Real quick here. If you're getting any value from the show so far, please rate it on your preferred streaming platform. It really helps us get the message out to more and more people and help more people with their own creative businesses. Here's the show. Three years into doing photography, I started getting called talented.
I hated that. No one called me talented. When I first picked up a camera or even a year into taking photos, it was only when I got good through daily practice did I start getting called talented. Now, I wanna make something really clear here. I didn't hate the fact that people were calling me talented. I was grateful that people actually loved my.
I was grateful that people appreciated the photos I was creating. What I did hate was when people made excuses for why they weren't at the level that they wanted to be at. I would hear, you're so talented. I wish I could take photos like you. And my response was always the same. You can just practice every single day.
This show is not gonna be about me ranting about being called talented. This episode is how anyone can become good at photography or really any skill in life. People often attribute to just talent. I really wanna get into this one, so let's get started. Welcome to the Creative Biz Launch Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures.
Whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here. After I got good photography, I got called Talented. After my YouTube channel began really growing. People said I was naturally good in front of a camera. For those of you watching from the very beginning, you know that's not true.
Go and watch my first videos and see how terrible I actually was. I could say the same thing about so many different parts of my life. Me becoming a good salesperson, me going from a bulky muscle weightlifter to completing an endurance event like an iron. These are all things that I got good at, not through some talent.
I did it through consistently showing up every single day and working towards that goal. And if I have any talent, it's this. My talent is sticking to things for a really long time, doing them consistently until I'm good at them. And that's really the secret. And today I'm gonna be teaching you how you gonna unlock this in your own life.
So let's talk about how to get good at anything. My one word answer here is consist. It's simple. You stay consistent, you stay the course, and you weather the ups and the downs. When you win, you don't let go to your head. When you lose, you don't get discouraged. A very common trap I see people that are starting out fall into is the early wins.
Early wins are fantastic. They give you some sort of evidence that you're on the right path, but they also will inflate your. If you're starting a YouTube channel, the stats are not in your favor. On average, it takes something like 70 videos for most channels to hit a thousand subscribers. Now, if you upload three videos and that third one ends up going really viral, you'll think that this is easy.
And the next one you upload won't go viral and you'll get discouraged, and then the next five or 10 or 15 you upload won't get any views and you'll feel terrible. When you get those early wins. You need to keep the big picture in mind and be cognizant of all the stats involved in success here. The most important thing is consistency and those early winds, as long as they don't go over your head, they'll be fine.
But if you think that it becomes easy after one win, early on, you're in for a world of. Okay, so what does consistency really mean? It means showing up on a regular schedule and doing the work as a YouTuber, that means showing up every single week and uploading a new video for at least one year. Right there, that's already 52 videos.
That is a lot of work, but that's not all. It's not just showing up every single week. It's showing up every single week and not expecting any results.
It's going through the motions and not getting any views. If you can lower your expectations like this, eventually you will succeed and you will win. The thing about showing up consistently is that you will get better over time. Week one, your videos will suck. Your audio, your lighting, your video, how you speak, all of this will be terrible, but each week you'll get 1% better.
You'll speak more confidently, your audio will improve. You'll learn lighting and editing, and things will improve over time. This is g. If you wanna get better at photography, it's really the same thing. It's showing up not just every week, but nearly every single day here.
If you can practice your skills for 30 minutes a day, you will improve. You take photos on Monday and on Tuesday you go ahead and you edit them. And when you're editing, you'll notice that you're not using leading lines. So when you go out to photograph on Wednesday, you make the conscious choice to use leading lines, and then this three day cycle repeats all over.
Day one, you take photos. Day two, you edit and you learn from your mistakes. And day three, you go out and you improve upon your photography. This cycle happens hundreds of times. And on that hundredth time, you better believe that you'll be a way better photographer. And this is really the secret. It's this continuous improvement coupled with consistency.
If you can have deliberate practice day after day, week after week, you will get better at your craft and people will assume you're just talent. , but talent isn't what got you there. It was that consistency. You showed up week after week, and from the outside, people just saw that end result. And they'll call you talented, but you'll know it's not just talent.
It's hard work. Day after day, week after week, you'll learn constantly. , and you'll also experience a lot of failures and setbacks along the way. It's not going to be a linear progression here. It's gonna look pretty bumpy, but the trend here is going to be upward. Over time, you will improve, but you need to go into it not expecting results for a very long time.
Now, why does I personally make the choice to work towards these ambitious goals? I saw people out in the world achieving their dreams, and it was inspirational. At first, I just saw the celebrities on the big business moguls just crushing it in life, but that was out of reach for me. They seemed so far away to what my world actually was.
and then social media happened and I saw a lot more people that I could relate to. I saw these people living their dream lives, and the thing about them was they weren't that much different than me, so I honestly didn't think that they were any smarter than me. So why were they living the life I wanted?
And then I saw this clip here. This is Steve Jobs talking about how he view. He says how everything in life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. When I heard this, so many of my limiting beliefs were destroyed. He says that you can poke life and something else will come out the other side.
When you start to view life as being made up by people no smarter than you, your dreams become more tangible. You can see yourself living your dream life. You realize that you don't need talent to live your dream life. You just need to show up and work consist. I wanna bring up one last thing here. You might remember this from your psych class.
Let's talk about the Dunning Krueger effect. You've probably heard of this even if you don't recognize the name. But simply the Dunning Krueger effect happens when an amateur thinks they are better than they actually are. When you start out learning a new skill, you quickly begin absorbing all the knowledge you can about it.
You start practicing and you suck at the start, but then you rapidly get. Then shortly after you think you know everything, when in reality you're nowhere near the level of an expert, but in your head you assume you already are as good as the pros. This effect mainly stems from beginners, overestimating their own ability.
This comes from a lack of self-awareness to recognize their own incompetent. So they are led to believe that they are more skilled than they actually are. I definitely fell into this trap a lot when I learned photography. I thought I was good pretty early on, but in reality, I still sucked.
When I was learning business and client acquisition and sales, I fell into the same trap over and over again. But the key to overcoming the Dunning Kruger effect in photography and in life is to constantly seek out new information, challenge your own beliefs, and seek feedback from others. This can include taking courses, going to workshops, and seeking out constructive criticism from more experienced photographers.
above all else, it's important to practice consistently and analyze your work over time. By doing so, you'll not only improve your own technical skills, but you'll also gain a better understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses as a photographer. This self-awareness will help you to recognize areas where you need to improve, and it will prevent you from becoming too confident in your abilities and making mistakes.
Okay, so what do we know? One, talent is a myth. Two, if you show up every day and work towards your dreams, you will see progress. Three, this world was created by people just like you, meaning that you have the power to make your dreams become a reality. And four, you're not as good as you think you are until you have evidence that shows you otherwise.
That's all I got today. My name is Chris Pieta, and this is a Creative Biz Launch podcast.
