Summary
What have you been meaning to do “one day”? Pick something that you really want to do and just give it a go.
Be prepared to suck. It’s only by being prepared to be a beginner that you give yourself a starting point to work from. Get in the game, get something out there, because once something is out there, you can tweak, fiddle and iterate it into something better and better. But in order to have something to improve upon, you have to be prepared to get out there and be absolutely terrible, if necessary.
What can you begin this week that you haven’t done before? What have you been wanting to do to get your creative heart out into the world and help make people’s lives better, easier or more beautiful? Just go and do it. Be prepared to be not very good, because you will – I promise – get better.
Transcript
(slightly edited for coherence)
Hello, my name’s Cathy Hay, and if you’re watching this right now, you probably already know that. That’s a pretty redundant statement. But I’m hoping that in time, this will become something in which I do need to say who I am.
About a year ago I started a course to help people like me make a career out of being creative. I’ve done that myself – I started out as a dressmaker, and wasn’t really making ends meet, but at this point ten years later, I’m doing a pretty good job of the successful creative lifestyle.
So I wanted to help other people do what I’ve done. Fourteen of my friends signed up and believed in me, and I helped them out with their creative businesses, and I plan to run that course again. But I’m also aware that an awful lot of people haven’t got the time or money to go on a course, so the reason I’ve started a Facebook page called “The Successful Creative” is so that everyone can have a piece of it, and learn a little of what I’ve learned. Not out of a great big ego-driven “Look at me” thing, I’ve just figured a few things out over the last ten years and frankly, I feel bad not sharing that because I see people struggling to make creative business work and not getting anywhere fast, and if I can give a couple of tips that can help shorten that learning curve then that could really help some people out. I hope that would improve your life and your work and help you go further, faster, as it were.
I would like to also start a vlog; I’ve written a lot online but now I’m having a go at doing the vlog thing! I feel like a complete idiot sitting in front of a camera like this, but I’m also aware that everyone feels like an idiot talking to a camera, it’s just a question of practice, and that’s something that I want to impress upon you aswell: you’ve got to be prepared to begin.
What is there that you have been meaning to do “one day”, someday, when you have Spare Time(TM)? You need to pick a horse, pick something out of all the myriad things that you really want to do and just give it a go…
…and be prepared to absolutely suck at it. It’s only by being prepared to be a beginner that you give yourself a starting point to work from. Get in the game, get something out there, because once something is out there, then you can tweak, fiddle and iterate it into something better and better. But in order to have something to improve upon, you have to be prepared to get out there and be absolutely terrible for a while, if necessary.
So I encourage you, this week, to try something that you haven’t done before. Start that page, or that website, or that blog, whatever you’ve been wanting to do to get your creative heart out into the world and help make people’s lives better, easier or more beautiful. Just go and do it. Be prepared to be not very good, because you will – I promise – get better.