Tom Guarriello argues that your best work comes from finding your creative sweet spot, the specific conditions where you produce most authentically. He describes his own as speaking directly to camera about topics he cares about, and warns against chasing trends or spreading yourself too thin across formats.
Oh, hi, it's Tom Guarriello. Can I ask you a question? When do you do your best creative work? And by that I mean, what are the conditions under which you can pretty well count on you producing something that you can be proud of? Now, you know, um, For example, for me, my best creative work, such as it is, is sitting in front of a camera and thinking out loud about things that matter to me. When I do that, I'm in what I call my creative sweet spot. I, I feel myself flowing with the ideas that I'm interested in talking about, and they just come out. Now, by contrast, if, you know, I've done other kinds of videos, um, and they've been fun and I've enjoyed them, but I have to say, if I were to be really honest with myself I don't think they were as creative as the work that I do when I do this kind of video. Now, the reason I think it's important for us all to discover our creative sweet spot is because focusing on the things that we do best is one of the most important keys to to being successful. You know, there's an old adage that every comedian wants to play Shakespeare. You know, every comic wants to be Hamlet. And I think that's a shorthand for how so many of us are dissatisfied with our creative sweet spot. Oh yes, I know I can do that, but I want to show that I can do this and I can do that other thing. And I can do— well, the fact of the matter is, again, if we're being brutally honest with ourselves, and if others were to be brutally honest with us, they would say, you know what, stick to the comedy, uh, stick to the talking head, stick to what you do and what you feel yourself doing most spontaneously. And most yourself. So I'm curious, what's your creative sweet spot? What is the topic area or the medium or the point of view, you know, the angle that you like to look at things from in which you find yourself to be most spontaneously creatively in your sweet spot. And if you have any stories, I'd love to hear stories about times when you've tried to move outside that sweet spot and what's happened when you've done that. I think it's very difficult for us, especially in an age when certain kinds of things get very popular. For example, here on YouTube, boy, if I was a comedian, if only I could do, you know, what Zipster does, or Renato, or, you know, hey, Sexy Phil, or, you know, any of those, any of the— but if only I could do that, you know. And people all the time write to you here on YouTube and say, you know, what can I do? How can I be more successful? How am I going to get more subscribers? What's the best way? And, you know, I know it may sound trite and sound like a cliché, but for me, the way to be most successful is to find your creative sweet spot and Mine the hell out of it. Work it, work it, work it. Perfect your ability to be in that creative sweet spot, in that niche. Trying to explore all over the map may sound like a good thing to do, but my experience is that finding that sweet spot and working it hard has been the key to more successful people's success than wandering all over the map reaching for all sorts of different things that don't quite have that same connection with them. So as always, interested in your thoughts about that. Would love to hear stories from you, and, uh, I'll see you again soon. Take it easy. Bye-bye.
