- Three simple words.
Just get started.
Hey guys, it's Roberto.
You know, just getting started might feel impossible
for you right now.
A lot of you have told me one way or another
that you're struggling.
You don't feel like you have enough time.
You don't feel like you have enough energy.
You don't feel motivated.
You don't have the right gear, and the thing is
someone could literally take all of that away
and you still would find yourself struggling
to just get started.
I'm not saying these problems aren't real.
I'm sure they're very real to you.
They were very real to me,
and you know what made them less real?
Actually doing something.
Whatever you imagine is holding you back,
and I used the word imagine very specifically,
it is in your mind.
When I started building my personal brand,
I wasn't even looking at YouTube or doing a podcast.
I started with a website.
I bought the domain, RobertoBlake.com,
I set up an email address, and I started blogging,
and I had no aspirations of becoming famous
doing a blog about graphic design and about artists
and interviewing people like David Cousens
or Kirsay Earwall or anybody like that.
I just wanted to do it.
What's gonna help you get started
is to not obsess over what anybody else is doing.
So many of you are looking at this famous person
on social media or this big YouTuber
or this person that is living this great life
and has so much money and that's not gonna help you at all.
Buckling down, focusing on yourself
and what you can do today,
when I tell you hey, go out there,
create something awesome today,
I'm not screwing around here.
I am not saying this for my health,
I am not saying this just to say it,
I'm not saying it to be clever,
I'm dead serious about just find something you can do today
that will be satisfying to you that also matches some goal
that you have that is one step out of the 1,000 steps
that you might need to take because just getting through one
out of 1,000 means that you'll only have 999 to go
and as someone who's literally done over 1,000 videos
on YouTube alone, I can tell you that it makes a difference,
that momentum, getting through the first one,
on the way to 10, on the way to 20,
on the way to 50, on the way to 100,
it does add up.
You do get better.
You do get smarter.
And you find yourself being motivated
by the fact that you actually did something.
Stop looking for applause
on your first 100 pieces of effort.
Just stop.
Focus instead on getting as good as possible,
as fast as possible.
Do not look at what other people are doing,
do not look at what people are saying,
do not look for the applause,
do not look for acknowledgement,
do not look for views, subscribers, listens,
thumbs up, hearts, whatever.
Ignore it and buckle down for the next 100 days
and get 100 executions on your belt.
That is my challenge to you.
Just get started.
If it's that you want to become
a great artist and illustrator,
then look at what pieces of work,
you're saying, Roberto, I just don't have any time,
I work a nine to five, it's easy for you to say.
Okay, you know what?
I guarantee you you have 30 minutes, 15 minutes,
that you're spending watching YouTube videos like this one,
thank you, or that you're spending on television
or social media or some hobby or some game.
Give yourself 30 minutes, allocate 30 minutes to do it,
whatever it is that you're actually good at
that you would want to do for the rest of your life
and give yourself the challenge of spending 30 minutes
on that uninterrupted.
Turn off your phone, turn off the computer,
turn off everything else and do that for 30 minutes
for that day to completion and the goal here is
whatever it is that you've made,
that's just what it is
and you will find yourself getting better at finishing
something worthwhile in 30 minutes, that's it.
'Cause, by the way, all these YouTube videos
that I put out, whenever I can, that's the goal.
Spend 30 minutes tops on a YouTube video
between shooting and editing it
and then maybe a little bit longer, obviously,
on the thumbnails, the uploads, and doing all the
titles, tags, and description stuff
but I spend as little time as possible
on each and every execution but that wasn't something
I could do right away.
It took a little bit of time to get fast
and you know what helped me get fast?
Creating something awesome each and every single day
helped me get fast.
I wanted to get good at something,
I did it every day.
You know, true story, it's literally the simplest thing
in the world.
Think about what it is that you're actually good at
and that gets you excited, gets you pumped up,
gets you motivated.
I have a lot of different things that get me excited
and you know what I do?
I appease my ADHD brain by just doing all of them.
If I'm in the mood to write something, guess what?
I write something.
Whether it's an article on Medium
or whether it's something that I've put up on Linkedin
or if I actually, on rare occasion, post something
on my blog anymore or if I write you guys an email
if you're on the Create Awesome community newsletter.
Then guess what?
I'm writing because I'm in the mood to write.
If I wanna do photography, I do photography.
I save it to my phone, transfer it from the camera,
and then you guys get a really cool Instagram post from me
and, again, I'm doing the thing that I like
that I'm good at and I'm just putting it out there
and if you guys like it, great.
If not, the main thing is I satisfied something
inside of me that I wanted to do.
I'm doing this because I want to
not because you guys are gonna happen to clap it up for me.
Not that I don't appreciate it, please keep clapping.
So, what I'm getting at here is think about
what it is you like to do, what do you enjoy?
Do you like doing spoken word poetry?
Do you like writing fanfiction?
Do you like doing photography like I do?
Do you like making videos?
Do you like making corny 80s reference jokes
that nobody gets?
Cool.
Then make that thing a priority.
Get started and do it and get through doing it
100 times back to back and putting it out there
and you're not putting it out there just because
you want people to see it.
I know you're just like, what's the point of doing something
if nobody sees it?
Like I said, it's because you want to.
That's why you pick something you enjoy
because if you're just gonna do something
only for the result that you don't enjoy
only to either make money or for people to accept it,
that's called going to work, punching a clock,
and being beholden to everyone else's expectations of you
instead of satisfying yourself.
And if that's the case, if you're gonna do that
why are you watching this video?
Once you know what you're good at and what you like,
you have to make a commitment to doing it every day
which means that maybe you stop texting other people,
maybe you stop being on social media for that 30 minutes
and you concentrate on doing the thing that you love
for 30 minutes, call that your me time.
Just do it.
More than anything, just get started.
You could do this today.
You know, stop with this oh guys, please subscribe to me.
If I can get 10 or 20 or 50 subscribers
then I'll be motivated to make videos.
If you wanna make videos, make bloody videos.
Don't wait for permission from people
or don't wait til you have an audience.
You get an audience by actually showing up
and doing something, you don't just decide
oh, there's people there so I guess I'll go do something
and everything like that.
Not if you want people to respect it.
Not if you want to be able to do it on your own terms
'cause if you start like that,
then you'll always just be pandering to other people.
You wanna write?
Don't wait for a book deal.
The publishing houses, a lot of them
are just gonna tell you no.
You know who else they told no?
Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian, you know,
that thing that went onto be a movie that Miramax bought?
That Matt Damon ended up starring in?
That I keep talking about on this channel?
Because guess what?
Gatekeepers will tell you no.
And if you keep waiting for permission,
you keep waiting for a publishing deal,
the odds are people are just gonna tell you no
but you can go directly to the marketplace,
you can take it into your own hands,
you can go to Kindle, you can go to iBooks,
and you can go ahead and just put it out there
and the marketplace will decide whether it's gonna buy
something or not but more importantly,
you'll be able to see that it says written by your name here
and, ultimately, that's what matters.
Whether other people decide to buy it,
whether it's 10, 20, whether it's 12,
whether it's just your parents,
it's fine because guess what?
You just put yourself into the point 1% of people
in the history have ever, that have written an entire book.
That kind of matters a lot more.
It's nice to have best seller by your name
but it's just as good to have author by your name
and it be legit.
Still gives you bragging rights,
still makes you better than 99.9% of people.
Hey, at least in my book,
I'll tell other people that you're better than them.
I've got no problem doing it.
So, you're a musician.
You're sitting there and you're hoping
that you get a record deal,
you're hoping you get on the radio.
You know what?
You got this beautiful thing called the internet
where you can reach the majority of the people on the planet
if you really want to.
You know, I know this kid, he was like, what?
14, 15 years old, he was doing cover songs
and doing stuff and he decided to go to the internet.
What was his name again?
Oh, wait, it was Justin Bieber.
Oh, yeah, that's right, I keep forgetting,
he was a YouTuber.
We all keep forgetting that Justin Bieber
was a YouTuber, he got discovered,
not in the conventional way, not in the traditional way,
not in the way that people have been getting discovered
for like 60 years prior to, he went to the internet
and that's where he won.
You have the same opportunity available to you
and, again, you don't even need a record deal anymore.
Majestic Casual No Copyright Sounds,
they were very successful here on YouTube
giving their music away for free
and then people actually would buy some stuff from them
and beyond that they were making money on the ad revenue
and there's all kinds of ways to monetize
whatever you want to do today
so that you're not a starving artist.
But you know what really helps you not be a starving artist?
If you actually do something,
if you stop waiting for permission,
if you stop letting perfection be the enemy of good,
if you stop getting in your own way,
if you stop letting your imagination, your anxiety,
and all the fears of rejection that are boiling up
inside you, if you stop letting the fear of gear,
the idea that you think you need a 4K camera,
the fact that you think you need fancy lighting,
the fact that you think you need anything more
than a smartphone today to make it,
if you can get past that hurdle
and if you just get started, even if it's not 100%
guarantee of success, you've at least taken
the first step to opting out of failure and mediocrity.
I've said it before so I'm just going to say it again,
create something awesome today.
Just go out and get started.
Take care.
(soft music)