I guess the tough part taught me to not be lazy and never let any opportunity pass me by. I grew up in a very humble home. My parents were very good disciplinarians, they taught me so much about life, and the good training they impacted me with has always been helpful to me in my personal life and career.

What challenges do you face as an actor and skit maker?
There are lots of challenges I face as a content creator, but funny enough, I can only think of a few right now. One is meeting up with fans’ demands. I have realised that the more you give, the more people want, and most people do not even know what we go through to bring this content to them on a regular basis. This is one of the reasons you see most contents creators nowadays push out bad content just to meet up the demand from the audience for weekly content. Thanks to God, my case has been different. So far, I have been able to consistently push out quality contents to my amazing followers. I am currently pushing out 3 contents per week and all these videos are doing well on social media. As hard and challenging as it may be, I am super happy for always being able to keep up with the demands. The second thing would be Restricted Freedom. I do not even need to say much on this as every popular person faces this. I guess it is what we all signed up for.

After the pause in your education, have you done back to it?
In one word, “No” and here is why: I do not feel like I need to go back, and before I elaborate further, I would love to say that I did not pause my education, but I paused “School Education” to embrace another form of Education (Informal Education) and I have since discovered that Education is everywhere. So, I now learn by trying.

What has been your greatest achievement through your career and why?
My greatest achievement so far is seeing my inspirational contents reach millions of people from around the world and help inspire and change the lives of many while at the same time putting smiles on the faces of millions of people with my comedy videos. This has always been my biggest dream since my first day of making content many years ago.

If you could change something about the entertainment industry in Nigeria, what would it be?
The Nigerian entertainment industry has grown enormously in the past couple of years, and there have been lots of positive changes. Nonetheless, I still believe that we deserve more than we currently get in terms of value. If I could change that, I would surely do and as a matter of fact, I am working on creating more value for myself and other entertainers in the Nigerian Entertainment industry.

What has been the biggest hurdle for you to cross so far?
Time and people management. As a content creator, you are always going to find yourself working with people and working with a deadline, effectively managing these two has been some of the hardest tasks for me as a creator and most time serve as obstacles. However, I am thankful to God for giving me the strength to always keep up.

What do you plan to do differently as an entertainer in the Nigeria scene?
Everything! It is safe to say that everything about me and what I do is different. This is because before I came into this industry, I noticed that almost everyone was doing the same thing, telling the same stories, making the same genre of contents (Comedy), and I wasn’t happy with this, so I decided that I was going to do something different and I am happy that I have successfully done it. In the beginning, it was almost impossible for me to succeed in my niche as most people in Nigeria paid more attention to or only enjoyed consuming comedy content. This was a big problem for me, so to solve it, I decided to create a balance by making my content a bridge between Tragedy and Comedy; Fiction and Reality, and lucky for me, it worked.

How do you develop yourself as an individual and how do you develop your craft?
My parents taught me a lot of self-development skills and I have grown to learn a lot more through life experience that has always helped me in developing myself. As per how I develop my craft, I will just say I develop them through the process I call CTAD (Creative Thinking and Doing).

How has the evolving digital world affected your work?
Humans naturally are afraid of change, but I am one of the few humans who rather than being afraid embrace change and make it profitable. I love the way the digital world is evolving, and as a matter of fact, evolution is one of the many things that help me achieve my dreams as a Content Creator, and I wish I could elaborate on that, but that is a story for another day.

What do you want people to know you for?
I want the world to know me as a paragon of change and the preacher of love who helped change the lives of millions of people and gave the heartbroken reasons to laugh out loud.

How do you keep healthy physically and mentally?
Health they say is wealth. One of the things I do not joke with is my health though most of the time in a bid to keep up with the demands of my fan, I overwork myself. But regardless, I do try to stay as healthy as possible by eating good food, consistently exercising, doing lots of mental exercises, and Gaming, etc.