14: Embracing Creativity, Courage, and Service with Brian Perry

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I was also measuring myselfand feeling like I was failing the
art, failing the creativity,because I hadn't broken through financially.
And I was measuring my wholelife by that same metric because
I didn't have the Grammys onthe shelf and, you know, didn't have
the seven fingers or more in the.
In the bank account.
I wasn't in that place, youknow, that wasn't the right thing
to be measuring by.

(00:21):
I was ignoring the person thatthe art had allowed me to become.
And I was feeling broken whenI wasn't broken.
The world was broken for sure,but I.
I wasn't.
And in fact, it's the thingnow that, like, people would come
to me, that clients come to mespecifically because they're like,
I.
I want you to tell me how youshow up in the world so vulnerably

(00:42):
and authentically.
Welcome to the standoutcreatives, where making money and
creating meaningful work gohand in hand.
You're already passionateabout what you create.
Now let's turn that passioninto a standout business.
Marketing your work doesn'thave to be overwhelming.
It can actually amplify your creativity.
I'm your guide, Kevin Chung,and this podcast is your roadmap

(01:04):
to creative business success.
I'll show you how to turn yourunique talents into a business that
truly represents who you are.
Let's get started.
What if building a meaningfulcreative business wasn't just about
perfecting your craft, butabout embracing honesty, sharing
your work with courage, andfinding harmony between artistry
and entrepreneurship?

(01:26):
Brian Perry's journey took himfrom struggling with depression to
becoming a communicationcoach, singer, and songwriter, using
his music to help others findtheir true voices.
In this episode, we explorehow Brian's creative path has shaped
his philosophy on selfexpression, resilience, and the power
of serving others through your art.
If you're ready to step intoyour unique voice and elevate your

(01:48):
creative business, this one'sfor you.
Now, onto the episode.
Welcome to another episode ofthe Standout Creatives to have on
Brian Perry.
Brian lives at theintersection of art, authenticity,
and purpose.
He's a singer, songwriter,life coach, copywriter, and speaker.
Brian's story is anything but ordinary.

(02:09):
He earned his degree 12 years late.
He has a healthy dose ofneurodiversity, is on a mission to
help people uncover their truth.
Most importantly, he wants tohelp you live your own story more
deeply.
Brian, can you tell us alittle bit more about your journey
and how you got into some ofthe work you're doing right now?

(02:33):
Sure.
Hey, Kevin, thanks for having Me.
Glad to be here with you andglad to be having this conversation.
I love talking about creativity.
I will tweak just a little bitwhat you described just then because
some of those things things.
One of the things I've learnedas a creative, living a creative
life, being a creativeentrepreneur is that I'm constantly
evolving, particularly in my titles.

(02:54):
Yeah, that was the latest onyour about.
That's and, and right now howI present myself as I was on my about
page.
Good to know.
I need to go in there and I'mabout to do a redo of the website
anyway.
But what I'm focusing my timeon primarily these days is I serve
as an authentic communicationcoach, singer, songwriter and speaker.
And in the work as anauthentic communication coach, sometimes

(03:17):
that does involve copywriting still.
But, but it's more abouthelping people find their own authentic
voice so they can as.
As you, as you correctly saidthere and as apparently I correctly
said on my about page is verymuch about helping people live more
of their life more, more oftheir true once in any lifetime story.

(03:39):
So with the question my what I do.
What was the question again?
It was a very good start.
I feel like we're off to great start.
Just how you got into the workthat you're doing.
So you evolved obviously overmany years into becoming the authenticity
coach that you are now.
Yeah, it's, it's I.

(04:00):
So how I got into itinitially, way back in the day, I
was going to school at LoyalUniversity in New Orleans and had
had a variety of majors, but Ihad settled into majoring in English
and then I was in a verysevere depression and, and needed

(04:22):
to take time off and ended updropping out ultimately.
Um, but around that same timeI had just picked up a guitar and
started writing songs andfound after a lifetime of feeling

(04:44):
other feeling kind of outsideand relatively without home, I just,
I didn't feel at home anywhere.
And I always, I always was toomuch and never enough in, in the
spaces that I was in.
And when I picked up a guitarand started to write songs and, and

(05:08):
started to perform, I mean Iremember the very first night I performed
at an open mic that mygirlfriend at the time asked me afterwards.
She said so how was it?
And I said it was like going home.
I, I, I understood myself inthat space because in that space
there was this sense offeeling too much, being too emotional,

(05:35):
being too all the things inthe regular world, the things that
were t o o fill in the blankin the space of performance, in the
space of the song were exactlywhat you came for.
And I was sort of reborn inthat moment and kind of went, oh,
okay, my life starts now.

(05:55):
And to be clear, I was notgood at all.
But that's.
But that's what it meant for me.
It's what it meant to me, youknow, and, yeah, in.
In the impact that it couldhave felt almost immediately like

(06:21):
something sacred to me.
I've met a lot of people overthe years and certainly heard a lot
of people over the years thathave expressed getting into music
at an early age, at least inmy generation, at an early age, to.
To meet women or pick up, youknow, whoever.

(06:42):
Whatever sex they were into,and then that was the reason they
got into music.
I never understood that.
I never understood gettinginto it for fame or getting into
it for.
For that.
For me.
And people are free to getinto it for whatever, what they want
to.
But for me, the moment peoplecame to a show and cried during a

(07:05):
song or, you know, we'reclearly expressing a lot of excitement
and joy and, you know, am I.
I'm a folk singer, so theyweren't dancing.
That was not a thing.
But it immediately for mebecame, oh, this is a really sacred
space between us.
You're letting me in where youdon't let other people in.

(07:27):
And somehow with these.
If you.
If I can get five minutes ofyour time, you're going to let me
go places that you don't gowith some of the people you're closest
to in your life.
So that became the creativeact, became as much.
Yes, it was about creating the song.

(07:47):
It was about the thrill ofperforming that song.
But the connection with theaudience was.
Had this whole other creativeaspect, which was how do I create
a container for us to be intogether to have this conversation
and perhaps to offer somerelief, some healing, some laughter,

(08:10):
catharsis, any variety ofthings, you know.
Yeah, I feel like I can go onfor about an hour or so on.
On this topic alone.
So I, I.
That fast forward, and I knewpretty quickly that that's what I
needed to do.
As a matter of fact, there was a.
Is a story that's.

(08:31):
Are you familiar with anartist named Melissa Etheridge?
I know the name.
I don't know her story too much.
She's, I believe, a Rock andRoll hall of fame artist at this
point, but she's a.
She was a.
Well, she is one of the mostsuccessful, particularly female rock
and roll performers ever.
She was an artist that I wasvery into at a time in my life.

(08:55):
And long story short, on Oneof her tours before she had become
really huge.
Friends of mine and I in NewOrleans had gone to see her in New
Orleans.
And then we had learned thatshe was playing in Houston the next
night.
And we decided to.

(09:18):
That that would be a greatidea to go hop in the car and drive
to Houston to go see her there.
This was during final exams incollege, so this was an unwise decision
on its face.
But.
But we piled in the car and wedrove to Houston and we, you know,
scalped some tickets.
We were able to buy sometickets there at the show and beg

(09:41):
still and bar our way into theshow, saw the show, we're on our
way home in the car.
And one of my dear friends,he's still a very dear friend of
mine.
And I should note by thispoint it had become clear that I
was sick.
I don't know what it was, butI had some kind of a virus or something
which wasn't great for anybodyin the car.

(10:04):
So I was kind of in and out of consciousness.
And the reason I'm tellingthis story was that my friend Sonia,
she says we were talking likeyou do late at night about big things,
big dreams when we were young.
And she was like, what do youwant to do?

(10:25):
I said, well, you know, I'mstudying to be an English teacher.
I'm going to be like Mr.
Keating from dead PoetSociety, which is an old movie.
And.
And she said, right, right.
But I mean, what do you reallywant to do?
Like if you could do anything.
And I had never thought.
Thought out loud, let alonespoken out loud, what I said next.
And I just.
I gestured back to Houston.

(10:45):
I said that 100% that.
And she said, me too.
Let's do it.
And I said, okay, let's do it.
She didn't own a guitar, hadnever written a song, didn't know
how to sing.

(11:06):
I owned a guitar, I didn'tknow how to play, had never written
a song, didn't know how to sing.
She went out and bought a guitar.
We behemoth duo, we went offand started performing.
And in lo and behold, longstory, I guess long at this point
we ended up that we both endedup being professional musicians in

(11:28):
different ways.
We ended up not stayingtogether as a duo, but went off and
so I started touring full timeand started while I was touring was
at one point, I feel like I'mgoing on for a really long time.

(11:49):
I want to give you anopportunity to speak if I don't want
to be just be boring you that my.
The long this life of Brian here.
Oh no, I'm investing in whathappened to you now.
Well, so I, after I startedtouring for a hot minute and I was.
And I got, I got married andwas on the.

(12:10):
Was touring and my, my wifeand I were living in North Carolina
at that point and I got reallyburned out on the industry pretty
quick and what they expectedof you and, and all that sort of
thing.
And I needed to take a break.
And so I went off andfulfilled a dream that kind of had

(12:32):
been deferred when I droppedout of college because I had to go
right straight to, you know,working to eat and in.
In.
I really wanted.
I'd longed to work at a summer camp.
I was, I'm an Eagle Scout and in.
And have done a lot ofbackpacking and that kind of thing

(12:53):
over the years and a lot ofoutdoors high adventure stuff.
At that point in my life, Iwent to the summer camp and the reason
I mentioned that is at the endof the summer is this large organization
called the American Youth Foundation.
And at the end of the summerafter the camps and they have a few
weeks where they did at thattime international leadership conferences,

(13:14):
which involved high school andcollege students from around the
globe that would gather andlearn about servant leadership and
what does that look like?
It was a four year program and such.
And during the course of thoseconferences they would have speakers
come in every night to sharesomething and offer some insight

(13:34):
and think in the vein of asort of a TED Talk sort of thing.
But well before TED Talk waseven a thing.
And one night there was a guywho was supposed to come in from
town to be a musical guest andhe canceled on them.
And at this point I had cometo camp and basically tucked my guitar

(13:55):
under my bed.
I was like, I'm taking a break.
And the camp staff wasscrambling going, what are we gonna
do?
What are we gonna do?
And I'm like, yo, hey, righthere, right here.
I can sing.
And like, well, are you gonnabe able to talk to them and everything?
I'm like, I can totally talkto them.
You want me talk to them?
I can talk to them.
So the next thing I knew, I'mplaying in front of.

(14:15):
There's like 500 students.
We didn't have a sound system outside.
And I would sing a song andthen I would take questions and I
would take the answer to thequestion and I would kind of craft
it to bring in some.
What we might characterize asa morality tale would bring them
to some sort of this is thiscan Be about following your dreams

(14:39):
or about leadership or about,you know, the result of which was
we came back from camp, wentback to New Orleans, we moved back
to New Orleans.
And I was preparing to go ontour again.
And I got an email.
Email was a very new thing atthe time.
Oh, he's still there.

(14:59):
Yeah.
Saying.
Trying to reconnect.
All of a sudden in the.
The.
The email said, was from somestudent in Cincinnati saying, you
know, look, I know you're aterribly busy famous musician.
In which I was neither busynor famous.
And she said, I wonder if youcould come and do your program at

(15:22):
my school.
And I remember saying to mywife, hey, guess what?
She's like, what?
I say, I have a program.
And I had long had this visionof serving through speaking.
I knew I could speak.
I had spoken in a variety ofsettings, including serving on retreats

(15:43):
and such during college beforedropping out.
And I had, when I was younger,intended to be a priest.
That was my.
One of the things that Ithought I was going to do, a Catholic
priest.
And I had this vision in myhead that, hey, you know what?
If I could reach a certainlevel professionally as a musician,

(16:06):
I could come into a town,play, show, place the theater at
night, but during the day, goand speak at local college or high
school or what have you, andbe of service in that way and somehow
help other people like me whofelt other and felt lost and felt
unseen.

(16:26):
And suddenly that opportunityjust kind of fell in my lap.
And so I started then foldingin, speaking into what I was doing
on tour and kind of built onthat same model of take questions,
offer thoughts.
And that morphed intodeveloping talks that integrated

(16:48):
music and stories in comedyand interaction, you know, conversation
with the audience and builtaround a theme, a variety of different
themes.
And yeah, so that's what I didfor many years and.
And then ultimately went backto school because being out on the

(17:12):
road, I learned things that Iwanted to know more about.
Like when I went back toschool, I said to the.
The dean, when I went back in,I said, hey, I'd really.
I think I want.
I would like to come back.
I was working at OvernightBellman at the Ritz Carlton at that
point, trying to be on theroad less because it become a burden
on my marriage.
And I decided at.

(17:35):
That I needed to go back toschool because one of the things
that kept coming up in mytravels was that I would have these
people, like, I was grindingit out.
Like, this was an era whereThere was no YouTube, there was no
American Idol.
There was no, you're not goingto hit it unless you're out there
playing gigs.
You can't just sit home andget your music out there.

(17:58):
It's not how it worked.
So I was.
I was out there grinding itout and sometimes playing for larger
crowds, more often than not,just hoping to be outnumbered and
sleeping in my van, all thiskind of stuff.
But I would go to.
I'd do a show and I'd havepeople come up to me after the show
that were wildly successfulpeople who were expressing how much.

(18:22):
How unsatisfied they were andhow envious they were of what I was
doing.
And so when I decided to goback to school, it was because I
said I wanted to know moreabout how that works.
And I went and studiedsomething called human and organizational
development, which is thestudy of how.
How do individuals connect andcreate the highest vision for their
life?

(18:43):
How do organizations do thatfor the organization?
And how can the two supporteach other on that journey, knowing
full well they're not going tobe aligned forever?
In other words, that you'renot going to stay at that job forever?
So how can the two create aspace where the employee's showing
up fully to the company'svision and the company showing up
fully to the employee's vision?

(19:03):
What does that look like?
What's the psychology of that?
What's the.
And.
And I never.
I went back to get that degreebecause I just wanted that knowledge.
I wanted to understand it.
I didn't understand why peoplewere out there just agreeing to live
lives that they hated.
It didn't make sense to me.
Um, and when I finished thatdegree, I thought I would go.

(19:26):
I thought I might get a.
A, a study, give an MSW orlpc, and basically become credentialed
to do therapy again.
More about trying tounderstand how do humans tick?
But I didn't want to incurthat cost, so I went off and went
to the relatively cheaper, butstill at the time, well, actually

(19:48):
even more so now.
I went to a relativelyprestigious coaching program to study
less.
Therapy tends to deal with the.
The.
The whys of things.
Wh y of things in the past.
And.
And coaching tends to dealwith the how and the what's next

(20:09):
of things.
And I was more interested inthat than I was trying to help people
uncover their wounds.
Not that their wounds don'tinfluence the how and what's next.
They certainly come up, but Iwas more interested in.
In that.
So, yeah, so I did all thosethings and then kind of had to just

(20:30):
come to a thing with my.
Well, as it turns out now, exwife that I.
I needed to be on the road.
That's where I needed to be.
And so that's.
That's.
So.
Yeah, so that's what turned meinto someone who was doing and continues
to do music speaking andcoaching in a very large nut.

(20:55):
That's.
That's the broad strokes of it.
Having not tried to summarizethat in a long time, I'm sure I left
out a lot that I will bethinking about later tonight when
I'm trying to go to sleep.
But I know that's.
That's just a great overview.
I think you recognize a lot ofinflection points in your life.

(21:16):
Right.
So you realize, yeah, here arethe moments in my life where I made
a decision, and that decisionultimately led me to where you are
now.
So I think it's always good torecognize those points.
And when you.
When you do, it's easier tofigure out where you want to go from
there, as opposed to if youwere just living off the seat of

(21:37):
your pants, which you kind of were.
But also some of it was in.
Most of it was intentionalbecause of something that happened
to you at that moment.
Right?
Yeah.
Well, let me ask you aquestion, because I think.
Because don't you find likethe seat of the pants versus kind
of having that inflectionpoint moment for people that are
feeling called to live acreative life, what we're terming

(21:58):
a creative life.
Right.
Sometimes there's not a visionso much as just that sense of internal
pull that there's more.
I mean, is that yourexperience or what's your experience
of that?
I feel like there is thatthing where what I'm doing now isn't

(22:24):
necessarily what I want to be doing.
And I know there's more that Icould be doing if I had the ability
to do more.
Right, Right.
So it's just making the timeand concerted effort to give that
thing space.
So my current thing is like creativity.
It's been this for my whole life.

(22:44):
But allowing other people tosee paths forward, to use their creativity
in a way that allows them tocreate more one and actually be able
to make money and a living offof it is the other.
Because you can do one or theother, but I think doing both is

(23:04):
the best way to be able tomake use of your creative life.
Because if you don't makemoney, you can be resentful that
your creativity is only usedto be an expression, which is fine,
but you still got to do otherstuff in life.
Creativity isn't the onlything for most people.
It's like a thing and that'svery important thing.

(23:26):
But when you are able to.
To make some money off of it,you can sustain that practice by
continuing to put moreresources towards it.
I think I certainly.
What do you think what callsyou though to.
So it sounds like what I'mhearing you say is that your sort
of.
Your current call is to fosterothers creative paths.

(23:51):
Yeah.
Is that what I understood youto say?
Yeah.
Because I think I can use mycreative thinking in order to help
other people.
I don't necessarily have aspecific creative act like music
or like.
Right.
Art particularly.
But I think being able to showpeople ways to think.

(24:11):
I think my thing is probablythinking creatively is where I want
to help people to understand.
Here's ways that you can dothings that aren't necessarily the
right quote unquote right path.
Right.
So thinking creatively andWell, I guess to sort of cliche but

(24:32):
to think.
Thinking outside the box,looking at people, helping people
to see things from different angles.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that's where I'm bestsuited to help creative people.
I'm not the best like designeror I don't really make music or anything
but I think I can show peoplejust because I'm so interested in
so many things.

(24:52):
Yeah.
Ways to use different ideas inorder to kind of build off of your
creativity in a way that youmight not think of.
What happens for you when yousee somebody that you've done that
for?
I usually, it's like, wow, that's.
That's interesting becausewhen I say it they're like, I never

(25:14):
thought of it like that.
But for me it's like, oh, thatwas like just top of mind kind of
thinking.
So it's.
It's really interesting to.
To know that obviously some ofthe stuff that I give out is useful
to people.
I think is always good to know.
Right.
I know you see that a lot inyour work.

(25:35):
Well, I do.
Well in my work.
It's more.
I would say that it's.
There's an element of whatyou're talking about in terms of
giving people things for sure.
Certainly in the speakingwhere a lot of it is at you.
Of course, you know, I try tomake it as collaborative, as much
of a.

(25:55):
Exactly.
A back and forth conversationas possible.
But, but like.
Particularly like in thecoaching realm, it's the gift you're
giving is reflecting back whatthey're not hearing themselves say.
Right.
Is more often or Very much inline with what you do.

(26:19):
It's asking a new question.
Yeah, that's mostly what.
That's how I would put it inmy terms too.
Yeah.
It's more like, have you everthought of.
Whatever.
I'm not saying go do this.
It's.
Yeah.
Here's an option that isavailable to you that you might not
have thought of.
Feel free to use it if youwant to.

(26:40):
But.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a.
There's a spiritual textcalled A Course in Miracles and one
of the things that it says,I'm not, I think it's great book,
but I'm not telling somebodythey need to go follow this.
But what, but there's what I love.
One of the things I love aboutA Course in Miracles is the way it
defines a miracle.

(27:02):
And it defines a miracle as ashift in perspective.
H.
I was blind, but now I see.
Right.
It's fundamentally sort of ametaphorical shift in perspective
and, or, or more of a parableof a shift in perspective.
And I think that that'sfundamentally those kind of.

(27:23):
Somebody hits you with a newquestion or a new perspective on
a situation that you've beenhammering away at forever.
It's miraculous when suddenlythere's a new, A new way of looking
at it.
And I love that what you're,what you're doing in the world because
I think there's a book byElizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic.

(27:48):
I think you and I, you and Imay have talked about it.
Yeah.
I adore the book.
I, I should say that I'm likeyou mentioned in your intro, part
of the healthy dashes ofneurodiversity that I, that I'm,
that I get to have are.
I'm.
I'm ADHD and I'm dyslexic and.

(28:08):
And yet I, I read that bookthree times cover to cover, and it
just really resonated with me.
And one of the things thatreally moved me in that book was
there's a part in which shetalks about our tendency and it's
particularly true here in theUS culture.
I don't know how it is inother cultures, but in our sort of

(28:34):
ambition obsessed culturehere, you can't make a pie well without
somebody telling you youshould turn into a business.
And I'm not saying that todiminish pie businesses.
It sounded like I was sayingthat's such a silly thing.
No, I love a good pie.
But, but you know, you go to afriend's house and you have a slice

(28:55):
of pie with dinner that they,and they're like, my God, this is
the best pie I've ever had.
And they're like, oh, thank you.
It's, you know, it's somethingI just, like, do.
And you're immediately like,oh, you should totally turn that
into a business and you shouldbe on Shark Tank and you should be
all these.
And she's like, stop doing that.
Stop forcing your creativityto be measured by the financial gain

(29:19):
that it provides.
Not that you shouldn't pursuefostering or cultivating a way for
your creativity for your.
The joys that you get fromthat to turn into a way to support
your life.
But the.

(29:42):
I'm badly explaining this, but the.
But the way that she flips iton its head.
For me, what landed for me inthat passage of the book was she
was basically saying, your jobis to support your creativity, not
the other way around.
And supporting your creativitycan mean, like, for her, she had

(30:04):
published two or three books,like with a publishing house, not
like I did self publishing andwas still working day jobs.
And it wasn't until Eat, Pray,Love hit and was doing really, really
well that she finally starteddoing writing full time.
Until then, she saw her job ascreating enough abundance in her

(30:27):
world that she could show upto the art and be fully available.
And I found when I read thatpassage, I remember at the time I
was at a cabin in NorthGeorgia that some extended family
owned for a time and.
But they lived out of state,so they needed people to go up to,

(30:47):
to look after it.
So I suffered through that andwent up there regularly and.
And it was glorious because atthe time I was barely making ends
meet and working in retail andit was just such a great escape that
I wouldn't have been able toafford myself, right?
And so I was sitting out therereading this book on the porch there,

(31:10):
and it was a covered porch, itwas raining.
And I got to that passage andI started crying and I had my guitar.
Sitting there with me is Taylor.
Sitting here now is also oftenwith me.
And I turned to Taylor and Ijust said, I am so sorry.

(31:32):
All these years, I have beenbegging you to keep talking to me.
I have been telling you howthere's nothing that brings me greater
joy, a greater sense offulfillment than the space when you
and I are creating a new songand then I get to share it.
But I've been begging you allthese years, just keep talking to

(31:53):
me.
It's such a privilege to keepwriting with you.
But over that same period oftime when you have been consistently
honoring that request andgiving me the opportunity to be a
songwriter, which is thisastonishing privilege.
As soon as you gave me a newsong, I've been like, now pay me.

(32:17):
And that's bullshit.
I'm wrong for that.
That's not on you, that's on me.
And so from here on out, I'm gonna.
I'm gonna take care of us.
I'm not gonna look for youcreativity to.

(32:38):
I'm not going to demand thateverything you offer me every time
I enter that creative spacethat it needs to generate a hit,
it needs to create the big moment.
I just want to create.
And at that point, it startedto shift.

(33:01):
Everything started to shift.
And I started to approach thebusiness of creativity in a different
way.
I'm doing this motion right now.
This is circular motionbecause for years, I put it this
way for years.
So the.
The epicenter of thesongwriting world with the.
There's arguably two or three,but Nashville is clearly the top

(33:24):
of the list.
And then to a lesser extent,LA and New York for songwriting.
But.
But I used to drive byNashville in particular when I was
on tour, and I'd roll down thewindow and flick the city off as
I was driving by because I hadsuch disdain for the business and

(33:46):
what I saw it do to music.
And I realized in that momentwith big Magic, that I was like,
no, man.
The business supports themusic supports the business supports
the music if I let it.
And I don't have to be a partof that business machine, but I can
begin to look for ways that Ican be taking the things that being

(34:10):
a songwriter has made me goodat and look for being a speaker and
being all these.
And look for ways to turn theminto things that the world actually
needs.
Things that people that aren'tstepping onto a stage at 10pm on
a Tuesday, but that areactually working 40 to 60 hours a

(34:31):
week and have a 401k.
The people that I'm trying tosell records to, the people that
I'm trying to connect with,the people that I'm trying to serve,
what do they actually need?
And how can I actually servethem in the spaces they're in?
And it just changed myrelationship with the creativity

(34:51):
such that I.
It's a much.
It's a much more easefulrelationship with that.
I'm not looking.
I don't.
I'm not pushing the art in theway I used to.

(35:13):
I used to force it in a waythat wasn't good for me for the art
or for the audience.
And I have friends that inthat time.
Since then, have talked abouthow there were times you showed up
with kind of a desperateenergy on stage.
I can tell.
Yeah.
And now you.
You're just there, just present.

(35:36):
And the result is that the.
The art is better, the reachis better, and it brought me and
it's in.
And.
Yeah, so that's.
Yeah, that's a longer.
I'm about to move in adifferent direction.
But.
But.
Yeah, so that's been my.

(35:57):
It's been an interestingrelationship between.
For me, step one was steppingfree of forcing the art.
The step one to.
To making a living as anartist was stopping trying to make
a living as an artist, tryingto make.
To make them.
To make the value of theexperience of creating contingent

(36:22):
upon whether I'm making aliving at it.
Now they're independent ofeach other.
There's making a living andthere's creating.
And the value of creating isits own unreasonable reward.

(36:43):
And then the journey ofsupporting my life.
Yes.
And subsequently supporting myability to meaningfully engage my
art can be its own journey.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think obviouslythere's multiple perspectives on

(37:05):
business and art coexisting.
So you can create art meantjust to sell, which was what you
were almost doing previous toreading that passage.
Yeah.
And then there's people whocreate art in hopes of selling it,
but it's not necessarily themain goal, which I think is where

(37:27):
you are now.
It's the art is created forart's sake.
And if it happens to resonatein a way that can support you as
an artist, that's what it does.
Right.
Yeah, but still with the.
I mean, it is paramount in my mind.
I wear a lot of hats now andfiguratively and literally, I suppose.

(37:49):
And.
And I still, I.
It's not that I would turndown if Oprah called.
I'm answering.
If I suddenly had a hit, thatwould be great.
You know, I'm.
I again, I make folk musicmore in the realm of.
I'm not saying I'm as good as.
By a long stretch, but more inthe realm of sort of the melancholic

(38:11):
Leonard Cohen's of the Worldthen, you know, I know Taylor Swift.
That's not what I do.
So the point is that I can bewhere I am, a bald man in his 50s
and still have a path to beselling art, selling my music, you
know, have an audience.
But.

(38:31):
But I guess what shifted, Letme put it this way.
And this is something thatused to come up a lot with my purpose
driven copywriting clients.
And I I would just drill this in.
Stop trying to sell, focus on serving.
If you, if you seek to serve,not to sell, the selling starts to

(38:53):
take care of itself becauseyou're not.
It's like the equivalent ofwhen you go to a website and all
the is happening on thewebsite is the people are talking
about themselves, thecompany's talking about themselves.
When you go to a website, thewebsite should be talking about the
ideal person they want toserve, should be helping them feel

(39:16):
seen.
Like, what do I do?
What do I do in the space of performance?
My goal in the space ofperformance is not to go as a songwriter.
Look at these cool songs thatI'm very proud of making.
My goal is to help you feelseen in the space of that song.
My goal is to help serve thatthing that you're trying to heal,

(39:39):
that thing that you're tryingto move through, that thing that
you're trying to dream up.
My goal is to serve you inthat moment.
It's not about me.
And that's what shifted wasshifting from selling to serving
and continues to shift becauseduring the pandemic I shifted into

(40:03):
adding, folding andcopywriting to what I do at that
time because some damnalgorithm on Instagram kept spitting
me ads and I clicked on the ad finally.
And, and for this program thatturned out to be a really great program,
that I went through thiscopywriting program and learned how
to take what at that point waspretty reasonably well honed ability

(40:27):
to write and turn it intowriting that's specifically designed
to sell, you know, and Ithought I have some resistance to
that.
But also it'd probably bereally good if I could write in a
way that would be more attractional.

(40:47):
Right?
There's, there's more than onevalue to that.
And what I found and myintention when I did that was specifically
at that point I had put out a book.
Well, my second book I put upmy most recent book called the Myth
of Certainty and other great news.
And I was making, writing more songs.

(41:08):
I just put out a new recordand at that point and I had really
wanted to be back on the roadto a certain extent, not, not to
the way I used to be.
I didn't want to be doing.
I didn't want to be grinding,but I wanted to be out there performing,
connecting and serving in that way.

(41:29):
But frankly just wasn't takingoff in the way that I needed it to,
to support me at that point.
And I thought, well, hey, if Icould do copywriting, I get to write,
I get to do that.
From anywhere.
And.
And people pay people to do that.
It serves a very specific need.

(41:50):
And that would support.
Allow me to support my art andset my own schedule.
Yeah.
So that's by means.
I sort of started kind oftrying to.
There was another way.
How can I take what I know Ilove to do?
So I'm in an adjacent thing.
I'm still prioritizing.
This is entirely aboutsupporting a life that allows me

(42:13):
to do the music, to do thespeaking, to serve in those ways,
but also allows me to be usingthose same skills.
I keep knocking my microphoneover here.
I keep meaning to get one ofthose arms, you know, because I keep
knocking this thing overbecause I gesture so much.
Oh.
But.
But where I'm headed is this.

(42:35):
There's a reason I'm sayingall that, and that is that very,
very quickly into doingcopywriting, there's a.
Every time I'd start to dosomething that was sort of a.
For lack of a better way ofputting it, a muggle activity, you
know, an actual identified jobin the world that people, you know,

(42:57):
get 401ks and such for doing it.
Always felt I.
I'd wanted to run because Idon't do art because I think it's
cool.
Although I do think it's cool.
I think it's amazing to get to do.
I.
I do the things that I dobecause I can't not do them.
They're just.
It's what I do when no one's watching.

(43:21):
And what I found when Istarted doing copywriting is once
again I was like, okay, Iguess I'm departing from the vision
in some meaningful way, butthis could support me in doing the
vision.
So you can see.
I feel like I'm.
I was in conflict.
Even as powerful as thatinsight that I have reading Big Magic
was, I was still sort oftrying to figure out how to inhabit

(43:42):
it.
You know, what is.
What do I do with that?
I'd gotten good at making sureI wasn't putting the pressure on
Taylor, but I felt resentfulof the universe for kind of giving
me this passion, giving me theability to have impact, but not giving
me a path to be reallythriving at that point.

(44:04):
And.
And very early on starting todo the copywriting.
I got on with a dear friend ofmine up in Washington D.C.
who has been sort of in that field.
Ish.
In the marketing field around,particularly for non profits.
She serves up there for decades.
She's been very successful andowns her own company and everything.

(44:26):
And I reached out to her tokind Of I said, I kind of need you
to show up to me as a bit of amentor, not just my friend in this
moment.
What do I need to know as I'mkind of adding this into what I do?
And the first thing she saidwas, I need you.
You're going to have theinstinct to hide your weird, winding,

(44:48):
funky path as an itinerantfolk singer, speaker, poet, writer,
dude.
Don't do that.
That's your greatest asset.
That's what people are goingto be clamoring to work with you
because it gives you acompletely different perspective
than anybody else they dealwith on any given day.

(45:11):
And I have found that to bewildly true in a way that I had no
idea was the case.
Things that.
Because I was.
I was.
What the problem was, I wasn'tjust putting pressure on creativity
in the art.
I was also measuring myselfand feeling like I was failing the

(45:32):
art, failing the creativity,because I hadn't broken through financially.
And I was measuring my wholelife by that same metric because
I didn't have the Grammys onthe shelf and, you know, didn't have
the seven fingers or more in the.
In the bank account.
I wasn't in that place, youknow, and I.

(45:54):
But that wasn't the rightthing to be measuring by.
I was.
I was ignoring the person thatthe art had allowed me to become.
And I was feeling broken whenI wasn't broken.
The world was broken for sure,but I.

(46:16):
I wasn't.
And in fact, it's the thingnow that, like, people would come
to me.
I've had clients come to mespecifically because they're like,
I want you to tell me how youshow up in the world with so vulnerably
and authentically.
And.
And I legitimately was like,can I swear on this?

(46:36):
I don't know if I can swear on this.
Yeah, I got a bit of a mouth, so.
But legitimate was like, Idon't know what the you're talking
about.
What is.
What do you mean?
Like, how do you see this thing?
How do you say.
I was like, why would I not?
And I realized what hadhappened was that the art had given
me a different.
Going out there and having tokind of.

(46:57):
I'm digressing wildly, buthaving to night after night be on
a different stage in adifferent town every time.
You have to prove, you have toearn that audience, you have to serve
that audience.
You have to get on stage,light yourself on fire, give them
everything you got, and openwide or it's just not going to land.

(47:20):
And you Gotta be able to thenpack up the car, drive to the next
town and do it again the next night.
Whether the people in thataudience were like woohoo.
Or if the people in thataudience were like Free Bird, you
know, or get off the stage andthey were, you know, and you had
to be able to weather both ofthem and essentially you had to be
able to get to a place of going.
The value of what I'm sharing isn't.

(47:43):
Is an effort to show up fullyto you and serve you and offer you
something.
Yes.
But it's not contingent uponwhat you do with that.
And something about thatchanged how I felt freed to continues
to change the way I feel aboutthe restrictions or parameters of

(48:09):
which, with which within whichI'm allowed to operate.
Shareholders be in the world.
All of which is to say what Ilearned is that at the very moment
that I was endeavoring to sayto creativity, I got us.
I'm going to take care of thepragmatics of this whole journey

(48:30):
while continuing to try tosort of till the fields and prepare
the way for one of these seedsto pop eventually so that we are
really thriving and I'm justfull time devoting myself to it in
a way that doesn't require meto travel 11 months of the year.
You know, at that very sametime that I was making that commitment,

(48:54):
what happened was thecreativity was able to represent
itself in my life, saying lookat all the ways that I've already
basically given you a PhD inthings that are unique, skills that

(49:17):
can help you with thepragmatics and subsequently support
me creativity.
And that's how I got to what Ido now.
I mean as an authenticcommunication coach.
It's, it's almost entirelybecause of what I do as a singer,
songwriter and a speaker, much less.

(49:38):
So yes, the things I learnedin coach training, but it's more.
But coach.
Coach training is really aboutteaching you how to be a better listener
when you're not on a podcast, apparently.
But how to be a betterlistener and how to ask the right,
deeper questions, moremeaningful questions.

(50:03):
But, but being.
But what I learned as a singersongwriter, as performers, how to
listen in a different way, howto know when an audience is with
you or not, when a song isright or not.
How to know when you'vestumbled upon the.
The idea that's longing tocome into the world is the song or
when you're just being clever.

(50:23):
And so when I'm helping peoplekind of birth a book or figure out
new copy for a website orfigure out a new way of a talk they've
been longing to give.
Because what happens with theauthentic communication coaching
piece is that people come tome because, you know, as a grown
up, we tend to get to a placewhere we can get, we can get really

(50:46):
good at checking the boxesthat the responsibility boxes and
the people that I end upworking with, they tend to have gotten
really, really good at that.
And somewhere along the way,the process of getting really good
at that made them really goodat being a different person in every
room they enter and they.
So now they've reached a stagein life where they're like, I really

(51:09):
want to write that book, dothat talk, make that change in career,
have that conversation evenwith their own mirror, or give a
toast at a friend's wedding ina way that feels true, you know,
and they're like, suddenly theprocess of trying to show up actually
as myself feels frustratingand confusing at best, but more often

(51:31):
dangerous and scary.
And that's where thatvulnerability piece comes in.
And they've kind of lost thatsense of where does that live?
Where does my voice live?
How do I know when I'm tellingthe truth?
How do I know when I'm being me?
And so I get to, with thecoaching, help them through a process
of sort of mining fordissonance and resonance through
conversation, comfort and discomfort.

(51:52):
Figure out, learn again.
Oh, do you see how you justlit up?
Do you see how something is?
That's it.
That's how you know.
And that all.
There's a straight linebetween that and songwriting to.
When I sit down and I'm tryingto figure something out and then
all of a sudden a line pops upand I'm like, oof.
That's, that's the song.

(52:13):
That's the story I need to tell.
Yeah.
And it's, I just, I, I, Iadore the way that the creativity
has emerged in this momentthat I was going, I'm going to be
very serious and not focus onthat so I can support the creativity.
The creativity went.
I can help.
And, and it's, yeah.

(52:35):
I don't know how much of thatmade sense, but I hope it did.
Hope some of that made sense.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I think the main ideas are,one is to use every part of you in
everything you do, especiallyif you're using it creatively.
Like every part of your beingcan help fuel that creative life

(53:00):
because everything that youwere trying to do was separate, but
it led to your creativitybeing able to come out of its the
seed, I guess.
Like if you're planting a seed and.
Yeah.
It sprouts out of the seed.
And that's.
That's because you were usingother parts of you to kind of sustain

(53:21):
yourself.
But that also.
Every idea that you learned,especially through something like
copywriting or learning how tobe a coach.
Yeah.
Shows you different aspects.
All of it.
Creative life.
Yeah.
And it's.
It's again, as long as yourfocus is on serving and.
And where does this.

(53:42):
The focus on serving come from?
Is it sort of.
There's nobody I know that.
That.
That writes songs or createsart or.
Fundamentally, for.
For all of us, there's a.
At least kind of in the realmsthat I'm in, we do it for the love
of it fundamentally, becauseit feels really, really good to do

(54:03):
it.
It's.
It's.
It's an amazing feeling whenthat new song is born.
I'm assuming it's an amazingfeeling when that new piece of art
comes to fruition and on and on.
But to what end?
Like, what's after that?
Why are you sharing it?
What do you hope comes of it?

(54:24):
What's.
What is it you hope.
An audience.
How they.
How are they going to respond?
And why do you hope thatthat's their response?
And if their response is X,what does X mean in their life?
What's the transformation for them?
Like, for me, coming torealize what I find intolerable is

(54:48):
how many people feel likethey're not living their true story.
How many people are sort ofgetting up every day to, like, going
to the closet, metaphoricallyspeaking, going to the closet to
get ready for something theyreally want to look their best for.
You know, imagine you're goingto some event that you really want

(55:09):
to kind of walk in and kind ofhave a little bit of swagger and
be feeling.
Be feeling.
Be feeling your best.
And you're kind of looking atyour clothes and going, nothing looks
like me.
Nothing feels like me.
And there's this profounddissonance between who you feel like
you are in here and who theworld is getting out there.
And for me, that became intolerable.

(55:30):
Still intolerable that I did that.
People are walking around onlyliving part of who they are.
It's, you know, the last night.
Well, yesterday they had theAFC and NFC championship.
If you're not playing yourposition, your team's going to lose.
We need you playing yourposition, not somebody else's position,

(55:52):
because you think that's whatyou should do.
You know, if the quarterback'strying to be a linebacker because
he Thinks, well, that's justwhat I need to do to make a living.
And well, then we never got toknow that you have those skills to
be a quarterback.
That's.
Here ended my sports bowl analogy.
But it's a.

(56:13):
That's my thing.
I think that, yes, it'sfreeing the creativity from the pragmatic,
but it's also by focusing onwho do I actually want to serve?
What's the level of service?
What's the level of impact I'mseeking to have in the world?
And what's that flavor?

(56:33):
For me, it's helping peoplelive more than once in a lifetime
story.
Cool.
What are ways I can do thatand what are ways that I can be engaging
aspects of my art in theprocess of doing that and continue
to cultivate the art whichcultivates me and continue to leave

(56:56):
the door open that the art onits own would flourish in a way that
creates a path for me to justbe doing that.
But it's.
But for me, I.
I have found that it startswith that service piece and then
looking at what are ways thatI am.
Because I have this passionfor this thing that not a lot of

(57:17):
people have a passion for.
What are the ways that.
That gives me a differentperspective on the world, different
skill set, different, youknow, ability to, like, it might
be that that visual art isyour thing.
Well, like, that's why a lotof people that visual artists end
up going into design.
Right.

(57:37):
Or interior design, becausethey have a real passion for an aesthetic
and what it can do.
Yeah.
I just think the more we canfree our art to be art and yet lean

(57:59):
into the things that we lovemost about the experience of it and
what our vision is for, whatit will ultimately mean in our lives
and the lives of others, andcultivate the practical aspects of
life around that service, lifejust becomes a richer experience.

(58:20):
All in.
In.
In my experience, I just think it's.
They're not.
They're not either.
Or I think too many of us, weset up the ideal.
I'm either going to be pickyour idol.
I'm going to break through inthat way, fill in the blank, or it's
not working.

(58:41):
And I think you're missing outon the joy of bringing more of you
into the world, bringing moreof your art into the world and bringing
more experience, or havingmore the impact in the world that
you could have.

(59:01):
Yeah.
And none of these, by the way,are, if they're.
If there's any coherence tothem, that this is all for me, when
we were about to start.
You were talking about thewanting to explore creativity.
What's it like to beovercoming obstacles in the creative
life?

(59:22):
What's it like to find a wayto make a living?
I do make a living.
I don't make a huge living atthis moment.
I'm on my way to that.
Part of that for me is gettingout of my way around how to run a
business.
I'm, I've gotten good atfinding things that are like I've

(59:43):
been talking about here withthe, about practical, practical things
that I know have value that Ican use to be of service and, and,
and make a living off.
I've gotten good at doing thatand it brings me great joy and satisfaction.
But I'm not as good atmanaging the business and that's
an ongoing journey.

(01:00:05):
But, but I would say that thesetbacks are real.
I mean the number of timesthat you think this is it, this is
it, this is it and, and thenit just turns out not to be around
9 11.
I think we have somewhat of anage difference.
I was fully adult enoughtouring and out in the world when

(01:00:29):
911 happened.
And I had just invested$20,000 in producing a new record,
recording and producing a new record.
And it was most I'd ever putinto recording.
And you know, it involved alot of creative financing and unwise

(01:00:55):
financing.
And I was supposed to releaseit like within a week of 911 and
then 911 hit and the wholeeverything, everything ended.
The music industry was done overnight.
Like they just did everythingshut down and so many other things

(01:01:19):
emerged from that.
And obviously that was theleast of the implications of that
tragedy and time in our history.
But my point is that that wasone of those inflection point moments.
I thought this is it, here we go.
And I look back and I listento that record and I'm grateful for
the songs and I'm supergrateful for the people it's resonated

(01:01:41):
with.
And for me personally, as itshould to a certain extent as an
artist, it's kind of cringeworthy for me to listen to.
And I'm like, I'm so glad thatdidn't happen because you know, I'm,
you know, if that had been thehit then that would be the thing
I'd be out having to sing every.
And that's not what's for me.
So I thought that was supposedto be it and then it wasn't it.
I thought this.
Other things, you know, allthese different things that I thought,

(01:02:02):
oh, this is it, this is it,this Is it.
This is it.
And I'm moving toward thisbecause I think it's.
I want to touch on the thingsyou overcome and how they're not
really overcoming, they'reactually part of the thing that the

(01:02:23):
discomfort is part of the comfort.
The soreness from the gym ispart of getting in shape.
That's, it's all the exhale ispart of the inhale and so on and
so forth.
I went through a stretch whereI did get a day job.
I went through a verydifficult financial time post divorce

(01:02:46):
in part because of things likeputting that record out.
And I just made bad financialchoices about how I did that, you
know, and ended up working aday job.
I was working full time for acompany that put on music festivals
on cruise ships for very bigname artists.

(01:03:06):
And so it had its own coolnessto it.
It was fun.
I'd spend most of my wintersin the Caribbean.
That didn't suck.
But a big, big part of me wasstarving and ultimately I was let
go.
And that was an awful time for me.

(01:03:32):
And I thought, well.
And I ended up, I like it was bad.
I ended up kind of at a, atthe, getting a job at like the last
branch I caught before I hitthe ground kind of thing.
I was working at a shoe storeand in my early 40s and going, what
the hell is happening to my life?
You know, And I thought, well,this is, that's fine.

(01:03:54):
This is a wake up call.
I, I want to be back on theroad anyway.
I want to be back out making music.
I want to be back out speaking.
Let's get back at it.
And, and then I had somethingcalled Bell's palsy.
And, and Bell's palsy is thisthing that causes paralysis of half
of your face or how it comes on.
It's a virus that attacks yourfacial nerve and, and it basically

(01:04:19):
makes it look like half yourface melted all the way down from
your top, your forehead toyour, all the way down your neck.
And there's no real effectivetreatment is you just sort of have
to hope that it goes up, gets better.
There's some things they throwat it, but they're not really.
They haven't solved thatproblem because it doesn't involve

(01:04:40):
getting an old white man'spenis hard.
But that's just how I feelabout that.
So.
But anyway, they.
One of those things thatdoesn't get solved by, you know,
the powers that.
Be until they get it right.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
And it's the kind of thingyou're only supposed to Go through
once.
Like it's a very rare thing tohappen for most people, it happens
once.
For me, it happened three times.

(01:05:02):
Oh, wow.
And, and after the secondtime, what happened?
And the reason I'm mentioningit is, I mean, it's a process and
you have to, it's, it's, it'sintense enough that like you have
to, you have to blink your eyemanually because your eyes don't
blink.

(01:05:22):
Your eye doesn't blink anymore.
You have to tape your eyesshut at night.
You have to hold up your mouthbecause it won't, you can't speak.
It's.
It's awful.
And I went through it witheach side of my face.
One side was twice, the otherside once.
At the second time, while Iwas trying to get back on the road,

(01:05:45):
I found that I was trying toget my chops back up, you know, and
when you're traveling likethat, when you're doing music full
time, you need to be able todo like half hour sets, hour sets,
three four hour sets.
You know, the three four hoursets are the kind of, often the breadwinner
ones because that's where youget hired playing a restaurant and
be background noise.

(01:06:05):
And those are gigs that kindof suck.
But they're for me, they did anyway.
They, you know, they had theirmoments, but, but they pay the bills.
And suddenly after the bell'spalsy, I would choke unexpectedly
because there was an issue inmy throat and it felt like identity

(01:06:26):
theft.
Like I just, I didn't know howto be.
Who to be in the world absentmy ability to sing and commune with
the audience like that, havethat conversation.
And the reason I mentionedthat is that period of losing the

(01:06:52):
job, working these jobsbecause I couldn't get back on the
road because I couldn't sing,led to me writing the book because
I was trying to figure out howdo I deal with uncertainty like this.
I was realizing that thiswhole notion that I was going to

(01:07:12):
arrive somewhere was always,there's nobody, nobody.
Oprah's not doing the samething she was five years ago or 10
years ago or 20.
Everybody's.
We're all passing through.
The highs and lows are.
They're just, they're not hereto stay, you know, so what does that
mean?
What do I do with that interms of this whole thing?
How do I embrace uncertaintyand what can I get from that?

(01:07:34):
Which led to me giving talksabout embracing uncertainty and the
power of curiosity and thevalue of comfort and discomfort and
where our power truly, allthese different layers, the process
of going, I can't perform inthe way I used to, but I still write

(01:07:55):
songs.
I still need to do this.
And upside, the world haschanged, and I can make music from
my room and share it with the world.
And psych.
I was never particularly kindto my voice.
I was always trying to soundlike somebody else.

(01:08:16):
So it required me to sing morewithin myself.
So now I find myself on theother side of all that.
I'm a better singer than Iever was.
I feel like I'm.
I'm.
I feel like I'm 30 years inand just getting good as a writer.
I feel like the process ofgoing through everything I went through

(01:08:36):
has created.
I have a much differentrelationship with certainty and uncertainty
in my life, and it's createdthis whole other area to be speaking
from and serving through.
My point is that the processof navigating the ups and downs is
more a process, in myexperience, of not viewing him as

(01:09:00):
such and using your experienceas a creative.
Every creative pursuit, every.
Every one of them that I'maware of, involves being comfortable
with messy.
Because every creativeendeavor, whether you're a chef or
an artist or a dancer or ajazz musician or a classical artist,

(01:09:23):
there's a process of going,this isn't working.
You know, letting it be chaosuntil it becomes order, and then
looking for ways that it'sstill not working.
And it's a process of miningthat resonance and dissonance, the
comfort and discomfort and theless I can attach to, oh, this thing

(01:09:43):
that I thought was going tobring me the next thing, get me that
moment that now I've madedidn't happen, therefore everything's
ruined.
No, it didn't happen becauseit's not supposed to happen in this
way at this moment, and itbecomes information rather than sort

(01:10:06):
of indictment of where I'm at.
Does that make sense?
Every.
Everything that you go throughis a piece of your journey and just
allows you to.
I mean, that's just life, right?
It's just like everything thathappens not necessarily happens for
a reason, like the sayinggoes, but it happens.
And you must deal with whathas happened instead of worrying

(01:10:29):
about what has already happened.
So going forward, thishappened to you, but what do you
do with that now?
Exactly.
And.
And what value might it hold?
It's almost like.
Did you ever see the movieCastaway with Tom Hanks?
Yeah.
When you're on desert islandlike that, right?

(01:10:50):
And he's.
The plane crashed, he's allalone, everything's gone, but some
random stuff is washed up onthe beach.
And what does he do?
He goes through the processof, please let this not be what's

(01:11:11):
happening.
You know, hoping I can justattract attention and somebody's
going to come, and this isn't.
You know, this isn't really my fate.
And then he.
Then he gets to a point wherehe's like, okay, this is what.
This is what's happening, andstarts going through what he has
there.
Right.
I have this box.

(01:11:32):
I have this soccer ball, youknow, this soccer ball that I can.
What can these become?
How can these become assetsyou just change your relationship
with?
And it doesn't mean it's not uncomfortable.
It doesn't mean that it's fun,doesn't mean you're not disappointed.
You get to be disappointed.
It's just.
It's just that it meaning something.

(01:11:52):
It's.
It's stoicism.
You know, stoicism is 101, is.
You know, Epictetus said thatwe were not disturbed by things,
but by the view we take of them.
It's that, you know, it's.
It's going, okay, maybe thisthing itself isn't.
Doesn't have this meaning thatI'm giving it, but that my view of

(01:12:15):
it does.
You know, you and I aretalking about the state of the world
when we were getting on thiscall here.
And that's part of where I'mat every day, all day long these
days.
It's kind of looking for whatis mine to do in this and going,
okay, this is what's happening.
How do I show up and be ofservice in this moment?

(01:12:36):
Yeah, And.
And that's.
I think that's.
That, again, is the gift thatI think the art gives.
Yeah.
Because it just requires adifferent kind of listening and a
willingness to.
To mine for what's.
What could be useful.
I mean, a spoiler.

(01:12:56):
In that movie, there's a pieceof a plastic door, one of the pieces
of a Porta Potty that washesup on shore, that he ends up going,
this could be a sale, youknow, and uses it to get off the

(01:13:18):
island, you know, And I thinkthat that's.
That's what can happen.
Kind of leaning into some ofthat wisdom of the ancients and combining
it with the experience ofbeing a creative and living a creative
life.
Yeah.
Awesome.
I know we.

(01:13:38):
You have to get going soon, sowe're gonna move on to the.
The final questions.
Okay, good.
Do you know anyone personallywho also runs a standout creative
business, and what do they doto stand out?
Well, yes, I know loads of people.

(01:13:59):
Thankfully, I'm gonna name thefirst, first three that came to my
mind, one we have in common,who was apparently on another episode
recently that I haven't gottenhere yet.
Bridget.
He's relatively new soul to myworld the last year or so.
But she's just a light andshe's constantly iterating and leaning

(01:14:25):
into that which is most alivefor her in her creative journey and
creative business.
And she hosts these freecalls, by the way, called right Monday
that are fantasticopportunities to come together and
create.
You and I were on one earliertoday, and so that's one.

(01:14:45):
Another is a woman named KatieBoyce who's a dear, dear friend of
mine I met at the verybeginning of the pandemic when I
was first getting into copywriting.
And she's a copywriter forinterior designers, but she's a writer
fundamentally and she's acreative fundamentally.
And she helps people feel seenin the world.

(01:15:07):
That was the question.
The sub question, right, Was,wow, what are they doing?
And yeah, what are they doingto see it?
And again, the key for her hasbeen iterating.
It's going into.
We have those moments whenwe're having conversations about
the business where we've runinto moments in the time that I've
known her where she's like,yeah, this thing I've been doing
for a minute, it's just not,I'm not loving it.

(01:15:28):
And then one or the other willsay, hey, just a reminder, you work
for yourself and you get tolove it, so change it.
So she's always iterating andnow she does things.
She built a quite successfulcopywriting practice for herself,

(01:15:49):
turned it into realized that alot of the clients she was serving,
interior designers is her niche.
But a lot of the clients shewas serving were really eager to
get things done quickly.
So then she developed, shestopped doing sort of traditional,
traditional copywriting work,particularly like websites and that
sort of thing could go on formonths by necessity.
But she started doing vip, VIPweeks where she does focuses on a

(01:16:14):
client in the whole week withthem and at the end of it they have
their full branding.
And in the process of buildingthis business, she found that she,
she was a really radiant lightin some other entrepreneurs lives
and she loves throwing parties.
She's one of these people thatlike, if you go to a dinner party

(01:16:36):
at her house, it's going tohave a theme and it's going to be
so.
And it's not going to be likea overdone, cheesy thing.
It's going to be thisintimate, rich, amazing time.
And so now she also leadsretreats for women entrepreneurs
that are cool locations.
Like she did one a coupleweeks ago.
It was a week long retreat inMexico, right on the ocean there

(01:16:57):
in Pacific Ocean.
So, yeah, and the last oneI'll just say is.
I'll just say much more briefly.
A dear old friend of mine whoactually did the, the art for a couple
of my CDs.
And she's an artist and sheultimately also moved into being
a graphic design professor andcontinues to do her art and.
And now also leads communitiesof designers and leads camps and

(01:17:19):
that sort of thing.
And we're not in each other'sworlds on the regular anymore, but
she just inspires the hell outof me.
And her name is Diane Gibbs.
The.
The copywriter is Katie Boyce.
That one I just mentioned isDiane Gibbs.
But yeah.
Cool.
What's one extraordinary book,podcast or documentary that has had
the biggest impact on your journey?

(01:17:42):
Well, again, I'll go with myfirst reaction.
The two that I recommend rightnow, there are many, many.
But the two I recommend are the.
The Creative act by Rick Rubin.
Everybody I know has read thatbook, ended up talking about it somewhere
like, you got to read this book.
And Big Magic.
Elizabeth Gilbert.

(01:18:04):
Yeah.
And.
Well, you know, I will throwin one more.
There's a book, what the hellis it, Called Leonard Cohen On Leonard
Cohen.
And it's this collection ofinterviews that he did over the course
of his career and lifetime.
And I read it cover to cover,ended up buying it because he, you

(01:18:31):
could see he spoke to thecreative experience really powerfully
in the conversations he washaving like this over the course
of his lifetime.
And I found that to be really heartening.
So, yeah, there you go.
Leonard Cohen or Leonard Cohen.
Big Magic and the Creative Act.
Awesome.
Yeah, you recommended Creativeact to me and I listened to the audiobook,

(01:18:52):
which is.
You get to hear his voice as well.
Talk about.
Oh yeah, he's got a great voice.
Yeah.
Cool.
Did you like it?
Yeah, it was awesome.
There's just so many different nuggets.
I don't even know.
I would have to like listen tothat a thousand times in order to
get everything he's trying toget out.
Yeah, it's one of the gifts of it.
So as a, as a, as a writtenbook, is that it's the kind of thing
that's not a, it's not an arc.

(01:19:14):
Yeah.
You just narratively.
Yeah.
You could just use one youcould put in your bathroom and just,
you know, when you're having Aseat, read a little chapter and then,
and get something out of it.
You know, it's, it's, it'sthat kind of a book they can read
in nuggets.
But yeah, awesome.
What do you think makes acreative business stand out?
And what is one piece ofadvice that you would give someone

(01:19:35):
based on your experience onhow they can stand out?
The authenticity.
Fundamentally, I think it'sbeing you unabashedly, unapologetically.
And I will add as a caveat tothat, because I know some people,

(01:19:56):
I'm not just saying wear yourheart in your sleeve willy nilly.
I had an artist friend who hadgone through some rough times with
social media and such andpeople kind of some backlash to some
things.
And she asked me how do youknow when it's time when a piece

(01:20:16):
is ready to be shared?
And I would put that in thiscontext too.
How do you know how, when it'ssafe to be authentic in this way?
And what I said to her, inshort, was first tell the truth in
whatever you're doing.
Let it be true.
It doesn't have to beliterally true.

(01:20:36):
You could be fiction you're writing.
It could be.
But, but does it feel truelike you've represented that idea
in an authentic way?
When you know you've donethat, then you don't share it until
such point as you realize asyou're clear that I'm sharing this
because I know it's true and Iknow it holds value and it matters

(01:20:59):
to me and it's, and none ofthose things are contingent upon
how you receive it.
In other words, it can alwaysgoing to feel good when somebody
loves what you do and it'salways going to feel a little bad
when they don't.
But as long as you are sharingsomething you know to be true, you
know to hold value, you knowmattered to you and you have gotten

(01:21:22):
to a place where you're like,I'm going to share it and if you
don't like it, that'll be kindof a bummer, but it won't be crushing
to me.
I still know it's true.
That's when it's ready.
That's, that's what, that'swhat it feels like to be able to
show up authenticityauthentically and unapologetically.
And then you, there's, youunavoidably shine.
You can't, you can't help it.

(01:21:44):
When somebody's really in thatauthentic place, being who they are,
they're attractional, theyjust radiate.
Yeah, it's Just like when youwere saying earlier with your music,
if you go into audience, theycan receive it in any way they want
to, but as long as you're theone bringing it in a way, that's
you.
Right?

(01:22:05):
Yeah.
It doesn't matter what they thought.
It matters how you feel aboutit as you're presenting it to them.
And the beauty of that is thatwhen you do it that way, it actually
becomes more theirs somehow.
And I don't know.
That's the magic part.
That's.
I don't know how that works,but I know it to be 100 true that
when I do all those thingsthat, though it's often around the

(01:22:26):
most personal of things, it'swhen it becomes most universal.
I think it's just the sharingof the human experience because we're
all here and we have no ideawhat we're doing.
None of us.
Right.
We are all making it up.
Yes.
Everyone's making it up on the spot.
So it's like when you feelthat from somebody else, you feel
a connection because you'realso like, oh, yeah, this is.

(01:22:49):
This is just life, you know?
Yeah.
Anybody who tells you they'renot making it up or pretends that
they are, no matter whatoffice they hold, they're lying when
they're selling something that's.
It's not.
It's all.
We're all making it up.
So it's a funny story about the.
The people.
I think it was Obama's WhiteHouse, where they're.
They're in the.

(01:23:09):
The White House, and they'relike, oh, we're the ones in charge.
I.
I don't know what they'redoing, and they're in the White House.
So that if that says thatnothing else to you, you're in the
most powerful building in theentire world.
And they're like, oh, why arewe in charge?
Right.
I don't know what I'm doing.
Why do they give me the keys?
You know?
Exactly.
Yeah.

(01:23:30):
I love that.
Can you give the listeners achallenge that they can take action
on right now to start standing out?
I guess the challenge that I would.
That I would.
I would give is create roomfor quiet in your life.

(01:23:52):
And there doesn't have to be alot of it to make a big difference,
but give yourself even threeto five minutes a day to be quiet
and to listen to where youryearnings are.
I just finished reading a bookcalled Bittersweet by Susan Cain,

(01:24:13):
and she talked about the powerof listening to our yearnings, because
our deepest yearnings areDirecting us to our greatest joys.
And I would say in thecreative for creatives that our deepest
yearnings are directing us tothat which is ours to express and
birth and share in the world.

(01:24:34):
But we have to be willing togo to lean into the parts that feel
a little bit scary, that arecalling us in the form of a yearning,
in a form of a need, anunexpressed want.
There's some part of yourbrain's going, yeah, but.
Or I can't do that.
Listen closer.

(01:24:54):
That's probably where yourunique thing to express lives.
That's the thing where you getto go.
I bet you there are peoplethat have this same yearning.
How can I serve those people?
And somewhere in there whenyou do that creatively, you're going
to be satisfying your ownyearning as you do.
So that's also a key componentof creativity is allowing yourself

(01:25:18):
to not think about whatever itis that you're thinking about.
Yes.
When the best ideas.
Oh, that's so great.
That's the low apart.
Yep.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I've the number.
I've lost time in a similar vein.
It's not exactly the samething, but I've lost count of the
number of times that I've beenwrestling with a thing that I'm creating.
Whether it's for work work or.

(01:25:39):
Or just.
Or the art.
And I've taken a nap.
Big fan of naps.
Taking a nap.
And I'll be laying there andI'll be like, I got it.
You know, it's just.
And it just comes up because that's.
That's how it works.
That's how it works.
Creativity never really stops.
It's.
It's in there.
That's why making that quietcan make a huge difference.

(01:25:59):
Yeah.
Well, Brian, this has beenreally great talking to you.
I feel like we could have goneon for another one and a half hours.
But same we'll end it here andwe can come back to it if we want
to.
Well, I appreciate that it'sbeen a pleasure and a privilege to
be.
To be here with you.
I hope that my ramblings werehold some use to someone.

(01:26:22):
Sure.
They will let people knowwhere they can keep up to date with
you and some of what you're up to.
Absolutely.
My website is yes,brianperry.com that's Y E S like
the opposite of no.
And I spell my name Brian withan I.
So it's Y E S B R I N P E R RY dot com.

(01:26:43):
Go there, sign up for themailing list.
If you would.
I'm doing a lot less on socialmedia these days just because I'm
disenchanted with the way thealgorithms can kind of get in the
way of our conversation aswell as some of the decisions some
of those platforms are making.
So.
But I really love the space.
The conversation I'm havingwith the mail enlist and we're doing,

(01:27:07):
I do free events with them.
I do severally richconversations there.
So that's.
Yes, BrianPerry.com is theplace to go.
And you can also, you canemail me through there as well too.
And yeah, and keep, keep aneye out.
I'm, I'm on, I'm in all theplaces, you know, Spotify, that kind
of thing for the music.

(01:27:27):
And I will be, you know, my intention.
I'm about to put together anew album.
My intention for 2025 is I'vebeen kind of playing a little bit
small with the speaking andthe music.
It's been a slow crawl out ofthe pandemic for me.
But this year is going to be abit of a shift in that.
So stay tuned.
Awesome.

(01:27:48):
All right, thanks again forcoming on, Brian.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you, Kevin.
Be well.
All right, bye.
Creativity isn't just aboutmaking something beautiful.
It's about having the courageto be fully seen.
As Brian showed us, opennessisn't a weakness.
It's your greatest creative strength.
If you've been holding backyour true voice because it feels

(01:28:09):
too personal, too raw or toodifferent, remember your unique path
is exactly what makes yourwork matter.
Ready to turn that potentialinto impact?
Head tothestandoutcreatives.com to book
a free strategy session.
We'll help you transform yourartistic vision into a powerful true
to you business.

(01:28:30):
The world is waiting for whatonly you can create.
So let's make it happen.

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Creativity as a Sacred Space

Creativity, Courage, and Finding Your True Voice

Balancing Art and Business Without Losing Your Soul

Creating Space for Quiet Reflection

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}14: Embracing Creativity, Courage, and Service with Brian Perry