Transcription
So your dream is to be able to do music full-time, be able to quit that job, be able to support yourself, support your family, and have a sustained career doing what you love to do. But your friends, your family, your co-workers—they're not being very supportive. They're telling you to be realistic. They're telling you you have no chance. They're telling you to go get a real job. Well, maybe they're right.
What's going on, guys? Adam Ivey, Adam I Be Calm, as always. I appreciate you joining me yet again for another video. Now, I personally have been making beats, producing, for about 12 years, since 2006. And in that time, from then till now, I've received—I mean, hundreds of emails, DMs, messages, even people in person at studios when I'm out and about, when I'm at events, even my friends, for that matter. They all kind of stem back to the same issue, and you might be dealing with this right now. You have this passion, you have this excitement for what you do. You love creating, whether it be music, whether it be YouTube videos, whether you're a photographer. Your friends and your family, maybe your co-workers, especially your co-workers, they just don't understand it. They're not supportive; in fact, they might be the opposite. They might try to discourage you day after day. You know, to them, that's a huge risk.
Now, when the people that we love the most aren't very encouraging, they're not supportive at all, it sucks ass. There's no other way to put it. It feels like you're all alone. It feels like you're frustrated because you're trying to explain your dream to them, and they just don't get it.
Recently, something happened to me that I want to share with you guys. I got together with some buddies on the weekend. We took my car to go get some food. It was kind of like, probably about 3 o'clock, so early dinner, late lunch. And when they jumped in the car, I had a 40 playing. I'm a big E-40 fan. You can judge me whatever in the comments below. I want to hear like your favorite artist does. Now, since I was a little kid, E-40 has been one of my favorite rappers. He's unique, he has his own style, he has his own slang, as we all know, and he's just interesting to me. It's always been fun to listen to. I used to love superfast rap. I'm white, after all, so that's kind of what we do. Twist the E-40, Busta Rhymes back in the day. Anyway, I used to like memorize lyrics. I used to go to Rap Lyrics.com, or Genius, or wherever. And I would—that's not where I used to get it from, but I don't remember. Yolo, Yolo, I don't know, something like that. I would print all the lyrics, and I would memorize them to be able to do—that's probably, probably why I talk so fast in these videos. Anyway, I was listening to E-40. My buddy in the backseat goes, "Pump the hell are you so listening to?" I think he likes creator Nickelback or something. But he's like, "What the [ __ ] you listening to, bro?" Oh, my dis is E-40's like, "Do turn this [ __ ] out." I'm like, "No, this is E-40." This is the thing. I went out of my way to defend my listening choice, to defend an artist that I've never met personally. I've had correspondence with E-40. E-40 is kind of one of my idols. I want to be on one of his projects officially. That's a different story, but I defended him. I said, "No, this is my car. I'm listening to E-40." And it made me think about this. It kind of tied right back to these emails that I get, these DMs, these messages, these conversations I have with coaching clients, these conversations I have with people at the gym. They are trying to, trying to chase a dream. I have a friend that wants to become a fitness celebrity or a fitness influencer on YouTube, and I try to walk him through the different steps. And if you're watching, what's up, man? But what I'm getting at is I defended E-40 because I liked it. I believed in it. I enjoy it. I don't care what anybody else thinks.
Now, all too often, as a creator, as a music producer, or rap, or a singer-songwriter, a musician—maybe you're awesome at the drums, maybe you're awesome at accordion—it doesn't [ __ ] matter. You have to believe in yourself as much as you believe in your favorite artists because your favorite artist doesn't know you exist most of the time, but you do. You know you exist. You know what you're capable of, and you can see your vision. What separates you from your favorite artists and you doing what's your favorite of the artists did? Now, the road is not easy, so maybe you should quit. Maybe you're not cut out for this. Maybe you're not built to be able to suffer through the [ __ ] to be able to find that reward. Maybe you're not built to put in the work, get lack of sleep, tell people to go [ __ ] off, tell friends that used to be friends way back to second grade that you outgrew them because they're not supportive. Either support me or go the other way. Maybe you should quit. Maybe me telling you that you should quit has you thinking about quitting. And if that's the case, then what the hell are you doing? Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in what you're trying to do? Do you believe in what your vision is for, for success and what you want to achieve and what you want to show the world? Or do you just want the Lambeau? You just want the McLaren, like my boy Superstar L, shoutout Superstar L? Do you just want the materialistic things? Now, I'm gonna sound like Tai Lopez again. He's really infiltrated my whole delivery here. That's the question. If I can go on Twitter and say, "Not everybody's built for this," not everybody is built to be a rapper, not everybody's built to be a successful music producer, because after all, you could be an unsuccessful music producer for your whole life. That's up to you. I mean, that's, that's actually a lot of, a lot of people choose that route. Do it as a hobby, do it as, do it as something that you just have fun with. How many people have, you know, driven the Guitar Center people crazy going in and playing piano, making beats on the MPC? And I can't even imagine what it's like working there. If you work at Guitar Center, let, let me know what it's like to work at Guitar Center, because I bet you either you tune it out and get, just get used to it, or you don't hear anything, or it drives you crazy, or maybe you're like an ultra-optimistic, glass half-full, three-quarters-of-the-way-full, and you just, you love people creating, even if they are god-awful.
If you're easily discouraged, how are you gonna find success? Because massive success—the people that you follow on Instagram, the people that you watch on YouTube—it hasn't been easy for any of us. I'm not saying that I'm successful, but let me tell you, I started off with [ __ ] One of these days I want to take you back to where I was living when I was in Wisconsin, in between being homeless, living in a pretty much a slum with office carpeting that was pulling up, and there was bare, shitty plywood coming through that you had to wear shoes in the house. The shower didn't work half the time. Somebody killed themselves in one of the rooms that I was in. I'm not lying about any of this stuff. I lived in—I'm not gonna say his last name—but I lived in a two-bedroom shitty apartment. The rent was $300 with my buddy Rob at the time, everything included, and it barely kept heat inside in the winter. Well, you could [ __ ] see or breathe. No, I just went off on a tangent, guys, so I apologize for the jump cut, but I don't have to put you guys through that. Just know that I know what it's like to struggle. I know what it's like to be eating ketchup and hot dog bun sandwiches. I know what it's like to not have a place to stay, have to sleep in the back of your car, couch surf for weeks on end, not know what it's like to have, you know, electricity for a few days or have cable. I mean, personally, now I'm doing pretty well for myself, and I don't have cable. I have the internet, but that's all. Anyway, what I'm getting at is there's no easy path to success. You know, the 1% of the 1% have things handed to them, but we're not comparing ourselves to them. You know, you have guys like Just Blaze, you have guys like Drake, you have guys like—I mean, I could go on and just name a list of people—but let me promise you something: the people that are successful, the people that you look up to, no matter what industry you could, you can look at Casey Neistat, you can look at Christian Guzman, you know, who's extremely popular here on YouTube, an incredibly successful, great guy from, from what I understand, they all start from square one. And what square are you in? That's another thing that I see all the time: impatience. Must start sounding like GaryVee, even though I don't agree with everything GaryVee preaches, the impatience thing, pretty spot-on. So many times I get DMs and emails from people that have literally just started making music three or four months ago, and they're like, "Why am I not getting sales? I'm not getting enough money. My parents don't believe in me. I'm about to quit my job." I'm like, "What the [ __ ] are you doing? You've barely even scratched the surface." But that's the problem with social media: things move so fast. Things move so fast. You didn't see my come-up. You didn't see people's come-up, like Superstar L, Anno Domini, other people, Cloak Beats, one of my good friends, Jay Kanan, Dylan Grounded Me. I'm not trying to drop names. I'm just, I know all these people personally that have come from nothing and made a name for themselves. Like I said, I've been producing for over 12 years, and I'm still getting better. I'm still improving. I'm still learning tips and techniques and tricks, and I'm gonna try to bring some of those to you guys, not necessarily through me, but some people that are way better than me. I have friends that are Grammy-nominated. I have friends that have huge followings on YouTube that make me look like I'm a loser, but guess what? That's motivating to me. I don't feel like [ __ ], you know, I'm a nobody, although I kind of feel like it sometimes, but I know that I have value. I know what I'm bringing to you guys. I know what I'm doing in this community is really making a difference. Sometimes in my Instagram stories, I'll screenshot, you know, testimonials and people hitting me up to thank me. It's not a narcissistic way. It's me showing you guys that if you take action, like these individuals did, regardless of how good their music is subjectively, they're finding successes. They're taking the action. You could watch these movies, or these—I guess their movies, though—you can watch these videos all day. If you do nothing with them, it's just like buying books. I can have five bookshelves full of books talked about. I could read, dammit, I 2,000 bucks, you know, what book a day, as the great Warren Buffett says.
And another thing that I need to talk about in this video—I wasn't gonna talk about it; in fact, I wasn't even gonna talk about this subject in this video—but I just got an email right before I turned the camera on, so it kind of threw me into a mood, and that's why I'm bringing this to you guys today. So I have another video that I'm gonna be shooting that I'll release later this week. But anyway, another thing that I can't understand for the life of me is seeking validation from people that are trying to do the same thing you do all day. You hear, as your producer, and all your friends on Facebook are producers, all your friends on Twitter and Instagram are other producers trying to figure the [ __ ] out just like you are. And what does that make any sense? It doesn't make sense. You're sending beats to guys that live in a one-bedroom [ __ ] apartment that you think are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. They're probably barely making ends meet. To do beat review videos, yeah, like that's the laziest, let me, let me pull back the curtain. That's like some of the laziest [ __ ] content that you can make for YouTube. If you have no value, what am I gonna do? You could do a like ice water challenge. You could try to eat a shitload of food and throw up and get people to watch that. People on YouTube are like [ __ ] itches, and they're feeding for some views. What else can you do in a music producer community? What do you do? You do beat review videos. Like, what the [ __ ]? Like, let me judge you for what you're doing. Let me tell you that your, your kick and your snare are mixed correctly. Like, what the [ __ ]? You don't need the validation. Who the [ __ ] are these people to tell you that your music is good or not? How many times have you heard music on the Billboard charts that you like that's the simplest beat ever? And I'm spending eight hours making this masterpiece, and this thing is like, like Gucci Mane, man. My hair's all over the place. I'm like, "Sorry, I'm, I'm getting like heated. I apologize. Let me take a second to kind of catch my breath." It just really pisses me off, bro. Really pisses me off, guys. I see these, I see these, these, these gurus out there, right, trying to give all this great advice, and it's like, "Who the [ __ ] are you? Like, you, you're nobody, just like everybody else, reviewing people's beats, trying to critique people's beats, telling them that they're not good enough, telling them that, oh, you should try harder and do this and that. Like, [ __ ] off. I'm not telling you how to do your beats. Now, if, now if you send somebody a beat for, for a one-on-one critique, maybe about the mix or whatever, like in a coaching type environment, I guess I understand that, but when it comes to like, "Is it hot or not?" Another girl, man, judging you. I mean, that's why I never understood the whole beat battle [ __ ]. You stand in front of a bunch of people, you play beats, you're like, yo, you're like [ __ ] animated to your own beat, like, pop, like, for what? You [ __ ] wasting time winning a beat battle? I like, well, sorry. I look at the world a little bit differently, as you could probably tell. I'm more like marketing and business-based, and a lot of people are just, it's all the hierarchy. It's all the hierarchy. And maybe, maybe from like a third-person perspective, I'm doing that right now. I'm sorry for rambling. This is just me being incredibly real with you guys, an off-script. It just really pisses me off how much misinformation from people that aren't nearly as successful as they're portraying themselves as, they are their own narrator for this [ __ ] grand story. When you're doing lazy content, it's not helping anybody. You don't need to find validation; other people to tell you that your stuff is good. You don't, that shouldn't give you a warm fuzzy feeling like, "Oh, you told me it was good." That's why I don't do videos like this on the Strip channel. Excuse me. I used to do cypher videos, but then I was even like, "I'm only giving so many people to win," and I have my other buddies, and we're all like judging people's freestyles and stuff. I'm like, "It didn't feel good. It kind of felt sleazy."
Anyway, what I'm getting at, guys, is if you want to chase a dream, and only maybe 5% of people that actually chase a dream find any sustained success, if that intimidates you, if you don't like the sound of that, if you don't think that you're cut out for it, quit. Sell your [ __ ], or just do it as a hobby. Say, "You know what? I'm not gonna pursue this career." I'm trying to turn this into a career for you guys. I'm trying to show you how to go from nothing to being able to support yourself, to be able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars doing what you love. Not even just with music. For instance, I started with music. I still do music. I love music. I'll never quit music, but I found another career, another passion, something that I find incredibly fulfilling in the marketing, the, the tutoring, the coaching realm. Next year, I'm going to be doing keynote speeches, guys. Not just at music conventions. I'm talking marketing conventions. That to me, that, that is, I, I'm, I'm living, living my best life. Anyway, I should make a song. When I say that you're my channel family, I actually bought channelfamily.com because that's how much it means to me. That's how much this, this phrase means to me. I meet you guys in public. I meet you guys at studio sessions. Once in a while, I'll even grab lunch with somebody if they're in my area, for—I mean, if I'm in their area. I'm launching a podcast to do just that. I want to be able to fly around the world. I'm gonna go to New Netherlands. I'm gonna go out to LA. I'm gonna go to Chicago, all these different places. I said that kind of like I was this bad chick gondola. I get passionate about this, guys. I really want to see you succeed, but if you don't believe in yourself, if you get all the self-doubt—I know what it feels like. It's, it's like you're, you're alone, and nobody gives a [ __ ] flying shits about you. You sit in front of a laptop with a hope and a dream, that's about it, wondering how you're gonna pay your phone bill in a couple of weeks. You guys, you guys have to believe. If you don't believe, you'll never succeed. That's all I got for you guys. That's really all I have. You have to purple, you have to put in the work. You can't be afraid to start. You can't be afraid of what the [ __ ] anybody else thinks. It's you. You have to have so much self-belief that you show the world. You don't ask the world for acceptance. Drake's not asking me what I think about his new single. Your favorite producer, your favorite singer, your favorite dancer, or your favorite YouTuber is not asking for our permission. They do it because they know what they're capable of, and they want to show you, and that's why you love them. You gotta start loving yourself the same way. If you found any value in this video, I hope that you smash that thumbs-up button. I want to hear from you in the comments below. I'm not gonna tell you what to say in this one, just tell me something. Tell me what your favorite artist is. Tell me what your dreams are. If you haven't yet subscribed, I'm not pushing that down your throat this video either. Just, just hit the, hit the subscribe button if you want to become part of the BFF family, the channel family. Hit that little bell icon so YouTube can tell you the next time that I upload a cool video like this because I genuinely hope you found something from this, cuz it's just God. If you guys could see what's possible on the other side of that [ __ ] self-doubt that you keep telling yourself every day, I tell you to change your life. Trust me, change mine. Until next time, guys. All my information will be in the description box below, and you can find me at AdamIBeCalm.com. [Music] You [Music]