Good Life Project - A Crazy Story About Creative Karma and Work That Matters

Episode Date: June 25, 2015

It was a moment that nearly brought me to tears...As an entrepreneur, a writer, a creator, a big part of why I do what I do is simply the hardwired need to create. I do the thing I "can't not do."The process of creation breathes me.Being able to write, to build, to produce, these things all light me up. But there's another part of the equation. It's the part about how the things you create land in the world. How other people experience them.It's part about whether they matter not only to you, but to those who might, in some small way, engage with what you make. To those who might just be left changed, or at least moved in a meaningful way.Often times, you never get to see this part.But, every once in a while, you stumble onto them. This week's Good Life Project Riff is about one of those moments. It happened through pure serendipity. It involved a guy named Steve and a venture he called Exit Plan B. The image in this post created by him.Neither of us knew what was really happening or how we'd truly affected each other until we'd been working together for months.Until the moment everything came full circle. And it left us both jaw-dropped.Enjoy the story! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is brought to you by our very fun gathering camp GLP where, oh, let's say some 350 or so amazingly cool people, makers, entrepreneurs, just all around super friendly, awesome people are going to come and hang out as we take over a sleepaway camp and have everything from workshops on making entrepreneurship careers to art and creating and all the awesome stuff that goes along with summer camp too. It's an amazing place to be introvert friendly, extrovert friendly, ambivert friendly. I'll be hanging out and a whole crew of incredible people. And if you're listening to this before the end of June 2015, be sure to go and grab your spot ASAP because at the end of this month, we jump up to the final price and you will lose the $100 discount that is going to be hanging out until the end of this month. So go grab your spot. You can check it out at goodlifeproject.com slash camp. Hope to see you there. Hey there, it's Jonathan here with this week's Good Life Project riff.

The name of this riff is Full Circle. So this went down in Oakland, California in 2012. I was walking along the pier and we stumbled upon a booth literally bursting with photos of letters arranged into words. And I've got to know the story behind them. So I asked for the proprietor and his name is Steve. He spent the better part of his adult life as a senior executive in the Bay Area tech scene. And earlier that year, his company downsizes and he's given what's called a garden clause, meaning he's out of a job and he isn't allowed to work for a competitive company, but he gets paid to sit the time out.

So he's got kids to take care of and a future to think about, but he has some time to figure it out. Photography. That's been his side passion for years. He wonders, what if I could spend the next year taking photographs and maybe even figure out how to build a living doing it that way? So Steve hatches an idea. He begins to cruise the San Francisco streets, shooting letters on buildings, wall signs, you name it. And pretty

soon he amasses a huge library of the images of letters and he starts to print them out and arrange them into words and phrases. So one day he shows up at a local outdoor market with a stash of product, you know, a few dozen words made up of a blend of his letters framed in glass. And inventory blows out in a New York minute. So he starts to double down. He sells out again and again and again. And a business venture is born. And funny enough, he calls it Plan B, which is pretty awesome.

So by the time I meet Steve, business is humming along. And his kids have actually joined the party, turning letters loose on reclaimed skateboard decks and various other items. My wife and I totally fall in love with the work and his story. And we order up words to give as gifts to everyone in one of our programs, ones that resonate deeply with their aspirations. And we work with Steve over a few months and also have him custom make a big good life project sign. Then I get a long email from Steve. He needs to make a decision about his future. Will he keep building plan B or return to the relative safety of the path that he knows better? So he turns to a mentor of his to talk it through and they go to dinner. And after a nice

meal, the conversation deepens around Steve's future. So his mentor pulls out a book, slides it across the table and says, read this. I think it'll help you a lot. The book he hands Steve is the first book that I ever wrote, Career Renegade. Steve looks down and picks it up. I'm the cover. He looks at the author's name, and then it all clicks. But not how you think. He makes the connection between the guy he's been working with and the guy who wrote the book. This book, he tells his friend, he's seen it before. When he loses his job originally, he starts spinning his wheels. He doesn't know what direction to go in. So he reads everything he can find, but every book seems a little too hot or a little too cold. Then he stumbles upon that book. It's

the first one that sticks. That moves him. It's the one that helps inspire him to launch Plan B. And until this day, he's never made the connection that I'm that Jonathan Fields. The moment I saw that email from him, I literally was almost moved to tears. When you create things in the world, you do it with the intention of expressing yourself fully to allow your purpose, your sense of who you are and what matters to you to move into the world. But you also do it because you hope in some way it'll resonate with somebody. Very often, especially as an author, if it does, you don't directly come into contact with that person. It goes out into the world and

you may get emails someday, you may get nice notices or letters, but it's not all that usual that you come face to face in a very visceral way with somebody where the thing that you created because it was the thing you couldn't not do goes out into the world and in some way makes a real difference in somebody else's life. And it inspires them to then create something that in turn makes a real difference in your life. That moment was this beautiful, serendipitous convergence of a full circle cycle of what I can only call creative karma. And it's the type of thing that keeps me doing what I do. It's also something where when I kind of think about what's the message moving out to everybody else is that never forget that what you put into the world matters, even if it's just to one person, even if it's just to you, even if it's just a

little bit. And that's enough. I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.