I've got to give a big shout out to Triad Middle School.
I got to speak to about 300 8 Graders last week and you guys are absolutely
amazing.
Thank you so much.
I had a blast.
And to all the new subscribers, last week's video went absolutely insane.
It almost had 2000 views in a week so by far, the most popular video.
Today, I want to talk about the Triple S threat.
What's going on there?
Sucking, Starting and Succeeding.
Let's talk about that.
Let's talk about sucking, starting and succeeding.
How do those all tie together?
Something that I don't think a lot of people talk about is the idea that really and truly,
every single person in this planet, every single musician, artist, baseball star, celebrity
or whoever it is sucked when they first started.
I wanna give you a story from my own life about how I absolutely sucked in the beginning,
when I first started.
I've got to travel the world literally.
I've shot weddings in the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and all over the United States and done
events and things in Fiji and all sorts of crazy places.
It's been awesome.
I never in a million years did I honestly dream originally that these things would happen.
Back when I was about 12 years old, my dad was in a wedding at Tetons and they wanted
me to film.
It was absolutely gorgeous.
We were all super excited to be there.
My dad was gonna do the reading during the ceremony.
We're going in and I got the Digital 8 handy cam, first major wedding I got to film.
They wanted me to film it and so what do I do?
Well, I see some cute girls and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, if they see me filming, they're
gonna think I'm weird.
These girls are way older than me and all these stuffs.
Nothing was ever planned to happen.
Now looking back, hindsight 20-20, what do I do?
I freakin' put the camera not only next to me, but in the bag, with the cap on and I
hit record.
Nothing bad happened then but when I got back, my family wanted to watch my dad giving the
reading.
What do they see?
They see nothing but a black screen and basically, they could barely hear my dad too so they
weren't too happy for me.
Probably, they didn't think that I'd have a very successful career shooting things.
I just wanted you all to see that not everybody is this prodigy and at birth they start doing
what they end up doing in life and they do it amazingly.
I want you guys to think about that.
The thing about sucking, starting, succeeding is the idea that I started.
I took that first plunge when I was twelve so I don't think I filmed my next wedding
for another five or six years.
I did some filming of different things in between that but the bottom line is that thing
there, I started and then I just kept doing it.
I just kept moving forward.
So through all that, sucking at it in the beginning, I kept moving forward and then
I was able to succeed.
I've got a few other quick things that I just want to say about that.
First of all, I've got another, Samantha Potter music.
I found her today on Youtube.
She is a prime example of how starting is so important.
This girl is 11 years old.
From looking at her channel, I think she started when she was 9 or 10.
This girl has over 10,000 subscribers on Youtube right now.
She has this one video, Katy Perry's "Roar" and she's got 10,000 views.
She sounds awesome and I'm blown away.
The cool thing is that if she sticks with it, amazing things are gonna continue to happen
for her.
If you look at another channel I love, "Boyce Avenue."
They have 4 million subscribers.
They're one of the biggest music channels on Youtube.
Back when they started, their videos, quite frankly are pretty bad and they did that video
after video after video, looking not so good but they stuck with it year after year after
year.
They stuck with it.
They sucked in the beginning, they started, they succeeded 'coz they stuck with it not
caring about what people are saying.
For me, that's the thing.
Video 1, song 1, guitar strum 1, baseball hit 1, whatever it is, the first time you
do it, you're gonna fail but I wanna change that mindset for you guys.
This is what really helped me breakthrough.
So the kids are asking me, "What is success?
Are you successful?"
I've thought a lot about that and I gave them an answer.
Here's what I told those kids.
Success for me used to be this destination, this place I have to get to.
For some of you, no matter where you're at, you may think (let's say you're in school
or high school), you got to get through high school, then you got to get through college,
then you've got to get this job, then you succeeded, then you're successful.
I don't want you guys to think about it that way.
I don't want you to think about it as an external thing or reaching a certain goal.
I want you to think success is every single day that you can be successful.
What are the little things that you can do?
Making someone smile, making someone's day, maybe it's paying for someone's food in the
drive thru behind you.
Whatever it is you're doing, maybe you just started doing that thing you've always dreamed
of and you're like, "I suck at this today."
That's okay.
Did it make you happy?
That's the bottom line.
Did it make you happy?
If you can answer that question and you can say, "I felt good about that.
I'm happy about that."
And you can think, "I'm going somewhere."
Then that's all that matters.
Guess what, then you're successful.
You succeeded.
I just challenge you to start even though you might suck.
That's okay.
We all do.
And then everyday is a success that you just keep going towards your dreams, towards your
goals.
Think of success as what makes you happy.