Good Life Project - Erik Wahl: On Art, Money, Creativity and Power

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

Guest: Erik Wahl is a tech-executive turned renowned artist, speaker, author and entrepreneur.He is internationally recognized as a thought-provoking graffiti artist and one of the most sought-after presenters on the corporate keynote circuit, where he travels the world opening people's minds with a blend of cinematic stage theatrics, high-speed live-painting and deep wisdom. His latest book is The Spark and the Grind: Ignite the Power of Disciplined CreativityStory: Erik lost everything when the early dot-com bubble burst, then turned to art as a form of healing, expression and a new way to share ideas, with a focus on street art and graffiti. He then taught himself how to paint large-scale street art style images at high-speed and transformed the process into riveting live shows with a powerful message.Big idea: Redefining what it means to be a successful artist.You'd never guess: Why he competed in the world series of poker to enhance creativity and experiential learning, and how he uses game theory as a way to grow emotional intelligence.Current passion project: Extreme biohacking for creativity (cryotherapy, fasting, ballistic exercise).Rockstar sponsors & supporters:90-day year - Check out the free online video masterclasses on hyper-productivity now and 90 Day Year program. https://www.90dayyear.com/p/?p=omcitykid&w=90dyspCamp GLP. Come spend 3 1/2 days with "your people," make amazing friendships, drop the facade, reignite your vitality and learn powerful strategies and breakthrough business ideas. Grab your spot before the final $100 discount expires on June 28, 2017 (and we sell out). http://goodlifeproject.com/camp/photo credit: Sean Sheridan & Erik Wahl Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Because this word success, it's a false oasis. There will never be enough critical acclaim. There will never be enough public recognition. There will never be enough financial success attached to your art to validate it, to make you feel like, oh, that's enough, I've made it. And so when artists start seeking out other people's approval, critics' approval, what this piece of art is worth, when they define their value as an artist based on those external sources, I think it devalues what the artist is really creating.

And if you're creating from a place of soul, those things will align for you, but won't mean as much. They will just be the icing on the top of the cake as opposed to the source of what you're grinding for. The back cover of Eric Wall's new book, The Spark and the Grind, says that he is an artist, author, and entrepreneur. He's internationally recognized as a thought-provoking graffiti artist and one of the most sought-after speakers on the corporate lecture circuit. When I think of Eric, I think of him as a philosopher. I think of him as a performer. I think of him as an artist, somebody who has this capacity to step onto a stage in arena-sized venues and take a crowd of thousands or tens

of thousands of people and drop them into an immersive sensory experience that leaves them coming out the other side in some way deeply changed and thinking about the way that they want to be on the planet. So when I had a chance to sit down with Eric and go into his process, go into what took him to this place in his life, and the really profound and often painful hero's journey that got him there, I had to say yes, and I'm really excited to share this conversation with you today. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. swimming or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10,

available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. Good to be hanging out with you.

Likewise. Thanks for the opportunity. I've been sort of following your work for a number of years now, and my interests in you are multi-level. So you're like, all right, the dude's stalking me. No, the fact that it's multiple levels, that's what's exciting for me. If it was one-dimensional, that would encourage me that I need to push further in other directions. So there's a lot of things that I'm passionate about, and I'm excited that it kind of picks up different pockets or niches in culture in different areas and then kind of blends them. I'm kind of a disruptive artist or mashup specialist. So I'm glad that you're provoked on multiple levels. Yeah. So let's go to a couple of those different places. So right now you're known in the world, you're an author, you do these incredible

performance meet art pieces in front of huge crowds. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about what goes into that, what happens behind the scenes that people don't see. And a lot of your current focus is sort of like bi-phase creative process. But I want to take a step back in time first, because you have an interesting life, which from my understanding did not start out in the field of art. It didn't. I was curious like every child is curious. I was told by a very well-meaning school teacher that I didn't color well. I wasn't a great artist because I didn't color within the lines, that I went too fast, that I didn't pay attention to detail. And for me, I think she was encouraging me to become more disciplined, but I heard it as I'm not a good artist. And so I stopped and I thought that critique,

I was affirmed for doing well on my spelling tests. I was affirmed for doing well on my math tests. And so children migrate towards that, which they're affirmed for. I was affirmed for getting good grades. So I continued down the road of operational efficiency to get good grades and really didn't pursue creativity or the arts, didn't have a great deal of interest in it because you can't get a real job. You know, you can't make any money as an artist. And so I'm a practical guy. I was raised really kind of as a, an alpha dog, an athlete divide and conquer, conquer this test. And then when I'm done with this test, get out to the ball field and practice and then get a good dinner and a good night's rest, rinse, wash,

repeat. And so I was very systematic and structured in how I went through school, athletics and life. And it was not an unhealthy childhood. It was good for me. It's very traditional. Very traditional. So I'm curious now, because you're a husband, you're a parent of five kids. Yeah. When you think about the way that you're raising them and the way that you would love to see them move into the world, how does your experience inform the way that you parent?

Balance. That I need them to understand discipline and structure and authority and accountability and the rules. I want them to understand all of those elements to the fullest extent that they should be understood, but not at the expense of their curiosity and their exploration, their desire to take risks and to try something new. And so really to balance those two equally. And each one of them is very different. And three of them are our biological boys, my boys, and two of them we've kind of taken in.

And every one of them, I have to parent differently. I have to be the perfect parent for each one of them because what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other. So I need to be dynamic in my parenting style and I need to balance the weights on my oldest son, who's 21, who's studying history and sculpture in Switzerland. I need to balance, you know, a little bit further on the discipline side for him still. I shouldn't say that I'm parenting him as much because he's 21. I'm encouraging him on the structure and discipline side because he's really a philosophical free thinker and loves innovation, creativity, music, curiosity. I need to also help him understand that there's certain elements to life like purchasing your own toothpaste and covering your rent that you need to take responsibility for as a young man in the world. So you can't just throw

yourself with reckless abandon towards creativity without also understanding structure. My middle son is in Berkeley and he's studying rhetoric and he's far more logical. School comes very easy to him. And I'm encouraging him to take more risks because he doesn't feel comfortable with anything but an A grade. And so encouraging him that you can get straight A's in school and still flunk life by being too regimented. So encouraging him and you think that's being in Berkeley, the liberal community, he's- Right. It's like, aren't they surrounded by that? And he really, he's actually out of his element in Berkeley because he's, he's more conservative than a lot of the Berkeley thinkers are. The fact that he

chose that school was interesting to me, number one, because it wasn't necessarily his brand, but number two, that he's chose to study rhetoric because I think I'm kind of maybe a proud papa that maybe he sees some sort of me in himself, even though I'm not a major, I'm not discussing rhetoric. I'm using the art of language, the art of persuasion, the art of words and performance to be able to create an experience for an audience. And even though we don't call it rhetoric, it can be called NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming, or there's a lot of mastery elements to stage performance that I think are initially learned in rhetoric.

So it's really, I'm excited that he's studying rhetoric, but he could use some encouragement to be a little bit more adventurous in his pursuits. And he is an entrepreneur, but he's a calculated entrepreneur. He will take risks if he knows he's going to win. Do those risks exist? They don't, which is why there's so many wantrepreneurs right now. There's a lot of posers who I think they want success. They want to call

themselves a CEO and entrepreneur, but they don't act like it in their day in, day out. They're not taking the risk. They're not causing the disruption. They're not differentiating enough. So I'm just noticing that we've got a real kind of trend of wannabe entrepreneurs who aren't interested in bearing the risk or the downside of what many entrepreneurs need to experience to experience success. Yeah. I agree with that. And I've been wondering what's driving that. And I'm curious what you think of this too. Part of the curiosity in my head is the obsession with fame these days. I think in the past generation, if you went into the space of entrepreneurship, there was either something that was inside of you that had to get out, that had to be made, or there was a problem that you

saw that you could solve, or there was a person or a community that you felt compelled to be of service to. And these days, increasingly, I think there's so much, I love the phrase that a friend of mine, Amy Hoyt, coined a couple of years back, entreporn, which is there's so much, quote, fame around the idea of being a founder and starting something. And you mash that up with the sort of obsession with fame these days. A recent study that asked college students whether they would rather be president of Harvard or the executive assistant to a celebrity. And by a large margin, the answer was executive assistant to a celebrity. By the way,

J-Lo was the number one celebrity followed number two spot by Jesus. So you look at stuff like that. And I wonder whether part of the phenomenon you're describing is that people see it as a path to becoming known, to fame, without understanding that the entrepreneurial journey is, you know, it is a spiritual path laden with a lot of struggle too. It's a beautiful path. And for you to phrase it as a spiritual path, it is. It's a journey inwards towards the expression of our soul. And you use the word service. And what you to phrase it as a spiritual path, it is. It's a journey inwards towards the expression of our soul. And you use the word service. And what you defined as what I think an entrepreneur used to be is really beautiful.

It's an idea or a service that someone has that is too valuable not to amplify or to share with others. Now it's kind of the reverse where people want to have the likes or be famous. And so they're trying to invent a service or a product that will 10 X them and make them famous. And I think the, the cart is pulling the horse in this, these posers of entrepreneurs. And I don't want to badmouth, but I think some of it's exciting. I think a lot of the startups are exciting, but we've, we've ridden a wave. We've caught a wave where especially the millennials, Simon Sinek does a wonderful piece on millennials that I think at least 20 million people have already seen. media system, the way that they clickbait, the way our presidential and policy system are kind of split. And we've become fascinated with things that really shouldn't be fascinating. I don't

think they deserve the fascination, but because they get clicks because they get likes and because that's where fame is, this whole thought of power and prestige and possessions are now centered around social media likes and it's disruptive. And for those who don't get it or don't live in that world, it's, I think, very frustrating that we've lost a fair amount of substance in what people should or could be sharing with the world to make it a better place instead of being divisive and pitting tribes against each other in anger. And I'm all for, I'm a graffiti artist, I'm an anarchist, I love disruption. But to the point where we're not finding unity or common ground or solidarity amongst humanity,

I need to take a step back. And why am I being disruptive or why am I causing this to be provocative? Or I want to make sure that I'm provocative with a purpose that I'm moving people intentionally to a better space. Not that I'm just knocking down things in hopes of chaos. And that's important for me as an artist to understand because I have a platform and it's important for me to know that and to be centered before I take the stage, before I create a piece of work, before I talk to young kids about why we're creating. It's important for me to be centered and know my truth because it's important because they're going to listen. I remember when I was a kid, adults were very influential to me,

especially adults that I thought were cool or had some sort of edge or influence. Yeah, I listened. Also known as anyone but your parents. Anyone but my parents, my poor parents, yes. All of our poor parents, right? And now his parents were like, okay, I get it. Oh, I'm a very uncool dad. At some point, you're just kind of like, okay, it is what it is. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned sort of like this ethos that comes out of street art slash graffiti. I had a conversation, I think it was last year, maybe a year or two ago, with a guy who was like one of the 70s burners in New York.

He's like one of the big names, Daze, Chris Elliott. And he was sharing what the culture was really about in the height of graffiti in New York City and where there were crews and it was almost like they would ride on a train and they knew that that train was going from the Bronx into Queens. It's like they were telling stories and sending messages to each other. And there was something bigger going on behind it. And there was this sense of anarchy and expression. And there was something bigger going on. It wasn't vandalism in their minds. It had nothing to do with it.

I'll give your listeners a brief history of graffiti for those who haven't been indoctrinated. But graffiti really originated where we scratched our legacy on cave walls. That's how we shared our stories. Graffiti is the etching of our life on walls or surfaces. And so it wasn't until the last hundred years that the term graffiti was hijacked by criminals or vandals or became a form of corruption. But what a lot of the street artists, the really influential street artists, particularly in New York, they would tag trains, but it wasn't meant for general consumption. It was meant as a marketing piece for other street artists where

that was their street cred. It was almost like putting Coca-Cola on the side of a train where they'd say, Hey, there's Mad Steves or Hey, there a Banksy, or there's a Shepard Fairey. So it was communication amongst themselves in a clever way. It's kind of evolved and devolved. It's become also tagging, which is very disruptive, where it's just anger, where they're like writing on top of other people's property, just because they're frustrated that they don't own that property or that they're not calling shots. And then there's really a beautiful current movement of street art, these large scale murals and really magnificent, majestic, full scale, three story productions. And so those are kind of the three levels of graffiti or street art. But those large murals are meant for pop culture.

They're meant for us as just tourists or city walkers to notice and be impressed with. Yeah. I mean, until last year, there was a place in New York and Queens actually called Five Points, which was this legendary, it was like the Mecca for some of the most extraordinary street artists in the world. They would fly here and it was this sort of like burned out 200,000 square foot old warehouse. And it was curated by this guy named, went by Mears One. And I went there with my daughter a bunch of times and we would just, I mean, the art was stunning. I mean, it was mind blowing and it was ephemeral too, because you knew that at some point someone else was coming in and Mears would assign that same wall and someone else would just like come over it. But what was really, what was heartbreaking with that is that was there for something like 10 or 11 years. And then last

year, the owner of the building, eventually there was all sorts of court wranglings and he brought in a crew one night overnight that whitewashed the entire building. And then basically the whole thing that this era was just gone and they ended up tearing it down. So for you and I, that breaks our heart. We saw the beauty in there. I think there's a large portion of the population that'd be like, yeah, you know, whitewash that. That was just noise. That wasn't art.

And I understand their point. I would prefer that we expand our view of what art is. For me, I like the ephemeral or dynamic nature of street art and it might change. It might evolve. It might become corrosive or kind of peel off the wall. ephemeral or dynamic nature of street art. And it might change, it might evolve, it might become corrosive or kind of peel off the wall. And someone else might add to it. I like that dynamic nature of art that it's not framed inside the Louvre Museum and that you only combine snap one picture and then it's going to remain that way for eternity. This is all art

that's intended to be dynamic. And I think there's a natural element of beauty attached to that, that there's no exiting through the gift shop. There's no purchase this postcard of that painting you just saw so that we can make four box. This is just art for the people meant for everyone. I like that part of street art. No, I love that too. I just miss it. I miss having that one place to kind of go to and just see the work and you have this stunning gallery, but really it's just, it's still there. It's just distributed all over the place now. Let's jump back into your story. You end up in business world from, I guess you went to college, studied business or?

Majored in business, graduated and went straight to work, get a good job so that I could make good money so that I could retire. Married at the time? I got married at 24, yes. Had an unexpected child within the first 12 months of being married. So I didn't have any money, but all of a sudden, boom, now we have kids. Then four years later, I have three kids. And still not that much money, but I'm working hard.

I'm first in, last out, working. What were you doing? money, but I'm working hard. I'm first in, last out working. I was an agent for a entertainment agency that brokered speakers and entertainers around the country. And good job. I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about business, the brokering, the contracts, the legal work, the marketing, hiring, training, sales, learned all of that because it was a small firm. And when it's a small firm, you when it's a small firm, you have to be a Jack of all trades. You have to understand how to answer the phones and how to close deals and make it rain. And I've, I had to figure out who to hire and who to hang on to and

who to let go. So there were things that every business has to learn. I learned all of that real time baptism by fire, build my plan as I flew it, and did that for the first eight years out of school. So what happens on the eighth year? That was the painful year. That was the dot-com bomb for listeners who are old enough. That's when, you know, for a while- The original. The original. Yeah, we had a 2008 real estate financial meltdown. This was in 2000, 2001, the dot com.

So everything that had a tech name was soaring. And you would double your stock price in a matter of two, three days sometimes. And I was riding this wave with just beauty, effortlessness, watching my bank account kind of swell and my pride swell. Man, I sure am smart because I played those stocks, right? Man, I'm, I'm going to be able to retire at this age. I know I was factoring out the math and that was all fine until it turned on me and it devastated me because so much of my ego and self-worth was apparently wrapped up inside of what my net worth was, what my bank account said, how much security I had, how much I had already saved for my children's college fund, how much I had in my 401k. So much of my happiness was based on my security.

And when that was ripped from me, that was really a difficult, difficult time. So did the company end up going under then or what happened? The company kept going. They limped because if anyone remembers back in the AIG effect, not only was there dramatic downturn in the stock market, but the scope, the lens was really focused on companies who were overspending on entertainment, on luxury. Yeah. So that's your business. That was my business. That's the first thing that gets cut, right?

It was a line item that got cut and it really pushed me out. And not only did I, I lost my money, but then had to walk away from that job and really didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Because if I put in all that conservative hard work and now at age 30, I'm left with nothing. Am I going to start that over from scratch? Am I going to, I didn't have the energy or the excitement to start from zero.

Well, and meanwhile, you're married with three kids. Yeah. So it's not just you anymore. Oh yeah. It's like, okay. So how, and there are people looking to you to say everything's going to be okay on some level, even if they're not voicing it. They were very supportive. I don't think they, my wife certainly knew that our boys were too

young. They didn't know what was going on. But you know, for me, it was the dark night of the soul. It was the cloud of unknowing where I was so lost because I didn't know how I was going to try and make a living from that point on. But I knew I had mouths to feed. I knew that I had to write the ship somehow, but I wasn't sure how to do it, but ended up turning to art just by chance. I didn't have a passion for art, but started just becoming fascinated with the way artists thought with their philosophy, with their lack of capitalistic nature, lack of consumeristic nature. And it was just attractive to me because at that point I was kind of anti-American dream. I'd been so stung by what, you know, getting bit by what I was pursuing in this American dream that I'm like, what's the opposite of the American dream? And it seemed like it was

what artists were doing. And- But of course the rap with art is, yes, you get to be fully expressed and live hand to mouth for the rest of your life. Starving artist is true. And that's what I also experienced was even though these artists were free in their conversation, in their thought, came up with genius ideas and lyrics and poetry, they really were kind of fringe players in society. They didn't feel like they fit in and they didn't fit in and they didn't make an effort to fit in. So they didn't translate their art to the masses and they felt like they were misunderstood. Yeah. And there's also, there's the ethos in the art world, which is that if you do quote fit in, there's another word for that in

the art world. Sellout. Right. Which is- That's a painful word for an artist. Right. Because if you define yourself by, in part, if culturally you don't fit with a lot of the cocktail parties, but the people you love to hang out with are the other artists like you, and that becomes your community. And then you somehow realize that there is a business side to this, which will allow me to actually do my art, be fully expressed and earn the living that I need to live to be comfortable in the world.

But it'll get me labeled the sellout. It's almost like that you have to choose between flourishing financially and now no longer having a community or being in community with the people who actually get you and you fit well with, but not flourishing financially. So I think it's not as sort of clean as a lot of people think. It's not. And to hang out with artists and to hear them use the sellout word, that is the lowest put down that you can give another artist is to sell out because that's being inauthentic. What is art? Art is an authentic expression of yourself. Once you commoditize it, then all of a sudden it appears as though the material element or the consumer element, the financial element is now more important than the authentic expression

of yourself. So it's a very real problem. I don't want to say it doesn't exist, but I think there needs to be some evolution to how artists view that, because if they do want to make a living, it doesn't happen in a flash. It doesn't happen in a whimsy. It is a very structured, disciplined, knowledgeable approach to marketing and branding and amplifying your message to scale. And it's not selling out. It's just translating effectively. And that's really the beauty of social media now is I think there's ways that you can share your art. You can share your brand. You can share your message without selling it. And people know they've got a high BS meter. They know when they're being sold to, and they know when it's authentic expression. And I know they've got a high BS meter. They know when they're being sold to, and they know when it's authentic expression. And I think artists need to become better at that authentic expression rather than singing three songs and then saying, Hey, buy my CD in

the back of the room, please buy my CD. I'm a starving artist. Please buy my CD. I think there, there's a more authentic way that they can fascinate their audience into needing to have that CD without actually saying, go buy it. Yeah, no, I love that. I have a friend of mine, Lisa Congdon, who's a very successful illustrator and author now came to art when she was, I think about 30 also. And she, this was in the very beginning days of Instagram where she started just by saying, you know, I wanted to create a mechanism for accountability.

So she decided that she would do a one-year piece of art a day project. And for accountability, she would post whatever she did on Instagram, even though she's like, look, I'm not good right now, but I need to share it publicly to have the accountability. And over time, people started to latch onto what she was doing and they saw her vulnerability. And then they saw the evolution of her work and the development of craft. And she's built this beautiful community, which now turns around and loves her work and supports her in almost everything she does. That's a really beautiful story. And I hope aspiring artists, current artists, listen to that and realize that there's a lot of value in documenting your struggle, documenting your vulnerability and holding yourself accountable to producing a piece of art a day, producing a piece of writing a day and putting it out there.

Because that act of putting it out there is what helps you understand what the marketplace is looking for. You might have thought you created something really brilliant and you put it out there and maybe the public didn't receive it as well as you thought. And you might've create something just for accountability. You put it up there because you're supposed to put something up there and it blows up and you realize something about that. Wow. They really are fascinated by this element. And so you learn to adapt as an artist, as you live out loud real time. And I think there's so much beauty in that accountability and structure of being an artist and being vulnerable and

holding yourself disciplined to continuing to put stuff out. Yeah. And then the question is really interesting because then you get into this space of, okay, where's the intersection between where I feel like I'm actually, I'm doing my work. You know, like I'm feeling expressed and what the quote market wants on a level that they value enough to pay me to sustain myself in the world. That's a sweet spot that I think very often takes, you can luck into it in a remarkably short period of time, or it could take years. That's where I would really ask the artist to go to the center of the core of themselves to remain authentic because this word success, it's a false oasis. There will never be enough

critical acclaim. There will never be enough public recognition. There will never be enough financial success attached to your art to validate it, to make you feel like, oh, that's enough. I've made it. And so when artists start seeking out other people's approval, critics approval, you know, what this piece of art is worth when they define their value as an artist based on those external sources, I think it devalues what the artist is really creating. And if you're creating from a place of soul, those things will align for you, but won't mean as much. They will just be the icing on the top of the cake, as opposed to the source of what you're grinding for. And that makes the expression of art, the most beautiful part and the part that you remain true to yourself. And you're just excited to keep creating and keep putting stuff out there. And that'd be very nice if other people

appreciate it as much as you appreciate creating it. But if they don't, that's where artists start to become depressed. They start to become self-absorbed. The world just doesn't get me and they need to adjust themselves and figure out how to either translate it to the world or keep their art pure and realize that, yeah, they're not going to get you because you're a very special individual. Maybe it's not your living. Maybe it's the thing that you do to feel alive, but it's not your living. And that's okay. That's why I actually devote an entire chapter to my book titled Don't Quit the Day Job,

which is counterintuitive. Most people will say, hey, do what you love, never work a day in your life. Those are great affirmations, but there's a reality here to the fact that I think you can serve coffees at Starbucks and that you can pour yourself into that, into the people, into the culture, and know that you're funding your passion, which is your art that you're going to do when you get off at 5 PM. But that day job becomes your source of income and security. So you're not relying in an unbalanced way on this art to provide your sustenance for the future.

Your art can remain pure. And so that's why I say don't quit the day job because there's a lot of value to that. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton.

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I know you're a fan of the book Daily Rituals also, which I'm a huge fan. I thought that was such a fascinating book. One of the things that stood out to me when I first read that book was also that a large number of people who we know to be sort of leading innovators and creators in their fields from science to art to writing actually had day jobs. And they had no desire to quit because it was the fact that that day job gave them the, quote, security. they knew the family was taken care of, that gave them the space to then go and step out into the abyss when it came time for what you described as the five to nine or the weekends to really let them do their work and not feel bound

by the need to serve a market beyond just their own need to express. I've been trumpeting this paradox that structure creates freedom. It's that discipline, that routine, that safety of knowing that we have this day job that we're able to explore even further boundaries in our artistic pursuits is it gives us freedom to be free once we kind of build those universes.

Yeah, I completely agree. I'm a big fan of routine and structure and discipline to drive the creative process. Yeah. And I actually want to circle back to that in a minute, but let's fill in, there's a big gap here. You and I could go off on a lot of different tangents here. You got to a point where you're starting to go into the art world and part of it is therapeutic for you, but you're also kind of awakening to the fact that there's something interesting going on here. You're at a point in your life where you're married, you've got a family, and you've got to figure out what you're doing next.

So how does this evolve into from that moment in time of a dark night of the soul, starting to explore art, starting to see there's something interesting happening to finding the narrative between business art and you saying, this is my next season. The biggest shift was a shift of consciousness, a shift of mindset where I redefined success. My wife and I redefined success for us before it was going to be either a certain level of financial independence or something related to prestige and work. What we changed it was, as I was talking with artists, as I kind of was exploring really the humanity of who I was, what the relationship to me and my wife, my kids,

our community was, was success for us was going to be, if we could have a good meal as a family together at the end of the day, the five of us, that was a successful day. And you know what? I can do that. I can have a successful day today because I'm going to have dinner with my family, regardless how challenging the day was, what I went through, I was going to be able to have dinner with my family at the end and we could fellowship and commune and have a nice meal together. And I can do that again tomorrow. And I can do that again the next day. And so my definition for success had changed. So therefore, so did my definition of failure is these things that would have normally really disrupted my, my ship or set me off guard weren't as damaging to me anymore. And I was able to move forward

knowing that I was going to have dinner with my family at the end of the day. So that was kind of the paradigm shift that shifted my mind. I continued to explore as an artist, just became fascinated both with art history, going back and studying the masters, how they thought, why did Van Gogh never sell a painting, but still painted every single day? How did the impressionists defy the photorealists? What did Picasso do to change the landscape of art? And so really just was fascinated by the history of art, but at the same time started exploring my own creativity. How could I create, paint, sculpt, write, do photography? So it was really a almost opening of a wellspring of this creative tap that I hadn't taken a sip from for 20 years. And it was delicious and it was

intoxicating and I loved it. But going back then to the, the artist who I was hanging out with, then I also realized even though this was so delicious that the people around me, if you go the next layer deeper after their first waxing philosophical about why they're different from society, they were frustrated and absorbed and kind of depressed because people didn't get them. And I realized, you know what? It's not either or, either artist or business. It's yes and. And there were a lot of really valuable tools that I learned in business and growing up

about how to make it in the world, practical reality. And a lot of things that I just learned as I was exploring art. And so that was where a lot of this kind of came together as I wrote a presentation, my own personal manifesto, that it is art and business going together and they work as yin and yang kind of as a complimentary forces as opposed to clashing opposites. And that wasn't the world I lived. You either were scientific and logical and pragmatic, or you were creative and whimsical and innovative. So I kind of have mashed them together at that point and have spent the last 15 years of my life putting together opposite

thoughts to be able to create entirely new forces of ideology and, for me, love and nourishment and connectedness, as opposed to what is becoming a more and more polarizing world. Tribalism, globalism, patriotism, politics, they're breaking people down because they're not able to hold a yes and philosophy. There can't, there has to be a right and wrong answer. And it's dividing us in ways that I would like to see not happen. I don't, I don't think that was what we as humans were intended to do. We weren't intended to be tribal and angry and competitive. We were intended to work together and to love and to be unified and to help each other. And if that sounds socialistic and said like a true artist, I'm unapologetic about it because we've been trained wrong.

And I think there's a lot of value to being a part of a team, being part of a tribe, being part of a culture, but not if your, your sole existence is based on breaking other tribes down, then I'm not a fan of that. And that's what I've seen and experienced, especially in the last five to seven years, I've seen it increase as opposed to decrease. And that's frustrating for me. And I'm trying not to be a part of the problem. I want to be a part of the solution. So I don't take sides, even though there are several things going on right now that I find very offensive, that I very much disagree with. It's important for me that until I have a viable solution, that I don't just voice and be a part of the problem, that I don't just protest without a great solution that's based in love on the responding end.

What's interesting also is that you're, on the one hand, you're sort of identifying this increasing experience of separatism within our culture. And what's fascinating to me is that the way that you've rebuilt your career draws from art, draws from the intelligence and the business, integrates the theory of creativity and innovation to sort of bring it together. And it also draws on what you were doing before, the performance. You used to be the guy who was booking people. So you knew that world and you kind of knew what sold and what people were looking for.

But what's interesting to me is that you decided not just to integrate business and art, but it's really a triangle. It's performance, it's business and art. So you're creating a collective experience where you're bringing very often large, you know, tens of thousands of people together in an arena-sized spaces to participate in a moment in time where they sit down in their seats and state A. And I haven't been in there. I can't wait to finally go. I know a lot of the stuff you do is private, but from the outside looking in, it really feels like, you know, they come in in state A, you take the stage and take them on a journey, tell a story, bring them into it, and lead them in state B. And it doesn't matter what their worldview was before it came into it. They all shared this experience together. So it's really interesting to see how you've brought this all together. Is that, again, this is like me from the outside looking in. Is that what it feels like? It is. A mind once stretched never returns to its original dimension. So I realized that I'm oftentimes speaking, the majority of my clients are Fortune 500 companies, and I'm speaking to the 1%.

And they expect to have a keynote speaker who's going to address leadership or embracing change or customer service. And I'm coming out every time and I'm looking to give this audience an experience. I'm wanting to change the molecules in the room. So if they think I'm going to zig, I always zag and I will create experiences that make them say, wow, or aha. I didn't think of that. And so I'm, I'm a disruptor in a positive way that I'm looking to catch them off guard and delightfully surprise them to the upside. So before I even say one word, when I take the stage, I rip off my suit jacket.

I come out in a suit, but I take off my suit jacket and I crank the rock music and I create a painting of Bono or John Lennon or Bruce Springsteen or the Rolling Stones in three minutes on a large canvas with my hands. So now I have the audience's attention because they've not seen their last, you know, bestselling author or the CEO of said company do this before. And there's no PowerPoint. There's no PowerPoint. And, you know, I've got lights, I've got a production team. So it's really highly produced intentionally. So, because we want to change this

conference ballroom into a live performance experience. And so we, through lights, music, sound interaction, I make cameras, GoPros, we take them on a journey. So in the first three minutes, I've got them on the edge of their seat in adrenaline pumping enthusiasm. And then I use that as a hook to go in to talk about how we access creativity. What just happened in our bodies there? Why did we lean forward? Why was that mesmerizing? And then how we can do that in our roles as leaders, how we can do that as parents, how we can do that in our communities, how we can do that in our school system, to use fascination as a tool for education, as opposed to just a delivery concept for delivering academic knowledge. I could have gotten up and just talked about creativity. I could have talked about the science or the neurology of where creativity comes from, why we're not creative,

and how you can be more creative. You know, thank you very much. Have a good afternoon. Or I can blow them away or I can give them an experience that they never forget. And this, the reason this came about was because keynote speakers, actually, I don't, I'm not that crazy about them. I cringe a little bit when people call me a motivational speaker because I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm a professional. I do the exact same thing when people like use that. I'm like, no. And it's, you know, it's labels.

And I just happen to have my own perception of that label is a raw, raw guy pumping his fist. Well, it's like the classic Chris Farley from like Saturday Night Live. Yes. Down by the river. And I get it because that's, there, there's a lot of them out there. And so that's why I try and disassociate with that form of what people call or what I assume is motivational speaking. My presentations happen to be very motivational because once we remove those, if you could snap your fingers and eliminate any of those perceived fears or failures, all of a sudden, sky's the limit for how far we can soar, how far we can encourage our children to soar. And so for that reason, it becomes inspirational, but I'm not of a motivational speaker. I am one who is able to entertain, to pass along some of the psychology of success, how artists create, how entrepreneurs create, and how everyone in that audience can also

continue creating. Yeah. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference

between me and yours? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So let's circle back to the idea of preparation and ritual also, because when you take the stage, you own it for an hour

and you own every eyeball, every heart, every mind. And it's like, you know, it's artistry. You didn't wake up one day and just be able to step on stage and do that. There's what happens behind the scenes in your life to allow you to get to that place. Hours and hours and hours of practicing and studying. But I didn't go, I didn't go study other keynote speakers. I never joined Toast keynote speakers. I never joined

Toastmasters. I never joined NSA, National Speakers Association. I did take a couple of high-end keynote speakers out to lunch and just kind of talk with them about how they crafted their messaging. But for me, I went and studied comedians. I went and studied improv troops. I went to live music. I went to live theater. And what I watched was when you go to a hotel ballroom, some people watch a keynote speaker, everyone kind of sits there with their arms crossed and just waits to be educated. When you go and see U2, everyone is clapping and leaning forward. And it's an experience.

It's not individual songs or you're not checking down. Oh, did they sing Beautiful Day? Check. Okay. Did they sing Streets Have No Name? Check. It's an experience. And Bono's taking you on a journey into his world of music.

And for 90 minutes, the whole arena goes with him on that journey. And so that was my goal in morphing. What was traditionally known as keynote speaking is I wanted to take the audience on a journey. I wanted to take them into a different place where they think different thoughts, absorb different ideas from a different perspective. And that fascinated me and theater fascinated me how you would take on different characters. And so there was a lot of, you know, I studied the timing that comedians would use for how long to wait and pause on in between words, jokes, diction. I studied what front men did for bands, how they would maybe not have the best or most talented natural singing voice, but they were the most engaging. They were the ones that pulled the

audience in, got them involved, had everyone hold up their cameras and want to share this with their friends because this was so fun. And it wasn't about, was the music pitch perfect? It was, was the experience electrifying? Was it unifying? So I looked to create my presentation around those ideas and then put in content and then put in the tool or the messaging that I wanted them to take home, but I didn't overload it with messaging or science or case studies. I had all that. I know all that because that's my research and homework. But when I take the stage, it's about creating an experience. And if I have the audience, very dynamic presentation, if I have the audience and the tension is there and they're loving this,

I'll leave off a lot of important business stuff because the feeling is more important than the academic knowledge. And so I will cut bait on stuff mid show, or if I see that, you know, they're laughing, they're having a great time, but we haven't yet gotten to the defining moment, the point where they're actually going to leave with something tangible and make a change in their life. I will again, zag and move out of maybe a storytelling mode into a more content-driven piece so that I make sure that they leave with something tangible. Yeah. Which takes years. It does. Of preparation and fierce. I mean,

I remember you describing your process because part of what you do is speed painting with your hands, these big things, very often upside down and you flip them around. I remember you describing the process of the first time you did it, it took something like a whole day. And over a period of months, you just kept working, working, working, working, working, using your terminology, grind, right? Until you got that down to three minutes. So eight hours to three minutes. Yeah. And so that's a lot of iterations and it's simplification is the ultimate form of sophistication. And so if I could maintain the likeness of Bruce Springsteen, but do it in fewer strokes, that would be genius. And so what would first would take me, you know, four hours to create a photo realistic painting of Bruce Springsteen. If I could do fewer and fewer and fewer strokes,

but still maintain the essence of Bruce Springsteen while the song played, that would be an aha moment that would blow the audience away. And so it was really out of performance. The thought of performance is what created that is, yeah, I could do it in 10 minutes and it would be more photorealistic. It would have more lighting elements, more balance, maybe look more like Bruce Springsteen, but it wasn't going to be better. It would have more lighting elements, more balance, maybe look more like Bruce Springsteen, but it wasn't going to be better. It wasn't going to be better and more entertaining than what I could do in three minutes. And so that was really where that came from. And that's when I started doing paintings upside down because that was even more exciting,

caught the audience more off guard than doing a painting right side up. And the way I will set that up, and this is again, kind of mastery of a craft, but I will make scores on a canvas as I'm speaking. And the audience all thinks the painting is going to go a certain way because logically he's got, it looks like eyes there, and that's going to be a nose there. And he's been talking about leadership. So this most likely is going to be some sort of leadership figure. Then at the dramatic conclusion of the presentation, I crank the music again, finish the painting and flip it upside down to reveal an entirely different portrait altogether. And that's oftentimes what success is. That's the punchline is creativity or innovations oftentimes seeing logically what everyone

else sees with their eyes, but thinking like no one's ever thought before. And at that moment, it's really quite a special time where the whole content of the messaging and the painting, the visual metaphor and the excitement and the connectedness between myself and the audience all comes to this conclusion. And it's really a special moment. I really enjoy it. It's almost like, it seems like you're not just turning the painting upside down. You're turning the worlds upside down. Yes. I'm curious about something else when you're on stage also, because I'm curious whether we share this. My sense is that we probably do. I'm a pretty quiet person. I'm fairly introverted, just on

a social scale. But when I get on stage, it's like I'm a different person. I step into a different mode and I love it. And then I want to be walking in the woods alone again. It seems like you share a similar wiring to me. You know, like, and you're pretty laid back, pretty quiet. You like your solitude. You like to be with your family. And, but when you're on stage, it's like, boom, something changes.

Tell me about that. Sure. And I do it unapologetically. It's not that I'm a different character on stage or that's not me. Cause I think people don't realize that I'm, I'm a huge introvert. I'm a card carrying member of the introvert family. And all that means is, is that I gain energy being alone or being with my wife or my boys. If I go to a cocktail party, a meet and greet, a book signing, that's taking energy from me. So I can do it, but it drains me from energy. So that's kind of the definition between introversion and extroversion is I gain energy being alone. My show producer

who travels with me, he's an extrovert. He gets kind of antsy when he's alone. He feels kind of, he loses energy and he likes to go down and meet with people and network and talk. And I understand that. It's the perfect partnership. stage, I meditate. I, what I call prime myself. So I go into complete solitude and really look for the heartbeat of the room, the quietness of, of their breathing patterns. So that when I take the stage, I don't, I'm not coming out tone deaf so that I'm not coming out. Hey everyone, if they're not at that stage yet, or if they just are coming off a sales rally and are all pepped up that I don't come out and say, now I'd like to talk a little bit about creativity. So I'm listening and meeting them where they are. But for me, once my threshold crosses the curtains, once I take

the stage, I do enter what I almost call an expanded state of consciousness where I, all of a sudden I think bigger, I think more clear. I see things at a transcendent level. And it's hard for me to really express that to people who oftentimes experience the opposite when they take the stage. And the way I know that is because I thought I would be good at acting. But the second that someone says action, I tense up and I start, you know, are my hands in the right place? Am I saying the right things? Do I look stupid? And so I'm very aware of myself when I'm acting and I'm working on getting better at that. But when I take the stage, I just feel this oneness with the audience. And I don't think about myself or my hands, or if I just said, um, or if I turned my back

on the crowd, I am fully immersed in the beauty of this moment. And I become bigger than life. And that's part of how I connect with the audience. And then when I'm done, I walk off stage and it's heady hoodie back on headphones on. And I, uh, my wife calls it a comeown where I have to have a period of solitude before I go back out. Cause I do want to, there is, are some times that a meet and greet or a book signing is required and I don't want to be inaccessible or seem like I'm a prima Donna. I just need some, some alone time before I'm able to have enough energy to come back and to be appropriate.

Yeah, no, that's so resonates with me. I'm literally almost the exact same way. And it's not that I don't want to be around other people, it's just that I'm wired in a way, it sounds like we're both wired in a way where we kind of understand, you know, that for us to be okay, and to be in that social environment, we also need a certain amount of solitude to refill the tank so that just from a self-care standpoint, we can function on the level that's okay in the world. And I think it's really important to know that about yourself and then build your rituals and your habits and your routines in a way that honors that. My career was becoming too much for me to bear because I was doing the AV and then the show and then the meet and greets and then the customization. I wasn't going to be able to do this

because it wore on me so heavily. And so as we kind of took a step back about three or four years ago and realized what if I had a show producer? What if my wife, Tasha, who's also our CEO and does everything structurally behind the business to make it go. If in advance, we kind of navigated around what this was going to look like. If we created what the strategy was, then there weren't any spaces

to fill in like, Oh yeah. And you're going to do this. Oh, and can you go to this dinner? Oh, and by the way, could you do another keynote? All of this was, was headed off at the past when we negotiated the agreement upfront. And it wasn't again, I'm being a prima Donna that I won't do the additional stuff. It's here's what we agreed upon. And then I've got a team. We're all very service oriented and my production crew, Tasha, everyone around me knows they're protecting the integrity of this performance. And everything that is not a part of connecting for that hour with that audience that isn't imperative for me to be doing is kind of taking away from what that moment can be. Even the book signings are great. Meeting the executives prior to going on stage, hanging out with the crowd.

It's all good stuff. But if it takes away from the connection that I'm going to be fully present in the moment with the audience, it's not the highest and best use of my time or the client's time. So we learned that and we built a strategy around how to maximize that. Yeah, no, I love that. And I think sometimes it's, yeah, there's a lot of trial and error very often with a lot of error in there to start to learn that and also to own the fact that that's okay, that it's actually okay to build the way that you interact with the world and with the way that you earn your living in a way that actually doesn't just acknowledge that, but serves that social wiring.

Because if you don't, you're going to burn out and you're not going to be able to do that thing that you feel like, you know, lights you up. You're here to do. So I love the way that you kind of hit pause and said, okay, if I keep on this path, this is not going to end well. But instead of just saying, this isn't right for me, let's try something else. You're like, no, no, no. There are pieces of this that are freaking awesome, but there are pieces of it that need to be reworked so that this is sustainable for everyone. And it will continue.

It will need to be reworked and massaged out again. There's it's constantly changing. And I, I actually appreciate that element. That's not always the same consumer behavior changes, audience expectations change. And so should my presentation and how we interact with social media. It's a totally new ballgame now because everyone FaceTime or Facebook lives or Instagram lives or Snapchats. And I'm building my show around the fact that that's actually works to my advantage. A lot of speakers before performers

before, you know, please no photographs, please don't record. And that's an old school paradigm. That's a dinosaur concept because everyone does it now. And if you go to live music, you see that everyone's got their phones up. And to me, it's not as a performer, it's not offensive. That's the highest compliment that not only do I think this is so good for me, I want my family and friends and everyone else to experience this. So they hold up their phones to record me or to share me while I'm performing. And even if they're down a lot of, you know, instructors or teachers want their kids to, you know, don't have your smartphones out. If I can't be more fascinating than your game of,

you know, Minecraft or email that's on me, that's not on you. And so my job is to become more and more fascinating as a performer so that email or taking care of business or stepping out of the room, they don't want to miss it. They don't want to miss what's next. And so I like to think of this changing technology as working to my advantage and making me a better performer, pushing me harder to become better. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. On the one hand, it's a new constraint slash opportunity. And at the same time, there's the whole new consideration of, and when I step off stage and the performance ends, then my relationship with that technology needs to shift to honor that at the same time. So I want to come full circle with you.

So much more that I'd love to talk to you about, but maybe another time. So I want to come full circle with you. So much more that I'd love to talk to you about, but maybe another time. So this is called Good Life Project, and we explore that phrase. So if I offer that phrase to you, to live a good life, what comes up? Love. And that is, I'm intentionally soundbitey there. I'm intentionally concise because I found some beauty in that. And as I was wrestling with this concept and I wrestled and wrestled and wrestled, what's the purpose of life? And, you know, is it family? Is it to serve the Lord? Is it to serve other people? Is it to be successful? And I wrestled with this because I didn't have an answer that made sense to me that I could endorse until I came up with love. If love is my purpose in life, how is my life fulfilling

that purpose? And so to live a good life would be to be an ambassador of love, to both give and receive love to as many people as I possibly can in the greatest ways that I possibly can. So that was the extended dance version of my shortened response love. Beautiful. Thank you. Pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's lives, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for.

Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then, of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much, as always always for your intention, for your

attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. And as you head out into your day, just a quick, to find more information about Camp GLP, go to goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or to check out Todd Herman's masterclasses, free online masterclasses, then click the link in the show notes now. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.