Top 10 SECRETS of Creative SUCCESS

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is Create What You Like. Over to you, Seth Rogen.

I wake up every morning. Espresso keeps me going.

I wake up every morning.

We make the movies we want to go see. I mean, we found that when you go in meetings, there's a lot of, you know, with studios and Various producers and stuff. There's a lot of talk about who will like the movies. You know, you make this movie, these people will like it. You make this movie and these people will like it. And they're all kind of guesses, stabs in the dark almost. And then that's when we realized, you know, the only people that we know that we can make movies for is ourselves. So when we sit down to write a movie like Pineapple Express, we thought, what movie do we want to go see? What's the trailer that we watch and we say, that's the movie that I'm gonna throw down my money for. That's the movie I can't wait to go watch. And, uh, yeah, that's, that's really all it is. It's, you know, you could guess all day as to what other people would like, but you know what you like. So that's what we try to do, is just stuff that, that we would want to go see.

Thank you guys so much for watching. The question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the last thing that you created that you really, really, really, really liked yourself? You created for yourself, what was the last thing that you made? Leave it in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion I also want to give a quick shout out to Noel Brosnan. Noel, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to stay inspired on creating the things that you like, stay tuned for some special bonus clips.

I don't think in terms of like retrospectively, retroactively looking at what I did and how I got to where I am. Instead, it's much more of a focus on what do I want to do next? Because I think that if you try to consider or cater to your audience too much, you will invariably end up making something that's mush. Yeah, because I don't know that the audience knows what they want to see. I know that I don't know what's gonna pique my interest. If I knew how to describe the perfect movie, vlog, television show, I would just do it. I want to see something that surprises me. And when I think of my own work, that's exactly right. Like, I put my head down and I try to ignore the world, and I try to make something that I think is really good. And if people like it, great. If they don't, I don't care, as long as I like it. So I think like if I had one thing to attribute all of this growth to, it's that I'm making work that I feel embodies the same level of integrity of anything else that I would invest myself into.

Do you have a specific target audience?

Oh, just anybody who can read, anybody who's literate. It used to be, again, that comics were just for little kids, or they were thought to be for little kids.

But that's changed.

Uh, yeah, yeah, with Marvel, because we started directing Marvel at ourselves, really. The theory was we're going to write the kind of stories we would enjoy reading, you see. And I didn't know if it would work or not, but it worked better than anybody expected because we grabbed a lot of readers who were much older who liked the kind of things that we liked, but we didn't lose the young kids. So we ended up We have kids 7 years old who read Marvel who don't understand the subtle implications and ramifications and the psychology and philosophy and the subliminal moralizing, but they love the nutty characters and the long underwear and the colorful costumes. And the older readers enjoy all the little subplots and the little asides we put in and the little things that a young kid can't ever grasp, but They're there in the story.

You've reached a happy medium.

Yeah. So we find the best formula, if you call it that, is we don't try to write for any audience. We try to write stories we would enjoy, and apparently there are enough people in the world who have the same tastes. I hate to say that. I'd like to think my taste is far better, but apparently everybody must have pretty much the same taste, because the books sell pretty well.

When it comes to pleasing people, listen, of course you want to have a good reception, but You don't make a movie by committee. And so I have to make a movie that I would want to see, and I have to create a character that I am interested in, and that's it. I put my head down and I focus on that, and I don't really pay attention to what people may be requesting because I believe that if we have enough conviction in what we're doing, then people will believe it as well.

Do you think the secret to your success is actually that you are in many ways, in the way you lead your life, your tastes are quite average, middle of the road? The kind of stuff that the mass market would like.

For sure.

Absolutely right. And I don't think you can make records, I don't think you can make TV shows properly, unless you can sit there as a listener or a viewer. You can't guess what people like. It would be like me guessing what you want for dinner. It's impossible. I can tell you what I want. So I base everything on my own tastes. And I have, you know, fairly broad tastes. You know, I'd say quite simple taste.

I think originality, period, could crack not only the UK, anywhere. Originality is— people strayed away from that. Every time people do music or anything they do now, they do it like someone who has done it before, or they do it like what they think the people want. I don't do that. I do what I know is nice to me. I do what I think is cool. And if you you don't think is cool, then I think you're not cool. So if you approach it with that attitude, then I don't think you could ever lose.