I Owe 20 Years Of Career Success To This One-Sentence Belief

You need to do things. Not enough people do things.

I’d never met him, but I used to be him.

He was fresh out of college, had just moved to Los Angeles to chase entertainment industry dreams, and had no idea what to do next.

He was where I had been 20 years ago.

A family friend suggested we meet and hoped I could point him in the right direction because somehow things had worked out for me.

I wasn’t sure what advice to give him, so I just told the story of how my career has evolved.

I explained how I landed and lost jobs, how my interests morphed, how side projects turned into opportunities, and how I wound up with a career in a field that didn’t even exist when I first arrived in Hollywood.

As I finished my story, I looked for a way to sum it up and give him some sort of big takeaway.

And these words came out of my mouth:

“You need to do things. Not enough people do things.”

I’ve done a lot of things over the years — some worked, some failed — but I don’t think I ever thought about that simple sentence as the key to my…