- If the reason why you're doing anything creative
is to make a living, than you're doing it wrong.
I don't really like the word inspiration.
I like the word motivation.
It's not how you tell it, it's what you tell.
Life shrinks and expands in direct proportion
to one's willingness to take on risk.
When you don't know the way,
it's that you have to find the way.
One of my most watched videos
it was shot terribly on a mobile phone.
There will always be someone who's better at
whatever you're doing than you are.
I always do my best to operate without fear.
And the irony here is that this video was like huge.
This is before YouTube.
This is when viral meant like chlamydia in a frat house.
You only get like a nugget of time
to really pursue the things you care about.
- He's an American film director, producer, designer
and popular YouTube creator.
- He's the co-founder of a
social media company called Beme.
- He and his brother are the founders
of the HBO series, The Neistat Brothers.
- He's Casey Neistat and here are
his top 10 rules for success.
- I always made a living so I could make movies.
I never made movies to try and make a living
and I think that's a big mistake
that a lot of newcomers do is that they focus
on how can my passion pay me.
And I think that's a terrible place to start.
If the reason why you're doing anything creative
is to make a living, then you're doing it wrong.
You get into it because it's a true passion.
It's something you really believe in.
Or don't get into at all.
What inspires me, you know I don't really like
the word inspiration.
I like the motivation cause I think the working part
always matters more than the inspiration part.
Work is always more important than the idea.
And as far as motivation...
You know I'm motivated by everything around me.
I'm motivated by my kid.
I'm motivated by other people's work.
I'm motivated by the people that I work with.
I'm like a sponge, I absorb the motivation to do my work
from everything around me.
Well I think the key to vlogging well,
and I think this is true to writing to filmmaking
to any sort of creative capacity.
Any sort of field in the creative capacity,
is that it's not how you tell it, it's what you tell.
So it never has anything to do with what camera
you shoot on-- - Yep, yep
totally. - It doesn't have to do
with camera tricks or high production or low production.
It's what you're saying.
That is the only thing that anyone
will ever respond to.
So the advice I give to newcomers
or to aspiring filmmakers or YouTubers
is that shift all of your focus
from how to do it to what you're doing.
What is it that you want to communicate?
- Yeah. - What drives you?
And if that's what your focus is,
I think you'll be a much more effective
sort of communicator
and creator. - Yeah.
- Then if you're someone who obsesses over
what lens they should be
shooting on. - Yeah, yeah.
- When I look back at my career, I see all of these tangents
and the tangents that have always yielded success
were the ones where there was no established path.
No defined route for me to take.
But I went down it anyways.
And through that kind of exploration,
I always discovered something new.
And those new things, those new entities,
whether they be movies or ideas
or things in my personal life,
have always proven to be the most rewarding for me.
Life shrinks and expands in direct proportion
to one's willingness to take on risks.
And I think when it comes to exploring
the act of exploration is the act of assuming risk.
The greater risk takers the greater explorer.
I never went to film school.
I never sort of apprenticed under a filmmaker.
I was never taught.
I never had a mentor.
I never had anybody that I followed.
And the interesting thing that happens
when you don't know the way
is that you have to find the way.
And I always get to the destination,
which are these finished movies.
But the path with which I employ
is radically different from what's the norm.
And again, that's not some...
I don't take credit for that as some genius stylistic move.
It's just I don't know, like...
I still don't know how to do proper titles, titling.
Like my assistant editor did those titles
which is why most of the movies on my YouTube channel
all the titles are just handwritten on paper
and then the piece of paper's filmed.
Cause I don't know how to do it right.
I don't know how to do After Effects.
So all my animation is like stop frame.
And now sort of in success, I have the opportunities
to use all of the tools that were always so elusive to me.
So now it's a much more conscious decision
to maintain this sort of handmade aesthetic.
I think now that so much media is consumed on mobile...
The cinematography, the cinematic aspects
are being marginalized.
And what's taking it's place is sort of
a more relatable story.
I think people, one of my most watched videos
was shot terribly on a mobile phone.
But the story is so poignant that 13 or 14 million people
still elected to see it.
So I think there will always be a place
and an appreciation for really high quality
cinematic production appeal.
But there's a new place that's being presented
that mobile has presenting that we'll forgive
short comings in production provided that the story's there.
Provided the content is something people care about.
There are two rules that I always adhere to
and that is to work hard and be brave.
And I think the essence of hard work
is one that's pretty straight forward is that
you'll never be the best looking,
you'll never be the tallest, most talented, most capable.
You'll never have the most money.
There will always be someone who's better
at whatever you're doing than you are.
But you can always be the hardest working
person in the room.
And I think the hardest working person will always win.
Right after the HBO show aired
I produced two feature films that were big hits.
They premiered at like Cannes Film Festival and Sundance and
I like got an award that Natalie Portman gave me
on TV that my dad watched.
And it was like a big, big deal.
And I just like, I remember having this moment
where I realized that like I was so deep into this thing
that wasn't really, it didn't feel right to me.
And it's different trying to find opportunities
when you are in a place of success,
when you're in a place of comfort.
Like I was no longer starving.
I wasn't hungry anymore.
I had some recognition.
But something didn't feel right
and that was when I took this big pivot
and that pivot was to like, you know what
it's not the politics.
It's not the Natalie Portman giving me the award.
It's not the schmoozing that I love.
I love telling stories, telling stories is my passion.
And that was when I decided to sort of walk away from TV
and walk away from movies.
And I just wanted to make YouTube videos.
And I remember like my big Hollywood agent
when I sort of told that to him he was like,
"Oh God, Casey no."
You know, this was four years ago.
YouTube, five years ago now.
YouTube was nothing, it was something that was silly.
It was like a really great place to go
and watch cats play the piano.
And I wanted to like parlay my career
as a very successful filmmaker into that.
And I can't tell you the opportunities
that were birthed from that.
It's given me what I have today.
That's opportunity.
Those are opportunities.
Those are opportunities that in the moment
I couldn't have told you were opportunities.
I didn't know what they were.
There was something that just felt right.
There was something that looked right.
I did my best calculations.
I took my best guess.
It wasn't reckless.
I never operate recklessly and this is an important
differentiation between recklessness and fearlessness.
I always do my best to operate without fear.
Don't not do something.
Don't skip something cause I'm afraid to do it.
But make sure it's a smart decision.
And then part two of that is obligation.
I feel obliged to embrace opportunities like that.
I felt obliged to quit my job.
I felt obliged to walk away from HBO.
And the obligation was because there was something in me.
There was a truth that I wanted.
And the obligation was to embrace that.
The first movie we made that anybody saw was in 2003.
And this is a good story for Eddie Lampour.
The talk yesterday about biting the hand that feeds you.
So in 2002 I think, Apple came out with the iPod.
And in 2003, my iPod battery died.
And I called up, I was like dead broke at the time.
It was a present and I called up Apple to fix it
and they were like, "Just buy a new one."
And it really pissed me off.
So I called them back but I recorded the phone call.
And...
And this is at the time, I know.
This was at the time when Apple had those like,
awesome like, those silhouette with the colors posters
all over New York City.
I mean the whole city was covered in them.
So I recorded the phone call and then my brother Van and I
went around with this stencil
and we spray painted, "iPods unreplaceable battery
"lasts only 18 months."
On every one of these in New York City.
(audience laughs)
And we didn't think, I mean sure we were wise asses
but we just thought we'd educate the masses.
Like if Apple wasn't going to do it, we thought we would.
And the irony here is that this video was like huge.
This is before YouTube.
This is when viral meant like
chlamydia in a frat house, like.
This thing was huge.
Like this was emailed all over the place.
Millions of views.
Steve Jobs sending me hate mail.
And then like a week later, Apple changed the policy
and they were like, "Yeah we were going to do it anyways."
(audience laughs)
Which is great but again, this video
brought a lot of eyeballs to my brother and me.
And people got to see all these other little stupid videos
that we'd been making for years.
And I tried to like find some press for you guys.
This is seven years ago, so I couldn't really find.
But this is some of that.
And anyhow, it brought a lot of attention to us.
And if anything, it drove home the point that like
you don't need any of that understood infrastructure.
This is just like us being pissed off
and that was enough motivation.
So we went and made this movie
and now we got all this attention.
And we drove that home for, stuck with that
for a really long time and now
you know, I make sort of serious movies.
I just a shot a documentary, a feature length doc
in Afghanistan which is going to be kind of serious.
But I never let go of that
and I still make sort of like wise-ass goth movies.
And this summer, this is a good one.
I just want to tell this story.
But this summer, I was riding my bike through New York City
and I was pulled over in the pouring rain
by a police officer for riding my bike
outside the bike lane.
Which, come on man, that's like give me a break.
So I filmed the cop on my iPhone naturally.
And then I made a movie of me going around
trying to show the officer
why you can't always ride in the bike lanes.
And I crashed into everything I found.
So the video's just me arguing with a cop
for like 30 seconds then me crashing my bike
for another two minutes.
And this thing was huge.
I mean this thing was bigger than the iPod movie.
This was gigantic like, it was on every news outlet
and Bloomberg had to answer to it in a press conference.
And what is this, The Guardian called me a warrior
which is awesome.
And...
And it was huge and...
This again is another good exemplification of the idea
that it's just embrace the resources that you have
available to you.
And this is what I try to talk to young kids about
and this is what I try to reinforce
is that like let go of all the pretentions
that is filmmaking and embrace
what you have available to you.
I want to talk about risk.
As a guiding principle, life shrinks and life expands
in direct proportion to your willingness to assume risk.
Yeah, like I've made some really stupid decisions
in my career for my entire career.
On a broad plane, they've all worked out.
Every time I've quit my jobs,
which I've done every time I've had a job,
people that I trust most that treat people that I love
all advised against it.
My dad told me not to move to New York City
because it was such a risk.
And every time I took this bigger risks,
the opportunity for a larger payout was always there.
Life is like this super temporary, mega fragile thing.
You only get like a nugget of time
to really pursue the things you care about.
And like I'm 30...
And my rule is that the right time is always right now.
To put a little meat on these bones,
this new company that I don't really talk about...
This new company is the biggest risk I've ever taken.
I took five years of my life to build my advertising career
and I made like a lot of money.
I've been doing really great.
Look at my YouTube channel.
Go all the way back.
The last branded content thing you'll see
was in February of 2014.
I ditched it all to pursue something I knew nothing about.
This huge risk and I did it at a time
when my wife was pregnant
and there was all of this vulnerability
and all this scariness in my life.
And even now at 33, my dad said, 34.
My dad said, "Casey that's crazy.
"You've got a good thing, don't let it go."
But I know that like someday, I won't be able to do this.
I know that the time is now.
The right time is always now.
So I had to do it.
That's how I feel about risk in general.
And that's what the struggle has always been for me
is like identifying risk, identifying fear
and then just smashing through it.
Because a fear is looking back and wishing
that I had done these things.
The most dangerous thing you can do in your career,
the most dangerous thing you can do in life is play it safe.
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
I hope you enjoyed.
I'd love to know which of Casey's top ten rules
had the biggest impact on you.
Leave it in the comments below
and we're going to join the discussion.
- And we'd also love to know
who are your favorite entrepreneurs
that you want us to feature on this channel?
Leave that in the comments below.
- Thank you guys for watching.
Continue to believe.
- [Both] And we'll see you soon.
- I don't think in term of like
retrospectively, retroactively looking at what I did
and how I got to where I am.
Instead, it's much more of a focus on
what do I want to do next?
Because I think that if you try to consider
or cater to your audience too much,
you'll invariably end up making something that's mush.
- Yeah. - Because I don't know
that the audience knows what they want to see.
I know that I don't know what's going to peak my interests.
If I knew how to describe the perfect movie,
vlog, television show, I would just do it.
I want to see something that surprises me.
And when I think of my own work, that's exactly right.
Like I put my head down and I try to ignore the world.
And I try to make something that I think is really good.
- Yeah, yeah. - And if people like it,
great.
If they don't, I don't care.
As long as I like it.
So I think like if I had one thing to attribute
all of this growth to, it's that I'm making work
that I feel embodies the same level of integrity
of anything else that I would invest myself into.
My advice to young people that want to be filmmakers
and want to do anything in the creative world
is always the same and that's do the work.
Ideas are cheap.
I think inspiration is cheap.
I discount all of those.
Those mean very little to me.
All I care about is the work
because when I started filmmaking,
I wasn't much of a filmmaker.
I had a really junky point and shoot camera
and I had iMovie.
I've never learned the technicalities of filmmaking.
It's only through doing, that I learned how to create.
Well you know, I think fulfillment...
Fulfillment and YouTube producing
are kind of two different things.
I think fulfillment in general as a filmmaker for me
comes from creating.
And that's why you know in 2010,
they put the soundtrack on for the story
so I'll try to make it sound nostalgic.
I left like the mainstream sort of universe
cause I wanted to create more.
So for me, fulfillment comes in creation.
And I always say that like I'm a little bit of a junky
and my drug is uploading.
Because if I haven't posted a movie in like a month
or a month and a half, I get like seriously depressed.
And the only that like makes me happy
is to get a new movie out there.
That answers your question, right?