We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex Robinson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alex, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
I think the ‘fake it till you make it’ mentality is incredibly helpful in developing the confidence and self-esteem that many people seek when starting a new endeavor. It’s not about faking it in the sense of applying for a bartending job when you’ve never even touched alcohol. It’s about pretending to believe in yourself, even when you don’t.
I’ve been creating films for a long time, but I’d say I only started seriously in 2020. My first freelance job was at New York Fashion Week (crazy first job!), where I captured videos and photos of the brand ambassador for the company that sent me. I had never felt like more of an imposter in my life than I did during those couple of days. I already have youthful features, but there I was, baby-faced on the red carpet, standing next to influential figures who all looked so dauntingly beautiful. Beyond being surrounded by 6-foot-tall models, inside, I felt very small.
But I remembered my mom telling me before I left to ‘fake it till you make it.’ So I channeled all the acting skills I had and told myself I would just pretend. And you know what? It worked. I still do it to this day. In fact, I’m doing it right now. Do it enough, and you may just actually start to believe it.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’m a writer/filmmaker/actor based in New York City. That sounds very cliché.
When I first moved here from South Florida, I found myself on various TV and movie sets across the city. I became yet another cliché: the coffee fetcher. I quickly realized that being a production assistant is not for the weak. It’s long days, longer nights, extreme weather and exhausted co-workers who didn’t mean to snap at you. This was my main source of income for nearly a year. On the side, I took on freelance gigs for different clients around the city, mostly editing and filming work, but this pace quickly burned me out.
One day when I was feeling down and out, I received a message from someone who worked at a creator space downtown called Studio 368. I had always made films on YouTube—those are my passion projects, where I get to pour my soul into my work. They invited me into the space and I was instantly shown a new path that I hadn’t seriously considered a possibility up until this point. I stopped PA’ing and decided to go all-in on creating my YouTube films, relying on freelance to pay the bills.
At 368, I met some wonderful creatives whom I still collaborate with today. Over the last year and a half, I spent time co-writing and creating my comedy sitcom, ‘Bare Minimum’. After finding some success in that endeavor, I’m looking forward to creating some short films over the next year or so.
Overall, I’d say I’m in a bit of a transitional period creatively, and that’s okay. I’ve always been the woman with a plan, but for the past few months, I’ve been figuring things out, and there’s something lovely about that. I have so many things I want to do and plenty of time to do it all, so it’s about finding what makes the most sense for me to put my energy into right now and going full steam ahead. You hear time and time again that creative endeavors don’t follow a linear path, but this year, it’s become clear that this journey is an ever-evolving one.
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?
3 qualities I’ve learned to prioritize over the last 4 years:
1. Patience
Early on (and honestly, still a bit today), you want everything to come at you all at once. You want to taste success and achieve your dreams, but you still need to learn how! If you haven’t caught on by now… “you” is me. Things always happen at the pace they’re meant to, and we can’t do anything to change that. So, it’s best to sit back and get comfortable because good things take time. If they happen overnight, they’ll probably fizzle out just as quickly.
2. Humility
No matter what field you’re in, you’ll meet people who are very humble, and you’ll certainly meet the opposite. Creatives get attached to their ideas, and when people don’t like them or want to make changes, it’s easy to take it personally. It’s crucial to remember that none of us have it all figured out. We all have good ideas and bad ones, and we need to leave our egos at the door when we create. I didn’t realize this was a lesson I needed to learn until I moved to NYC and started collaborating more often, but I’m a better creative now because of it.
3. Confidence
The journey to building true, authentic confidence can take a lifetime to cultivate. It’s not something you magically wake up with one day, like the flu. It takes conscious effort and time to build. You have to tell yourself you’re awesome, even when you don’t believe it—especially when you don’t believe it. There are a few ways I’ve built mine over the years. First, I bite off only what I know I can chew. I never want to take on too much, overwhelm myself, and see my work suffer as a result, especially with client projects. Take on work that you know you can execute nearly flawlessly, so it makes people stop and gawk at it. It’s also important to practice positive self-talk. When we feel insecure, that’s when negativity creeps in. Be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with grace. You’ll never build confidence if you keep telling yourself you’re a fraud.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
I know I’m overwhelmed when it feels like my brain is on a low shutter speed. Camera people will get it. It’s not a nice feeling, but it’s helpful to recognize when we need to stop for a second and chill out. You can’t drive a car with no brakes. It’s something I’m still trying to get better at, but when I feel like this, I know I need to take a step back and give myself a day or two off. Guilt sets in when I’m not doing work, but I try to remind myself that rest is productive. Sure, maybe it doesn’t feel that way when you’re sitting on the couch and binging ‘The Sopranos’, but it may just save you from a bad case of burnout.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.minimeprod.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arobinsonfilms
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arobinsonfilms/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexandraRobinson
Image Credits
Jeremy Cohen, Alan Shindelman, Cole Frasher, Dan Esberg
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
