One of the lessons that I try to drive home to students (and the adults who I coach) is the importance of being someone who makes things.
Rather than simply being the content consumers – constantly paying for the creativity and ingenuity of others – I counsel people who will listen to become the kind of person who makes new things for this world.
If possible, excel at making things.
Make great things.
Not only will this often prove to be lucrative, but more importantly, it also brings far greater joy to a person than simply consuming the content of others for an entire life. Granted, this kind of creation requires effort, focus, and an investment of personal resources, but the results will almost always be well worth that investment.
This could be as simple as learning to cook the perfect cheeseburger. Playing a musical instrument. Painting or drawing.
But it could mean larger, more complex projects like writing a book. Acting in a play. Launching a small business. Developing a new app. Building a better mousetrap.
Big or small. Profitable or profitless. Making stuff feels good and leaves behind a legacy for other to remember forever.
Last night, Elysha, Charlie, and I found ourselves listening to Amos Lee’s “Sweet Pea.” I was instantly transported to the evening of my launch of “Twenty-one Truth About Love,” where Elysha played the ukulele and sang that song in public.
She made something that night. I will remember it forever. “Sweet Pea” is no longer just Amos Lee’s song in my mind.
It’s Elysha’s song now, too.
At my recent virtual book launch for “The Other Mother,” Elysha and Clara sang Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” while Elysha played ukulele.
On a conference call a week later with fellow board members for a business, one of my counterparts told me that he cried while listening to them sing. The first time he had cried in a long, long time. The song had stirred up emotions in him about his grandmother and her passing and brought him to tears.
Elysha and Clara made something, and the results impacted people around the world.
Make stuff. You never know what might happen.
But I also counsel my students – child and adult – to not limit themselves to the paths of those who came before them. Sometimes the most interesting, compelling, memorable, and even profitable things that you can make are those that have never been made before. The new idea. The never-before-seen product or service. Art like no one has ever seen before can oftentimes be astounding.
The closest I have come to something like this is my novel “Twenty-one Truths About Love,” which is written entirely in list form. I’m not sure if that has ever been done before, making it fairly original.
But it’s still a book. Not exactly groundbreaking.
But just this past week, I have found three examples of three brand new, never-before-seen things that are brilliant:
- Teqball, a new sport invented in 2012 in Hungary by three soccer enthusiasts that combines elements of soccer and table tennis. It is now the fastest growing sport in the world and is making a bid for a future Olympics.
- MayTree, a five person acapella group that specialized in recreating the music of video games, computer programs, the musical logos associated with film companies, and much more. They are astounding and have quickly gained international fame when their YouTube videos went viral.
- A chart of household appliances and their ability to perform a list of specific chores. Simple, amusing, and a never-before-seen idea that is utterly original. Will it make the artist, whose name I cannot find, wealthy? Probably not, but it may open doors for that artist that were otherwise closed, and it certainly brought me a great deal of amusement.
Make stuff. Be a content creator rather than simply a content consumer.
If possible, make stuff never before seen. Blazing a new path is often the best way to get seen and be remembered.
