“You’ll never make enough money with an art degree.”
My best friend studied art and opened a successful tattoo business.
“YouTube won’t pay the bills.”
I’m a full-time video editor making YouTube videos for my company.
There’s opportunity everywhere. Look at all the fancy startup campuses in your neighborhood. They’re popping up all over the place.
Money is out there; you have to leverage your skills correctly. It may take working at your craft for free for a couple of years, but if you want to live a life as a creative, it’s the reality you face.
Thankfully, there aren’t many steps to craft the life you want.
And they’re simple.
Never. Stop. Learning.
I graduated from university in 2017, but I’m a heck of a lot smarter than I was five years ago.
I don’t read as much as I’d like, but I absorb information as it comes to me. Call me Spongeman. Spongebrain?
Not all the best advice comes from books. Listen to your peers. When you assume people are more intelligent than you, you’re open to listening to them.
We like to think we’re the best. I have a problem walking into a room and sizing myself up against the next person. It’s not a good trait.
Flip it on its head.
They might say something you can use later. Look for inspiration. You don’t have to copy them, but you can use their unique perspectives to your advantage.
I was in a work meeting, and leadership spent a portion to remind us of our company values.
Months later, I used the same technique in my own meetings. I asked someone to remind the team why we were spending time on a particular project, and it was a hit.
Don’t ask for permission
Elizabeth Gilbert would be proud of me.
I essentially made my dream job out of clay. I almost said no when an opportunity presented me in the face too. I doubted myself, thinking somebody else might be better for the job.
Thankfully, I took a chance on myself. We don’t ask for permission out of fear that we’ll fail, but frankly, who gives a flying ferret whether we fail.
If you don’t fail, you don’t move forward. You end up stuck in a ditch somewhere, and people ignore you because you aren’t willing to dig yourself out.
At least people who fall and are willing to get up are seen.
Don’t ask yourself whether you can do something. Questions are only good for one thing: learning from others. Don’t ask yourself whether you can, do.
Now, it’s not as simple as Nike makes it out to be. A new workout routine is brutally strict the first couple of times. But after the shock factor is over, you can focus on fundamentals, adding weight, and progressively getting better.
This is when your confidence skyrockets.
That’s what happened at my job. Now I’m running meetings because I’m 100% confident in making things happen on my end.
You have to run through a prickly barrier sometimes, but at the other end, the road continues.
Money is abundant
Write that down in your notes app and look at the phrase once a week.
Money is psychology. You want it, but not too much, right? You don’t want to seem like a richy money-grubbing mansion owner?
We need to pull a particular switch in our brains to realize that having money doesn't make you an evil person. There are bad people with money, just as there are good people. You can be a good person with cash.
Living comfortably isn’t a crime. But, living below your means because you don’t think you’re good enough to be financially free is setting yourself up for real trouble.
There’s an opportunity in everything. Read that again.
Being a “creator” will be an essential job quality.
Look for problems and solve them. Where there are problems, there are solutions you can monetize. Seek issues, make dough.