I realized doing this work, identifying either issues or challenges or thinking about opportunities to actually impact people's lives, I could actually make things better, and bringing people around the table for solutions was something I liked doing and was actually something I was able to do fairly well.
I was too shy to do any vocal lessons or go to choirs; I just didn't want to be seen doing it. It's something that I kept to myself. I started easing into it, and I started doing talent shows, and YouTube really helped with that, too.
Something like riding a horse - which I've recently started doing - requires courage, especially for me, as I started out being actually scared of horses.
I did the one concert, and I was not bitten by the conducting bug, and I thought I was done, but then the phone started to ring, and gradually, over time, I started conducting more and more. Now a third of my performances are with orchestras.
I started dance class when I was a little kid, and then, when I turned 11, I started taking vocal lessons, guitar lessons, and piano lessons.
When I started to watch some of the films I'd done, I realized I was doing movies that I might not actually want to see.
I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.
I started singing before I started tweeting, actually. It was always a passion... I started singing, and then I got into acting. Singing is something I love to do. I feel very confident doing it.
I've never had a time where I didn't want to do my jewelry anymore. Once I started it, and once I realized I was really doing something I loved, I gave it my heart. When we first started the company, I did it all myself in our living room.
I wanted to start doing more music, doing more things than just playing guitar. I started taking singing lessons and piano lessons. I need to learn more things, to be an artist or whatever, and then transfer that back into writing songs.
Little did I know that earning a living at stand-up is the hardest thing you can do. But once I started doing it, I just loved it, and I realized that I was actually kinda good at it, and then that was it.
When I realized I could actually make my decisions, it was a very strange feeling. It's like a switch went off in my brain, like, "Oh, then why am I doing this? I don't enjoy this, so I'm just gonna stop doing this."
I fell into makeup by accident, but I found my love for it, and once I realized that I could actually turn it into a huge business, that's when I started taking it a little bit more seriously, but it's always something that I knew could be something.
I never took any guitar lessons or anything; I never really learned to play covers. I'm actually happy that I never took lessons as a kid. Now, I'd like to take lessons to kind of go deeper. But I think sometimes lessons can steal a person's personality away, because they're trying to do things so technically.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that there has got to be a reason for what you're doing. You actually have to care about what you're doing. The business has to be about something. Whatever the point of it is does not have to be inconsistent with making money, but usually if that's the sole reason, it is not very successful.
When I first started tweeting, I was just doing it because I was watching 'Breaking Bad' in my trailer and I was so scared by the assassinating cousins. And when people started responding to me, I realized it was like I wasn't watching it alone.