- Good morning, believe nation.
Today's message is embrace your uniqueness.
Over to you, Nina Dobrev.
(rooster call)
♫ I wake up every morning
♫ Espresso keep me going
♫ I wake up every morning
- Honestly, I think everyone is different and unique
and that's a good thing.
It's not bad.
It's kind of the best thing in the world.
You don't want to be like everyone else.
Growing up in high school and just junior high
just your whole life really,
either you have been taught to feel like,
or you want to be like everyone else
because conceptually you'll be included
and you'll be like the crowd
but when you think about it,
when you look at people like Lady Gaga
who is so crazy and so different and so unique
and her whole message is about, you know,
being yourself and being okay with it.
And she, the reason she is so successful and so
is because she's talented, because she's different.
If she was just like Britney Spears
of if she was just like me
Nina Dobrev, then there would be two of us
so there'd be nothing special about that.
So I think what's special
is the fact that you're different.
And is the fact that you're unique
and that you can bring something to the table.
So if anything, embrace that uniqueness
and that thing that you have that no one else does
and expand upon it and make it better
and tell everyone about it
and be confident in it.
Because if you're confident and happy and smiling
you will attract confidence, happiness and laughter.
- People keep trying to copy the successes of other people
because they think it's what's going to make them win
and you can to some extent,
you can model success
but if all you're doing is copying somebody
step after step after step
the best you're going to be
is a second or third-rate version of them
Instead of the best version of you.
And this is what's really, really important.
As you begin on your path,
it's okay to copy other people.
You're looking for guidance.
You're looking for inspiration.
You've no idea how anything is done.
And so instead of trying to figure out
every single idea yourself,
model success.
Learn from the people who've come before you.
It's a fantastic strategy.
But if you want to win the big game,
if you want to really be unique
and really different
and really stand out
and really have massive success,
it's going to come from you taking these bits of pieces
from other people, figure what worked for them
and then tweaking them to apply to your situation.
There's a great example I like to reference on the channel
talking about 50 Cent
looking at new people coming up through the industry
and people sending him demo tapes
and people that sound like Lil Wayne.
He'll say, you sound just like Lil Wayne.
I can't tell the difference between you and Lil Wayne.
It's amazing your talent to sound
like Lil Wayne is fantastic
but we already have a Lil Wayne.
We don't need a Lil Wayne copycat.
So the best you're going to do here is just be
a Lil Wayne cover band.
Is that what you want to do?
Where you have uniqueness.
You have talent inside you.
You can find a way to tweak
some of the things that worked for Lil Wayne
and apply it to your situation
to be an amazing artist.
I found this when I was working on my YouTube channel
and I was working with my agent.
I had my agent, Steve
and I had a media coach, Jenny
who worked at the agency
and they were giving me feedback
on how to make better videos.
And I would meet with Jenny once a week
for a year and a half.
And I met with Steve, maybe once a month
looking at different videos.
And they would always give me feedback
and totally different style feedback.
Steve was always, raise the stakes, very aggressive
why is this so important?
What if somebody's about to kill themselves
before watching this video
and you had to make that transition
to help them stay alive, right.
Just make it more important.
And Jenny is leaning on authenticity.
Understand and be genuine
and a much softer side.
And so every time I met with both of them,
they would give me different feedback.
And they see it through their lens
and I would always take their advice
and I would struggle with it.
And I would do exactly what they said.
Steve gave me homework, I would do exactly what he asked.
Jenny gave me homework, I would do exactly what she asked.
And it always felt uncomfortable,
which was good, stretching your comfort zone
but it was never quite right for me.
And what I had to do
was take that awesome piece of advice from Jenny
and add just a little bit to it.
Make it shift so that it worked for me.
It felt more authentic.
Felt more comfortable.
Felt more Evan.
And that's what you need to do.
Look at all the strategies of people that have gone out.
What they've done before you,
it's amazing.
And then see how can I make that thing
that worked for Steve Jobs, work for me.
What tweak can I make
to make it authentic and uniquely me
so that I will have success in this market?
Cause if you don't do that,
again you're just going to be a copy of somebody else.
And you're never going to stand out
and have massive success.
You have amazingness inside you
and you need to let that out.
Trust that it's there.
Embrace it
and go all in on it.
So the question today is
I'm curious what have you learned
from somebody else that you've modeled
and then tweaked.
What was the tweak?
I'm curious.
What did you learn?
And then how did you tweak it to make it fit
and work for you?
Leave in the comments below.
Super curious to find out.
I also want to give a quick shout out to Juliette Young.
Juliette, thank you so much for picking up
a copy of my book Your One Word.
It really, really, really means a lot to me
and I appreciate the support.
I hope you enjoyed the read.
Thank you guys again for watching,
I hope you have an amazing day.
I believe in you
and hope you continue to believe in yourself
and I'll see you again tomorrow morning
for another shot of entspresso.
♫ I wake up every morning
♫ Espresso keep me going
- Saying that we have enough artists,
is like saying we have enough scientists.
We have enough designers.
We have enough politicians.
(group laughter)
But you know, nobody gets to be you except you.
Nobody has your point of view except you.
Nobody gets to bring to the world
the things that you get to bring to the world,
uniquely get to bring to the world except you.
So saying there're enough writers out there,
enough directors out there,
enough people with points of view.
Well, yeah, there are but
none of them are you.
And none of those people
is going to make the art you will make.
None of them will change people
and change the world
in the way that you could change it.
So if you believe somebody who says,
no, no, we've got enough of those,
then all it means is you're giving up your chance
to change the world in the way that only
you could change it.
- Everybody is the same and I run into these people,
I feel like nobody's a real, real individual.
It's rare that you stumble across someone
who's a real individual and when you do
it's like amazing.
And I love seeing people who are just truly themselves.
But everybody's like whatever they see on TV,
whatever they see around them
they just want to be that.
The world is huge, you don't have to be that.
You do not have to be what your neighbor is.
You don't have to do what your neighbor is doing.
You can do whatever the you want.
So people are just like
yeah, rappers feel like they have to be a certain way.
Actors feel like they have to be a certain way.
People in certain neighborhoods feel like
they have to be a certain way
because who's there around.
I know deep down like children,
children are themselves,
they react off of instinct until they start
to understand how the world is.
In adults, once they turn into an adult
they start to see, oh, dang I can't do that,
I can't like that no more.
I can't be that way cause that's not acceptable
cause I might get looked down upon.
They might laugh at me or think I'm weird.
And it's like, no, that.
This is what makes you you.
Like I just try, it's hard to do,
don't get me wrong.
I'm still learning about myself.
I'm trying to just open myself up
to new ways of thinking all the time
and truly being myself.
But sometimes I get caught in,
so many different levels to a matrix,
you know what I'm saying.
Sometimes, you're like damn, I thought I was out
and I was still in.
It's just,
but yeah, it's just everybody just feels like they have to
be just like everybody else.
When I see rappers, I'm like come on dude.
- They've got the same dance.
- Same dance, dude.
- The same turn up.
- It's like dude, you got a billion tattoos
on your face and body, where did you get that from?
Cause I know you didn't come out of your mom's vagina
going I want to be tatted.
You saw somebody do that
and you said I want to do that too
cause that's going to make me look
like this type of thing
and I want to be just like that.
And everybody's doing it,
I know that works.
So I'm going to do it
and now it makes you look like one of them
and now you're not original
and then when your rap career doesn't go far,
you're like, what happened?
But it's not just rapping, it's just all areas of life.
- Staying power means hard work.
Staying power means everyday you get up
and you try to stay ahead of the pack.
That sort of march to the beat of your own drummer.
This notion that music becomes homogenized,
in other words, there are lots of successful rappers
but have short careers.
Because if you can replace one rapper for another,
you're done.
The more unique you are in what you do,
the better your chances of continuing on.
So when you take a look at, sometimes it's musical,
take a look at a band like AC/DC
you hear it, you immediately know what it is
that's what they serve up.
You want ballads, go to another band.
They serve up, straight up.
That's what you do.
KISS serves up spectacle.
We will not sit around on stage on a Persian carpet,
light candles and sing about,
oh, the flaxen haired lass
and the English countryside.
Kill me now.
We don't do that.
You know, you want nice quiet,
stay at home with grandma,
pour another glass of water
and put her false teeth in it.
Let the spinach rise to the top.
That ain't what we do.
We blow stuff up.
With a drummer and a backbeat.
Don't sing about the secret of life
cause there is none.
Here's the secret of life,
you're alive and then you're not.
That's it.
That's the secret.
Be glad you're alive while you're alive,
you're allowed to
shake the world up a little bit
and that's what you do.