Meet Stephen Spence

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephen Spence. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephen below.

Stephen, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Some people are fortunate enough to find their life’s purpose at a young age but unfortunately, for me, I’m not one of those people. I just recently discovered my life’s purpose within the last three years. Once you discover your purpose in life, there’s an unexplainable feeling that comes over you. It’s an overwhelming feeling and an “ah ha” moment at the same time. You begin to evaluate your past immediately. If you dedicated yourself to something that had nothing to do with your purpose in life you will feel a lot of regret and think to yourself I’ve been wasting my time. It may have taken years to develop a skill that has nothing to do with your life’s purpose. Once you discover that, you’ll feel as if you’ve been climbing the ladder of success to the wrong building. It’s not until later you’ll realize that the skills you acquired can be used towards your life’s purpose. Let me give an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say you grew up as a troubled teen who dropped out of high school and made a career out of criminal activities. you’ve developed skills in criminology, which made you very streetsmart. You’ve also had success and failures. Meaning you’ve made plenty of money, but also done some jail time also. Now let’s fast forward to 20 years later where you discover your purpose in life. Let’s say you’ve come across a teenager that reminds you of yourself when you were that age. You watch the teenager prepare to walk the same path you’ve already walked. The teenagers mine is made up and there’s nothing that anyone could do until you came along. you talk some sense into that teenager and that teenager veered back on to the right path from your advice. Once you’ve seen the impact you made on that teenager you begin to mentor and help other teens to where you become a counselor. As I said earlier, the first thought you have is regret, and the feeling of climbing the ladder of success against the wrong building. Now you start to think if I was doing this from the beginning, I would be way further along than where I’m at now. Then you later realize that those criminal skills were needed for your purpose. You relate to troubled teens, so well, because you were one of them. You understand how they think, what their circumstances are, and how they feel. That is the reason they listen to you more than others is because you’ve been in their position. You also can tell them where they will end up if they continue that life path that they’re on. A perfect example would be someone like Judge Mathis, who grew up as a troubled teen but later on, became a judge. Notice how it’s hard for anyone to manipulate him in the courtroom, because of the criminal path he took at a young age which gave him the knowledge to see through a con artist. If you haven’t already discovered your purpose in life, just know that it comes when it’s supposed to come. Everything happens when it’s supposed to happen.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Like everyone else, I have my fair share of ups and downs. Especially when It comes to my profession. I have good days and bad days. Every profession consists of problem-solving, which is the reason we deal with many struggles. I have an entertainment company that comes with more bad days than good days. There’s a lot of struggles I face on a daily basis. Some days I feel like procrastinating and just saying I’ll do it later. I was taught years ago that there are two types of people in this world. There are doers, and there are feelers. Feelers allow their feelings to dictate their actions so they only take action if they feel like doing it. Doers on the other hand don’t care how they feel. They do what needs to be done when it needs to be done with great discipline. I’m human just like anyone else so when I create cartoon stories, I deal with writer’s block, editing issues, and sometimes I struggle to get the sound right. When I create T-shirts, sometimes I struggle with creating the perfect design. That’s just some of the things that I struggle with. When the finished product is created it makes it all worth it. Me myself I’m a perfectionist. I’ll do whatever it takes to put out the best product within my power. If there’s something I don’t understand, I will do massive research to figure it out. What separates me from most people is that when I do my work I’m working for my company not for the money. What some new business owners don’t understand is that usually the first 3 to 5 years you might not see a profit at all. One thing I’ll keep in mind is if the product is good, the money will eventually come. So my focus is on creating the best product that I can create. When it comes to my work, I protect it like a father and nurture it like a mother. The work that I do may not have an impact today but years after when I’m no longer here my work may be what feeds my grandchildren’s grandchildren. When I first started making animations, I would create whatever came to mind. Looking back on some of the things I created I often ask myself. What was I thinking? I was just starting off, and my number one goal was to try to give the people what they would like. Instead of doing what was in my heart I was doing what I thought would please the viewers. I’ve had very little success, and truth be told I was my own biggest fan during that time. Once I started making cartoons about the Yoruba Orishas, that’s when things changed for me. The success I was receiving had me thinking that there was something wrong with the algorithm believing this can’t be real. I started receiving comments mostly good but there are some bad apples which is OK. One comment that stuck out to me was a woman who said that she uses my channel to homeschool her children. Right at that moment, I knew that any previous works that I’ve done that consisted of profanity or sexual language would have to be put in private mode. The reason I put it in private mode and didn’t delete it is because I will often go back to my first set of animations and compare it to now to see my measurement of growth. Sometimes I laugh at the old videos, but I do realize that they’re stepping stones that got me to where I’m at now. Who knows, years from now I may be laughing at the videos that I’m doing today. As my skills develop, my product becomes better.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Three qualities skills that are a must when dealing with my profession are video editing, sound, editing, and creative story writing. In order to put together a great cartoon story for editing, it has to be great. If the editing is not on point, people will not take it seriously. The video sound is very important. If the music is louder than the voices or the voices are not mixed properly, then the whole sound will become a disaster. Story writing is also important. You must know how to connect with your target audience and also keep people interested in your story. For the people who are in this profession, and you’re just starting off, my advice to you would be if you’re looking for instant gratification then this is not the profession for you. You cannot put a seed into the ground today and have an Apple tree by tomorrow. You have to water that seed and it can take years to grow into that tree. The results can be amazing but unless you are lucky it doesn’t happen overnight so you can’t expect anything to happen overnight. I would also suggest having a reason why you’re doing what you do. Your reason why has to be stronger than your emotions. There will be days where you do not want to do anything at all and it would be easier to just take a break and put it off until tomorrow. The problem with that is when you do it too often eventually, you will abandon the whole thing. and never go back to it. Another thing you will have to develop is thick skin. There are going to be plenty of people who just do not like you or your work. We live in the era of social media where everyone can display their opinion and I don’t care who you are. There will be people that do not like you. I’ve seen some people abandon their whole project over comments in the comment section. Some people will argue with others and take their focus away from their creativity. Then some people will just abandon their work completely but, opinions and criticism comes with the territory. The best thing to do is look for those negative comments and embrace it because people will only respond to you when you’re doing something. The last thing I will mention is to do for others what you want done for yourself. If you’re watching a YouTube channel of someone else hit the like subscribe and the bell. If you’re on Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media hit like to the videos. The reason I say this is because whatever energy you put out is the energy you’ll get back. You want people to like and subscribe to you so you putting that energy out for others it will return to you.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
Self-help books, audios, and videos have been very helpful to my progress. People like Eric Thomas, Les Brown, Tony Robbins, Jim, Rohn, 19 keys, Dame Dash, Dr. Umar Johnson, Tyreek Nasheed, and many others. Some advice is spiritual. Some are for self-help, and some are for business. Any profession that we take on in life always remember we never have all the answers. We’ll forever be students because there’s always something to learn. Lots of times when I’m editing I will have a podcast playing in the background. There are also times where I will read books also but most of my reading is done at night when my work is completed. The person that I am today if you would have told me, I would be this person 15 years ago, I would have laughed. Today’s version of myself has a purpose and a reason for why I do what I do. 15 years from now I plan to be even better. If I’m still living, my objective is to grow into greatness. Each and everyone of us will have the same outcome and that is death. So while we’re here, what will be the benefit of playing things safe? Life is about taking chances and creating your story of how people will remember you. Some of these authors and motivational speakers are no longer with us, but what they left behind still has an impact on other people’s lives. I, myself, want to create things that will help people even after I’m gone, so I work day and night to create something great to be remembered by.

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