- Hey everybody, so I'm here in New York City,
I'm in Tribeca right now
getting ready to head to 368.
I'm gonna be doing my speaking session there.
- Hi.
- [Roberto] Hey, how's it going?
- Good, how are you?
- [Roberto] Doing good.
- Hi.
- [Roberto] What up, what up?
- You are frozen.
- [Roberto] Yup, I'm an icicle.
Hey everybody.
(group greeting)
Anybody here not frozen to death?
- [Man 1] No dude, everyone well, we got here on time, so.
- Happy evening.
Thank you for joining us tonight here at 368.
Let's give up a round of applause
for this beautiful space, all the people that they've
allowed us to host and create here.
So, thank you very much.
Thank you for joining us offline on this chilly
Monday evening.
And we are Creators Offline.
And Creators Offline was an idea that Genki over here had
where he just wanted to create, whoo.
(applause)
we really wanted to find a community of upcoming
and smaller creators, so just kind of mingle.
I'll let him tell ya more but until then
I'm Kelsey, I'm your MC for the evening.
And I'm the graphic designer here at Creators Offline.
So, yeah, take us away.
- Well, thank you.
So, like Kelsey started to say,
I had this idea of trying to bring together
a community of creators of all kinds,
I know a lot of you are video creators,
but I'm really happy to have everyone here
who considers themselves a
creative person or a creator,
and I'm really excited,
like already so many of you have thanked me
for making this happen,
but really it wasn't me,
it was a lot of you who made this happen.
And I'm excited for you to meet each other
and get to be in this space.
So I won't drag this out to long.
I want to introduce our first speaker,
started off in the world of graphic design,
creating himself a company,
used YouTube to help make that company bigger.
You may know him Roberto Blake.
(applause)
- What's up everybody?
How's is going 368?
(applause)
That's what I like to hear.
So first of all give yourself a round of applause
for coming out here in the cold
'cause like I can't stand the cold.
(applause)
So that was a great introduction.
For those of you who may not be familiar,
actually quick show of hands,
who here is not familiar with me?
It's okay don't be shy.
Alright awesome wow.
Well that's super flattering
that almost nobody here is not familiar with me,
that's cool that's different.
So anyway my name is Roberto Blake.
I'm a creative, I'm an entrepreneur.
Came from the world of graphic design, advertising.
I think that gave me a huge advantage
starting out in YouTube.
Play to your strengths people play to your strengths.
I cannot stress that enough.
Today's talk is something that I think
is the overall theme of my channel.
Always be creating.
That is my motto, that is my philosophy in life.
Always be creating.
Now a lot of you have heard me say
create something awesome today.
At the beginning and the end of all my videos.
It's not just something that I say
to motivate and inspire you,
it is a life philosophy that I held
that I adopted during my time struggling with
my own depression and my anxiety,
and I think ultimately it saved my life and my sanity.
Because I realized that one thing I could control
every single day is that I could create something.
Whether anybody was looking whether anybody cared,
I could create something that I was proud to
sign my name to at the end of the day.
And that is something that I think really matters.
I think as creators a lot of you get discouraged very easily
by the idea of the fact that you may not have an audience,
or you haven't found your audience yet.
But more important than finding your audience,
you need to find your voice.
And does anyone here struggle with finding their voice?
Do they not know what they wanna create?
Or what they wanna do?
Show of hands and don't be shy and keep them up.
I want you to look around real quick.
Keep those hands up.
Understand that you are not alone,
and that is not some unique struggle to you.
Everybody goes through it at some point in their journey.
But I'm gonna tell you,
do you guys wanna know how you find your voice?
Wanna know?
- [Audience] Yeah!
- Okay, it's actually simpler than you might think.
Find something to yell about.
Find something to scream about.
Whether it's something that your screaming about
because you're excited.
Whether you're screaming because you're angry and upset
and it's an injustice in the world
like the freaking iPod battery not working properly.
And then you end up getting a viral video
because we're here in 368
because K.C kept making videos about things
that he was passionate about.
Whether it was something that he thought was unfair,
like bike lanes or Apples dirty little secret with the iPod.
It was him making something because he felt something.
And guess what happened?
It turned out that a couple of other people,
sometimes thousands sometimes millions of people
also cared.
And nobody here is so out there that you have an idea
or something that zero people are going to care about.
It might feel that way in your head,
but if you take a look around, if you take a look around
the reality is that someone in this room
cares about some of the same things that you care about.
But I'll tell you what the problem is.
Some of you are not going to trust in that,
and instead you're going to try and make a video
that you think other people like,
or that will be a viral video,
or that will go big or that will be mainstream
or that will be popular,
when all you had to do
was just remember to find your voice
and you'll find an audience of people
that want to have that voice shared,
because it's the same thought in their head
you just had the guts to express it before they did.
And that will resonate with people.
You wanna know how people grow?
And how they build communities?
Because people who care about what you care about
will share that thing with other people that care about it
that you could've never reached.
You are less at the mercy of an algorithm
than you are at the mercy of the voice in your own head.
Everything that you think and that you believe
is stopping you.
Whether it's the algorithm or the advertisers
or feeling even sometimes like
you're at the mercy of your own audience.
You're at the mercy of the voice inside of your head
that's holding you back and making excuses
for you not creating the thing that you know in your gut
is the right thing for you to make.
Because somehow you got into your head
that there's no value in creating something
if nobody sees it.
And that's a load of bull.
That's a load of bull.
And I can tell you that.
And I can tell you that not only because
I made a thousand plus videos on YouTube,
and it might sound like that's easy for you to say Roberto,
you have an audience
of hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Guess what, that doesn't make it any easier
to follow through on creating.
If anything it means that when I decide to create something,
or when I decide to open my mouth,
I'm thinking about what uncle Ben said.
I'm thinking with great power comes great responsibility,
and I'm double questioning every single move I make.
And then guess what happens?
I'm doing it anyway.
Because at the end of the day,
I'm doing it as much for myself as for any one else
because I'm only making the content that I really believe in
because at the end of the day,
I'm making content for someone like me.
Someone like me.
And it just so happens that as lonely as I was as a kid,
as much as I thought that I was a misfit and an outcast
and an exile I'm not standing in a room full of people
who probably had that same thought at some point.
And that's a really dope thing to come to a realization.
I hated getting up in front of people as a kid,
on stages like this or anything like that
because I thought I was gonna get picked on,
and I often was.
And now to find myself in a place with like minded people
because I finally had the guts to do something
that really mattered to me.
Something that I thought was cool
and decided you know what when I started
making content on YouTube in the summer of 2013.
It was mostly tutorials.
Because what I wanted to pass on a skill that I had.
I went to a small community college in a small town
and I did graphic design and advertising.
And you know what?
I was like it'd be really cool
if I take everything that I learn that let me get a job
in this industry and if I gave it away for free.
Because there's some kid somewhere
that is going to not have the money to go to school,
even a community college,
I didn't have the money to go to a fancy school.
I worked my butt off and I got horrible grades
because I was working a double shift
or would leave in the middle of a class
to go to the store and work
so that I could have the money to pay to be there.
And that like sucked.
And I got criticized for a lot of things
because I didn't do the traditional path.
And it occurred to me that somebody has it worse,
and so I'm gonna give free content out on the internet,
I'm gonna use this dope platform called YouTube
and I'm just gonna give this stuff away
and if somebody happens to stumble across it
in the search engine, cool.
They just got a free education
that could maybe change their life,
or might give them access to a new skill,
or something that gives them a career.
And that was dope.
And then a lot of people like you kept asking me questions.
And so I kept digging through my experience or my history,
and just kept giving out everything that I know
happily away for free,
and I had no expectation of an audience.
I had no expectation of making a bunch of money
on ad revenue.
I wasn't thinking that I'm gonna get brand deals out of this
what I was thinking was,
how valuable would this have been to a young Roberto
if this had existed?
Doesn't that deserve to exist?
Isn't that enough?
So always be creating always be creating.
A-B-C.
Always be creating.
And yes I did kind of steal that from
Glenn Garry Glenn Ross,
which will come up again
I'm sure at some point in the evening.
But the thing that I will say about this philosophy,
and why it matters for me.
And by the way as for like a Q and A thing,
I'm around for the rest of the night so just hit me up.
And then also at Roberto Blake on Twitter.
But what I'll tell you
with my remaining allotted time here is this,
if you wanna be successful as a content creator,
you have to decide what you can actually sustain.
Because the hardest thing about the reality of YouTube
and everything that you think when it's over glamorized,
the hardest thing is to build yourself a brand,
and a reputation that you can live with
for the rest of your life.
Which is why a lot of people are struggling
no matter how successful they are,
they burn out.
They're are a lot of people that went viral
that wish they hadn't.
They're are a lot of people that have outgrown
the brand they built that was popular,
and are now facing some of the rejection
for who they've decided to be.
You know because they grew up.
How dare they?
How dare they evolve as a human being?
How dare they change?
How dare they age out of a demographic, right?
So when you decide that you're going to create something,
every single day make sure that it's a worthy day
because what you created was worthy of your name,
worthy of your talent,
worthy of your gifts.
And if people don't accept that then screw 'em.
At the end of the day you have to live with it.
You have to own it.
So don't worry,
don't get yourself down about
oh I'm a small YouTuber I'm a small creator.
As somebody here that I'm very fond of will tell you
creativity is much bigger than that.
And you have it beating in your chest.
So if you're a creator,
you go out there and you create.
Always be creating.
Every single day.
Create something awesome today.
Every single day without fail.
It is not a motivational speech.
It is a mandate for success in your life.
Create a moment in time that you are proud of to own.
Create a moment and experience for the people around you
that made it a worthy day for them.
Create something that will live beyond you.
Create something that creates value for other people
like you and helps them.
Create experiences that deserve to exist in the world
so that the history of it is documented
for other people to benefit and to learn from.
Create resources and information to help people overcome.
Create something awesome today, whatever it is,
whoever excepts it, whoever rejects it,
whoever watches it, whoever heres it,
whoever reads it.
It doesn't matter.
Create because that's what you are.
You're a creator.
Creators create.
And that's what I've got to say about that.
(applause)
Not a bad way to start the night.