Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Trent Stark. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Trent, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I’m so thankful that I’m able to be creative full time. I started working when I was 12 years old and have always had a “hustle by any means” mentality. I broke away from the 9-5 life two years ago and haven’t looked back since. The best advice I can give to anybody is keep learning and keep networking. Get good at things you need to be good at for yourself and then find a way to provide that same value to the people in and around your network.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly describe yourself to our readers? What is your passion?

Music. Everybody has an art form inside of them and when I was 16 I found out mine was rapping. I’m a very DIY guy and anybody who’s tried to start a business or follow a dream knows that it comes with a necessity of many things surrounding the one goal. If you want to be a famous painter, it’s not just painting. You need to learn how to network with galleries, clients, etc. So this “necessity of many things” for me was learning how to network, market, produce beats, engineer vocals, make album art, direct and edit music videos, etc. It’s way more than just writing a song, but at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about… communicating emotion. My whole goal is to help people feel. It could be comforting you with a sad song so you know you’re not the only victim of heartbreak, or a pop rap record helping you get hype before the big game, or any other set of emotions. You’re not alone, and I think as a society if we could try to allow our emotions to connect and communicate amongst themselves, everything would be a little bit easier.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Helping people. I want you to hear my songs and feel less alone. I want you to hear my songs and feel happy, feel sad, feel excited, feel angry, feel hopeful. We are just people, and if I can help you face, understand, and accept your emotions by trying to understand and be transparent with mine, then I’ve done what I set out to do.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

This is actually one that I used and still use every day. YouTube. People think you need some Berkeley degree to be successful in this industry and that’s just not true. 98% of everything I do in the creative space came from YouTube. The other 2% is just asking the people around me. Don’t be worried about being the coolest guy in the room and never asking questions. I respect everybody I work with who is transparent about things. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know. The only caveat with what I just said is that you have to be self motivated. There’s no tuition bill you’ve gotta pay the internet that will remind you to work hard. There’s no grade at the end of the semester. It’s a pass or fail class in this life and the only person who is responsible for you passing is you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.trentstark.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trentstarkmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trentstarkmusic/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrentStark
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TrentStark

Image Credits
Beau Horyza Mark Ginsburg