- Whatever you do, I'm begging you,
don't become a starving artist.
Make money instead.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake
helping you create something awesome today.
Today, I wanna talk to you about something super important.
I wanna talk to you about the importance of not
being a starving artist and making money
doing the thing that you love or alternatively,
make money and do the thing that you love.
Very different things, believe it or not.
So let me give you some background and context.
I thought that the thing that I wanted to do
was I wanted to make money and make a living as a
graphic designer or as a photographer
because I love those things.
Guess what?
I absolutely did it and ultimately, I was miserable.
It happens, it happens.
It had very little to do with not loving design
or photography.
I learned that I very selfishly didn't love
necessarily doing that under rigid constraints
and controls or with toxic bosses
or bad co-workers, the circumstances, or bad clients
or ya know, whatever.
The circumstances under which I was operating
were not ideal and did not make me happy.
I loved the art, the craft, all of those things
and I was successful at it to make a living
both in corporate and as a freelancer but ultimately,
didn't really make me happy, satisfy me emotionally.
In fact, it made me depressed and actually made me
resent the thing that I loved so much
for a very long time.
While that was my personal experience,
I understand that that will not happen to everybody,
but there are a lot of people out there.
Even if they have a job in a creative services profession
that ultimately are just getting by
and they do resent the situation that they're in
at their job and there is an alternative.
You could actually choose to operate outside of the
industry, make good money,
and then you could do what I do which is,
I hoard my craft for myself.
I use and apply my skills for either myself
to grow my business or I do it
as just pure art and expression
and either keep it to myself or put it out there
at my leisure.
What I decided not to do was I decided not to
give myself a situation where I have to be told
what to make, how to create and how to do it
in order to survive because that could actually
completely disrupt your creativity.
It can stifle you and it can make you miserable
as an artist.
Now that sounds like me talking you out of
making a living as an artist.
You can absolutely do that if you're willing to do it
on your own terms and if you're comfortable
doing client services work and if you still
feel like on your nights and weekends
that you have enough creativity and freedom of expression,
absolutely do that whether that's in corporate America
or as a freelancer.
But if you want to do something,
whether it's design, photography or filmmaking,
and you wanna make a living at it and you're struggling
right now, I have some advice for you.
If you're struggling and it's financially
crippling for you as an artist,
I want to encourage you to look at other methods
of making money, especially making money online.
I would love for you to actually reference
and I'll link them up here for you,
I would love for you to reference my
How To Make Money Online videos
in terms of how I make passive income,
how I do affiliate marketing or even how you start
something like a podcast or an online course
because if you have skill and talent as a creative,
there are ways for you to package that
or use it to create content that you can monetize.
There are a lot of ways to make money
as a creative artist and it is not gonna be
YouTube ad revenue, although that can be a little bit okay.
Today, I wouldn't recommend it.
To give you a real world example, I think
in my hay day with Amazon affiliate,
I was doing $1500 a month on a very good month.
With other affiliate programs that focus more on tools
or web hosting and appliances, ya know,
at a peak, five to $6,000 a month.
I cover this in very specific videos if you wanna know
how to do that.
My point being that by creating other revenue streams,
by doing other things online, especially focusing on
passive income, it meant I could spend my active time
doing video and photography and creativity for me
whether it makes money or not.
It also meant that when I decide to do my own business,
that I could focus on doing photography to grow my business
instead of somebody else's.
I could focus on photography that I enjoy doing
for leisure instead of worrying about making a living on it
which means that I've been able to grow creatively,
have ultimate freedom of expression
and still not necessarily worry about money.
The same thing with graphic design.
I ultimately stopped doing client services work
on the graphic design side, moved to doing marketing
and consulting work for the same type of people
and charging much more money and getting a better
experience both for me and for them
by using strategy and marketing as my sales pitch
instead of my execution as a designer.
I did better hour for hour, dollar for dollar doing that.
Now, I get to reserve my skills as a designer
and as a visual artist for my brand and my businesses
and that is actually very satisfying for me.
This may not be a path that everyone wants to take
but what I would encourage you to look at
is think about alternatives.
Think about a way to get to a place where you have
some other skill or ability or industry
that you could potentially work in,
that's very lucrative, make money, more than survive,
and then you would have the freedom to create
on your own terms, to be able to do
the film that you wanna do using that spare time,
to be able to know that you're not beholden to making
ya know, crappy commercials for people
for products you don't love or designing logos
for clients that are a nightmare,
or doing photography that is soul crushing
and uninventive to you but it pays the bills.
I want you to understand that the opportunity exists
for you to create without limits
if you do make money somewhat of a priority,
which brings us kind of to my main point here
in terms of don't be a starving artist.
You see, you have a lot of creatives that will
call ya know, people like you or I,
who actually care about money, sell outs or greedy
or that we're not ya know, in it for the art.
The reality is I actually get to be more of an artist
and operate on my terms by focusing on money
and making it a priority.
Ya see, money isn't necessarily gonna
solve all your problems but money isn't evil either.
There's a saying that Grant Cardone has put out there
that I've really embraced.
Rich people have the power to change the world.
Poor people don't.
The thing is, nine out of 10 times, that's gonna prove
to be true.
If you're a successful artist
and you make enough money to cover yourself,
you have the ability to invest back into other artists.
I have moved from being a starving artist
and then a freelancer that was getting by
and a corporate guy who was getting by
to being in a position as an entrepreneur
to hire and support other artists or to be able
to donate to other artists through things like Patreon.
I have the ability because of being successful
to empower and enable other people to be successful.
I get to spend time making videos to help people
be successful and be a creative professional
whether they wanna work a job and negotiate
a better salary with my help through the videos,
or if they wanna start a business,
or if they wanna build a product for themselves
or if they just want another outlet for expression.
I'm able to spend hours a day putting out stuff
that helps those people because I have the luxury
of buying back my own time.
And I couldn't do that if I wasn't making money
and if I didn't prioritize revenue-generating activities
that have allowed me to have that.
I want you to make financial freedom
and success your priority.
I don't want you to ever glorify being a starving artist
and to beat your chest about not caring about money.
I want you to care about money
and use it as a tool to create awesome things
and share them with the world.
If you do that, you can buy the best tools for your craft
to elevate yourself.
You can donate money to causes that you believe in
that empower other artists to have
that same kind of freedom.
You can do tremendous things if you refuse to be
a starving artist and if you look at the opportunity
that is right in front of you.
I hope for some of you that this serves
as a wake up call and that you understand that
you can become whatever it is you feel you want to be
and you have the luxury of that when you are successful.
There's more than one route to the success
that you're looking for.
If you want to be a writer, if you want to be a filmmaker,
if you want to be a graphic designer,
if you wanna be a photographer,
the technology and the availability of opportunity
in the time that we have right now
has never been better for people like you,
for people like us, the misfit toys out there
who think differently.
We have so much that previous generations just didn't have
and you could be taking advantage of it right now.
Question of the day,
what steps are you taking to be more successful
in your life and in your creativity.
I wanna know in the comments section
who's hustling and who's not.
So, drop that in the comments below.
Also, if you have questions about freelancing,
creativity, anything at all, drop those
and I'll try and answer as many of them as possible,
especially those of you who drop it in the first hour
that this video is up, I'm more likely
to respond to those.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content here on the channel.
It could probably help you make a few bucks.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there and create something
awesome today, take care.
(upbeat music)