Meet Kelsey Roberts

We were lucky to catch up with Kelsey Roberts recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kelsey, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

I keep my creativity alive by remembering WHY I create. My earliest memories are of my mother singing nursery rhymes and telling me fairy tales. Once I learned to read, I was immersed in the short stories of Mark Twain, O’Henry, Edgar Allen Poe, H. G. Welles, etc. As I grew older I was drawn to episodic and anthology-type storytelling like The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Star Trek, Tales from the Crypt, and The X-Files.

Being able to consume narratives from start to finish in short bursts and rapidly jump between vastly different perspectives helped shape the way I see the world. To me, each day of our lives is a series of short stories that are interwoven with the stories of others in a flow of cause and effect. Unfortunately, we are limited to the perspective of our physical being. Those limitations manifest temporally – I can only experience the present moment, not ten years ago or ten years from now; optically and audibly – there are creatures that live with us on earth that can see a broader spectrum of light or hear a broader spectrum of sound than we can.

As I develop my WHY, I find more and more that my creativity is about showing people ways that we can expand our perspectives. Yes, we’re limited, but we have this amazing part of our brain that allows us to model potential events with the perceivably impossible.

While I don’t want to influence people to think in any particular way, when someone consumes something I created and they’re able to assume a different perspective when they’re making a decision or planning their actions or even imagining a potential series of events, then I’ve done my job as a creator.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m the showrunner for the SCP Un[REDACTED] audio drama and the Dr. Gears Presents: A Ballad of Oaths and Ashes live show on Twitch.

My current focus is on expanding my storytelling skills through formal education and close-contact networking. I’ve spent the last four years building an audience through multiple podcasts and YouTube channels and although I don’t have anywhere close to a million subscribers, the audience I have is very loyal and supportive.

As I built my technical skills to give my audience a better product more often, I began to identify specific areas where I knew I couldn’t progress without formal education, so even though I already have a master’s in business, I’m currently enrolled video and film production bachelor’s program which has led to the breakthroughs I needed and added new skills to my toolbox.

Adding a skill in a new creative medium exponentially increases the number of things you can create. It also brings new challenges, some of which can only be solved by a team. Building the right team to expand the storytelling I bring my audience into visual medium is a high priority for me right now.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. Keep a prioritized list and always be aware of what’s at the top of it. If taking your kid to the park ,or doing something special for yourself, or “I’m doing nothing today” is never at the top of your list, you’re not prioritizing correctly. Know when to put those things at the top and make yourself do them when you say you should.

2. Be slow to make promises and fierce when keeping them.

3. Only take advice from people who are at least two steps ahead of you. Seek the perspective of people who are so far beyond you that you have to aggressively learn more before you can understand what they are telling you.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Two books: the 48 Laws of Power and the 50th Law by Robert Greene and 50 Cent.

Being able to spot people and scenarios that are working against your interests and at least be able to position and prepare yourself for unfavorable outcomes is an important skill. The fact that there are people who will work against you, take advantage of you, and want to see you fail isn’t very palatable, but that doesn’t make it less of a reality. It’s important to always know where you are and what you’re doing in service to your mission, but you also have to maintain a keen awareness of your environment. These two books prepared me for that and kept me out of more trouble than I can credit any other books for.

Contact Info:

• Twitter: https://x.com/scpunredacted
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@scpunredacted