CIW 2014 speaker Terry Fator spent 40 years perfecting his art. Then, in 2007, he won America’s Got Talent and suddenly the obscure artist was an overnight sensation—in the art of ventriloquism. Here, Fator joins a few of his friends (spoiler: they’re dummies) to share how he realized his dreams, and how you can, too.

[youtube_embed src=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYFpm6w4ag8″/]

1. As Drake says: Started from the bottom, now we’re here.

“I went from complete obscurity—I was playing elementary schools, I was playing county fairs, pretty much anywhere they set the chairs up…. And within one and a half years [after America’s Got Talent], I was headlining at The Mirage in Las Vegas in my own theater.”

2. Follow your creativity.

“Maybe you want to be a writer, or a musician, or maybe you want to be a songwriter or a dancer. Doesn’t matter what it is, but you have that focus, you have that something inside of you that says, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

3. It’s important to be the best—at your day job and your dream job.

“You may be stuck in a job that you feel, ‘this is not my calling.’ And you want to do the best job you can because the last thing you want to get known as is somebody who’s a sloppy worker.… I told myself, ‘I have to be the best at everything if I’m going to be the best at anything.’”

4. Find what you’re uniquely suited for.

“I have to figure out something that everybody wants and nobody has. And I think that really applies to whatever you want to do…. What is it that I can do that nobody else can do?”

5. Beg, borrow and steal. Politely, of course.

“I saw a person perform with just the bottom half of a mask…. I didn’t just take the idea and steal it. I went to this person and I said, ‘Listen, I love what you did. Do you mind if I take this and kind of do my own thing?’”

6. Give up. Really, just give up.

“It’s okay to give up on your dream. It’s totally okay. But it’s never okay to stop working toward your dream… that’s when your dream truly dies.”