Welcome to the Jerry Banfield show episode #1. Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Poorly. I filmed this for the first time in St. Petersburg, Florida. The room was empty which was a relief. It had given me a chance to set up my equipment giving me a chance to test the audio.
If you really want to do something, it's got to be worth doing whether it is glamorous and amazing or just done kind of at a bare minimum poor level.
If you think about almost anyone that has worked up like a professional football player, some of them have the abilities some of the time to make beautiful plays and to put on an amazing show for us.
If you think about when did they start playing football? What did that look like? The professional football player probably started out barely being able to crawl, walk, not even being able to catch a ball and made a poor effort until being able to put on an amazing show.
Thus, the key that I find for an entrepreneur and a creative is to be willing to do something poorly. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. A lot of us want to start, especially after things go well, we want to start off at some fancy level.
I was fantasizing that my show could get funded for hundreds of thousands of dollars and that there'd be hundreds of people there for some of the first episodes and maybe I could have made that happen.
Here's the key thing. If the show's really worth doing, it's worth doing in a room by myself. I enjoyed doing it regardless of whether anybody is here or not. That's how I know it's worth doing. If it's only worth doing based on the external validation I get then it's not worth doing.
I've gone through with launching the Kickstarter project and I just submitted some ads and made a promo video for the show. The ads just started today and it would have been kind of crazy if someone had come out within a few hours of seeing an ad for the first time.
At the same time, my responsibility is to show up, prepare the show and to then tell people about it. I've got ads out that are telling thousands of people every day according to YouTube but that hundreds of people every day are clicking on for maybe $20 or $30 that are within 7 miles of the show.
That means that it's very close. People can walk or drive to the show very easily and I've got ads running. If you've watched one of my videos before, I've got ads running within 50 miles of here.
If you've already seen a video up to 540 days ago and then you see that I'm doing a show within a day's drive then that's how I'm promoting the show and talking about it. From there, it's just my responsibility to show up and film the show.
I'm excited to film outside of my house to film in a different location to make videos on a digital camera with a real background instead of making them in my green screen.
I’m doing this just to practice and enjoy doing the show before there's any pressure to perform for anybody and before there's anyone I'm accountable for that expects me to say something useful.
I remember thinking of Eckhart Tolle who is the best-selling author of “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”.
The first few workshops he did with people, there'd be one or two people that come to his house. He liked those intimate workshops. Now, he does huge retreats with 400+ people and he's got the best-selling books and he's been on Oprah.
The secret is he started off just working with one or two people a time. He was willing to do poorly so to speak. Now, I think one-on-one in-person can be really helpful. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
Imagine anyone you follow and you'd love to be hanging out with them. Imagine having a one-on-one with them at the beginning of their career. How special will it be and you'll always remember that.
I got to go to one of Eckhart Tolle's first things back when nobody knew who he was. I just went to his house. I love imagining that.
I imagine the same for my show that the first few people that show up will be like, “Dude, I was at that show when nobody else knew about it. I was the 1st or the 2nd or the 10th person to come to the show”.
I have this idea of doing the show in my head and it feels so good. I love doing it. I'm happy to do it by myself and I'm happy to tell people about it until others are inspired to come to sit and fill the room.
So, even as the room in my present senses, my eyes, my ears and my smell, all the air conditioners are off. Even though my senses are saying that the room is empty, I'm imagining this room being filled as long as I show up, film and share the videos.
I imagine the room in time will fill and I imagine in time we will outgrow this room and need a bigger one but I don't get to that point without starting at this point today with an empty room.
I'm grateful. I also looked around at how to promote the show and instead of messaging every friend trying to get them to contribute to my Kickstarter project, I realized I have a talent. I'm really good at doing online ads. I'm really good at making videos.
When you multiply the 2 of those together, I can do online ads for my own videos. How many businesses would love to have the ability to do that?
It's my responsibility to use my talents. So I'm running a YouTube ad right now all over within 7 miles of here doing a 90-second promo for my show and I imagine I'll do some more episodes and put those YouTube ads out also as more people come to the show.
Even if just one person comes, I’ll do a great job. When nobody's here, the first person will show up. I’ll do a great job with the first person. They might bring a friend or maybe another person will show up from a YouTube ad.
In-time it builds, builds and builds as I keep giving a lot more value than what it costs.
My vision for the show is that when you come here and pay $20 for a ticket, you get $200+ of value out of it. $200+ of value in how good you feel and what kind of ideas you get during this show in the problems you're able to solve in your life.
Finding problems you can cut out of your life. For areas you can cut out of your life, that'll save you money and increase your earning power. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
The format I'm doing for the show is Monday is a make money class or workshop, especially for online based on my experience. I've made one and a half million dollars in revenue online. Almost $700,000 in profit from 2015 to 2018 taxable income.
These are my results and therefore, I'm in a good position to teach others that are interested in doing the same thing. Thus, I'll try 2 different formats. I stand here and teach and answer questions to the audience.
On Tuesdays, we'll try a slightly different format where it's more of an inspirational motivational as let's help each other. Let's talk about things that are tough in life. It’ll be kind of like “The Tonight Show”. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
We'll have a monologue by me to start with and then just invite audience members up to talk about their specific situation so that I can interview and give feedback.
You might think that it looks like a failure. Why would you do a video with an empty room? I've put in all this effort, all of this thought for years about having a talk in front of live audiences and specifically picturing doing a show.
You might think, Well, this is a failure. It's the first time you do this show and not one person shows up. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
For me, this is a success because I showed up. I love what I'm doing and I'm grateful things are just the way they are. I'm glad I can just set up my camera, test out the filming set up, listen back to the audio/video, make sure everything is looking good and sounding good.
Next time I'm ready and then I don't have the expectation that someone should show up. I know I'm showing up. I am doing what I know how to do to promote the show and then from there I trust that the results will be delivered when I'm ready to receive them.
Tonight I was not ready to receive somebody else coming to see my show. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
In fact, I had lots of video ideas I could do that were great to do by myself. I wanted to talk about the last 7-12 AA Steps. When nobody's here, I can just talk about whatever I want to just like in my home office.
When people are here, there's listening for me to do and focusing exactly what I'm saying on who's here.
The key is to be willing to do things poorly and to just do something without expecting a whole bunch of applause or anything in return because you love it and then just keep doing that. Again, back to being like a professional football player. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
I imagine because I'm not a professional football player that professional football players just started out loving playing football for years and years and years. Maybe they started to imagine that someday they'd be professionals and would get paid.
But probably for the first 10 or 15 years of playing football, from being maybe 3 to 4 years old, there was no pay. There was no glamour. It was a backyard football game. It was a random game of jackpots.
At school, there was no pro football. There was not a lot of money. There was just love of the game and with enough love of the game then there's the opportunity for what you might think of as stardom and glamour or for most pro football players, it's not.
It's been just a year, a couple of years in the NFL, and then what am I going to do with the rest of my life now? What a disappointment you might argue for the majority of professional athletes. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
I am doing this today with the imagination that this helps you to execute on your own creative vision. If you can see with all that I've done online, I'm willing to show up to a room that's empty to start filming my show then the goal is for you to think, “Well, what am I willing to do to show up to an empty room”?
Maybe you want to play music or write books. Are you willing to write a book nobody reads? Are you willing to write 5 or 10 books that nobody reads before you get a best-seller?
There's a story that I love but it's tragic and it also helps. There was a man who wrote a book. He loved the book and he sent it out to publisher after publisher. He got rejected so many times that he gave up and ended his life in despair. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
His mother got the book published and it sold a whole bunch. He literally couldn't stand the pain of living anymore with all that failure and rejection. Maybe all he needed to do was submit it one or two more times.
JK Rowling the author of “Harry Potter” got turned down a lot of times. A bunch of publishers got her manuscript and thought this is stupid and nobody wants another book like this.
I imagine the success that you might say the Harry Potter series has had. The 8 Harry Potter movies + the other Harry Potter universe movies. The massive audiences that have read the Harry Potter books and the love people like me have for Harry Potter.
All that only materializes because JK Rowling was willing to (a) write a book with no assurance anybody would read it. (b) To get told by a bunch of publishers that this is not worth publishing. We're not publishing this. There's no market for this book.
Got “No” by a bunch of people who get books like hers all the time until she could get just one publisher to say “Yes” and publish the book. I imagine as you're experiencing this that you're starting to see you really just need to show up for your life and your dreams to have the chance for everything else to succeed.
Now, I'm not saying that if you feel unnatural about the idea of being a pro football player that you can just show up and be a pro football player. Each of us has unique gifts to use.
For me, speaking is one of my gifts. Teaching is one of my gifts. Being a pro football player is not one of my gifts. It doesn't matter if I show up and try out, I'm not going to be a professional football player.
Although, all things with God are possible. It might take this body to pass away and reincarnate for me to become a professional football player.
The key is to show up where it feels natural. It feels natural for me to show up in this room. I'm in with a camera in front of me and talk that feels natural. It really doesn't matter how many other people are in the room because I just like hearing myself talk.
That's all we really need to fill this room is me showing up when it feels right. I have a very strong imagination and a feeling of how good it feels having this room full of people who are inspired, excited and leaving this room feeling better than when they came in.
That's my responsibility and that's what I'm doing and contributing.
So, I appreciate you joining me here for the very first episode of the Jerry Banfield show live in St. Petersburg, Florida. I am imagining that if you'd like to come to join us, you'll go to jerrybanfield.com/show and grab your tickets there.
They are $20 each and there's also a season pass. You can come to every show monthly for $123. I've made the cost as absolutely low as I can stand.
At the same time, I see it's important to have some cost so that there's some investment from the audience in the show. Any expectation of experience, commitment and an expectation to not just be a sales pitch for all the other stuff I do.
Thank you for reading this post. I love you. You're awesome. I'd love to see your comments on youtube and I'll see you at the Jerry Banfield show.
Love,
Jerry Banfield
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