3 People You MUST Know To Be Successful

hey guys have you ever wondered why some people who seem to have kind of mediocre talent or like no talent at all are suddenly wildly successful and you're sort of sitting like trying to make ends meet and you feel like you're pretty talented well there's actually a secret and the secret is successful people tend to surround themselves with three kinds of people let's take a look and see what those kinds of people are alright my name is Thomas brush and I am the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma and I'm actually working from this creepy basement here because me and my wife are currently building a new home and there's also gonna be a new studio there so I'm in transition forgive the creepy vibes but let's talk about those three kinds of people that successful people surround themselves with the first kind of person that most successful people I've ever come in

contact with surround themselves with are creatively successful people so people who surround themselves with creatively successful people typically get great ideas they tend to be able to think outside of the box a little bit more rather than surrounding yourself with people who are kind of squares right people who follow the rules don't really have new interesting ideas that maybe you've never thought about before now the cool thing about creatively successful people other than the fact that they can you know give you new ideas is that they can actually put themselves or put you on their shoulders so if you think about it if you live in a small town like me I live in a small town of a bigger city but where I've grown up my hometown is a small town it's been difficult for me to find creatively successful like wildly creatives create creatively successful people in my sphere of influence and so I always wondered especially when I was a teenager how am I gonna find creatively

successful people and learn from them and also you know take advantage of those connections well it's actually not that difficult now especially with the way social media and technology is you can send emails to pretty much anyone you want to get in contact with just by searching their Twitter account seeing if their email address is listed on the Twitter account and a good way to do this is just and you've probably heard this for my previous videos but a good way to do this is just to simply ask them for their advice or even if you in your local sphere of influence maybe at your school or your workplace or maybe your church or just the town you've grown up in maybe you could just send a text message to people and just say hey I really like to learn from you I'll pay for your lunch if you want to go get lunch with me this week and I've done that a lot I've reached out to people told him I buy them a lunch and I just

want to learn from them and it's crazy how not only did I learn a lot but I also kind of came up with new ideas while talking to these individuals and ultimately you know they they were willing especially if I was friendly and especially if we sort of continued our relationship it's crazy how they were willing to help me out in the future and hopefully one day I'll be able to return the favor all right the second kind of person that successful people surround themselves with are believe it or not their enemies okay you got to keep your enemies close I don't know what quote that is there's a quote that says to keep your enemies closer than your friends and I've been trying to think about why this is true and there's a lot of reasons I think but for me personally I used to not take criticism well and to go even further I didn't take bullying well right I mean who

really takes bullying well but part of me thinks that it's really important to remember that most people at some point in their life get bullied so it's not a good excuse to say I'm getting bullied no one else is so I'm gonna avoid bullies at all cost I think especially when you get older and when you have a career and maybe a career in the indie game industry or the game industry in the triple-eight game industry it's really competitive and so you might come in contact with people who don't want you to succeed and these might be bullies so I would say learn to keep your enemies close and actually be intentional about keeping your enemies close keeping your bullies close practice being bullied practice taking negative energy and turning it into positive energy I really like the idea

and I've actually kind of figured this out in the past year or two especially after releasing Pinstripe on Steam I really like the idea of almost working out telling physically working out getting stronger but working out my mind and my heart and my conscience so that I'm able to take critique so that I'm able to take maybe even mean comments and take them and not care right I think it's really important to grow a thick skin if you're in the game industry especially excuse me if you're in the indie game industry grow a thick skin because there are gonna be comments out there excuse me guys there's gonna be comments out there about your game and you're gonna need to learn to not avoid them not run away from them but take them in let them come in and

listen to them and then don't let them affect you don't let them hurt you and I can honestly say and I'm not I'm not a self-aware person I tend to be pretty introspective I can honestly say in the past year I've grown leaps and bounds just by intentionally saying I'm going to be around people and I'm going to like read negative comments on YouTube or steam or whatever I'm gonna intentionally keep those in my life and slowly learn how to have a thick skin and to be strong I think that's really important in the indie game industry all right the third kind of person that a successful individual keeps in their life or I can't think of a better word for this so just go with me here for a second but energy givers okay I know that sounds whoo-whoo and kind of weird but there's actually a term that was

coined by some bloggers I read his book a while ago and I loved the term it was called energy vampires and if any of you can think of who-who term coined that term leave a comment but basically there are energy vampires out there and they're basically people who don't like to see you succeed and they don't like you to pursue your dreams or pursue a passion because maybe they're pursuing their passions and it's not actually working out for them and they're kind of jealous or maybe they're fundamentally opposed to the idea of pursuing their passions because their mediocre individuals and they don't like anyone else to be not mediocre okay so people like this will maybe passively say a negative comment so there are a lot different than bullies actually I like to keep bullies close I like to keep enemies close or at least that's my ideology and I want to keep pursuing that but the thing

about energy vampires is they're not really bullies they're actually people who are close to you who might manipulate you into feeling bad about yourself they might kindly say something but really it's a terrible thing to say maybe saying something like I didn't really see you as a video game developer I always saw you as somebody who was more of a teacher or I always saw you as someone more of maybe like a mechanical engineer are you sure you're a creative person or why do you think that you can make games isn't that really difficult for people like you that's an energy vampire they suck the energy out of you and they make you want to just go lay down and go to sleep instead of actually working hard in pursuing your passions I think who Jesus said a common phrase from Jesus was a prophet is not welcome in his hometown now I'm not saying indie game developers or prophets I'm not saying I'm a prophet but I think you can

apply that that statement to this which is in your small sort of maybe within your family circle or your close friends circle they know you as the five-year-old who is picking his nose right that's they don't really know you as someone who's successful or someone who has a passion and wants to follow a dream so I would just remember that if your family or people close to you aren't really seeing what you're seeing they could be right but there's probably a better chance that they might be wrong and they're energy vampires meaning they're the kind of jealous or they don't really they can't really see eye-to-eye with you about what you're passionate about so rather than surrounding yourself with those kinds of people which it's okay to be friends with them it's okay to be close to your family I would say it's more important to take advice and really take in information and conversations from energy givers people who want to see you succeed so a good example of this is maybe someone you're really

close to who's known you all your life but has followed you very closely and personally too they kind of know every step of your career path and know which steps you've taken which ones worked for you which ones didn't a good example in my case is my dad my dad has been there from the very beginning he's always encouraged me to follow my creative passions and he actually was the one who pushed me to get into indie game development he is he is not a game developer or a game a gamer himself but he saw that that would work for me he knew me on a very deep core kind of level and pushed me to pursue that so start with that one person right who is that think about that one person right now who is an energy giver maybe it's a really close friend that you have at school or at work and they always seem to encourage you but they they're honest right it's

it's an interesting combination you want to avoid people who lie to your face and tell you that you're an amazing singer right and then you end up on American Idol making a fool of yourself but you also want to avoid people who genuinely you know don't want to see you succeed so a really good way to find out whether someone's actually being genuine with their critique and trying to help you versus an energy vampire who doesn't want you to succeed a good way to sense this is to look and see if the person is competing with you do they have similar career paths or passions I had a meeting one time with an illustrator and I wanted to grow in friendship with him and it kind of reached out to him and we met and he we talked and he was just very critical of my work and it was more so than I would have expected right and come to find out we were actually kind of competing with one another I think he

felt like he was competing with my art style and honestly I felt like I was competing with his art style and he also kind of wanted to make games I believe and so I think he saw that I was making games and taking my illustrations further and there might have been some jealousy there or confusion so he was very critical I went home and I spent like two hours sort of just confused right two hours I think I was laying in bed just kind of feeling really down like wow I didn't know I was this bad and I found out about two weeks later that he had actually told someone else that he was really impressed with my work but he didn't want to tell me that's an energy vampire someone who might be jealous or competing with you so look for people who are competing with you and that's why I always say and this goes back to number one if you want to avoid the energy vampires altogether hang out with the mentors hang out with the people who are better than you already hang out with the people who are more successful than you don't let the blind lead the blind because the blind leading the

blind are probably all gonna be energy vampires right and I'll admit I've been that before I've been jealous and I haven't really complimented someone when I really felt the urge to compliment them because I was jealous and I didn't want to let them succeed so a good way to avoid this is just hanging out with people who are older than you who are more successful or their careers are completely different right so my dad is an accountant I'm a game developer and we both encourage one another because we're not competing with one another or on the other side of the coin a lot of my mentors are in the game industry but they're like killing it right I'm kind of struggling a little bit here and there trying to make make ends meet or make games and fully understand what games how games are successful what makes a game not successful whereas my mentors they've figured it out right and they're not competing with me so those are the three kinds of people again creatively successful people your enemies and then also energy givers people who want to help you succeed and see you succeed be intentional surround yourself with

these kinds of people and this is tough this is really difficult because you know these these kinds of people it's actually really I would say challenging to one find these people but to have the courage to actually reach out and tell them that you want to be surrounded by them it's a weird feeling to text somebody and say I want to be your friend right I want to be around you it's kind of like asking a girl on a date or something it's really strange but it's totally worth it and I've heard this story over and over and over again of successful people reaching out to other people and just saying hey I want to learn from you so anyway my name is Thomas brush you really like this video please subscribe hit the like button I'm trying to hit believe it or not I'm trying to hit a hundred thousand subscribers by the end of 2019 I know that's crazy but I'm gonna go for it and I'm gonna announce that publicly right now so if you want to subscribe please do also I want to give a big shout out to my patrons Thank You Jeremy Mike Matthias and Nate for supporting on patreon if you want to see your name splashed up on

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