Eduard Stinga

Eduard Stinga is a serial entrepreneur, YouTuber, and video ninja. Among other successful projects, Eduard spends most of his time between his two main video businesses: The Explainer Company – a creative video explainer production company with 10 years of experience and 400+ explainers produced; and VideoPlasty.com – a stock marketplace for ready-to-use animation assets that work with drag & drop simplicity, trying to make professional animation easy, affordable and accessible to anyone, regardless of budget and skill.

In recent years he has become more active on YouTube, growing VideoPlasty’s channel to 50k subscribers, and aims to get it to a million in the near future. His newfound passion is connecting with an ever-growing community of talented people around the world looking to make better media projects. Money is nice, but educating and helping people is 10x more fulfilling! Eduard is currently switching focus to mostly YouTube, as he sees a disproportionate leverage potential to reach an unprecedentedly large audience. As YouTube and other online media channels are slowly taking over and eating away at cable TV, Eduard is quick to recommend anyone to jump on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that is still in the early days, with the competition not yet fully matured.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

I feel like we glorify too much the daily routines, especially morning routines. There’s no magic bullet. You wake up whenever works best for you, attack your to-do list, and get things done. Day in and day out. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

I’m a morning person, so I get up at 6-7AM on most days, including weekends. Sometimes I drink coffee, sometimes green tea. Sometimes I meditate, and sometimes I don’t. Then I go straight to work and do the bulk of my most productive hours in the first half of the day. I think it’s important that every single day you have one BIG task you approach and do, no matter what. If you finish that BIG task, you win the day. Everything else is just secondary.

How do you bring ideas to life?

You have to understand that ideas are worthless. Everyone has million-dollar ideas. It’s all in the execution. There are a ton of people on the sidelines who’ll tell you they had that idea before but never ran with it. You don’t even need great ideas if you execute well. Hard work always trumps talent.

Stop thinking about it and just do it. The more you think about it, you’ll start doubting it’s gonna work and then you slowly convince yourself it’s not worth pursuing. Throw so much at the wall that regardless of how horribly bad you might be, something will eventually stick.

What’s one trend that excites you?

Nothing really, I’m more concerned about everything actually. Nobody can tell the truth anymore, nobody can focus on anything for longer than 30 seconds, and everyone’s dopamine receptors are completely and irreversibly fried. The fed and central banks are printing money like there’s an infinite money glitch in the Matrix, inflation is out of control and people are concerned they didn’t get enough likes on their Instagram posts.

Not exactly a new trend, but I’m happy to see more and more people get off the grid from social media at least. I’ve done it once for a few months and it was the best time of my life.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Planning. Every evening before bed I make a list of what I need to do the next day. This way when I wake up, I don’t have to think too much. Otherwise, when you wake up it’s very easy to convince yourself to add fewer things to that list, only cause you’re still lazy and it’s still early. Trust me.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Party less, stop trying to fix other people, and go all in on what you want without caring what other people say.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.

The educational system is the biggest scam for most people. I mean schools too, not just universities. I wish I dropped out of high school and never gone to university either. The only reason I’d ever send my future kids to school is to make friends. Literally.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Meditate. My brain works on overdrive 24/7, so learning how to calm that and control some of it has 10x’ed my productivity. I find it funny every time I tell someone to meditate and they tell me they can’t because their mind goes crazy sitting still for one minute. It’s ironic because these people don’t realize they’re the ones that need it most.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

Take a break. Go for a walk. It’s funny how getting some perspective by distancing yourself a little bit can work wonders.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Try things. Break things. High volume and see what sticks. People think successful entrepreneurs have all the answers. We usually don’t. We’re just comfortable failing and keep moving forward.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

Dividing my attention into too many projects. Some exceptional people can do it maybe, let’s say Elon Musk running SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, and The Boring Company. But for most people, running one company is hard enough and most people fail at that. So why put yourself in a harder situation trying to grow two successful companies when you haven’t even finished with the first one? Giving 50% of your focus on one company will always be beaten by one of your competitors who give 100% of their focus on their company.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

YouTube channel optimization agency. Massively underrated. A/B split testing titles, thumbnails, etc. One better thumbnail can get you from 3% CTR to 6% CTR, so literally, double the views. Huge potential for recurring clients. However, I’d rather make content than tweak all of that. Hit me up if you can help!

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Again, I think we glamorize software too much. I keep things simple. Most of my productivity comes from planning in advance and for most of that, I use my Notes and Calendar app on my phone and Mac.

What is the best $100 you recently spent?

Good question.

Personally, I got an amazing wake-up alarm that simulates the sun rising. No more waking up with sudden alarms that are very unnatural and raise your cortisol. Just gradually wake up naturally with the light. Highly underrated.

And professionally – I hired a professional YouTube thumbnail designer. I know, it’s quite niche specific and doesn’t apply to most people, but high CTR’s are important!

Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. One of my all-time favorite books. It’s a very good image of what’s currently happening in most of western society.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I don’t watch movies. Neither should you.

Key learnings:

• Whatever you want to do, just go ahead and do it. Stop thinking about it for too long, otherwise, you might convince yourself it’s not worth it
• Ideas are worthless. It’s all in the execution. Bring your idea to life before someone else will. It’s getting more and more competitive
• YouTube is the biggest leverage right now, especially for personal brands. It’s harder than it was 5 years ago, but still, early days and anyone can still do it. Move fast.