779 Using YouTube to Bring Your Dream to Life

This is episode number 779 with the Powerhouse Women of YouTube. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you.

Discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now let the class begin.

Welcome to this episode. We've got some inspirational powerhouse females who are taking over the world with their creativity, with their passion, making their dreams a reality. And they all started in one place, and that was YouTube. They built this massive following on YouTube, which has allowed them to create a passionate following and audience to take their dreams to the next level. We've got Lily Singh, who just got a late night talk show, who has gained a massive following on YouTube and done so many other creative projects from TV to movies. We've got iJustine who's a huge YouTube personality, one of the first vloggers that really became famous. We talked about her and how she's built her channels. Bethany Mota who was also on Dancing with the Stars and taking over the world in fashion and beauty and styling and makeup and hair tutorials and recipes. We've got Lindsay Stirling, one of my favorite people who has turned the violin into one of the coolest things in the world with her music and her dancing and her choreography, doing massive sold out shows around the world. She also spoke at the Summit of Greatness last year and performed and blew everyone away. And this is all about how to really take your dreams that people think might be a little weird or quirky or different and these women have turned this creative thing that most people think you can never make money doing, and they've built massive businesses, massive brands, and led inspirational lives that have impacted and changed millions of people's lives around the world. And in this interview, we talk about how to sustain this level of intensity. All these women have done something unique with their hustle, but how do you sustain the hustle? How do you reinvent yourself through burnout? continually grow when you feel like you might be getting capped out. We talk about how to surround yourself with people who lift you up because there's a lot of negative haters that can say mean things about you on YouTube when you start to grow and any platform. And how do you really surround yourself with the right people and not worry about that? Talk about how to overcome the fear of failing. The fear of failing when you launch something that you think maybe other people don't believe in, but you launch it anyways because you love it. how to overcome the fear of failure once you become successful and you have that pressure to stay successful, and also how to find your true self through all of this. I'm so excited for you to listen to these women who are on this mashup episode about their YouTube dreams and how they built their brands. I'm super pumped about this. And make sure to share this with your friends. Tag a friend, text a friend, spread the message of greatness, help other people become dream makers like yourself by taking action on the wisdom they learn from this episode. Big thank you again for everyone who is here and let's dive into this episode with the powerhouse women of YouTube.

One of the things that our mutual friend Humboldt told me about, I was like, what's something that really inspires you about Lily? He goes, She, her level of work ethic and hustle, whether she's working fast food or some job she hates or putting together furniture is like the same level of energy and passion and hustle of across everything you do in life.

Right.

And so he's really like inspired by that. Why, where does that come from and why do you do that?

Yeah, honestly, I don't know where it comes from. Part of me thinks that, and this is me being really honest, I think is a great pro and a strength. But often at times it's also a really big con in my life. I'll give you a prime example. The other day we threw a barbecue for someone on my team got engaged. He's sitting right over there. And I threw a barbecue and I was like, all right, pretty simple barbecue. Get some stuff for the barbecue. And then I'm like, I should do a fruit plate. And I was FaceTiming Humble and this is why I know he said this to you because I was FaceTiming Humble and I was cutting strawberries into stars and bawling melons to make them look like flowers. And he was just looking at me and he's like, What are you doing? He's like, why are you putting this much effort into this fruit bowl? And it did not even occur to me. I was like, why wouldn't I spend five hours on this fruit bowl? What do you mean?

Five hours.

And I think it's just that I like to challenge myself and when I do anything, I treat it as if it is the most important thing. And that's great because then I get to do amazing things like this that I'm really, really proud of. But then also I spend five hours making a fruit bowl. So it's kind of problematic.

You sleep in your bed for two hours.

Yeah, it's, I haven't gotten there yet. But it's, yeah, I don't know. There's something in me that's just obsessed with improving and productivity all the time. And when people ask me, how do you do that? Don't you get tired? The answer is, I don't know. I don't get tired. I get tired of doing a lot of things, but I don't get tired.

Of making this one thing the best it could be. You obsess over it. I obsess. You think there's something underneath it? Like, what if you didn't have the perfect fruit bowl?

I mean, it wasn't perfect. The kiwis were kind of whack. I'll say that. I think it's just we have X amount of energy in a day, and if I'm going to spend that energy anyways, why not just spend it on doing something really well? It really bothers me if I just do, like, here's an example. If I take a break, I usually watch a TV show. And in my brain, it's not just me, oh, I'm gonna do nothing and watch a TV show. In my brain, it is no-no. you are going to get inspired, but you have to proactively watch this TV show now so you can get inspired.

It's like homework. It's not relaxing.

And I'm obsessed with that. I'm obsessed with productivity at every level and being the best I can be and extracting the best I can out of everything. And it's obsessive.

Who do you want to be?

Who do I want to be? I want to be I don't want to fill anyone's void. You know, I think Humble and I learned this when we were in Italy at the honor of talking to Pharrell, and he said something that really, really impacted me. When Humble was asking him, he said something like, I want to fill the Andre 3000 void. You know, that's what I want my music to be. And Pharrell was like, you should fill the Humble, the poet void. And I was like, I mean, Humble talk about that all the time. And that got me thinking where I don't want to fill the, I don't want people to be like, Oh yeah, you could be the next Mindy Kaling. You know, they're just saying that because I'm also a brown girl. I don't want people to be like, yeah, you could be Amy. No, I want to fill the Lilly Singh void. I want to be the best version of myself that gives me goosebumps. You know, I want to make little Lilly get goosebumps when she looks at my success.

That's what I want to be. I love the dedication that you had. I'm just gonna read it. Yeah. Dedicated to the person I was six years ago. I told you to keep going. Thanks for listening. It kind of reminds me of the Matthew McConaughey speech.

Yeah.

Did you remember seeing his speech was the Oscar or the Oscar where he was like, my inspiration is myself three years from now and like chasing that guy who's going to achieve those things that I want to achieve. And it's like, what do I need to do now that's going to make that happen? And like always chasing that myself, not someone else. Right. So I think it's cool that you kind of dedicated to that. Yeah, that dedicate, I was thinking long.

And hard about the dedication. I'm like, of course I want to dedicate to my mom. Of course it's all these people put them all in the acknowledgments. I'm like, cut the BS. The person is actually dedicated to that actually inspired me. It was the person that was like, I feel like crap. I'm still gonna get up tomorrow, that person. That inspires me.

I just finished my book, my next book, and I might have to change my dedication. Really? And give you the props for the inspiration. Not saying the same thing, but do it in my own way. You don't gotta give me any props for the inspiration.

I think it's really cool, because I dedicated my family in the last book.

And I'm like, okay. Which is great. Families are great. But they're in the acknowledgments as well.

So maybe I'll change it up. But I think sometimes as humans we need to be like, we feel pressured to always be giving people credit and always be, and that's very, very important. But sometimes we don't give enough credit to ourselves.

Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.

At the end of the day, it's still you that did the thing.

So what's your vision then for your growth strategy for, or just for your strategy in general for what you're creating? Just to have fun or do you have a vision of like, I want to hit 10 million subscribers or I want to make this much a year or do you not even think about that?

I don't.

Really, as long as you make enough.

Money that comes in, you're happy, you're not like focused on a big dream or big goal with that.

No, and the weird thing for me is like setting goals is I always set these goals. I'm like, I'm bored, I don't want to do that anymore. And I find something else that's even cooler than that. And I've talked to a lot of people who have set these goals that they will do nothing until they achieve that. And they're so pigeonholed in getting to that goal that there's other things that.

You could have been doing that are so much better than that. So what are the things you want to be doing?

And what's the dream for you then? Wow, I don't know. I mean, I have so many things. Like, every day there's something else I want to do, and it's like, if I don't want to do that the next day, then I change- you- don't do it. Yeah. So, I mean, I know I'm gonna be working on a movie, which is really fun. Really?

Yeah.

And I think another reason I started writing the book, too, is because I wanted to pitch sort of a web series idea based around my life, but nobody could really grasp their head around the crazy things that have happened.

So I was like, I'm just gonna put it in a book, and then we'll talk. What do you think is the biggest thing that's opened up for you since doing your first YouTube video till now.

The biggest thing you've learned about yourself? Learned about myself.

It's been a journey.

It's been a number of years. Good at staying on task. I am a procrastinator, and no matter how much I try not to be, I am. So that's why it's very helpful that I was like, I need to have people surrounding me that are able to sort of compensate for the things that I know I'm not good at. You know, even like my sister, like, I know if we hang out, we're probably not going to get any projects done. So I need to make sure she's.

At her house telling me what to do. It's your face timing. as a person being a person.

Yeah, because then we'll just play video games. So, you know, I think just surrounding yourself with people that are able to sort of, you know, lift you up for the things that you're not good at is just super important. So I think that was kind of the stepping stone for me is learning what I wasn't good at and finding people to help fix that.

Got you, got you. I'm curious if you, you know, with all the content you put out there, every video out there, if it all got erased, What I'm curious is if you could put up one final video. Yeah. That would be the only video people see for the rest of time from you. And in this video, well, first off, I'll ask you two things. One, what would you post in that video if it was the only video people would ever see and just say it was under five minutes, what would you post?

Five minutes, which is a good average YouTube length.

Where are you?

I don't know. I don't ever plan my videos either. So if all my videos got deleted today, I would probably just turn on the camera and just start talking. And I have no, I don't know what I would say though is the problem.

Okay, well I'll give you a better question.

Okay.

If you had one video left.

Oh no.

Everything was deleted. All your social network was deleted. The internet was done, but you got to put one video out there that the world could see. And you could never record again. You could never have any of the other messengers go out there. And you got to share three things that you know to be true about the world and your experience and what you've learned. What would those three things be?

Nothing is as big of a deal as you probably think it is. Nobody actually really cares as much as you think they do. And yeah, just have fun and be nice.

Be nice. Do you feel like you've been pretty nice?

Definitely. I think I'm sometimes too nice.

Too nice? Does it hurt you sometimes?

I think so.

What would you say is the biggest fear for you then? Again, you've gone through a lot of the bullying, the cyber bullying, you've had other people criticize you for things you've done, you've had failures like you said, but what's the big fear for you moving forward?

Biggest fear? I think it's funny because my fears have changed. My biggest fear used to be failing. And I failed, we've all failed, but I used to be very affected by failure. I used to take it so personally. I let it stop me for months.

What did failure look like for you? Was it just not achieving something that you set out to achieve or what was the failure?

I think it's when you have expectation. When you expect something to happen and then you feel entitled, you allow yourself to feel entitled to that happening because, oh, I put the work in. Mm-. Why didn't I get the results? And then you start, you know, it affects your ego.

Yeah.

And I think I used to let my ego have too much control because I simply, I just wasn't aware of it. I wasn't aware of the ego. And when my ego was in control, and when my ego was in control, that's when I would focus on numbers. And, oh, it didn't get this many views. Oh, my gosh, what am I doing? Take it really personally. and I wasn't happy because I wasn't focusing again on the passion, on just loving it and doing it out of love. Because when you do things out of love, there is no ego there. You don't take it personally if you don't get the views that you wanted. You just love the fact that you're able to create something. And so failure was my biggest fear. And now I embrace failure because anytime, I don't even consider it, that's cheesy, but I really don't consider it failure anymore. Anytime I've experienced failure or pain, somehow something beautiful always comes out of it. It's really strange. But cyber bullying, when I went through that experience, I started YouTube. If that didn't happen, if I wasn't cyber bullied, 100% would not have started YouTube.

Where would you be now?

And there's so many other experiences like that in my life that have happened even, you know, maybe yesterday, like little things where it's like, if I didn't go through that challenge, I wouldn't have known that I was this strong. I'm excited. Like, what's the next challenge going to be? Because I know that I'm going to learn from it. That's amazing. Because the stronger that I can get, the more wise I can become. What I'm working on, what I'm creating, hopefully can be more helpful to the people around me. And if I can be more helpful to the world, then I have purpose. So now I no longer fear failure. I think I fear losing passion. And as long as I'm aware of, I think awareness is so powerful. I believe that as long as I stay aware of why I'm feeling things, because obviously I'm still going to feel insecure, I'm still going to feel doubtful at times. But if I can be aware of the fact that this is just a reaction, it's possibly just an illusion, it might not even be real, then I can keep the passion alive.

Amen to that. I always talk about for me, failure is feedback. It's information that's telling me what's working and what's not working. And when I figure out, okay, this isn't working, it's not allowing me to achieve or create what I want to create. So it's feedback, what's the information I need to learn to help me get there? And so I think again, you're doing a great job of saying it's just something that's going to challenge me, that's going to bring something beautiful to life and it's going to make me stronger. Right. So I think if we reframe failure or fear or any of these things as really opportunities to grow, that's pretty powerful.

Yeah.

What do you see yourself creating now? You're like this phenomenon, fans all over the world, number one songs in all these different countries. You're touring everywhere, sold out. Like where do you see yourself going? Who are you trying to become?

That's such a good question. I've been asking myself that since I was five years old. I would say, I mean, I love what I do. My favorite part of, I think, the whole thing is I love touring. And that's kind of why I started originally was the YouTube channel, the music, everything was emoted so that I could, like, then go out and share it and perform. Like, I love being on a stage and seeing people smile. Like, there's nothing that, like, gets me alive like that does and. So, I mean, I definitely want to keep touring and I'm, I'm working on.

My next album right now.

And sometime this year.

Yeah, that's what we're allowed to say. Sometime this year, I have my goal date, but I'm, who knows if I'm going to make it. I'm hoping for the summer. But yeah, so I'm working on new music and, you know, I hope to produce a film someday with my dad, actually. Oh, that'd be great. You know, that's something we're actually working on a script lightly right now and, but yeah, that's, that's part of the goal. It's been amazing to, to live my dream, but also bring the people I love along with me, whether it's like now my, my tour family. getting to bring them along on the journey has been amazing. And then also writing a book with my sister. And I work with my other sister, Jennifer, and hoping to write a script with my dad. That's kind of what makes it so exciting, is to do the thing you love with the people you want to be with.

Sure. What's the feeling you get when you're on stage? Explain it to us.

How do you explain it? When I'm on stage and when I'm performing and dancing and you know, doing the whole thing, I honestly feel like that's what I was created to do. Like this sense of true self, of just like, just empowerment. And, you know, and I look into the faces and, you know, you can always see there's lots of people that are excited to be there, but you can usually find like one or two people in the front row that you can tell they are so happy and that they've been waiting for this for months and being able to look into their eyes and just, I mean, it's so selfishly validating, you know, it's just like, You know, I mean, I hope it's not too selfish, but it's amazing to have that moment of connection where you realize that you're connecting with someone that you've never even met and you have these moments with people that are just amazing.

There you have it, my friends. You are the dream makers in this world. You are the ones who are taking on your dreams in a massive way and making them happen. You're manifesting your dreams each and every day when you consume this information and you take action on it. Spread the dream making ability for other people as well. Send this to a friends, text your friends, post it on your social, Instagram stories, your Twitter, Facebook, spread the message of greatness and the ability for other people to dream and make those dreams come true as well. that's what this is all about, paying it forward. And the ladies of YouTube mashup lewishouse.com/779 share this with your friends. Spread the message of greatness. We're taking over the world one day at a time, one person at a time, helping people live their dreams and live greater. That's what this is all about, baby. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there. and do something great.