Starting a fire attracts other people that want to be warm.
I was stuck.
I was living in the south, with my heart set on becoming an actor.
in a place where the closest you can get to being in front of a camera is being in a cheesy green screen car commercial or being a news anchor.
Sick.
My 9-5 was a retail job where, for the cost of living in arkansas, I made great money.
Great money, locked into a routine I hated.
It went like this:
Clock in
Spend the first 10 minutes of my shift sitting in the break room with my head in my hands.
Will myself to go out onto the sales floor.
Sell products I didn't care about for a company that didn't care about me.
Rinse and repeat, day after day after day.
The same singular thought bouncing around into my brain from the time I clocked in to the time I clocked out. I'm wasting my life.
Then it occurred to me:
If my only hope for opportunities was to wait until I had enough money saved (and courage summoned) to move to a thriving entertainment hub like Los Angeles, then I had to figure out a way to create my own.
If there were no projects available near me, I had to start one.
So I bought a camera, and with the help of youtube and a little bit (a lot) of obsession,
I absorbed every piece of filmmaking content and tutorial I could get my hands on.
Shortly after, my first creative project Step-Brotherly Love was born. (I've linked it here if you want to go down the rabbit hole)
For the next decade I honed my skills shooting and editing and over time became an expert in that process.
A skillset that I learned out of necessity in order to create my own opportunities has been pivotal to getting me to where I am now.
And because of it, I'm entering my 5th consecutive year making multi 6 figures as a fight coordinator and stuntman for some of the biggest film franchises.
On the surface being a stuntman relies on your body and your athleticism.
But my unfair advantage was that I came into the industry armed with the knowledge of how to create films from start to finish.
I spoke the language.
Being able to perform but also being able to shoot, edit, and sell an action concept to a director in a time where that was hard to come by, fast tracked my career.
It's like when you take shortcuts on Mario Kart and smoke your friends.
Wanna take the shortcuts in real life Mario Kart? Letsaaaa go!
Here are 3 lessons I've learned by creating opportunities for myself when there were none.
Lesson 1: Your skill stack determines your value.
Realize that you can learn anything you want for free.
We live in a time where you can spend a couple hours a day on youtube and over time learn almost anything.
Dont believe me? Go to youtube and type in "How to ______"
If you dont turn up a gazillion results I'll buy you a cookie.
Filmmaking? I’ve done it. (highly recommended you learn this skill to be totally self reliant. More on that in the future.)
Photography? Absolutely.
Home decor? It's there.
How to fix cars? Yup.
Cooking? Mhmm.
Wanna learn a backflip? An army of 12 year olds with their own successful youtube channels will show you how.
Literally anything. You just have to sit down and do it.
Like my with my stunt career, there are no wasted skills.
I learned filmmaking for the purpose of shooting my own projects.
But the skills I learned helped me survive the early years by shooting freelance music videos.
They allowed me to take on graphic design and photography projects to stay afloat.
And eventually allowed me to jump years ahead in my stunt career (my ultimate goal).
Your skill stack determines your value.
Lesson 2: Starting a fire attracts other people that want to be warm.
Creating opportunities attracts external opportunity because it doesn't take long for people to start seeing you as "the person that does that thing."
I may do stunts as my main career, but lately my friends approach me talking about the motivational stuff I've been posting on social media. I've become "the guy that makes those videos."
The reality is, people aren't that different. There are people in close proximity who are just like you, and who interested in the same things.
They also feel stuck. These are the people you want to involve yourself with. A handful of people participating in the same created opportunity become a team.
Teams get shit done. Teams become your tribe.
The steps look like this
create an opportunity around something you love
Involve people in that opportunity
become a team
become friends
beat their asses in Mario Kart.
My entire circle of close friends, who are also my network, can be traced back to the beginning through a common interest. Birds of a feather and all that.
Create opportunity for yourself, put it out into the world, and be loud about it. People will find you.
Lesson 3: Trial and error is the only way to stack failure reps. Success requires reps of failure.
If I had waited to move to Los Angeles to get in front of a camera I'd be back at my corporate job by now.
Filming myself allowed me to see what I sucked at.
Trying to improve got me comfortable enough in front of the camera to pursue being in short films.
Being in short films (and sucking) gave me experience taking direction. It allowed me to get used to being in a high pressure environment and helped me learn how things flow on set.
The point is, the road to success is paved with failures.
You can't get reps failing without trying (and in turn cant gain the tools and knowledge you learn from failing)
You can't try without an opportunity
You won't have opportunities unless you create them (at least in the beginning)
I sometimes wonder how much unrealized potential is out there because of people that waited on things to come to them.
Don't be this way.
The bottom line
No one you admire in the upper echelon of success got to where they are by waiting for things to come to them.
We all know that.
For some reason, we (myself included) tell ourselves these stories about how other people have it easier than us because it's easier to accept that than it is to accept the pain of our failures along the way.
Accept them. There will be many.
But the only true failure is giving up. Everything else is growth.
I hope this helps.
Caleb
