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Week 6: Next Steps – Now Take Action

Good morning, everyone. I am excited to welcome you to the fennel Ah, gathering of the creative calling Book club were now in week six of six. Wherever you are hailing from today when he may be, type it into the comments if you're at the creative live dot com slash book club or creative live TV or maybe even Facebook, Um, Twitter, instagram live Any of those places I would love see where you are coming in from, and right now you might be looking at my face or a window of zoom participants. And if we're going like wait a minute, what's going on and why? Why were those people in the zoom call? And I'm not answers? The easy one. Those folks have signed up to be a part of the text group. That's right. You have my phone number and people are going like, wait a minute as bonkers and I'm Yeah, I agree. Um, and if you want my phone number, pay attention here for a second activity. It's two of 6309 5177 isil intimate text group of a few 1000 of us. Um and these folks here in the zoo call where ...

the first to respond when I asked them if they would like to be in the zoom call. That's maybe a slightly better experience if you're doing that, because I can see your face. And, ah, it's easier for me to call in the human being vs jumping into the chat. But I will be taking questions from both the folks in the zoom and those of you chatting in from the creative live chat from YouTube. Live Facebook, live instagram live and periscope. So don't let it slow you down. But one more time. If you want to join that group, it's actually my thumbs. That the two of 63 or 9517 seven. Um, but let's get into it. So we have, um, I promised that this episode today was gonna be primarily focused on answering your questions. Um, with respect to today's are with respect to the creative calling, and it is important that we reviewed just briefly, um, the only reading assignment for the last week was actually two weeks could be at the holiday here in the States was to read, read this last, um and so I'm gonna open today's class with ah, reading from that reading. It's a short one. On page 2 it goes something like this. So many of us live our lives with the nagging sense that something important is missing. Finish school. We built a career. We start a family, buy a house, rent a house, build friendships, do all of the other things that society tells us, make for a happy and fulfilling existence. And yet we still don't feel fulfilled. I've come to believe that creative expression is this missing element. Now. Creativity is a critical human function. It imbues every incident we experience in life, every sight, every sound, every texture with profound meeting, without acknowledging and exercising our creativity in small, consistent ways, we're undermining our natural capacity to imagine design, execute and amplify the life that we are meant to be living. That, to me, is a nutshell of this course, and the reason that I wrote the book. Never before had I read a book that tied the creative acts that we think about her, that we're taught as young people to craft or the ability to create the living and life that we want. So this book is while it's about creative practice and small daily creative skills that will build any individual discipline. The Trojan horse here is this is a book about creating your life. So I hope you've, um, gathered that as we've been marching to the last six or seven weeks. Six weeks, rather. And you know, the three topics that I want to cover very quickly before we get into the Q and A A very simple the 1st 1 is that in order to, um, in order to get the life that you want or I will also say in the in a sort of small creativity small sea world the only way that you will create the results that you want out of any individual creative product project, whether it's an app, a book, ah, screenplay, making a meal, um, crafting a conversation like this is if you take ownership of creating it Now, um, it's important that we shift out of this idea that life happens to us rather than for us. We really covered a lot about mindset. Oops, Someone's got there. Mike open. I'm hearing a, uh what is it? They're out there we go, it sounds better. Um, it's really important that we shift out of this mindset of, you know, life happening to us rather than for us. That's one the reasons in the first couple of parts of the book we spent so much time talking about mindset. Ah, and I do believe that that you know it. As I was scrolling through the comments and the texts from the text group. And, of course, some of the chat, the chatter chatter. Uh, most of the questions seem to me to be either really, really, really tactical. Like how do I carve out more time for myself or mindset oriented? So I'm I'm increasingly optimistic that I can answer both both the questions that those ends of the spectrum, um, in relatively short, concise terms. But part of the benefit of today's class is going to be not just trying to get through a lot of questions. But when there are things that that don't fall in those easy answers, I'm willing to take them on. And if you're sitting at home right now wondering if my question is valuable or if it's just little old me sitting at my home at home, in my underwear in Ohio. Um, please ask the question, because the chances are of the 4400 something people that are in this class if you have this class at least. Sorry. If you have this question, at least 10 other people, maybe more have the same one. So, um, please do not limit your, um participation out of fear. Um, out of anxiety or out of the the thought that you might, The little question you have might not be worthy to be heard by the group. So if Topic one is the only way that we can get what we want out of this one precious life for any project is to take ownership for us. Topic two is happiness or fulfillment. I like to put those things really close to one another. That also is not an accident. You don't get that. You don't get the outcomes that you want of their people in the world that you aspire to, um beat like or model after or be inspired by their lives didn't happen by accident, nor do the most happy people in the world. Nor do their lives happened by accident. I mean, just think about the kind of person, the most successful person, the happiest person that you know, What is their disposition? Just as a default. What is their disposition? Disposition is joyful. And yet, as we reviewed earlier, Ah, the human brain is largely wired for negativity. We haven't negativity bias. Therefore, this is Job one, controlling this multi 1,000,000 year old organ that is in our skulls, and I as a reminder. I call it the brain, not my brain, not our brain. It's the brain. And if you can learn to control the way that the brain talks to the rest of you, if you can observe your thoughts, if you can recognize that there is a negativity bias in your biology. And yet that that thing is Wira bullets programmable with messages that you craft and outcomes and experiences that you craft, how much power that be for you. That's what this book has been about. How do you take these precious gifts that you've been given and make them into the things that you want to be your become in this world? All right. I do want to take a second here and welcome folks in D chat. We got Sri Lanka in the house. Of course I didn't get ah carries. Like, Okay, I'm on in my underwear. Im in my PJs. But she is in Ohio. Um, Ontario. Canada wants to say hi. Thanks out for every shadow to everybody. Um, where else we got? We got more South Africa. Oh, we get some Denmark. Nice. Denmark. London, Florida. Hello, Florida. Peter Ali. Elaine. Gina, Dianne, Cary Sky. Want to thank you all for joining. Okay, Um, and our last sort of little review here is the framework. Now, if you have for gotten what we talked about in week one, which would not be, or maybe week to the intro and or the first, uh, section of the book, what we're talking about is a framework. And I mentioned in that for either first or second broadcast that if I have done one thing poorly in my talking about the book very publicly in my interaction with, um not just the folks here in the zoom, but everybody is listening. Watching right now, I have done a disservice because I have not hammered into everyone's brain. The concept of idea as a framework for life as a framework for any project. We talk so much, begin that the idea that creativity underpins, um, all of our desired success is this idea that great? But if you don't have a framework for thinking about it for applying it for, um and for taking the actions that need to happen in order to receive these gifts of your creativity, then what have you got? You just got a bunch of, ah, hand waving And sure, um, the book does a very compelling job. I think of making it exciting and making creativity sound important. Assim Porton as it is. But where I've, um I think done a mediocre job and where I could use your help and where I believe you could use your help is in any time you feel lost Any time in this process or in any project you feel lost. Go right back to idea. Idea. Was it that I'm imagining? All I need to do is make a plan design of a structure for my day, week, month, year. Whatever the duration of the project is execute that plan and then make sure the whole time I'm executing that plan that I'm building audience, that I'm amplifying these ideas. This literally will get you out of jail every time it's stuck. And so I'm trying to commit or rather re commit now that the book's been out for six months and I want to thank all y'all for supporting the book and for all you've done reading reviews and whatnot in Amazon get some good ones over the course of the past two weeks. Thank you, Um, and if you haven't would be in the world to me, if you did, is to to continue to come back to the framework I d. E. A. And remember, there is a very popular set of problems that go along with the framework or rather, our manifestation of it. And that is, we do not complete the entire cycle. For those of you who are dreamers or starters, what you're doing is you're just you're just doing the 1st 2 year idea eating. You get a great vision in your mind. You've got in your by all the supplies or you get started on your novel. You start writing with great vigour. You design a framework and then you go right back to dreaming because the executing part is hard or it's frustrating or it's scary. You have a fear of success if you're a failure, and we all know how much fear drives us or you're executing a plan and you're getting people to come along with your vision over and over and over again. But what you find out is that the thing that you're executing against and the thing that you're bringing your peers and friends and colleagues at work Ah, and in your community, along with you on if someone else's big dream, whether you're working at a company on at your bosses big vision or whether you're working for yourself but really not doing what you were put on this planet to dio. In both cases, you are on a path to, um, I think, ah, feeling of disconnection, a feeling of, um wanting a feeling of feeling less van. And that is why I want to just continue to ask you to go back to the whole thing. Have I started out by envisioning the thing that I want in this world? I don't know. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. I had a conversation been doing. A lot of the podcasts live at a conversation, most recently, I think, two days ago with Sam Harris. Sam Harris. Amazing. Um, you know, I think he's got a PhD in neuroscience. It's writer, very, very smart guy. And we talked at length about our lack of ability to imagine what's possible for ourselves because we're getting hit with so many messages about what's possible that almost by default, so much of our culture has programmed us to be in a you know, if you if you are from there with Carol Dweck. Book mindset programmed us to be in a fixed mindset because it's, you know, the message that we're fed from our parents from our career. Counselors from the people in our community are, um, about possibilities, and the possibilities that are available to us are largely what we've seen on TV, what are made popular in all the, you know, blog's and social feeds and whatnot. And the reality is that that's not true. Um, and you know, again, this this idea of returning back toe idea if we're at either end of that spectrum, whether we're in you know, just imagining and designing or whether we're living somebody else's dream. I would invite you to return to the entire cycle, because that is the way it was. And again, this came from me deconstructing my own successes and failures, the successes and failures of the people who, um, I respect, admire. The people who have spent a lot of time with that are top performers and across the industry. It's like industry agnostic. This is from, you know, burn a brown and your teaching and talking about, um, vulnerability and authenticity. Or Sir Richard Branson, Daymond John again, all walks of creators. This idea framework was president. All right, Um, I do want to take a second before, um, I shift gears and to start taking some of your questions. And I'd like to welcome 82 year old Joanne who's tuning in from Whitefish, Montana. Joanna, When I say thank you so much for joining our broadcast today. And for those of you who are yes, the shadow Look at all the people in the world clapping for you. The fact that you are 82 years old and still willing to take control of your life, understand a creative process and apply. It is incredibly inspirational. So so many of us right now are thinking men. I'm I'm 32 I haven't quite done the things I want to be. And you're beating yourself up. Um, I just really important to recognize that, um again there are There are folks at every walk of life, every stage that can pick this up and go from wherever you are right now to where you want to be. Um, again, there's an example in the book of an artist who got her first show that I think 89 years old or maybe 92 and had a retrospective at the Whitney at 101 years old. So it's never too late. And I just want to say joining Thank you for being an inspiration to us all. All right, so I am walked you through again, a reminder that in order to get the things that you want in life, in order to be or become the person that you aspire to be, um, the only choice that we have is to take ownership of it, and this does a couple of things it reminds us to get out of feeling like a cork in the tide and get into action. Second, is that happiness, and by extension, fulfillment is also not an accident. That the kindness, the smartest, the most successful, happiest person what is their disposition? It is one of a growth mindset, and you may need to overcome negativity to get there. The third is keep coming back to the idea framework as a tool. All right, then, um, so who would like to share with us there? And I have a list of challenges that I got. I received text over the course of the past, whatever. Two weeks that I can always go to if someone is a little bit too shy to volunteer. But my guess is that I've got some folks here who are willing to share with us. Ah, question that they have about material. Who in the zoom call and I might add, hey, nasa. I'm looking at a feat of myself. So in order for me to un mute people, I'm gonna need to see a different program feed. I'm gonna need to see the zoom feed. Um, let's see who's got a question, I think. Is that sore down there and the Yep. Okay. Go from Thor. And then we're gonna go up to Mark Shelagh. Hey, Jace thinks thanks a bunch. Thanks a lot for finishing the book. And thanks a bunch for starting the workshop because I really needed this help. And, uh, happy to I guess the question I had. The question I have is. So you printed the business card. Chase Jarvis, professional photographer. It sat in your bill vote for a year. What was the event that triggered you to finally have face to face with your fear? Get it out there and make it Make it make it known for the first time the very, very first time that I had. Ah, that I would say I sold on Image. Was working at a ski bum in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, had just returned from Europe where I tripped across, you know, whatever. 27 different countries over the course of the 67 month period with my then girlfriend, now wife Kate learning to to be a photographer with the camera that had been given to me by my grandfather when he passed a return to steamboat and ah, still not desire ing a traditional job still hadn't realized that that was not my path. In fact, I was concurrently applying to graduate schools, and philosophy is in a PhD program, and I had recognized that the pictures that I was taking actually had potential, and what I started to do is compare them to the work I saw out there in the world that gave me a little bit of confidence that it was at least like the creative gap for me was closing. It wasn't zero but that my work was actually commercially viable. And what the printed business card did was not just something that that I didn't. It was not just something that stayed in my wallet, and maybe that's ah, either I wrote that incorrectly. Or maybe that could be something that you took away from the book that wasn't quite right. But what it gave me permission to do is then, in conversations when I would have ah, just add, you know, at beers at a friend's house or something, or if I met someone new and they would ask me what I did, I began to certain as soon as I printed that business card. Use the identity as a photographer in my script, not just to myself, and not just hit in my wallet of publicly. Now, granted, when I say publicly, there was no social media then and it was not on a stage in front of thousands of people, it was in a one on two or one on one or one on five conversation and the mindset of just putting it out in the world. Sorry, the mindset followed by the action of simply putting it out in the world that that was my my, if anything, preoccupation. This is what I was thinking about. That is a very, very that was That was my step. Okay? And when other people started because here's how the world This is why I concurrently believe this is this is you know, the whole time you're doing steps. 12 and three u are amplifying what you're doing because if if you can't bring other people along with your dream my 1st $500 free pair of skis in exchange for a photograph came from someone at one of those parties where I told them that I was a photographer. My 1st $500 came from one of those people coming back to me and saying, Hey, I work for the ski company If I gave you a free pair of next year skis and you could put them on a bunch of your different scheme our friends, maybe you could create a good picture for us. So had I not printed that card that said Chase Jarvis photographer And had I not socialize? The fact that what I was focused on in the world was being a photographer And remember, all you have to do in order to be the noun is do the verb. As soon as I start taking pictures, I'm a photographer. As soon as you start building a business, you are an entrepreneur. As soon as you start playing the piano, you are a musician. As soon as you start, you get the point, right? So I had taken those very, very simple steps. And the Onley thing that allowed that person to come to me with a possible project was that I had socialized those three or four previous steps. I didn't say, Hey, I did this weird thing I printed a business card. I just said, Where's I'm a photographer? And you know, I give you the bigger context there because it's important to take these steps, and the most important of those steps is actually putting it out in the world. And to be fair, I had been working on my craft, but without putting it out there in the world without building community and helping other people understand my vision for myself, none of it would have happened. So I'm gonna ask you one particular specific question. Thor, since you asked me one where you stuck, there's no shortage of ideas. It's endless. You know the thing. Your stories help me look back in time and realize that some of what I had created in business plans while working with a big company, I'm it's still alive. It just, you know, the train is not left. It's actually it's making sense, right? So I know what's missing. Um, I'm at a perfect place in life, so it is about taking the doing steps and taking them perfect imperfecta comptel for you just by the time voiced, or that the imperfecta part of action, I'm guessing that you wanted to be perfect that you want. You wanted to completely de risk everything in order to take that first step. And printing a business card that says photographer is is maybe v flimsiest step you can do right. And I didn't actually to anything rather than puts, um, put some words on a piece of paper, but it was action. And I want to know if if if you feel like you are clear enough on what 3 to 5 imperfecta actions that you could take in order to move your vision for Do have you identified 3 to 5 things that would get you from where you are to the next step? Yeah. And if, like, if I'm face to face with my fear, what I realize is I don't have to be the best in photo shop, right? There's lots of talent out there. Thank you. So the community is so key to being able to actually not say no because I don't have the skill, right? I can find that the community to help me actually make it possible. So, yes, I don't know how to code, but I know that Blockchain is a part of what I want to utilize a framework to put out there. Um that's that leads to what actions do I need to take? I need to find people that are in the Blockchain community that can help me put my idea into practice. I don't need to learn how to coat. I need to find the people. Sure. And you know what else you need to dio you start that is that is the your rating. To be ready to start and you have to start before you're ready. That's just that's just the facts. And and so if you're saying I need to meet some other people in the community, I'm gonna give you a piece of homework. And it is reach out to somewhere routine. Five and 10 people who could help you start your vision. It isn't. You don't even have to know what happens after that. The first thing is, if if the Blockchain is really critical to what you want to Dior, if ah, photo photo shop is like, what is the simplest number of action? Simple, simplest set of actions that you can take to do something instead of nothing. And to me that's just open. Opening up a dialogue with five people might be able to help you expect to hear? No. But start with the possibility of yes and right. Those people reach out to them. Call them. If there are people that you've already identified. What can you do to be in their circle? What can you do to connect with them? How can you do something instead of nothing? Yeah. Copy that. Thank you. Copy. Welcome. All right, you guys, give us the door and, uh March, Ella, Hello. Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Okay. Here in the U foes near Boston. Um, so I think you partially answered my question, but I'm probably gonna get some additional input from you and the crew. I am a very comfortable introvert. Um, and I'm trying to figure out in this cove in world like I'm venturing into art, I run a design and construction teams and that's been my like shadow expression with the rial expression is not. And how for a profound introvert do we for either community and build our base camp and share? Um, so that's where that's where I'm stuck, okay? And I want it. So let me ask a couple of investigative questions, if I may. So I understand that you manages design, build firms or design and build projects or something. But what is your person? Is that your access? Excuse me. Under which you want to to put all of your energy to be or become the best version of that. Or is there something you said? You described it as a shadow s. So what is your What is your bright sunlight version of it? Ah, working with artists and being a mixed media artist myself. So I have a business partner who's on here somewhere, and she and I are trying to figure out businesses to disrupt the art world, but also for me, actually creating art because I come from a long line of artists but have always thought like, but I didn't inherit that artistic part that was was for them. My love. This I love it. I love it. There's so many so many, um, opportunities for you to make quick progress as I listened to What You're what? You're what you're saying? So I noticed that you immediately went the descriptor The order of your description of what you wanted to be was first to support other artists and then two become one. Speaking of shadows, what I What I see in that is that there's a shadow of, you know, I am built for supporting artists first and what I really want to dio. But I'm scared to put it first into prioritize. It is to actually be the artist. Now I could be wrong. I have only, you know, I've only done this therapy about 60,000 times with different people. I'm happy to be wrong. But if indeed you were alone in the dark staring your ceiling at three in the morning and you said What you really want to do is notice. I'm not trying to take away the supporting other artists like I look at What I'm doing right now is that's a part of my vision, right? That's how I started realizing that man, that's, you know, when I almost died and then avalanche in Alaska, I was like, I'm at the peak of my career and yet something's still missing. And wait a minute, if I got you know, this has delivered so much value to me that if I could get one or or 100 other people to tap into 1/50 of what I got to experience, it would all be worth it. So I say that as like inspiring and supporting and adding value to others in the creative community is a virtuous in and of itself. But I here and there that you want to do it. So my question to you is What are you doing? Right. So you're building communities. Great. I'm also hearing that you want to actually be building community before you starting to do the art part. So I started the art part. Okay, Um, I get halfway through a project, and you part of it's on the table behind me. Part of it is on the floor behind me and the, you know, the inner voice starts coming in, like what you doing? What? What is this? Maybe you should go see what other people are doing, how they're doing it right before you do this. And that's, you know, Then go support artists and create a business. But I get a start, and then it sounds It sounds to me to think it is a fancy, virtuous form of procrastination because helping others is very virtuous. But if you're not putting your own oxygen mask on, you're gonna be second class when it comes to helping others. So my prescription, if I may, is I want you to complete five things and I would challenge. I think you can actually complete five things in five days if you just set your set. The scope to be something different doesn't have to be a piece that's hanging in a gallery rating to be sold, but it could be a piece that you put in a drawer and the the prescription two. Or rather, I would I would say, the solution for getting through this idea of being part way done, intending to the thing that makes us feel good about progress. Right? Because if I do something, I get to the point where it's just about to be the part that helps me. And then I set that down and go do something that makes me feel good, because this makes me feel bad, right? Almost finished. Not quite there, psychologists and you take a break and my in my break, I'm going to go do the thing that makes me feel good, where I can get instant results where I know him. You know, I have veracity, and I can support others. And I can easily tap into a community by googling you know, Facebook group, needle point or whatever your profession or your your craft is, and you can go start leaving comments or that's not bad action. But in your case, you're deferring the completing of creative projects in order to go to the thing that is more national to you. And so it's sort of like if you're a jump rope superstar and what you really need to be working on is your pull ups, you get 1/2 a pull up and then I cool. I'm gonna go jump rope some more because it makes me feel good. And what I want you to know is that is absolutely natural, 100% natural, because we all like to feel good about ourselves. I'll tell you, this is a little insight on creativelive creative life has we have 2000 some odd classes and that creativelive I have long desired for us to be able to package these classes and to help present the right class to the right person at the right time as you're part way through your journey. But you know, it makes creativelive feel really good. Is just making more content because it's what were the best in the world that and so if we're getting stuck over here, we'll go create five more classes and then the teams high fiving and we get the best. You know, we get Citizen Cope to do a performance, and we get Sam Harris on to do a thing and burn a brown. You know, we all right, and then we pat ourselves on the back because that's what we're really good at. But what I want us to be better at is presenting the right class to the right person at the right time said. They like being click. This is awesome. Thank you for helping me. That's math. That's engineering. That's a lot of the, you know, the very complex side of the business. We have mastered making classes. Sounds like you've mastered helping other people. I want you to master making art, and the way that you do that is to complete five things in five days. I don't care if you put him in the garage. Okay. Put him under your you know, under your bed in a drawer. Just call him done. Can you do that? I really think that the community building to you is that is a second tier of importance. I think when you start calling yourself the artist first, and I also help others. And, um, when you do those things and you have some more questions about about building community, I'll answer those after you, you know, show up for yourself And ah, so you can text me. You're in the text community. I recognize your name and you here in the zoom call. So when you when you get stuck on the community building part, I'll answer that after you after it. Zey acquaint pro chrome. Um, fair enough. Fair. All right. Thank you so much. I'm a new look to the when Facebook and I'm going to look at YouTube live and ah, Twitter and Instagram life for a couple of comments are a couple of questions here real quick, and then we're gonna go back to the zoom. Uh, let's see here. Really? Okay. What's the right question here. Ah, okay. David Brass ity on, um, on Twitter or rather, periscope. It's almost a comment, but I want to address it as a question because I think it's it's helpful. And he said he'd love a daily journal, a workbook or something to support this book. I'm in the middle of doing research on, um, some projects that will further creative calling creative callings. Life is still very, very young. I think this this is six months into its life. Um, and I think we're just getting started. And I was also scheduled to be speaking all over the world, um, about the topic of creativity both in corporate settings and at the big, you know, conferences around the world. Eso I want you to know how she show hands. If I created some more materials around the book, would that be valuable? Just like, uh, Okay, I'm putting that at a 90% 85%. Drew doesn't need it. Everybody else does. Um, okay, so that's helpful thing one, but thing to and why I want Teoh treat David's comment about wanting a journal as a question, um, is because I often get asked what is the value of a journal. Now I think the value of the journal comes in lots of different forms and the most important of which is actually just taking action and regularly revisiting your goals. Um, whether that is in a journal or morning pages or something in your phone that you scribble or look at every day, or whether it's a list of habits or goals that you have. Remember, my app of choice is habit list for reviewing my goals and my daily behaviors. But I find that writing, um, is a most powerful for me in the morning and be a very good way to organize your thoughts. If you can write down the things that are in your brain onto paper, that is a form of doing two things. One getting them out of here so that you can use this for thinking and creating rather than remembering. And two, It puts the things in the world from this, this sort of in material spiritual, you know, role of neurons and cognition and all these fuzzy things. It puts them into reality. It makes them hard, reviewable, passable, communicate, herbal thing, which is on paper and to me, those both of those activities are very, very powerful. So if you do not journal, I'm not judging. I'm currently sort of oscillating between a physical journal and a digital journal as part of an experiment to find out what works best for me. Eso that if I did make some other materials for the book. But today, David's point is that, um you know, the understanding, the value of a journal, even if you are not a writer, even if you are a visual artist, Um, the place that I would steer you to is some of the exercises in, um, in the book. I think it's in chapter in designing a plan. Um, if you review that section that step, there's a lot in there also morning pages. Uh, Julia Cameron, Um, Tim Ferriss has got a lot of good stuff on journaling. Um and I am I'll continue to to share with you my findings. But if you don't have a ah journal, that's a good thing to do. Also, there was a uh oh, and Redon A just chimed in on Facebook with the point that I was gonna make, which is I had a conversation with Ah, Benjamin Hardy, who is an author. Just came out with a great book about this. Just look up, Benjamin Hardy. All right, so thanks, David, for sharing your comment, which I turned into a question there from ah, from Twitter. All right, we're going back to the zoom universe. Um, was brave enough to step up. He's got a question. All right, Let's see, Boy, um, there's a lot of hands. Okay? We're gonna try, and I'm gonna try and ghost 50% quicker, and I'm going to start off with Ada. Louisa. Good morning. So I'm stuck on the execution. Um, because I've interviewed quite a few people and asked him, What do you feel? Um, when you want to schedule professional photographer, what's one of the first things you look for? And then they answer Well, I want to see a professional environment. Um, you know, the studio and immediately. I'm thinking, Wow, I don't have a studio, so I'm trying to get around to you. How do I present myself as the professional that I know that I am without this physical building that I'm definitely working on because, you know, I'm put a put it on Craigslist. Hey, give me an hour of your time and I'll you know anyway, So I'm just terrified right now. And so I'm stuff there. That's a great question. And I appreciate your willingness to share with us. Thank you. So I find the narratives like you're probably aware of the concept that statistics can basically tell you anything you want to hear. And so my lens on the petitioning of people and what it is that they want to see when they invest in a professional photographer is gear and equipment is has to do with two things. One, the you're it's not. It's not, um, it's not a bad thing to ask the opinion of others, but the way that we talked about this in the startup world, um, I'll use creativelive is an example is you've got to sell the bananas that are on the cart. You can't wait for better bananas, and the path to getting the bananas that you want is to sell the ones that you have first. And so, in a weird way, what you are, What the universe is providing for you is like, Hey, this idea of managing a physical space. There's a whole bunch of stuff of drama and cost and headache and things that get in the way get in between you and the craft or you and connecting with your subject that you can't even see yet. And as someone who's owned lots of studio spaces and manages a lot of physical, physical, real estate and relative to being a creator, I can attest that that is true. So to me, what the universe is telling you and what my prescription in your will would be, too, is to stop asking questions of others, especially ones who, um, are because I'm betting you you have several answers that didn't say I need a physical space to want to invest in a photographer. But you're over indexing on the ones that did say that because yours Creve created a narrative in your head, which is fine. We all do it myself included, and force yourself to especially. There's a benefit here in a cove in world where out, you know, outside on, in a world where there is no studio is it is a requirement for you to get started and in, you know my lens on your challenge is it's we end up making convenient, um, convenient points to ourselves about what we're missing, the distance between where we are, what we need to get started. Um, that is just a form of procrastination. It's very natural, and we also remember, have a negativity bias. If I don't have a studio then and you've already told yourself a story based on gathering data that supports the story in your head. So the the antidote to this is to do five jobs without a studio or to do 10 jobs without a studio. And one of the parallel benefits to a Covad world is real. Estate is about to be a lot cheaper than has been because people are fleeing physical spaces. So I'm encouraging you to think, to change your mindset towards what can I do with what I have? And if I do thes things, the ability to have a studio is probably more available to me than ever before. I just have to meet the right people. I have to communicate. I do have to build the community, have to do all these other things that I talked about. But when you open this conversation with, you know, having problems in executing my understanding of you. The problem that you set up was that I can't execute getting a studio. So have you as another question here, Louisa, have you earned revenue from people without a studio? Ah, a couple of people. Yes. No, I mean, I'm encouraged. Their, uh so like you sounded son narrative. I just But I don't Don't beat yourself up. Don't beat yourself up because we all anybody have a narrative. Put your hand up. Anybody got a narrative? A story to tell yourself about a thing. Hopefully you don't feel alone now because literally every single person raised their hands. So given every single person raised their hand don't beat yourself up about a narrative. But what I'm trying to do is great. Get your put the studio part on hold and go. Get five paying clients to do an outdoor session. I don't care if they pay you $ or 200 or 2000 or any other number. Do five without a do five at a playground at a park at a place where you can operate safely in a covert world wherever whatever part of the planet you're on and get some money doing it without a studio. Because ironically, when you do it that a studio, you're gonna realize that it's possible. And not only does that reframe the problem, but it also is generating money and generating experience with what you would do with that studio if you did get it. And all the while, real estates gonna becoming cheaper all the while you're gonna be meeting more people who's gonna expand your footprint because you might photograph someone that has a spare garage that they would rent or them unit photograph. Something like this is part of what building community means, and we tend to silo these things and I have to solve this problem. Before I saw this problem and this is why I talked about it is in perfect forward action because right now, perfection for us having a studio, thean perfect action is doing what you can with what you have. Sell the bananas on the card, do some jobs outside a studio, and then after you've done five of these things were 10 of these things you might be saying she's I made like three grand last month. How much is the studio? The studios to grand do I wish I had 2000 less dollars in my pocket right now, the's. You start to ask a different set of questions, so don't beat yourself up. Your prescription is to do five jobs without a studio park, the idea of a studio and evaluate again after you've done the homework I was gonna done. Done. All right, everyone. Nice job and elusive. Thank you so much. Uh, yes. Um, awesome. There's lots of folks raising their hands. Um, as a reminder to those of you in the zoom, the group that zoom chat is for you, That is I am not paying attention there specifically, so you all can exchange into someone eight. Louisa, maybe you want to go in there and say where you are at the risk of getting a studio before I want you to. Maybe somewhere on this call as one. Um, but just so you know, I'm trying to pay attention to the visual side of this and ask questions for people who are raising their hand. Um, let's see, then. All right. We're gonna go back to hi Kate by cape. So I had to say by the Kate who's leaving. Um All right, hands up. Okay, lets see. Going down to Frank Weaver. Frank Weaver in the lower middle of my screen there. What's up? Frank's now celebrating. And just as a reminder, Um, nasa. I don't get to see the second page unless you scroll. I don't have the ability to scroll. I'm still looking at. Ah, here we go. I don't have the ability to describe to that second page, so I would love to. There you go. Um, but I I promised to go to Frank Weaver. So, Frank, welcome to the show. A chase. I thank you so much for taking on my question. I'm such a big fan. I'm so thankful for all the content you have been doing for all the years. I remember the first watching you on the Toy camera Challenge Week I and just the way that you interacted with the common folk people was really I cool. Thank you. That camera, for what it's worth, was 50 times worse than you could ever imagine. And you're looking at pictures. It looked bad. It was way worse than you think it is? It was. It was a very hard subject. And for those of you don't know what Frank's talking about. Ah, Google my name plus Lego camera and you'll be treated to nine minutes of delight. Go ahead, Frank. Sorry. No, no, no pressure. And I have been following you lunch pretty live your book and even your photo session with Apple. And I'm a great approach. So it was really awesome to deliver your session to so many people that came to the Apple store. Question is, you know, I see Ah, the community that you're building and see these beautiful people there here, you know, taking your teachings about creativity. And that's a bigger struggle for me. You know, I have a podcast when I'm interviewing indigenous leaders talking about conservation, and it's great conversations. I had a conversation with Gentlemen, Australia that does, you know, beehive Rescue. But when it released those podcasts, you know, it's just kind of a little bit of crickets. I don't have much engagement with the with the people's. That's my question. Now how can I turn my pockets until community like you're doing? I like to make a recommendation to This is a very popular question. This is why 25% of the book was dedicated to building community. So my first prescription would be go read, step for again. And be really honest with yourself around. How many of those actions that are? I'm suggesting you undertake in that, um how many of those suggestions are you actually implementing? So that's thing one thing Two in sort of summary of the book. I like to start out by being the fan you wish you had. So I have seen your name and my feeds for a long time, Frank and I'm grateful, And I'm guessing there are some others but also show up to people whose podcasts, you know, aren't one of the top ones on ITunes or don't have a 1,000,000 people paying attention to him. People who are in the same line of work is you. If it's in conservation than show up in post comments on YouTube channels on Facebook groups on you become a joiner, join other communities. And if the first thing that you that you post in those communities is Hey, everybody, come look at my podcast. Obviously, that's gonna feel transactional. On the other hand, if you show up and leave thoughtful comments over and over and over on 10 of the top podcasts and conservation and 10 of the 10 other podcasts on count on conservation that are just beginning that are in a similar phase of the journey as you are. Those people, if you do it regularly enough, will begin to recognize the name Frank Weaver. And then they will look up Frank Weaver and see who you are and what you're doing. And those will be the first people who come to watch your podcast or listen to your podcasts or engage with the community you're trying to. They will become people in your community, especially if you're adding value to them. If you're, if you're comment of them, is not just a hands up emoji. If your comment is, this is such a good show, I'm going to share it with the Facebook group that I'm participating in, because what does that do to the person who's in your shoes? Let's just flip the script here. You have you post your, uh, show. I'm just going to say it's the place where you can leave comments. So you also posted on on YouTube and you see someone that said, Oh, my God, this conversation with his conservationist was amazing. I'm gonna go share it on this other community that I'm a part of. If you see that Frank Weaver, you see someone leaves that comment on your page, What do you dio just instinctively be honest? Like, what would you do if someone said Oh, my God, this is amazing. I'm going to go share it over here. What would you do? I will reply to them and thankful for, you know, leaving that comment? Yep. And I'm also guessing that you you look at Who are they? What's their name? What's their website? What's this other group that they said they were going to share to? Oh, my God. I'm gonna go see how that group is receiving the content that this person shared. And in doing so, you are demonstrating exactly what I want you to do. Because if you did that on 10 other podcasts that are popular and 10 other podcasts are emerging those you know, some subset of those 20 people would do the same for your stuff. They would come Look, they would and you would understand. Exactly. You are the behavior. You are the person that you want to attract or if you haven't, then you you identifying your ideal customer. I'm guessing it's someone who likes and does a lot of things you do, which is what you're building a community around it. And this is a wildly misunderstood thing. You have to be the fan you wish you had. You have to show up for others consistently. And I'm by consistently I mean months. And I mean every day. If you left a comment on my instagram feed every single day for two months, I'm absolutely gonna know you are, especially for your first, especially if you have notifications. Turn on. Especially if you're Communist, thoughtful. And if other people like it and voted up. This is the participation part that most people miss. And in me sharing this with you, Frank and I applaud you for asking this question. Um, this is almost ubiquitous in people who have no community and wanted build one. The way you build one is by joining others and not just going straight to the transaction of telling them about your community. It's like showing up at a party where you don't know everyone and being the person who runs around telling everyone to come to your party, you're at someone else's party. What world is that? You show up at someone's party, you're a guest of someone else and you start telling them to come to your I have a party tomorrow or right now I have a party going on. You leave this party and come to my party. The psychology of that is just like Who does that? The reality is 99 out of 100 people do it on the Internet and that one person who's not doing it, who's showing them, who's attending the party over and over and over and complementing the guest and bringing Hey, I noticed that you are low, a nice last time, so I bought a couple bags ice. That's the person that you want to hang out with. That's the person whose party you want to go to when it's appropriate that you introduce that you even are having a party, Capito. So I was gonna chase. Thank you so much. I think that answer was awesome. I don't know if anybody else did her. Uh, all right, Um, I don't know. That's that's funny. That's a great question. And, Frank, I do thank you have seen you in my feeds for years. And if anyone was wondering, that's another good reason to turn notifications on. Not just for my stuff, although I appreciate that. And, um, like I mentioned earlier, this is I'm I'm honestly surprised that, um, you know, I mentioned that I was gonna read every review and every review has a name to it. And every name is something that I can fall on the Internet. Just a reminder that, like that's a great example of adding value notice, I said It's not just a hands up emotive. No, Like literally carrying water. I show up with bags of ice, leaving a review, a thoughtful comment, signing up for an email newsletter, commenting on the newsletter. These are all things that add value to the Creator, which in turn inspire others to do the same for you. So I'm I'm again. The the reviews that I have received from this community make my heart sing, and they are helpful in spreading this message But if you want to get on my radar this it's a very good way to do it. Um, okay. Comments are going nuts over here in the, uh, in the zoom chat. I'm gonna check out my note Over here. Um, Mary Jo, thank you for the shot on. I really am pleased with that example, I hope. Nice job, Chase. Andy Katz. Drew Denise. Thank you all for the, um, participating over their Facebook and YouTube live. Um, we're gonna go back to the zoom call, and he's got a question. Hands up. I'm gonna go the close my eyes and it's gonna go boom. All right. And I see Audrey Hall was the first person who my eyes landed on Audrey. Welcome to the show. How can I help or how can this community help? I agree. I got a media put that closer to the camera. I have the producers screen up. There's a reason I have the producer screen. OK? I don't know why it's OK. Just go like nails. Go by. OK, go in the upper right hand corner. That's okay. Maybe somebody else's go for it on re. Here I am. I have a question about mentorship. I would. I've found some really, really incredible mentors to help me in sort of, ah ah, career transition. And the one thing they're they're amazing with helping home the craft. But it's in an area of creativity where there's a lot of negativity, so it's sort of it's like while they're helping me from the Kraft. There's also a narrative going on of leg. You shouldn't do this or you can only do this. Have you been doing this for 30 years? Cause everybody who's successful of, you know, started when they were 12. I'm not 12 obviously. And, um, and that the whole idea of any kind of success is sort of it's like, non existent. So in a way, I'm trying to figure out, like who to emulate in the whole emulation part of it. And it's been really hard to find, because I find this narrative sort of ubiquitous throughout the whole, uh, area of creativity that I'm exploring. Great. Um, I like this question a lot because, um, you're using the framework. And to those of you who, um, may not remember, it was from an earlier ah earlier episode of this class and earlier lesson in this class she's talking about emulating under the dear framework D E a. R um, which is deconstruct the lives and successes and workings of other people that you really admire, emulate what they're doing, analyze which of those actions that you emulated are actually helping you and then repeat those actions. And so for me, that meant going to Barnes and Noble cause I couldn't afford to buy a $3 magazine standing in front of the magazine rack, looking at all my favorite photographers, looking at where they shot, who they shot with what kinds of pictures, how they were framed, literally taking notes. So I had, like, notebooks that were larger than the magazines that I was looking full of notes. And then I went and replicated those things. I went to those locations. I tried to contact those athletes. I tried to make photographs that looked like the the photographs of my heroes. And then some of that started to gel with me, and some of it didn't and I I looked at what was working, what wasn't and repeated those actions, and that's what helped me understand. So she's talking about a framework that I am very fond of, which is sort of learning how to learn the in the analyzation part. That's also your your understanding a little bit more about you. You're looking at other people, but you're starting to understand how you work. And so I think that's a really important and often misunderstood relationship. And whether this is a virtual mentorship for me mentorship, It's like mentorship. This is mentorship its scale, right? This is your you getting chases, brain. This is, you know, 25 years of me as a professional creator. Everything I know, horror stories wins losses, etcetera. The same is true for just looking at any individual piece of art. You can probably take something away from that, even if it's just a brushstroke. So I find value there. Now, the, um let me just run a little exercise. And if you are familiar with the book as familiars, you may be at this point then this will be a dead giveaway as soon as I say it. But for those of you who are you know, maybe you dropped in a little bit late. I wanna look, I want you look around the room right now for green things. Look around the room, toe and count. How many green things you see? I'm to give us 10 seconds to do it. Just look around. Just look for green things, Please. No, You look very closely, Robert Green things. How many do you see? Deeming. Okay, How many red things did you see? Three. Know how many read things? Did you see? I'm not green Theme point of this exercise is that you see what you're looking for. Okay, So when you're seeking mentorship and the mentors are all giving you a certain piece of feedback, you are sourcing mentors that are most likely to give you the feedback that you're looking for. This is not dissimilar to a Louise's point where she's when she's petitioning people. What do you need in a professional photographer? She's latched on that professional photographer equal studio. And when I ask people, if that's the thing, that's that's item number 64 in their list of shit that they look for in a professional. She's gonna put it right to the top because that's what she's looking for. And the same is true when I asked you to look for green things, and then I ask you how many read things. Did you see? So with mentorship, Um, part of what is interesting with mentorship is and I think this is, um this is tied to so many things in our culture. Uh, I have realized this is really important in racial inequality. For example, I've been doing a lot of work in that area. As leader, I'm looking for ways to help, to learn to, um, just participate to be, ah, supporter, an ally. And this that when phrase has been very prominent, which is it's it's hard to be what you can't see. So we look for mentors. And if we don't see mentors that are either doing the things that we want to be or they look like us, or that we believe we could tap into some aspect of what it is that they are, they stand for that they're doing it. I understand it makes it hard. And I've learned a lot about, um, how how that manifests. I think it's true across a lover, a variety of spectra, and the way that I like to prescribe a solution here is Is this person someone, That is then it sounds to me like the mentors that you're choosing. And I'm putting those in air quotes just in case their default and you're not really choosing them. And those mentors, I think you might want to get some different mentors because the mentors that I looked too did not confirm all of the biases in the industry. Now I'm going to tell you another little expanded story that is actually part of what helped me understand. The what I could become is. When I looked at the photo industry, I did not see anyone sharing information. I did not see anyone who was, um willing to reveal their secrets, their trade secrets, and build community around those shared holes in our knowledge. So I used to do all of those things I did. You know, I told you the story about standing in front of a magazine rack, but what I didn't see is anyone talking about all the hard stuff, all the shoots that sucked and where they missed. And so that was in deconstructing analyzing and repeating or emulating, analyzing, repeating, I was emulating the thing that was that things that were working. But I also uses an opportunity say OK, I'm pretty familiar with the marketplace. I've been doing this research for a long time, and there's a gap. You start to understand where the gaps are and whether this is a gap in mentorship or a gap in opportunity for a business or a gap in opportunity for your art or to say what you want to say. You can then start to exploit that I use that word in the positive sense is and take advantage of make use off those opportunities. So the shortest version I can give you Audrey is try and get some other mentors who were actually living The thing that you find is needed, and if you're telling me they're not out there, I think you're not looking hard enough because I think if you can look at it like there is a community is a community on the Internet that paints portrait's of dead presidents and sells them on Tuesday for grand, there is a Britain. There is a face. There might just be 12 people in the world that seven billion people that do that, but there is a community out there. So I encourage you to learn, look a little harder. And then thing to reality is you're not gonna find a mentor. It is exactly what you want. And that's the magic. That's where you you get to put your imprint on that. And if the mentor serves 2/3 of your needs and that what they don't serve or fulfilling you, is this positive like, Hey, you don't have to have 30 years of experience. You can start doing this tomorrow, then that's a great thing for you to experiment with. I loved like, let me give you one other example. And I like to use my own experiences because it's something I can speak as aptly, honestly and without without, um, projecting on to others. So my experience was every person, every photographer, every when I talked to them about how to become a professional, included in the prescription to work for another photographer, assist other photographers, I do not think that is a bad advice. I think that is actually good advice cause you to be around it. My dumb ass didn't do that. I went from I never assisted for a single day in my life as a photographer. Extremely rare, extraordinarily rare. But that ended up being my own path, right? And so this is where I think a cement me and you're look at mentors out there. No mentor is gonna build the entire picture. There's always gonna be some that is mute. It's gray, It's blurry. It's fuzzy. That is an opportunity for you to dive into that area. Explore it. And so when everyone said that I had to do that, I was like, OK, great. Um, that sounds slower. That would want to do this. And so that was the way that I was able to, Um you know, I guess become the mentor that I never had. And, you know, I'm not telling people that they have to be an assistant. I'm saying now is the time where the gate keepers are more invisible and removed than ever before. So health and I'm gonna go for it now. Long answer. But again, I think that the the multi faceted aspect of your question that you're doing the prescription. Your deering at D A. R. You're seeking mentor ship. You're not seeing the things you want in the world. It's a complex problem that has a very simple solution. At the heart of it is action. Great action over intellect said that lots of times in the book. And I hope that you've now you're, you know, 30% further along than you were before you walked in. And he follow up questions real quick. Audrey, before you move on. No, that's great. Thank you so much for helpful. Who's on fire today? You guys Nice one on you. Go get so much chase. Hate to do it. Have you know it brings me so much. Do I came to tell you this is likewise. All right, all right, all right. A lot of people raising their hands. Let's go back. Ah, OK. It's so hard when everyone literally everyone raised their hand. So, um, I couldn't tell if Let's go with Happy man. France. Hi. Happy man. France. Good morning, or I'm guessing if you're actually in France, it is probably well into the evening. Are you unneeded? We got to get happy, man. France a muted here? Yes, I'm still looking at Thea. I have the wrong page up because I can't click on them myself. That would need you to do that. Okay. I'm gonna muted now. Hello? Oh, Franco. The text was so small. The Texas so small. And now I see the Franco part, Just like Eddie. I have, ah, one comment. And one question or a comment is earlier this morning, I was watching your creator, uh, calling class mine creativelive. And during the 1st 1 um, a guy named Josh got up, can he? It said that he had made a mission statement and that had helped him a lot. And then you went into core values And how that those two things can help you find out what your call and really is. And I thought that was spectacular. Really. Thank you. It's a great framework. The question is, I'm stuck between a starter and a new door. I can start a project. I love nature. So I do, uh, landscape flowers with Mac Rose. I don't do people, and I don't do people basically because I think I'm a perfectionist, and I know I won't get it right. So I shy away doing people OK, But what I find is I belong to the 52 frames on. Uh, I know wet. And I looked at the photos, I submit mine, and I find out how much better everybody's else photo is except mine. And I try to learn their things. I'm I'm spinning in circles, if you know what I me, I dio I dio what is your What is your ultimate goal? What is your ultimate aspiration? Um, to master the landscape and, um, flowers. And when you say master it, do you do you Do you want to sell them or just want to take them and put them in a drawer? You want to display them? You want to sell ourselves? What I did before we came to came out here was I would print my photos, put him on or would board my partner. Um And then my plan is to go back. I go back to Maryland is too seldom that craft shows cool. Noticed the difference between when asked what your ultimate goal. And then what you just told me you talked about mastery. And then when I said no, no, no, that, like, Okay, so once you've mastered something and you put all these photos in the door and you don't show them to anybody. Don't talk about it. That got you to under something that was slightly different, which is No, no, no. I actually want to make money from my craft I want. And so I think inherit in that. And we all have something to learn for you. So thank you for volunteering again. Happen, man. Ah is be really clear about your goals because right now the spinning part for you is you are working than your craft. You compare your work to others and then you go back to working in your craft. When you compare your work to others and you go back to working in your craft, you compare. You work to others. With what? If you actually price something appropriate. You took your best work and you went to a fair tomorrow. Could you sell something for $10? Could you sell something for $100? Yeah, okay. And if you're really goal is to be selling photographs for a living. Part of that is selling and why you are a starter in a neutral. You are doing the imagining and designing, and then you're going back to imagine and then you're designing and you're going back to imagine is like my craft could be a little bit better Posted my photos. Nobody liked him. My craft could be a little bit better when you're really you're really goal is to make a plan to take a photograph mounted, you know, designed to imagine yourself a selling photographs for a living. The first step is in that process to sell a photograph. So this is what this is the I am imagining myself doing this. How does one do that? What would the plan look like? Well, it would be to take a lot of photographs and then look at those 1000 photographs and print my favorite 10 and then take those 10 to affair any fair price. Um, not to make me rich, but to actually transact and get used to that. You go execute that plan, and the whole time you're doing it, you're handing out business cards. You're telling people in your 52 frames group that you've got a show, you are passing out business cards at the at the fair, wherever it is, you want to see it. You're executing this plan and noticed you're amplifying. You're talking to let other people and I want to give you a shadow for volunteering your story Here. Thank you. This is a great example of building community. And if you did that tomorrow, I bet of the 1000 photographs you have. And you did. You printed 10. And you took 10 to a craft fair and sold him for 10 bucks each mounted on wood or whatever. It might even be break even my might even lose money. Uh, you would actually recognize your like, Damn, I just did my thing. I thought I was so far away from my goal. And right under my nose were the 10 photographs that someone would pay $10 for. And once you've completed that entire I D. E. A. This is a beautiful example of what I started earlier in the broadcast with I D. And E A is not completing the whole thing and notice you couldn't do that. Because your original question, my original question to you is what do you want to do? You like I want to master it. The concept of mastery is just about craft in perfection and craft in perfection versus selling something which is, we find out if we push this one layer deeper. That's why being real with what we want in the world about imagining a solution is actually a super critical piece of the puzzle that we often zoom right over because we say I kind of want to be good ish with the camera. Ishan saw some photos and no, no, no, no, no laser focus. And once you've done the laser focus and you walk through all four of those steps of the process and you complete that process and you're looking around and going, damn it did it and maybe only did it once and maybe only did it for 10 bucks. What, you've done it once. It's repeatable. I'm that example. With $500 a free pair of skis. I sold a photograph and it was like I was like, I could die and go to heaven at that point, and then all I did was do the same thing again. What did I do? What part of that worked? What was the hard part? What would I change if I had to do over again and repeated, and then my next sale and do the same in my next sales the same. And with every sale I could then walk into a, uh when I when I approached the merchandising manager at Ari I and said and notice the photos on the wall. I've got a portfolio full of these images. I would love to show them to you and she said, OK, well, what else have you done? Like? Oh, I've, you know, licensed some images to some ski companies. Most of the work that I do is outdoors instant credibility because I'd actually done the thing once. Go back to eight of Louise's point or any other guest we had on before. Like once you've done it once and you've built a little confidence and you can actually say that. That's what people want to hear that you've done the work before. Photographers rarely get hired for work they haven't done on. The same is true across any creative. You haven't built a house how maney homeowners are gonna hire you to build your next house, right? So you need to find a way. And that 1st 1 is the hardest. Which is why I'm trying to get you a win. So I'm guess if you want to do a little bit more work on your portfolio, fine. If you feel like you got one or two heaters and out of the 10,000 voters that you take, print those. Go to the go to the ah, the fair that you aspired to side in Maryland, sell a picture. And if you don't sell when you sit there for four weekends in a row, you're gonna be talking to a lot of people. You're gonna be amplifying. Give me learning. What is the gap between your pictures and what people actually want to pay for? Okay. Copy that, Franco. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I'm very happy. I'm excited for you. And I see just turned 70 right? Yes, I did. And I'm retired, so I can do this. Nice one. I love hearing it. Congratulations. Let's give a shout out to Happy man. Franco, Word up. Um OK, um I'm gonna shift gears here. Take a peek at all of the different feeds we've got going on right there. Cool. Cool comment here from Diane. Mentors were fined, but reminder you control your own learning curve This is true. So many of us have a lien on our mentors to give us the answers. This is the cool thing about deciding what you actually want to do, despite you being embarrassed or ashamed or weirded out by actually saying that you want to do something that the world might not approve of when you actually start doing that thing. Learning takes on a whole another meaning because hungering and acquiring knowledge actually becomes a huge benefit. It's a huge win if you will learn a skill. And you're like Dang Aiken, do that now versus pushing a Rock Up a Hill, which is what learning always felt like to like to me in school. And as soon as I started saying no, I want to learn photography. I would like be the dude at the library where the library would have to come up and say, uh, libraries been closed for like, 20 minutes. I want to go home. You're going to check out the book. Or that's what learning feels like when you're actually learning things that you want to be doing. So be honest with yourself. Great reminder from Diane. Um, Harry, it just says. I recognize I just realized rather how much she's downplayed her own success. I think that is a wonderful take away. You have successes in the world, even if they're small. And you have achieved a couple of things in the area that you're interested in even if they're small. The mindset shift to finding what is positive rather than engaging our negativity, bias or crocodile brain. The well worn, um, neurological pathways that tell us that were not enough recognizing the positivity it the the things that you have actually accomplished is so valuable. Thanks for reminding me of that, Harriet. Um, I'm gonna take a question from Diane, and she says, I have enjoyed your part. I think it's a question. Mm. No, it's just a comment, so thank you. Dan was long comment. I needed to read. I thought for sure it was a question buried in there. All right, Thank you. And, um Denise a, uh, happy man, Franco Dinis yields wants you to know that she she wishes you happy. 70th. Congrats. Um, okay. Back to zoom. We're yet raised hands. Lauren Kelly was first. Lauren Kelsey Rather was first. You've already asked a question on this show. Before I remember nice to have you back. You were like lightning was like this. Just I don't always reward speed, but thanks for being on the show. And welcome again. Excited to hear question. Oh, thank you so much, I really appreciate. I hope it's a good question on that. Other people can relate. But when I read the book and listen to the book, um, one of those things that I really related to was your story about what she mentioned a little bit today as well, about kind of jumping the line. We're progressing really quickly and by mass we're going outside of they were back at the old school or older generations, thought that you should be following. And, um, I've really been doing not in my work. I'm the one that works in film, um, that we talked a couple weeks ago and I've jumped up the ladder like exceptionally fast, and I've just gotten a new gig that's even higher and higher. And, um, I feel really concerned because I get it a lot from the older generation that I'm like ambitious is in, like, a negative way, and that I have trouble surrounding myself with people that air super supportive of me kind of going my own way. But I can always use because I'm working in a film production situation. So I can't surround myself always with super supportive people. And I wondered if you had any advice of how to sort of deal with the haters with negative people. I dio first allow me to, um, thank you for sharing your challenge. First, let me make a light, wispy joke. You're sounds like year in Canada. Yes, Canada and ambition I got Don't know. So you all are Very I'm just kidding. There's I love Canada, one of my favorite places on the planet. And, uh, of course, Canadians were known for their humility. So, um, jokes aside, the you will always get pressure from, um outside and go back to this negativity bias that we're wired to pay attention to. If you get 100 positive comments in three negative ones, everyone over indexes on the negative ones, and that's natural. So what you need to do in a case I'll just take the most simple version of the comments is Teoh. If you have chosen to read them. Just recognize that you are likely never going to be criticized by people who are, um, more imaginative or who have actually done the hard work where you will be criticizes people. By whom have not or are, um, you either growing you're dying and these people are probably on a downward descent. So if you look at the source of those criticisms or in Bernet Brown's terminology, if they are not with Roosevelt rather, if they are not in the arena, then it's your duty to get good at what to pay attention to and what not to. Now. If these people are people that you generally respect and they're, you know, providing you with their opinion, analyzing their opinion for the value that you can extract from it is important, Um, or maybe there's an opportunity in there. But conditioning yourself to, by and large continue to listen to your gut and focus on the things that you are out there in the world that you want, and people that are out there in the worlds that are setting an example that you choose to follow conditioning yourself to orient around that and not the other thing is a very important job. If you ask the writer Elizabeth Gilbert what her job is, she says, her job is for mental health. She's a writer. Second to that, her number one job is taking care of her head and her heart. And whether that feels squishy to you or not, it is required, especially if you are. Um, you know what? It's not not I'm never gonna qualify. It is required full stop. So in the case of doing things that are out of the norm, and I will again, I try and turn to my own experience because in an almost a Buddhist way, like all we have is truly have is our own experience. Um, and I can project and guess about a lot of other people. But I'll tell you, I had the same exact thing happened because I never assisted for another photographer for a day because I went from zero to, um, making money as a photographer. Extraordinarily quickly, Um, there's up. There's often opportunities for those who decide that following the prescribed path isn't is valuable for me. I had a benefit, which is I was just ignorant. It's not like I like. I chose to do this other thing. I didn't know how to do it until well after I had already done it. And there's so it's sort of like there's bliss and ignorance. And yet, if I if I, um, looked on any photographic forums early on in my work where I was building community, the reviews would be mixed. It was a very, very mixed bag. If you can condition your mindset not to get, um, pulled down by those who are the haters. And if you can orient your mindset around people who inspire and encourage, um, this occasionally ends up, meaning you need a different set of friends. And that's part of what's hard You, if you are the average of the five people spend the most time with, and four of those were telling you that you're not doing it right. Getting a new set of friends, even if that set of friends isn't different are in a different industry could be valuable. That's not to say you don't wanna have connections to units you don't want to remain sort of connected to or a part of that community, but orienting around you know the five people who you spend the most time with Keeping them in the, you know, the positive camp is, is, I think, very, very important. Remember, Burn a Brown makes a list of people that she actually wants to make sure that she is in line with their opinion of her and then that list, I think she says it has five people on it. That's a very small list. And, you know, like in Internet language checks list, not on list. I don't care about you, Like, not don't care about your opinion, Okay? Like in in the in. The lightweight since I might care about you is another human being. But I don't care about your opinion of me. So this is this doesn't happen by accident. This, like so many other things in our world are in our human conditioning is something that it's a muscle that we developed. So practicing that muscle and when I get negative feedback, or when I get things that want to check my ambition checks list not on list. Thank you for your opinion. Next. So one other, um, related bit, which is it's two thoughts, and this is I don't really have a crisp delivery on this, so bear with me for a second. But what I'm feeling is that people who and I'm again I'm trying to rely on my own experience here, there I I used that as a talking point when I talked to others or the people that were in my innermost circle as a, um I didn't realize it at first, but it acted as a little bit of an anchor because it became a talk track for me that I went to. I'm going quickly in my industry. I blah, blah, blah, blah. But all these folks and but I realized at some point was in use in articulating that. Now this is I want to be very careful because I want to reward you for bringing this up. But I want you to put a pin in this, and I do not want you to, um I want you to move beyond it because I found that as it it became a default talk track for me that I was being held down by these other people. And once you start to say that more than one or three or five times. It's a talk track, and that talk track ends up acting as an anchor. And again, I apologize for this. Not being a very eloquent, but I think you're picking up what I'm putting down, because I okay, I also remember that you said this a couple of weeks ago. There was it wasn't the whole thing, but it was a piece of that that shared a similar sentiment. So I can't make this assumption because you've only talked twice. But if this is true for you that you said this more than five times and it's not serving you, I need you to put it down. And any time you end up in that talk track, say these words for yourself to yourself. That's not like me to use that framework. Next time I'm going to, and whatever the behavior you want, that's not like me to use this thing. It's not serving me. Next time I'm going to find five people that I really respect and admire and don't check my ambition or that support my goals. I'd like to put it in the positive. It's a very simple phrase that I learned from a sports psychologist When I was 15 years old, I made a bad pass in a soccer game rather than saying God, just like That's not like me. Next time I'm gonna hit him right on the run or whatever the thing is in just It was just automatic and it began to rewire like Your brain is plastic, right? You're blames. Brain is motive. All these default neural networks. We end up in a rut, and this right is a talk track. How many people find yourself at a party saying the same thing you said at the last party, over and over again about your profession, about your skills, about your vision, about who you are, about what you do. We are creatures of habit that makes it comfortable for us. We don't have to think and all of those things, if again going back to. And I I acknowledge Buddhism not because I'm Buddhist, because I think it's very, very useful. It's about presence. Buddhism is about presence of being in the present moment, and the minute you're in the past or the minute you're projecting into the future, you're not. Right now, all those things are forms of suffering the story that you told yourself about your coworker, not supporting your ambition, that is, you suffering and again pain in this life completely, not optional. Everyone will have pain suffering that is beating yourself up about a thing telling yourself a narrative, holding yourself back All that's optional because if you're truly living in the moment, you cannot. You can't do those other things. So, yeah, be that we good or in Yeah, we're great. It makes a lot of sense, I think letting go of it all is it could be a challenge not to replay it. I don't think it's a story I say allowed to other people very often. I only I ask you because I feel like you've been through the very similar thing. But I have definitely you be playing what people have said to me in the past few years. We'll keep that I admire in a ground form of my career, and it's really it's time to let it go, I guess. But yes, it is a hard one night. When we hang up, you're gonna go great. I got my path. But it's not easy. Memory simple, not easy. Yeah, very very simple. I'm saying that's that script doesn't serve you let it go. And how you let it go is by using that little mantra and by actually directing your thoughts to something that actually it serves you or a community that serves you are people that serve you are a vision for your own precious life that serves you whatever the fact is. And I also I want to say I'm not suggesting that you are you. You verbalize this because remember, the most important words in the world are the ones that we say to ourselves. So even if there are things that all y'all I'm just pointing all you on the screen here, even if you don't verbalize them. But you think them that's every bit as as potentially harmful now, verb thinking it and verbalizing it ends getting stuck in that talk track. That's that's doubly hard because you're thinking it and you're doing it. And so you've got the corresponding action, which is continued tow wire, your neural network and again. And I don't want to get too much into neuroscience here, Um, because it that on the most simple and surface level, this is just about again. The word the word you used language is very important. And if something is not serving, you need to choose different words and thoughts. Not serving you. You need to be able to direct this Oregon. It works for you. You do not work for it. Your thoughts are not you. If you meditate, you actually get good at looking at your thoughts. My goal in meditation is to not think my goal is to focus on a mantra. And I meditated this morning. I'm 10 seconds into my meditation thought comes around. Oh, jeez. I wonder where my USB my mini USB court is not even kidding. This actually happened. And then I'm like, Oh, this is not time to think about my mini USB cord. This is time to focus on the mantra. Thought not, chase Thought goes by sea. Later thought mantra, mantra, mantra on my gut Am I gonna have time to eat before the broadcast? Not serving me. The goal is the mantra Thought goes by notice. I am not my thoughts. You can either be in the waterfall or you can look at the waterfall the started. This is why met it again. This is very I'm getting, like, some of you are, like, scratch your head right now, going deep. But this is why meditation becomes powerful because it serves so many different aspects of you. You start to realize that you are not your thoughts. You start to realize what it what calmness looks like. What, being in service of yourself. What self care? All these. There's there's a bazillion benefits. Anyway, Thank you. Lorne Kelsey shot onto Lauren for volunteering her challenge that we all share who? All right, we I'm gonna I'm gonna go at this for another 18 minutes. Um, Mary Jo Needles, Needles. Doris wants you to know Lauren, go get him. Um, the ah, either Kate or NASA, Whoever is running our social town right now, CREATIVELIVE wants me to share my mantra. Um, the mantra that I use in my tm is given to me, and it's not something that I share. Um, the mantra that I think is effective when you're being criticized or when you make a mistake, is that's not like me. Next time I will with the behavior that you desire. All right. All right. Let's see. Ah, Merial your screen is frozen. Hope. Hope. Ah, other screens or not frozen. Can you guys all move your Oh, yeah. Okay. Cool it. You're moving. It's working. At least zoom calls working. Um, cool. I'm gonna go to shove hands. Going to go to Lauren Penny. Well, the morning Lauren I and then a Liza, did you have a question or was that it was at a scratcher? Was that a raise? It was his graduate. Okay. I want to make sure I was trying to trying to choose to folks here. We're gonna go to Lauren. We're gonna tackle your question head on. Lord, how can I help since you got a little wu with other Laura? And I thought I'd feel comfortable asking this. Um, I'm wondering. I noticed in myself, especially being on this zoom call how much anxiety I have around being seen in, like, a big way. Like I feel it in my chest. So I'm making up a story. The head, You don't have that. That you always You never had a fear of being seen in a big way, and I was just wondering if that's true or if that's something you've acquired along the way. Practice active. It's practice, and it's true. Um, I will share a story from a podcast yet to be released. This is the benefit of being in little inner circle here in the podcast I'm about to release with Sam Harris sometime in August, when he's got a new book dropping. Um, he talked about being terrified as a speaker, and yet he wrote a book that was very popular. Required he going book to her like, how do we reconcile these two things? This is in 2004. He talked about this, reassured this experience about being in 2004 and, um, he had an experience where he froze and, um, paying attention to the physical sensations in the body. This is, um, very this has much to do with mindfulness. So if anyone wants to take classes around mindfulness. My wife, Kate, is a teacher of mindfulness, and she's not giving me the ability to share her coaching, practicing with anybody on the call. So at some point when she will, I will share it with you. But there are great mindfulness practices out there. What mindfulness does it gets you out of your head and into your body. And if you started, like, what is fear? Basically, fear is generally a story, right? We go from right into her head, Head tells head talks about the time that we froze in front of our students. It's a come. It's a comparison about are worth as a human. It's a versus what Sam shared so eloquently in her podcast. I can't wait for to come out but what he shared so eloquently it was like Great. Now you have this anxiety of being seen. What does it feel like? And as soon as you're going to like, what does it feel like? Where is it? In my body feet, the fear and the anxiety literally can't exist because you're like, OK, what does it sound like? What does it feel like? I don't hear any sounds. Feels like a tightening of the chest shortness of breath. If you sit with that for like, 20 seconds and you're describing it, you're not anxious. Then you're talking about a series of neural chemical reactions in your body, that air creating something and you're recognizing that, huh? That's just a chemical in my body and fear Alston starts to feel a lot like excitement, huh? Looks like what I've been telling myself is a story. Now I'm simplifying years of practicing this into a single sentence so I can watch that. But that is a powerful experience for those trying to get over public speaking, trying to get over the fear of putting your work in the world. What does it feel like to read a negative comment? Where do I go? Where does that come up in my body? Stomach, Heart, head. Mostly, these feelings air from here to here, right? It's from your belly button to your neck and you're like, OK, sit with that for a little bit. Now, Um, let's get out of the neurology for a second. But because I do think it's very much it is. The ability to strengthen and condition your neurology is is an important aspect of it. That is, this is a deeper version. Why I prescribed mindfulness or meditation, and it is a thread of most of the top performers in any discipline. Is there self awareness and mindfulness? Um, so it's this is a short you know, the person that prescription is a shortcut for what we're talking about in a little more depth here, Um, the shortest answer that I can give you about my own experience is, um, as a young person, I performed and enjoyed it and not dissimilar to Lauren, Kelsey started getting, you know, when you start to be in the 5th 6/8 grade range, people start talking to you about your people, reflect on your personality, who you quote are, as you have you show up in the world and then we start making judgments about that. Is that accurate? Is that not accurate? To make us feel better is to make us feel worse. And so to be super fair, like unless Ning to that or unlearning what other people have said about you is difficult. But it's literally a matter of repetition. It is a muscle, like so many things I'm prescribing, and this is why this is why it blocks most people because the thought of getting in front of people or this This is why publishing work is so valuable. If everyone on this call published something every day for days, every day or five out of every seven at the end of 30 days, you would feel dramatically different about what you put on the world you would feel. And I'm not just saying a little. I'm saying dramatically different and it's like going to the gym. How good does it feel the day after your first workout? It feels like yet this is an emotional hangover. As soon as we pushed published on our work and someone commented, lame. This is someone that you've never met on the Internet took ah, quarter of a second to tap out L. A M E. And it is defining your next 24 hours. I'm not saying that that's not human. I'm not saying that that's not natural. I'm not saying that we're not wired for negativity. Bias. I'm not saying that we have stories about our performance, our capabilities, who we are, who, maybe who had this think of us. But I do know that if you did that 30 times in a row that quarter second that some asshole in Connecticut took to type out four letters does not matter. No. Now I we have out of share a funny story. I was I think I shared this earlier as about to talk in front of somewhere routine. Let's call it 10,000 people somewhere between eight and 10,000 people's with stadium. It was, I think I'd been hired to talk at the Intel annual company meeting. It's literally it was held at the Staples Center. So I'm going on stage in the Staples Center, where the L A Lakers play basketball and I'm backstage with my wife. And Kate is terrified for me, terrified. And I've got my noise canceling headphones on and I'm like, and the reason is I'm used to speaking in front of large groups. Cates Not, That's it. That's it. It's a muscle Now it's important to the last thing I'm going to say is it's very important to not devalue the often hard, nonlinear process of getting from you know where you are now to where you want to be, but it's just a muscle like anything else. Your task, Lauren Penny well, is to find out how you can put yourself in that environment in a lightweight way over and over and over. If it's public speaking, it's Toastmasters. If it's putting your work in the world, it's publishing every day, and there are 10 other You know, analogous ways to practice depending on your craft or what it is that you want to be your becoming the world. I'm just giving you a couple of obvious ones. So I do think I'm a natural extroverts. I'm becoming more introverted. Or I would call it Amber averted at later in my life because I feel like I can actually get more work done. I can make more progress in the ideas and the things that I want to be and become in a smaller environment. Um, but it's not required that you're an introvert or extrovert. Some of the most successful, happy, fulfilled, talented creators in the world are introverts. And yet they show up on the today show that they show up in places that we need to see their work. So it's available to you with a little practice. All right, now, I never got clear a Liza, Did you have a question or was that a squeeze that a scratch and not a I was just No, you kind of got a question. Yes. I want to hear from you. Hi. Hi. Is it a Liza? Is that right? Yeah, he actually got it right. E I pride myself on my ability to screw up only 20% of the name, but I often screw that my badly. So if I get yours wrong next, whoever is gonna be next I apologize in advance. But for now, we're focused on you and your question, ELISA, Um, it was a scratch, but I don't really buy. Since I'm here, I should I feel like I should, uh, join the conversation. I I had started a project a few years ago, and then life happened. So then I put it on hold on. Being in quarantine gave me the opportunity to bring it back to life. Beautiful. So I started actually, part time on that found a full time job remotely as a graphic designer. So, like financially, I don't have to stress too much on. I can still do part time on my passion project. And I'm also starting to sell those things. People are exciting. Me great feedback. They're sending you like text misters. Thank you. Like and it's like I feel like I get shocked that that next step like I don't have a website. I'm not selling online I just post the things that I make on Instagram, but I even that's rare as so. It's always like word of mouth or people contacting me. OK, I just thought you posted that. Are you selling this? And then that's how I make so great, which is a good thing, A good problem to have. It's just I think, that it's the next step. I I'm constantly blocking myself there. Cool. Well, I can't wait for you to go Relax This the next 120 seconds over and over again afterward. I'm recording this class and it's on the creativelive website because your prescription is very simple. You are conveniently accepting where you're at right now, which is fine. And yet embedded in you is a desire to go forward because you've talked about and again, I'm not prescribing this to you. I'm just translating the words that you used into what I believe having done this a bunch, you mean, which is like, I want to go to the next step. I didn't hear you say that. You just talked about the next step as its its distanced from you. It's over there, so I don't have to go touch it, because if I can't accomplish it, it's not mine. I don't have to own it. This is fear of success. Is this fear fair? That's fear of a lot of things. It's all based on fear. And you know what, 100% natural, 100% natural. This is why I'm gonna take you back to I imagine you need to define take a second and define for yourself what it is you want to do imagine was possible. And this concept of imagining is a little scary because it set you up to potentially fail to potentially miss the target to potentially not make it to the next step, whatever that means in your world. But here's the cool thing. If you set yourself up and you walk through this four step process, I believe that the success and fulfillment that you want from this thing that you haven't that you have some notion of, but you haven't become Chris Pond. I think you've got it. I think you got it in you and I think you can do it. The cool thing is that I think, like literally every person on this call without exception, has the capability to do some version of the thing that they want to be. Now. Maybe you want to play in the N B A and you're 66 years old. Maybe you could be an N b A coach. Maybe you could be a trainer on the NBA's like you can get super super close. So I'm trying to think of the most unrealistic thing. I don't know a lot of 67 year old N b A players, but there's ability to be so close, and for almost everything else, you can actually do it. What's required is describing the vision, designing a plan to get there, executing that plan and all the while building community. So your job starting in 72 hours and this is on the create a website created by website is to go back and watch this two minutes because the prescription is quite simple. I want you to actually write down the things that you want out of this next step. If you could envision a next step, what would it look like? What is a plan that you can through deconstructing the success of other people trying what works. Seeing what? What? What would the plan for you be to reach that attack? That goal, Right? Attack that goal. Execute against it and then all the while be showing up as you are here today. And you know what? Even if you don't end up doing that thing or your plan various, just a little bit or in any of these situations you're gonna learn a lot. Maybe you're gonna refine your I just a little bit. And you're gonna You tweak your plan a little bit and it's going to be within your reach before you know what the distance between where you are right now, where you want to be a shorter than you think. And this is true for every person. I think you're well on your way. Okay, This is just the next step. You don't have to see all the steps. You don't see the whole ladder. It's foggy. There's a jungle between you and where you want to be. All you have to see is the step straight in front of you and the one after that. And the one after that. How you doing? Comes up, down, sideways, Up down there ciders. Double thumbs up. Right. Thank you. Goal. Roundball shadow for Lisa. Awesome. Um, I'm gonna take a peek at the other feeds. Ah. Ah, cool. Elaine Faber. Maybe it's Alan. Maybe it's Elaine. I just, you know, talked about 20% of the time getting these things wrong and 80% getting right. I don't know. Since he's on YouTube life. Sorry. Says he's an introvert, has done 50 videos in 50 days. Shout out, That is, that is a serious amount of work. Someone who knows what goes into making a video. And then here's the punctuating sentence. I can already feel the changes, the challenges and the rewards. So not dissimilar to Liza, it's not gonna all be rewards. You're gonna find hard spots, but you're going to find some rewards and some areas of opportunity. It's and things toe toe work on 50 videos and 50 days. That is serious business right there. Oh, all right, one c um, come back to zoom. Oh, Nancy crowd was very fast. You're very fast. And they were gonna go to Henry Travis. Nancy crowl What's happening? Welcome with show. Thanks. Chase. Um, you kind of dressed some of this, but my narrative is worse. Um, before I even launched a photography business, Ah, five figure job landed in my lap, and and it was a legitimate job. But it turns out it was the person from my past who had known me as a creative person before I did the whole tech thing and was watching when I was doing. And, um, that was, like, unexpected success. Um, now, years later, I haven't matched that because that sort of reinforced the imposter syndrome. Right? Right. Oh, it's someone who knew me. Um, so I have a really good, uh, sort of social following. And I will post photos and adult blue. Someone will say, I want that. I have to have that. And my immediate response is to figure out how to discount my price for them. Great. My favorite thing about this question is that the prescription is pretty gangster, but it's very clear. Is there another question? I kind of interrupt you there, so I want to make sure is it is It was mostly about pricing rights of my issue here. Okay, cool. So we're social animals. We want to be accepted into the tribe even if foreign an introvert belonging connection. If a baby is not held as a baby, it will not just not turn out well. It will die, especially early on in that child's life. So that just underscores my point about how wired we are biologically for connection and acceptance. And if you take into this conversation all of the stuff we've been talking about mindset in connection and how to tune in or out two lovers or haters of you work. I think that's all part of this answer. But if we focus on the narrow aspect of two things that you said Nancy, one early success and then pricing early success is awesome. But it's also very hard. I can't tell you the number of photographers that I have men toward, Um both like one on one, like I'm all the eyeball having coffee and on the Internet who land a job. Ah, campaign for Nike And they think they've made it cause they went from shooting for their, you know, local magazine. Someone saw it, someone you know, promoted their work. Someone at the agency who worked for Nike saw, and they got a campaign for Nike they think that they have made it. And then, you know, the next, um, job does not happen for a long time. Um, this is true. You know, They call it the sophomore slump in, you know, in music and with album releases with so many things, that's very common. And so on that point, I want you to know that it's common. Early success is, you know, both a blessing and a curse. Um so importantly, trying to not compare yourself to that first success, which, you know, luck is another reason that we get hired, right? It's not all skill and ability, um, or wisdom. Ingenious. There's a lot of the world is a very uncertain place. Um, so if you can start to de connect yourself from disconnect yourself from previous successes or failures and get back to the moment like, who am I? What can I do now? Right now? Not yesterday and not tomorrow. Now, over and over and over. Live in the now, um, that's step one. And then, with respect to pricing, it's very easy because you have to be willing to a work on how you mentioned your stuff like word for word script. It's sometimes it's easier to write it down. Sometimes it's easier to practice in front of a mirror. It's required the price and from a mere so you can deliver it. Listen to Vanessa Van Edwards if you type in Chase Jarvis, Vanessa Van Edwards Pricing. I would also encourage you to watch my conversation with raw meat. RM. 80 set East's S E T H I. Venice Event Edwards and remember Meat City. And if you go back with raw meat, look at my very first interview with him. If you search me on Google and you looked are we have a conversation somewhere in the 2012 range, I think maybe 13 14 talking about pricing. My price is $500 versus this is Venice Van words versus my price is $ and the points that you get from army are how much value? My adding, If you are an artist and you're charging hourly, I understand why you might be doing that. I think that's the wrong approach because it limits the amount of money that you can make based on time. I like to have a creative fee because I created fee can be any number, and a lot of photographers get trapped into a day rate great. And we want you to work for four days. The most you can make that is $8000 versus I have a creative fee of anything you wanted to be based on how much money you know. They have made some how much money they did it for last year. Based on that, money is on the table for you. So these are very There are very tactical pricing exercises that you can both learn from listening to my conversation with Vanessa and my conversation with for meat where we go deep on these things. But ultimately you have to get really good at a very, very narrow set of things, which is talking about your work and price. I like anchoring it to value. There are some anchor pricing available. Are some anchor pricings available to in the market? What are other people doing? Like, for example, if you have ah, video on demand, subscription is very hard to make that a $200 a month subscription because Netflix is $9 these are realities. But that's why I would like you to then reframe the conversation, which is what What Rami talks a lot about is reframing your pricing. Run the structure where you can make however much you need in order to make it. And then the delivery of how much your shit costs is practice. I can look someone the eye and say, Yeah, it's good to give me 100 grand to hire me for those two days and something. They may be flabbergasted, but you know what? The difference between getting 100 grand for something and 10 grand for something is largely who you're talking to. This is why starting to understand where you want to be pricing can tell you who to talk to. Because if you're if you're happy, man Franco and you go to you know the street fair in Baltimore and you say you know my would block portrait there is my would Brock Block Landscape is 100 grand. Do people who show up at a street fair expect to pay 100 gram for a photograph? No, But if that photo is on display at Sotherby's, do people at Sotheby's expect to pay 100 grand for a photograph? Yes. Who's the difference there? What's the difference? The work is the same. The difference of the audience. So if you know where you want to be in the market and you decide who your customer is and you can shop it to them, that's going to help you vert notice how this is intentional. This is not who fucking called me and wants to buy a thing. This is who is my customer? Yeah, very different. And for those whose ears I offended, it's not It's not. I'm not known for not speaking like that. So I apologize in advance, but it's also well chosen and in, um, speaking of intentional, it's intentional, cause most you need to wake up to this. If you are just responding to who calls you, you are not driving your business. Okay? This is super critical. If you want to make a living, then you know, again selling something for $5 on the Internet. How many things you need to sell the pay rent a lot? This is simple calculus. This is simple math. If you want toe Now there's all kinds of narratives about how much how long you have to bend in the art world. How many experiences you have to have had? Who do you know that buys shit for honor Grand. Might need to make a new set of friends. Might make me to put yourself in a different place. Might need toe swing. Your client base upstream a little bit. Might need to get some referrals. Might need to. There's lots of things. You can do it as soon as you start defining some of these unknowns get really crisp really quickly. I got one more question, and then I'm gonna go get outside. All right? Who wants it? I think that I did. I pick to I think I did. I went to Henry Travis, right? I said Nancy. And then I said, Henry. So Henry, we're going to you and your fantastic bookshelf behind you. I'm gonna on mute you. Here we go. Ask you to on mute. Yeah, the soccer ball in Tim Ferriss course. Right. See it. Take. Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. And, uh, when it generate what I saw in chat, which was Can't believe this is the last session. I really appreciate your time, and we've been taking notes like crazy. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you for the kind the kind words I'm really loving. And I want to have a couple a couple Saturday mornings Teoh to get outside of my normal Saturday mornings, and I'm a pumping out. But I'm also I feel really connected to you all, Um, seen so many familiar names and and met so many new folks through the cars of this and, um, are texting relationship that I'm trying to find more ways to do this. So keep your eyes appeared to my feet because we're gonna do more, but I'm getting a ton of juice from this, too. So thank you for that. And stay tuned for more. Um, in the meantime, how can help so, uh, finished reading the book this week? And one of the things that I thought was most profound was when you said that enthusiasm is more powerful than confidence. And when I reflected on my experience in the past, I saw a strong correlation with when I was enthusiast about something that when I was successful, so that really kind of start come with me. And my question for you is primary. Straightforward is, uh, when you're being offered all these different gigs and you convinced it, Take whatever you want to work on at this point. Uh, there are a lot of good ideas Come your way. Do you use enthusiasm as a guide to what you choose to work on or other things that that you, um once, you know, absolutely, um, enthusiasm is, And by enthusiasm, I mean, how does it make me feel in that moment? That moment? And you, maybe you heard this. It's either the hell, yes or no. And if it's not a hell, yes. If it's a my need to think about this Me, it's and and and that is you know hell, yes or no. And it is not a hell. Yes, like and for me, the hell yes, it has. Check a lot of boxes. It's not just money. It's, you know, maybe it's brand location humans with or to the human beings that I'm gonna be interacting with on a regular basis. Do they have something I can learn from and to be inspired by? Of course, we can all be inspired by anybody and learn from anyone, but are they on my list of someone I was really excited to work with. Um, whatever the rubric is for you to be able to say yes, it makes it. This goes back to a core value statement like, What are you about? Why are you in this? Is it about paying rent? Then if it's about that, then I think you should check yourself. If it's about paying rent, then to me, you're not living the highest version of yourself. Now you can be in a profession that you would love more than anything and still need to pay rent. But notice they're different, right? Subtle. But riel. And that distinction is up to you to identify. So if things are in line with your core values and if they make your heart sing, if there is enthusiasm, genuine, heartfelt Ernest enthusiasm that is what is important to at least set your sights on. Now the goal of paying rent with your passion is very riel, and so I don't want to pretend that there's not a discussion. Remember that earlier in the book, the Big Three. Um, you know the people, um, money and creative control those things we're all gonna come up over and over. So I think you should think about those things before you're confronted with those decisions. Um, but, you know, if my world is ah, I do get to choose those things, then, um, the cool thing is that that world is available to you as well. It's not. It doesn't matter how far along on the spectrum you are. I just want to make sure you're being honest with yourself that you're not setting some bar that allows you to say no to things you should otherwise say yes to develop as a creator or is entrepreneur or however you define yourself. So, um, this is an area where a lot of people stumble and they stumble naturally because there's a like everything else in this course is a muscle. And very few of these things are natural. We are undoing a lifetime of programming. People who told us what was possible with this one precious life, and that's hard. I want to grant it, but it just that it is doable is exemplified in the people that you look up to respect, admire, appreciate, want to be like emulate. Inspired by all those things. They are living proof that it is possible. You also have moments in your life that when you look back, you felt connected. You felt in a flow state. You were doing things that you wanted with people that you like. Even if it was just for a day, a week, a month season, a project it exists. Look at what it will look like. What were the takeaways that you have from that? How can you replicate that and set some core values around that as a North star? Because as soon as you have a North Star, as soon as you have a why making all these other decisions is so much easier. All right. I am very sad that I have to say goodbye to you all. I'm very sad that this is the last ah, week, the last lesson session, if you will. In the creative calling book club. Um, I I do want to ask for your ongoing support sharing you all sharing the answers. The you know, pictures of you reading the book reviews on Amazon. It really does. None of this happens without a community, and it has been a huge part of my individual success of successive creativelive. And the cool thing is, is, this is what will create success for you all as well. If you're out there doing the work we are. Now that we've read the book, we are absolutely crystal clear that the role that community plays and we're absolutely clear that showing up for others being the fan you wish you had, um is such an important part of the process. I want to thank you all for showing up. I get tons of juice from this. And, um, there are so many comments in the chat that Ah, there's a lot of if you haven't reviewed that yet. You're in the zoom call. You should, um the hashtag creative calling is always available to you. I look at it every single day. If you want to put your work there, I'm on instagram or whatever. I share a lot of the stories in the work that I see in the world in my stories. Um, I want to finish with a Is he living checking my thing here? Um, I want to finish with a closing read. Not everything will be a fit for you. That's okay. Just as I assembled my own approach to life by deconstructing the lives of the creators, the skate punks, world class performers and philosophers I've studied. I encourage you to take what works to integrate it into your own life and to ditch the rest. If you're simply willing to accept that you are a creator responsible for designing and living your own dream, I will consider my job here. Done. As your creative practice deepens and expands, you'll experience a greater sense of direction over your own life. You will prove to yourself over and over that you have the power to turn your ideas into reality. This sense of agency and autonomy will bring you happiness and satisfaction like nothing else. Please pursue your own creative calling. All right. That was from page to 90. I I am so grateful for this community. I hope you've got a lot of value. Leave a review on the creative calling on the on the ah on the book. If you would on the website just participate in the community and show up. I see your names out there and know that I am noticing all of you I'm seeing you. I am looking at your work, and Creativelive is here to support you. Whatever we can. I hope you have. Amazing. They week weekend and I truly am working on trying to do more of this in a sustainable way. So keep your eyes peeled. I'll reach out to you in any of the number ways that I can And shadow for everybody who volunteered their own personal story across this class is really helpful. Because if you have a question, so do thousands of other people. So raise the roof, shouted out Not time to do a little dance As we leave and I fade into the rest of my Saturday I hope you'll have amazing weekend. Thank you.