Good Life Project - Sean McCabe: Hand-letterer Turned Business Visionary

Episode Date: July 14, 2015

From the time he was a kid, Sean McCabe was obsessed, strike that, possessed, with letters.The shape. The form. The curves and nuances. Not just the fonts you see on computers, but the ones drawn painstakingly by hand, what's come to be known as hand-lettering, consumed him.A few years back, Sean began posting his work online. Nothing happened for the better part of two years. Then, lighting began to strike. In part, riding along with and, in part, helping to fuel a massive resurgence in both the practice and demand for hand-lettering, Sean's posting began to catch fire.People wanted to not only buy his work and hire him, though, they also relentlessly asked "how" he did what he did. Both as an artist, and as a professional who'd built a career hand-lettering.That demand kicked off a journey Sean never saw coming. One that's now led him into what he terms the next "season" of his life, moving away from the practice of hand-lettering and into his role as a leader and teacher in the business-side of art. He's built a tremendous educational resource with his Learn Lettering course, a broadcast-quality podcast and video series with a global audience and an emerging career as a keynote speaker. And, there's lots more in the works.In this week's episode, we dive into the exact steps along his journey. We explore how he developed his skills as a hand-letterer, then shifted his focus to cultivate the same depth of expertise in business and media. Sean is incredibly transparent and generous and he also shares a mountain of strategies for building not just a business, but a life. In fact, this conversation was recorded during one of his "7-week sabbaticals," a one-week window that he takes work-free every seven weeks. We talk about how that began and, also, how sacred and important it has become.Oh, and P.S. - An all-new Learn Lettering 2.0 classes will launch on July 27th, 2015. I was a student of the first one and I was blown away by both the depth of the content and the production values. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you start seeing headlines like a hand letterer makes six figures in three days, you start to pique the interest of people a little bit outside of that realm, more business-minded. And once again, I'm realizing there's people wanting to learn to do what I do. So a couple of years ago, hand letterer Sean McCabe started posting his work online. The response was pretty stunning. Everybody wanted to know not just what he was doing, but how he was doing it. People started calling him, more and more and more people emailing. Everywhere they could reach him, they wanted to know how to do what he did.

So in order to sort of save himself a little bit, he wrote this incredible tutorial and put it up on his website. That page exploded, drawing hundreds of thousands of people to the page, where he then turned around and realized that the thing that had obsessed him, the thing that had drawn him, his deep fascination, almost obsession with drawing letters, was something that the world was becoming increasingly fascinated by. And that led to not only a pretty huge explosion in his career as a letterer, but it launched his life as an educator, as a teacher, as somebody who turned around and taught people how to do what he did, and also how to build a career around the thing that he loved so much. In this week's conversation, we go down that rabbit hole with Sean McCabe and how he really came to lettering and then how he turned

around and turned this into something much bigger and really extraordinary. He's incredibly generous with his time and his wisdom. I'm so happy to share this conversation with you this week. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. 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 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. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? It's so fun to be able to hang out with you. You hit my radar originally, I guess a couple years back, when I started to get interested in hand lettering.

And of course I did what everybody else does. I go online, I'm like, how do you learn hand lettering? And that was the time where you had this giant tutorial up on the web. And I was like, wow, this is phenomenal. And then I got curious about you. I saw your work. So it's so much fun to kind of be able to come full circle and sit down with you and just kind of explore your journey. Because since that time, oh my god, it's been amazing to watch how you've evolved and the things that you've built. But let's take a little bit of a step back. You started out really on the design side of things, right? I did. My background is in more design stuff. And actually, I should take even one

step back from that. My first business, I was age 16, 17, started a computer repair business and just started passing around flyers locally and got a bunch of work in some neighborhoods that had a newsletter. And so they would recommend me whenever I did work. And every couple of weeks, that newsletter would go out. Someone new would recommend me. And I was basically permanently in that one community. Oh, that's awesome. And really got to see the power of word of mouth. Yeah. But also kind of cut my teeth on business with that first computer repair business. It grew to the point where I was getting really busy.

But on the side, I was in a band previously, and I'd stepped down from the band because I just got married, had been really busy with the business. But what I didn't anticipate in stepping down from the band was that, you know, missing the creativity element. I wasn't really realizing how much of an outlet it was for me to be able to play music. And while I enjoyed the computer repair, I didn't have that creative outlet that I was looking for. And so in my nights and weekends, I started teaching myself design because a lot of my computer clients were wondering if I also did web design and I didn't, but I decided to learn it. And so it got to the point where I was starting to get a ton of work

just from referrals for web design. And so I was self-taught in web design, started taking on a lot of that work. And it got to the point where in my nights and weekends, I had so much of that work that I was thinking that I'm going to need some help with the design. So I mean, it's so interesting also, because so that I guess we take a step back even further from that first thing you said you were a musician. Was that sort of like your first love? I think that's accurate. Yeah, I love music. And even now, I try to find ways to incorporate music in what I'm doing. If I make a video or a screencast or something, I just I use the opportunity to make my own music instead of finding stock footage. So on podcasts and things like that, I produce my own intros. And I really have always enjoyed music. And I hope one day, because I'm kind of focusing on one thing at a time, I hope that I eventually come back to focusing exclusively on music, maybe putting out a piano album or an electronic album, something like that. You have this sort of really, and I don't know if you'll own this as unique, but in my mind, it's a pretty unique blend of pretty fierce creative side. Musician, design, hand lettering, there's a pure artist inside of you, sort of like very abstract, divergent thinking side. But in the same time, you have that very convergent, sort of linear systems-based business mind all in one person. Do you own how unusual that is?

I think I do. I've started to realize how unique of a hybrid I had in that regard. And I definitely leveraged that when I ended up launching my hand lettering course. And so kind of bridging the gap in my story, I started a design firm with a partner, and I ended up contracting out work for the computer repair business, and did the web design thing for about three years. And then that eventually slowed, and my partner took another job somewhere else. And, you know, we basically

hibernated the firm. But during that time, once again, I'd been overlapping my pursuit. So I was doing web design, I'd contracted out the computer repair work, basically done with that someone else was handling it. But once again, in my nice and weekends, I started pursuing something else that I loved even more. And that was hand lettering. And this was before I hadn't even known what typography was or what lettering was. I just, I drew letters, you know, this was something I did ever since middle school on my homework. You know, my, the title of the lesson would look so nice. You know, I did okay in school, but I was so focused on making the lettering look so nice on my homework. And it was so cool to get online later, you know, in high school and find out this is actually a thing.

This is a thing people do and nerd out about. And I'm not. Oh, yeah. There are people that are just massively obsessed with fonts. Yeah. And hand-lettered fonts, but traditional fonts. I mean, you know, I mean, their entire documentary is made about typefaces. Right, right. And I always felt, I felt weird as a kid because all of my friends were artists,

you know, in a traditional sense, and I'm drawing letters. So I like to say that the internet has a unique ability for making people feel a little less weird. What was it about it, though? I mean, what was it that kind of drew you in and just kind of led you to be semi-obsessed with fonts and letters, typography? You know... What did it do for you or to you? When I look back on the things that I'm really passionate about, it seems to be in the overlap of this Venn diagram between logic and creativity. And it seems like everything I'm passionate about, whether it's music or typography or business, is this overlap between logic and creativity. I have one foot so firmly in just the mathematics and the logic of everything, but I still have this

creative spirit and I need this outlet to create and make things. And it's where that's blended together that I've really found where my true passions are. You know, with music, you have this freedom to create whatever you want. We have this wide variety of different styles, but underlying all of that, we have certain rhythms and melodies and chord structures that you need to adhere to so you don't have just chaos. There's like a math and a set of constraints at the same time. Yeah. Similarly with lettering or typography, you have a lot of room for creative expression, but ultimately the message needs to be legible. Otherwise, what's the point?

It's interesting. Just this morning, I saw, I can't remember where I saw it, it popped onto my screen and I checked out a study that was done in 2012 that sort of like took a paragraph and then displayed it online. It was actually I think on the New York Times where they ran this and it was kind of like done covertly a little bit. And they were asking people, are you a pessimist or an optimist? But really what they were doing was displaying the identical paragraph with six different fonts. And the question was, would the font choice change how people bought into, would they think that, you know, that same paragraph was either more believable or less believable, you know, more credible or less credible. And there was one font that actually massively outperformed every other font. And so the outcome was that a simple change in font

can make a pretty profound shift in the way that people experience the message, the fundamental message, which is kind of mind-blowing. That's huge. So you're playing with this, and you're kind of dancing with this, and there's this really interesting through line with that dance between expression

and constraint or, you know, freedom and logic that flows through music. And then you start to become really involved with lettering and fonts. When you were younger, did you have any sense that this was something that actually people built entire careers around? No idea. You were just messing around. You're just like, this is really cool. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was just like, this is a thing I can do because I enjoy doing it. I always assumed I'd have to find some sort of work, some sort of job to back that up. And for me, I guess I was fortunate enough to be doing well enough with the computer repair business where it was always this overlap, one thing leading to the next.

And if I ever found myself in a place where I wasn't thoroughly enjoying what I did, I overlapped to the next thing. I spent my nights and weekends on something else until that eventually became my full-time pursuit. So I want to talk about that, actually, because I think that's such an important point. I think we live in a world where the expectation is so instant and that you show up and the thing will just be created right after you. And I come from a background where, and I've made some really big abrupt jumps, but at the same time, the further you get into life, the harder it is to do that, especially once you start to build a family or a home or whatever it may be. And I completely agree. I think the better way to go about doing it is rather than just cutting short and say, I'm done. And then I'm going to hope and pray and work

really hard to scramble and make the next thing happen. Let me start to take all those extra hours and stop watching TV and stop doing all this stuff and start to build that next thing on the side and try and make it either big enough so that I can just kind of step into it or big enough so that there's a pretty clear trajectory forming and I know that it's going to need my full-time effort to get to that same place, but I can see it's going to get there. I see so many people not wanting to take that space.

They're just like, I'm done with my old thing. I'm out of here. Rather than saying, let me use that as a leverage point to build the next thing on the side. There's definitely the safety element of that, having the foundation of the day job or something to cover the bills while you do this other thing on the side and grow it more organically. It's definitely safer to have that foundation, but I think

there's another benefit to doing it this way that I think a lot of people don't realize, and that is that people have ideas of things that they think they would enjoy doing or like doing, but it's not always reality. You know, they end up trying it out and they realize, I don't actually like the work of waking up every day and writing a few thousand words. I just liked the idea of being an author. And this allows them to go out there and experience it and try it and maybe fail at it, or maybe realize, you know, I just like the idea of doing this. And you come to realize that in a safe place where you haven't just quit your job cold turkey and jumped out on your own into the unknown.

Yeah, no, I so agree. And the other thing that I think comes up a lot is that a lot of times if you jump out into the unknown and you know, okay, I've got three months of money to cover myself, then the first week or two, you're like, oh, cool, freedom, yeah. But if that thing doesn't immediately pan out and then you get to the last four weeks, you start freaking out and you start making decisions

not on what's the most intelligent thing to actually do to build over a longer term, but just on, you know, oh my God, I need money in my bank account. What's just going to stop the pain and put money in as quickly as possible. So you start deciding based more on fear and scarcity rather than what's really intelligent

and what will allow me to potentially also give myself the breathing room to develop the craft so that I can build something better over the long term. Right. So jumping back into your story, you got to a point where you're in a band, you move on, you're building a computer company, and then a design business. And then that's winding down. Are you still at the same time obsessing over working with letters? At this point, I am. No exaggeration here. Literally six to eight hours a day, I was spending doing lettering almost seven days a week, usually seven days a week. This is outside of the day job. I'd work eight to six at the day job and then do six to eight hours of lettering. And over the course of these three years, from basically

the beginning of starting the web firm, I'd spent in the neighborhood of 8000 hours practicing lettering just so much time. And I was starting to share this work, not initially, but eventually warming up to sharing it and posting it online, not really thinking anything of it. Like maybe maybe some of my friends will see this, you know, hand lettering has now, it's experienced a resurgence and a lot of, a lot of interest in it. It's huge now. It's amazing. It wasn't like that three, four, five years ago. And so I started sharing work and this is the part that people don't like, or maybe they don't want to hear, but for the first two years, it was nothing. I was sharing almost every day and it wasn't this explosion. It wasn't this massive audience growth. It was really just that long and steady, slow build, really slow. And I'm not worrying about it being fast because like I said,

I have the day job. It's covering my bills. This is just something on the side. It's my passion. I'm enjoying doing it. It wasn't me trying to become famous for something. I was just loving the craft of it. And eventually people started noticing very gradually saying, Hey, can I buy this on a print? Can I buy this on a t-shirt? So what I was doing is basically taking on commission requests from people saying, could you make a custom logo? Could you make a custom that? And since I had my bills covered, I saved all the money I made from those client requests. And then I put that right back into my first t-shirt design doing, you know, it costs maybe a thousand or two because of the number of shirts I wanted to do and the quality and the custom tags, you know, making it feel

like it was my own thing. And that really And that was really well received, I think, because it was in response to the interest that people had. The Apple Watch Series 10 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 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 eight 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 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 going to be fun. 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. I want to keep going, but there's something that you just said about it costs you a couple thousand dollars to create that first t-shirt. Because it sounds like you're semi-monogical about the quality and the integrity and the visual brand and the feel. It's got to be the right shirt, the right cut, the right material. It's got to be tagless. It's got to be all these different things. There's a mentality, especially in the online world these days, that says make it good enough and then ship. How do you feel about that? I'm much more of a long game kind of person. Yeah. To me, the first product isn't about making money.

And that's what I love about what I call the overlap technique, like we've been discussing. I don't see the first product as an opportunity to make money. I see it as an opportunity to create an experience. And so I don't want to cut corners and try and make a quick buck. If I were to just jump out and say, oh, I'm going to design my own custom t-shirts. I got to make some money so I can pay bills. I'm going to find a way to squeeze profits out of this. But I'd rather put that into the experience the person has because that experience is what's going to stay with them. That's going to resonate. It's going to cause them to come back and buy when I really am going to make a profit.

Yeah. And also, I mean, the experience is you're learning. It's like you're doing it because, A, it's a thing you can't not do, which for you, clearly, if you're doing it six to eight hours a day in addition to your full-time gig, just because it's the thing you massively geek out on and the fact that you're sharing it and people are resonating is almost secondary, which is very different where a lot of people now create for the purpose of finding fame. Then a lot of it is just, it's the experience you're creating, but simultaneously also also, it's your internship. It's your just path towards mastery.

But what's interesting is a lot of people will still share, and you did. You started to sort of share along the way, but without the intention of I'm sharing because I want to sell. That kind of happened organically once you hit a certain point. But then you also made this really deliberate decision, saying the first time I sell something, it can't just be good enough. It's got to be stunningly good. I wanted my brand to mean something for people. I wanted them to see my brand and remember an experience and know that the future things that I create, the future things that they might buy from me are going to bring about that experience again and again for them. Yeah, I think it's such an important thing to just kind of think through.

I have the same ethic, you know, with everything that we do, we try and just like, we're going to do it. We're going to do it absolutely over the top. You know, delight is at the core of our values with everything we try and create. And I think also these days, if you hold that ethic as something which is sacred to you, it's such a strong differentiator because I don't think, sadly, a lot of people do. Let's kind of roll with your story a little bit more here. So you're starting to build through the lettering and what's happening. Well, things are going really well with the products

and with the client work. I'm getting tons of requests for both. And it seems like everything's totally fine. And it really is, except that we're kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is all of the people that want to learn how to do what I do. And I've basically been neglecting them up to this point. I'm sharing work on a daily basis for a number of years, people are starting to associate me with lettering. And they're starting to associate lettering with me. And that's through this curation of my output. At the time, I was doing all kinds of work at the web design firm, right illustration, animation, icon design, user interface branding, but I was only sharing the lettering.

And through that curation, people started having the association with me and with me to lettering kind of back and forth. And it was a very strong bond. And so people thought of lettering, they thought, I want to learn how to do this. Who am I going to ask? I'll ask Sean. And so I started getting emails, you know, two, three, four, five, six emails a day, people asking questions. And so what I did was I created a guide and I put it up online and answered all of the common questions. And thus how I first became aware of you because I became, I think I first saw your work as a hand letter. You were sharing on Instagram for what I remember, right? And I was like, wow, I'm kind of blown away by just the ideas and the work and the craftsmanship. And then I start to search, you know, how do you learn hand lettering? I have a

background as an artist. I used to paint like album covers on jean jackets to make my walking around money as a kid. So I got really fascinated. I was like, I'd really love to explore this a bit. And I found that tutorial, essentially, that you posted. It seems like not only were people enjoying it, but Google was appreciating it as well. Because I just I put up the guide on my site. It wasn't at the time, it wasn't something that you download or had to sign up for. It was just there. It was just on the web. And people were appreciating it, they were linking to it. And so Google noticed and it started showing up in searches for hand lettering. I remember to this day what blew me away about it was how really in-depth and thorough and valuable it was. You hit the page and I didn't get the feeling that this is the lead to a product funnel.

I got the feeling that this is somebody who actually just put up a really cool thing that's going to help a lot of people. Probably because it was. I had no idea of any kind of product or course at the time, which eventually it turned into that. But I left it up there for a year. That's all it was, is just to help answer all the questions I was getting. I just wanted to help people. And over the course of that year, over 200,000 people had read the guide. I realized, wow, there's clearly interest here. There's clearly room for me to go even more in depth. And that's what I did is I put together a course. In order to be able to put together this course, I saved up money. I worked really hard at client work until I could afford six months of living expenses

to just sit and make this course over the course of that half year. And so during that time, what I did was I put a sign-up box on that page with the guide that said, hey, I'm making a course. Sign up if you want to be notified. And during that time, it amassed a list of 15,000 people, which was just incredible. Which is amazing. It blew me away just in such a short amount of time. Long story short, during these six months, I basically immersed myself in marketing, just learning everything I could, getting my hands on books and podcasts and videos,

everything I could just to learn about how to do a course, how to launch a product. Long story short, when I launched it, the course grossed six figures in three days, the very first three days. Were you absolutely blown away by that? Completely, completely floored. What was it that you think, what was the underlying energy or ethic or what was it that you think really deep down fueled that? I think because my course in particular was not at all trying to compete with what was already out there. What was out there? Well, what was out there were kind of these $29 stuff that was just teaching people a skill. You know, how do you do calligraphy? How do you draw letters? And I came at it from a totally different value standpoint,

which was, I'm going to teach you how to make a living as a hand lettering artist. And this is where I leveraged that unique hybrid we were talking about. I had the business experience, as well as the creative talent and this unique combination that is not really common. You know, most people, they're very strong in one or the other. And I decided to bring those together. And instead of trying to compete on a lower level, I priced it more in the two to $300 range. And when I launched it, I mentioned to people that I was going to be increasing the price after the launch. And 85% of people bought the top tier, the main tier, which was the $200 to $300 course.

What was the difference between sort of like the basic tier and the top tier? I basically did simplified versions of fewer of the modules because I had 50 total lessons and something like eight hours of video. And I broke it down into smaller modules. So the top one, you got all 10 and the lower ones, you got one module or three modules. Right. And so hand raised, I was one of the early purchasers. Oh, thank you. What stood out to me was because I looked around also, and there were cheap classes on Udemy or the big places online. What really stood out to me was the quality. Like you said, you spent six months on this. It was so clear that you had invested so much energy and time and personal resources in doing this. The other thing that stood out to me is that you recognized something,

and you spoke to it a little bit before, which is that a huge percentage of people didn't want to just learn how to letter. The reason they wanted to learn how to letter is because they want to make a living doing it. And you spoke to that in a way that I didn't see anybody else speak to. Do you think that's part of what was going on there? Definitely not being afraid to turn off the wrong people. Someone who's looking for something cheap, something quick or basic. That wasn't really my target audience. And I wasn't afraid to not reach those people. And I think a lot of people, they're afraid to go more specific and speak more strongly

to one person or one niche in their audience because they're thinking about all the people they're turning off. And I think it's to their own detriment. I mean, you want to resonate deeply with people. You want people to feel like you're speaking straight to them. If you're not speaking to someone else, they're going to be fine. They're going to brush it off and say, that's not for me, but for the people that it is for, they're going to really feel that. So for you then, that person wasn't the dabbler. You were looking for the person that was looking at saying, I actually want to invest a serious amount of time and money, because I really want to learn this. And you were really also looking for people who

are looking at this is potentially adding to their career path in some way, right? I mean, I'm teaching them how to work with clients, how to price the actual contract terms and licensing things that might be kind of hard otherwise to find kind of piecemealed in different places. I was trying to bring all of that together and say, here, I thought about this ahead of time for you. Yeah, but you're also bucking an ethic, and it's the art and money thing. There's a lot of the art world that still says to this day, you know, it's always got to be 100% pure. And the moment you start talking about business, it bastardizes everything, which I don't believe. And if you go back in history, you know, that argument is actually relatively new. You know, the greatest artists all had

patrons where they were working different jobs that paid their rent. But we've hit a point where this sort of this ethic in the world of art where if it's commercial in some way, well, that's not real art. Have you danced with this at all? Well, I mean, we have to pay bills somehow, right? And I don't think it's fair to say the only way to be an artist or the only way to be a musician is if you get a real job and pay your bills. I believe there is value in creative work. And I think that the business world also respects that. Certainly creative people tend to get taken advantage of

because they so thoroughly enjoy what they do. But there is acknowledged value of creative work. Take a tin lunchbox that's just plain and metal. That's not going to sell, but you slap a cartoon on that and people buy them up like hotcakes. You know, the design sells the product. And as designers, as artists, we are creating the value proposition. People don't want to just buy a lunchbox. They want to buy a fun experience for their kid.

And we're creating that selling power. And that selling power deserves to be acknowledged. It deserves to be compensated. And I think as things are getting more and more digital, things are becoming more and more automated, I think we're collectively fearing that the human element is going to be automated out of things. And we're missing that tangible handmade feel. And I think that's the reason for the resurgent interest in hand lettering. And I think that's also why clients are looking for it. They want artists to create something that's going to resonate with the people they want to reach.

I'm realizing this selling power is something that people are interested in, and it's something that people should learn how to sell. Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I wonder also if part of it is because you didn't come at this from sort of like the world of being traditionally trained as an artist. You came through business and then through design, which carries a very different lens and like, you know, designers generally look at it. And so there's an implicit understanding that what I'm creating has economic value for a client. So that you can kind of carry that to your own work and then bring it out into the world. People still dance with that. And I also, I so agree with you. I think one of the things that's

really driving the resurgence in hand lettering is just this nostalgia to get back to something tactile, even if it's just, you know, like stuff that looks more tactile in some way. I think we're missing it. I think because the world is going so digital so quickly. I know I'm missing it. You know, that was one of my interests. Like, I'm not looking to make a career as a hand letter. I was just, I want to get back to working with my hands. So I totally agree with that. I think that's something that's a powerful driver behind the growth of hand lettering. I think it's interesting that you highlighted the path of coming through business and then design before coming into the art world. I mean, maybe if I had gone through a more traditional path,

I wouldn't have this kind of a mindset or approach. Yeah, it is interesting how that determines so much of the way that people either develop baggage or don't develop baggage around the economic value of the art that they're creating, and whether you can feel good as an artist, and at the same time, feel good standing in the economic value that you're creating. And there's so much struggle, you know, around that. Even in the world of design, actually. Even in the world of design, because there's still a lot of people who want to be accepted for the extraordinary nature of their design. And feeling like, you know, like I've created something extraordinary, but the client or

the world outside of that, you know, doesn't actually see the economic value in it. You're constantly dancing dancing i'm sure you had this in your client work you know it's like i've got the person who's paying me to do this and what they want out of it and then i've got you know the my lens on what i want to create as an artist and somebody who wants to express in a way that i feel like you're bringing an opinion to the process that sometimes probably jives really well with the clients, but maybe not. I think there's also a third party here that a lot of people are recognizing and maybe not even aligning their client with, which I think is an important

part. Just coming from this background in web design, and I'm super big on professionalism and taking responsibility i personally do not believe that there's a such thing as clients from hell because i think only designers from hell take on those type of clients and a professional designer will seek responsibility this project went in a way that is other than what i expected or wanted where could i have done something differently? Where could I have prevented this problem? Where could I have more effectively communicated with this client the expectations that I have of them? How are things going to go in this project? Instead of getting frustrated that they're expecting one thing from me when I'm delivering another at this stage,

maybe I should have communicated that at the beginning. And so this third party is the client's customers. And the designer, you have to remember, the designer is not designing for the client, they're designing for the client's customers. And so it doesn't matter if something is, you know, if you personally love it, or if the client personally loves it, maybe your favorite color isn't the color that's going to resonate with the audience you're trying to reach. And that's something that you as the designer need to bring to the client and say, we're trying to reach these people. Let's dive into the market research and make sure we're not just creating something of our own preferential whim, either mine or yours. I don't want to do

that because I think that would be a disservice to you as the client. Yeah, no, completely great. And it's funny, I have the experience as an author, I know you're working on your book right now, as well as we're talking. And there is that interesting dynamic, because when you when you're an author, you've got I've got my publisher, and then my publisher in their mind, their customer is the the book buyer, but not the we're not talking about the person who buys it at the bookstore. It's the booksellers. It's the buyer at Barnes & Noble. It's the buyer at these big retailers. And they're trusting that that buyer then has in mind that they know the taste of the ultimate

buyer, the reader, well enough so that they'll be able to say yes or no. In fact, they have a lot of power over the cover design of a book. If know, if the buyer at Barnes and Noble comes back and says, nah, we were, you know, I would suggest a whole bunch of changes. There's a good chance that those changes are actually going to be made. So there's this really interesting feedback loop along those lines in the book industry still. And there's debate and battles over it as well. So many parties involved. And I think the artist and the designer would do well to zoom outside of their world and realize everything that's involved and all that this work is impacting. Yeah. I mean, in the end, it's in service of that ultimate experiencer. And that's, you want to feel like you're expressed. You want to feel like you're

doing a good job and you're offering your craft. But at the end of the day, the moment that you choose to accept money in exchange for what you're doing, somebody else's opinion matters. I think we just have to own that to a certain extent and be willing to work with it. All right, back to your journey. This is fun. I love these. You and I can take a lot of chances because we're so aligned in so many different ways. So you're starting to do all this hand lettering. You put up the tutorial and then you build this course. And oh my God, you know, like you say, it's here and people come running and a lot of people.

Where do you go from there? Honestly, it takes a little bit of a turn from here because I still love lettering. It's still a passion of mine. But obviously, when you start seeing headlines like a hand letterer makes six figures in three days, you start to pique the interest of people a little bit outside of that realm, more business minded. And once again, I'm realizing there's people wanting to learn to do what I do. And what I did was launch

a phenomenally successful course. And people are wanting to break this down and figure out how, you know, how did you do this? What went into this? What's behind the scenes? And so this basically, for me, this started a sharing of everything that I know, just everything that I'm learning. I just started teaching it. I just started doing what I call iterating in public. Hey, I'm going to figure this out as I go. I don't have all the answers, but I'm just going to share what's working, what's not working, and basically pivot towards business and helping other people realize that, you know, maybe you're into hand lettering, maybe you're into

music, maybe you're into development, whatever it is. I believe that you can make a living, you can actually support yourself doing that thing. And I think there's three ways ultimately to somehow make money from something that you're passionate about, something that you love doing. There's client work, and then there's products, and then there's teaching. So client work, I find, is the easiest way to get quick cash because products take a lot of investment up front. It takes a lot of time to get profit back from that. And then teaching requires that you have an audience. You have people to teach. And there's sort of a chicken and the egg thing going on there as well, because why should I listen to you if you don't have a track

record? Meanwhile, you're wondering, why should I put up things and create a track record if I have no one listening? But basically, trying to break down systematically what I've done and my journey and kind of distill it to these timeless principles that can help other people do the same regardless of what their industry is. Yeah. I want to linger on what you just said, though, that dance between client work product and teaching, because there are a lot of people that want to go straight to teaching or straight to product without realizing, especially on the teaching side right now, especially, and it's weird, in a weird way, I don't consider myself

an online entrepreneur, probably because I have a long history in brick and mortar entrepreneurship and service-oriented businesses. So this is a newer world for me. What I see happening a lot is people see right now, like creating courses online is hot. People are like, oh, you just have to throw something up, cost a little bit of money. It scales infinitely. I do it once and boom,

it's just automatic cash for the rest of my life. But the thing that allowed you to get to the place where for the first time you could do that was that from the time that you were a little kid, you had been like obsessively working on your craft. And then when you owned another business, you were then spending another, you know, like six to eight hours a day working on that craft, you know, to a point where by the time like you start to go public, you know, you had six, eight, 10,000 hours of extraordinary deliberate practice where you start to put stuff out and people are like, oh, wow, this is really good. Good on a level where people wanted to hire you to do it for them. And you were able to build a successful business around it, both on the

client work side and the product work side. And then, and only then, did you turn around and say, let me teach you what I know. But not even then. First, you said, let me just you what I know. But not even then. First you said, let me just share what I know for free because I'm getting hammered by emails and it's taking over my life. And then when you're like, oh my God, there are a lot of people who want to know, really know this. Then at that point, you became a teacher and you turned around and said, let me share what I know. And you were at a point then where you not only had built a substantial community by offering so much extraordinary value for free, but you had proven that you were at a place where you're ready to stand up and teach.

And you had this astonishing track record of extraordinary work and having built a successful business around that work. And I see a lot of people jumping straight to the, I want to create a course, I want to teach, without all that stuff beforehand, and then wondering why they just stumble immediately. Right. It's a long game mindset, right? You know, you have these big course places that are going out trying to find teachers, aggressively going towards these artists and creators and saying, hey, do you want to make a course? Do you want to make a course? And I think you're right. There is this microwave mentality of, oh, big platform, they've got the audience, I can just show up and record a few videos,

and it's going to be an overnight success. And I think a lot of people are getting disappointed. And I believe it's because people buy from those that they trust. And it's no longer something you can just go up to anyone and say, buy my product. I have it right here because they can pull out their phone and they can look online and look at the reviews and compare with other products and look at competitors. You have to be in the forefront of people's minds. You have to be the go-to person for that thing that you're trying to teach, that you're trying to help people with. And the way to be in the forefront of their minds is to just be relentless and consistent and prolific in providing value to people for free,

no strings attached, just providing value. Robert Cialdini talks about it in his book, Influence, the rule of reciprocity. You give someone something of value and they feel obligated to return the favor, not only just equally, but you buy someone a coffee and they want to turn around and buy you lunch because they don't want to feel this sense of indebtedness. So they're going to actually overcompensate in paying you back. But if you're just overwhelming people with this value consistently, they come to think of you as the person to go to when they're seeking advice, they're seeking solutions. And so when you actually do finally have a product available, they're going to buy for that reason because of this long and deep history, you know, the roots beneath the surface.

Yeah. And also because you've taken the time to actually be good enough to be able to deliver that value. And I think that's a big missing link. You're right. I'm totally taking that for granted, right? Spend the six, 8,000 hours and then you're good, right? It's just a two-step process. And not to say that you have to be the best in the world to be able to provide value like we can all provide value on some level no matter where we are you know we're always going to be one step ahead of somebody else where we can turn around and say hey this is what i i know maybe it's a value to you but still to be able to actually sort of have larger and larger and larger scale success you need to be able to provide larger and larger and larger scale value.

And that takes time and, you know, like massive effort sometimes. 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.

Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The Apple Watch Series 10 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 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. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So when you start to then focus your energy on helping people build, not only learn lettering and build businesses around lettering, but then broaden out to, okay, let me explore how I can just help people build more meaningful careers.

What form does that take? It basically started out as a podcast and being the ambitious, overcommitting person that I am. And by over committing, I don't mean that I don't deliver. My problem is that I always deliver and I'll work myself into the ground. Oh, if we have time, I would love to talk about the sabbatical thing. Yeah, actually, as soon as you said that, it popped into my mind. So let's definitely make sure we cover that. Because that's kind of why we're hanging out right now. Yeah, teaser for people. I'm just, I'm in New York City on a sabbatical week. And that's why I was able to stop by. I decided, oh, I'll do a twice a week podcast. That's not too hard, right? I'll just do a twice a week podcast. And so that's what I started out with. And it ended up being a pretty significant commitment. But it's one that I've stuck with, maybe initially against my better judgment.

But now I'm so glad that I did because we have just we have so many rabid listeners that are just eagerly, hungrily acquiring all of this knowledge. And basically what I get a lot is, you know, we say, hey, if you have any questions, you can contact us. We'd be happy to do a podcast on it. And surprisingly, people are pretty quiet. And I find that when we hear from people, they say, you know, I don't even know, I don't even know what to ask, but that's what I love about your podcast is it answers all of the questions that I didn't even know to ask. So I feel like I'm getting ahead here. And so for me, the biggest thing is doing this twice a week podcast, sharing everything that I know, everything on business, everything on marketing, entrepreneurship, it's online and

offline, just basically sharing, you know, sharing everything that I've learned and teaching everything that I know. Yeah. And again, like everything that you do, you don't just sort of sit there and talk into the internal mic on your computer. You, like me, are a bit of a gearhead. Yes. And you love production value. So, you know, you produce an extraordinary experience, as we can hear, like, the sirens in the background. Oh, yeah.

It's true. Man, I would love to be able to record in New York, but it's we've got, you know, a decent setup. And I mentioned to her, I said, you know, every once in a while, I get an email from people saying, oh, this is so unprofessional. This is just like, how can you even like let that go? It's just, and Tina's like, oh my God, this is like, I love the fact that I can like, if I'm walking around and I'm listening, like I can hear some of like the flavor of the city around you. She's like, don't ever take that out. And I was like, huh, well, that's a cool reframe. It kind of makes me feel better about that whole thing. Just embrace it.

Yeah. So, so it's funny because I've danced with sometimes like, do I just embrace it? And sometimes we record, you know, we're recording at my home studio now, but sometimes we record, you know, at an official studio where they can block out a lot more sound. But there's something that, that I do kind of like about just being able to get a little bit of the background and knowing that it's almost like it adds, you know, a context of uniqueness to the environment. I'm definitely, like you said, big on production value. And, you know, we regularly get people saying that we're ruining podcasts for them because we've set this really high bar of audio quality but i i i wish more people would place a bigger emphasis on the production quality because honestly as podcasters

it's it's relatively easy to make an investment in audio we we don't have to concern ourselves with lighting or and video right even though eventually we did end up doing a video production of each show. Initially, it was just audio. And a lot of people, they skimp out on that investment. And that's not to say you need to buy the top of the line gear, but something a little bit better than just the baseline. You know, maybe if you have a Skype guest, having them record on their end and taking the time to edit it together instead of, you know, letting the audio get choppy. I don't know, little things like that. I feel like make a big difference for people just in the overall brand perception that

they know, okay, when you come out with a course in the future, I know it's going to be high production quality. Yeah. Good production value because that's what you're about. And that's the whole thing. You know, part of it is just because you have pride in your work. You know, I love the fact that we can produce something that sounds really good, as do you. But part of it is also positioning.

You set an expectation that if this is the media that we create, then everything that we're going to create is going to be on that same level of not just production, but whatever it may be, creativity, service, value. And there's definitely that expectation. And that allows you to move into a market when it comes time to actually give people something that you're going to charge for. It allows you to move into that market at a premium level rather than a bargain basement level, which as an entrepreneur is where, at least in my mind, I always want to

play. So it was interesting too, that you just mentioned that you started out as a podcast and now, you know, like you also, and I've seen, and you guys should all watch, I'll put it in the show notes. There's a video where Sean walks through like all of his gear, like all the setup that they use. And you're like, Oh my God. Cause now they're broadcasting, they're live streaming, they're doing video too, and all this stuff. What's funny is we actually went the exact opposite way. So we actually started out as a web series, and we were shooting live with a crew and three-camera shoot for the first two and a half years. And then I became really infatuated with audio. And the tipping point for me was I was walking around the Metropolitan Museum one day with a woman named Julie Burstein, who was one of the creators of Studio 360, which is one of the big sort of public radio franchises.

And I was telling her, I was like, you know, I kind of think that there's something about radio that's really intriguing to me, and I'm really curious about public radio. Like, how do you break into that? And she's kind of like, well, why do you want to do that? And I was like, well, I think the reach is pretty extraordinary compared to what I can do. She kind of cocked her head, like I wasn't getting, I'm like, what am I missing? She said, the thing about audio, that's so different than video, what you're doing now. She's like, is that radio is a far more intimate medium than video. But what we were doing at the time was just we had started podcasting in addition

to video but all we were doing was stripping the audio out of the video and just airing it as a podcast she's like but to really get the most out of audio you can't just do what you're doing you can't just strip that she's like you have to the conversation has to happen audio and you have to produce for audio and kind of like a light bulb went on to me and I realized like that's the conversation that I enjoy having more. And I think people feel, like she said, people feel that intimacy so much more differently than when we were just shooting straight video

and stripping the audio. If you think of how many people that you allow three inches from your ear, it's maybe your spouse and your podcast, right? So people feel, I just had a, last night had a meetup here in New York City, just mentioned that I would be here and had a few people out. And it's so crazy, but it's really cool meeting people that, for me, I've never met personally, but they feel like they know me so intimately. And it's just through a podcast through audio format. And what I love about audio,

certainly videos engaging visually, you know, there's a lot of power in video, but like you said, not neglecting audio because of it's, it's so portable too. I mean, it fits in so many gaps of our life. I mean, you can shower with a Bluetooth speaker. You can have both of your hands on the wheel and be listening. You can be mowing the lawn. It fits in so many gaps of our life. I really feel like, you know, a lot of people are saying like, I don't think podcasts are really going anywhere. I mean, in a technological sense, if you look at something like the iPhone and iOS, the podcast app only came default just as recently as... It's three years ago, right?

No, it was iOS 8. It was just last fall. Oh, no kidding. I didn't even realize that. I feel like we're just, we're on the cusp of an explosion there. I so agree. And like you said, the portability of it versus video is just, I mean, I walk around the city all the time now. I've got my headphones on just catching up. I headphones in, and I'm so aware of the need to create deliberate pauses in my day for the really good creative ideas and solutions to bubble up without any sort of like deliberate input that now I've actually started to pull back a little bit from always having some sort of audio in my ear because I just want to walk around and just be, you know, just hear the sights and the sounds and the smells of the city around me without another message that I'm focusing on. I think those pauses are so important in life. And even in speaking, especially when people are just getting started with public speaking or recording podcasts or doing talks, they're so nervous. They're afraid that there's

going to be a little bit of dead air and they have filler words or they're stumbling to make sure that there's no gaps. But it's those pauses, like I just gave you right there, those pauses, that it's like the underline of your message. It's really driving something home. And it's this rhythm. It's like music. The notes are just as important as something home. And it's this rhythm. It's this, it's like music, you know, the notes are just as important as the rests. And I like what you said about, you know, sometimes unplugging, sometimes not filling in all of the gaps with audio. Yeah, which actually is a perfect segue also to your sabbatical concept. So right now we're hanging out, we're in New York City. I just happened to catch somewhere that you

were in this city. I reached out, I was like, dude, swing by and let's do this. Explain why you full time. I just work really hard. And I think that's because what I do is aligned with what I love to do. It's not a chore for me. And so this was something I had to communicate with my wife, Lacey, who's sitting on the couch over there here in the studio with us is, you know, sometimes I'll be working and, you know, you swing by my office and see me still in there and it's the evening hours and it feels like, oh, you're still working, you're just working, working, working. And I'm like, no, it's more than that for me. You know how when you're done with your job, you sit down on the couch and you read a book?

That's what I feel like for me. It's a mental transition because on the outside it looks the same. Maybe you did this work for clients, but now you're doing it for fun. It's because I love what I do so much, you know, it looks like the same to people on the outside. And I had to slow down and communicate that. But I'm basically a full on or full off guy, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it to the best of my abilities. I enjoy working hard. And what I realized was, you know, I'm doing multiple podcasts a week, I'm committing to so much. At this rate, if I continue, I recognize and I've gotten pretty close to reaching

this point, but I've recognized that I'm heading towards burnout. And I can't afford to burn out, you know, we think I can't afford not to work, I can't afford to not finish this project or ship this product. But you can't afford to burn out. It's terrible. I mean, I've seen other people do it. I've heard stories. And I mean, you're just you're out. You know, you think I need I should squeeze a little more sleep out of this day. But what happens when you're sick? I mean, then you're out for a week and you can't get anything done. And so we think it's less productive to slow down and stop working. But what I realized was it's more productive to have those purposeful rest points.

And so, you know, I've heard of people taking a seventh year off. Well, it isn't Stefan Sagmeister, like that's his famous thing, right? The entire year. And he's like, that sets up the next seven years of creative output for him. Right. So I've heard about this idea. But I thought, well, why don't we do this on a smaller scale? I mean, we go through our week, we typically have a seventh day where we slow down, hopefully, and maybe don't do as much work, if we're being healthy. And hopefully, during each day, we're taking time to have a little bit of a break, whether it's a lunch break, whether it's a mid-afternoon break, so you don't get in that slump after lunch. We have these breaks every day. We have a break every week, but then what?

And so I had this crazy idea. What if I do what I now call small-scale sabbaticals, where every seventh week I just take it off entirely. And so I did this the first time I did it, it coincided with a trip we had with some friends to Telluride, Colorado, which, Oh my goodness, if you haven't been just gorgeous, just gorgeous. And that was easy because it coincided with a trip we had, but the next seven weeks came around and I was like, Oh man, I don't think I can take this break. There's too much work to do. There's just too much work. And that's what I hear most often from people when they hear me talk about this sabbatical thing is, boy, I wish I could do that.

I wish I could take off that time. And I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying, you know, everyone can and should be able to do this because I realized you have to be at a point where you're stable enough. You know, you've got income coming in one way or another, and that's something you have to set up over time. It took time for me. But I took that second sabbatical and I said, okay, I'm going to purposefully take a break here. It was around the holidays and I could have easily shifted it to where it was around Thanksgiving where we were already going to be with family. But I said, no, I'm going to stay true to the sabbatical. I'm going to come back from Thanksgiving.

I'm going to take the next week off. And I'm so glad that I did. And I made a public commitment to people. I told people in my audience, this is what I'm going to be doing. And I'm so glad I did that because it would be so easy to give up on it on my own because I'm thinking about all the work that has to be done. Anyone who's a small business owner or any kind of business owner, they know how much there's always constantly things to be done. You never finish the work at the end of the day. You just decide this is my stopping point.

And I'm glad that I made that public commitment because it's allowed me to stick with it. And every seventh week, take off that week and rest and have it be this purposeful rest that allows us to continue working hard. And I believe in this so much. I believe that it makes us more productive, not just break even, even more productive in the six weeks that we're putting in that I now have five employees and I give them all paid sabbaticals. Every seventh week, everyone, everyone on the network, everyone on the team, they all take a sabbatical. So you have happy employees. They're happy.

And productive. I love the concept because the idea is that I don't have time to do it, but the reality is, and there's research around this too, that when you take those breaks, that you then become so much more productive and creative and effective, you know, that you're, it consumes like that extra time, you like that, what would normally take you seven or eight or nine weeks to do you get done in your six weeks, because you've hit it, you've got that

reset to tap into, and it fills the reservoir back up on so many different levels. I don't know if you were like me, but growing up, whenever I had an assignment, and the same with music, too. I took piano lessons. I was a smart kid, and my piano teacher, she really nailed it. She would show up, because I grew up in a big family. We had several of us taking lessons. She would actually come over to our house and and do all of all of the lessons at once she would show up and i would

practice in front of her play the piece and uh she would say you you did really good sean but i wish that you would practice somehow she knew i wish you would practice we're supposed to practice like two hours a day it was so much i wish you would practice every single day because she knew that at the last minute, I would put in a quick, you know, really tight one-hour practice session before she came, try and cram it all in. I did the same with school.

A three-week paper the night before. I just pulled an all-nighter until seven or eight when I had to go to class. And, you know, I'd still get like a 78 or an 80 on it. And it's like, well, I could kind of coast through this. But somehow the teacher always knew. And rather than procrastinate until the end, I wish I had spread it out. Because I think the reality of it is, to some degree or another, we're all procrastinators.

And that we try to, or if we have something that needs to be done, we get it done in whatever time we have. And whatever needs to be done, it tends to expand to the time that we allot. And so the six weeks that I'm not on sabbatical, I managed to get done what I would have got done in seven weeks had I allotted seven weeks. Yeah. And also I think knowing that that seventh week is actually going to happen, forces you to make sure that like, you know, if you're like, well, if I really don't have it done, like I'll take an extra day into the week. But if you're like, no, this is sacred, like no matter what this is going to happen, then it forces you to say for those six weeks, whatever I need to do to make this happen in six weeks, even if it would normally take seven, right, I'm going to make it happen in six weeks. The teacher's knocking on the door. Yeah, exactly. And so funny, I'm wired so much the same way as you. It's like, I was pretty good, you know, but still like people knew, like I would get called on that all the time. So you're here actually, as part of your, you know, sabbatical week, just kind of bopping

around New York City with your wife, which is kind of fun. Speaking of your wife, you guys are working together now. Yes. Yes, she is finally on the team. She's trying to ignore us on the couch. She's like, what's he going to say? She's used to the podcasting. It's really great because I would go to conferences or speak and, you know, have to be

away. Now that we're working together, our schedules are aligned. We both have sabbaticals, we both have breaks, we both have trips and conferences and we can be together. And I really enjoy that. So I've decided if I'm going to speak from now on, I'm requiring that they at least accommodate her and allow her to come with me. And that's been really, really huge for us. Yeah. What was the conversation like when you guys were deciding, OK, let's do this full time together? Yeah.

So everyone's like, oh, my gosh, I can't imagine working for my spouse. It's funny because I mean, you met my wife. My wife and I work full time together also out of a home office. And we have we work really well together because we have different sort of orientations and very different skill sets too. So she, she does one thing phenomenally well that I have no interest in doing and I do other things really well that she doesn't want to be involved in. So it just works really well together. But I'm curious how it works with you guys, because we've gotten a lot of raised eyebrows from people. They're like, wait, you with each other all day,

every day? Like, how does that work? Because people are like, I can never imagine that I need space. Yeah, we have very complimentary personalities. I'm much more introverted, I can stay at home for days. And she's always anxious to get out, which is good, because it gets me out as well. These, you know, these sabbaticals are for me, it's, it's a nice break. And I, you know, by the time it's over, I'm ready to get back to work. And for her, it's like coming up for air. Um, but it's, it's worked out really well. I guess, um, I guess we're fortunate enough to have really complimentary personalities where we play off each other's strengths and weaknesses and work together really well.

I'm just watching for any response from Lacey on the couch. She's like, no, it's all legit. Thumbs up. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I mean, I think if you can make it happen, because one of my sort of constant lingering questions is if you're looking to grow something, if you're an entrepreneur and a maker and you're looking to grow something, I'm always looking for examples and ways to be able to grow it in a way where you can make something substantial that matters to you, that matters to other people, that supports you well in the world. But at the same time, when you're further in life, if you have a spouse or a partner or family honors your, you know, if your value is to be physically and emotionally present and there and engaged with the people that honors your ability to really do that simultaneously. And so, so I think building a business with that partner is a really interesting thing to explore,

but it's absolutely not right for everybody to. Yeah, totally agree. And I think underlying all of this is really strong communication because when we were dating, we did four years of long distance. And so all it was, was talking, all it was, was communication. And I think that's huge. Like, like I was saying earlier, where it's, it would seem like from the outside that I'm working when you look into my office. For me, that's my playtime because I've mentally shifted. And that was something that we had to communicate and work out. So underlying all of this is just a ton of communication. You can't expect people to magically be on the same page. You have to really make sure that you're on the same page. What I've been, you know, trying to do with Lacey is making sure that when I hear her communicate something to me, I repeat back what I understand. Because I think a lot of times we feel like we've communicated something when we've said it, and not really when it's been received. And a lot of times we want to put the reception of our message, the responsibility of that on the other person. And really, I think we should take responsibility for ensuring that something we're communicating is actually being received by the other person.

Yeah, no, I love that. And which also happens to be a phenomenal practice when you're building a company and you have employees, because it's that same dynamic, especially a small business, it's like all of a sudden, oh, well, so now I'm married to five people and now 10. So it's a really good practice to actually, I love that you brought that up. I think it's so valuable. Thank you. Curious.

So you're at a point now where you've moved away from creating as a musician. You moved away from your full-time hand lettering, you know, really working viscerally and with your hands and to building a company, to building educational content, to traveling and to speaking, to managing people, to producing media. Are you getting the same Jones filled by doing that, that you did back in the day when you're hanging out in the basement writing or playing music or when you were just in a corner of a room lettering massively geeking out with nobody watching such a good question i love it i am

getting a different kind of fulfillment and so what I mean by that is I still recognize that void there. And I guess there's two ways that I'm thinking of this. Number one, the sabbatical period, the small-scale sabbatical, the primary reason is for resting. But the other reason is to pursue my secondary passions. And I believe we have these seasons of passions that we go through. And I don't think that just because you're saying no to one of them now means that you're saying no to it forever. And I think that's one of the

big struggles that a lot of people have is, I have too many things that I love doing. Like, how do I pick one? You know, I can't, I can't decide on one. And it's really hard to build an audience when you're in that kind of a situation, because if you're not sure, other people certainly aren't sure. And they're, they're not going to be able to clearly associate with you with something or something with you. You have to pick something now. And what I like to say is you can't steer a parked car. So just pick one of them and go and you can course correct. If you find out that you didn't like doing that thing, you can't steer a parked car. So just pick one of them and go and you can course correct if you find out that you didn't like doing that thing, you can do another and switch. And for me, I'm really big on focus just on a day to day basis with my time, focus blocks of time. And then

also in seasons, what is the thing that I'm focusing on right now. And I realized right now I'm focusing on building a business, building teams, producing media. And I'm not so much focusing on the art right now. I'm kind of transitioning out of that season. But the sabbatical periods allow me to pursue those secondary passions in these little checkpoints, kind of to keep them fresh and keep them alive. And I think the way that you know that something is still a passion, even if you're saying no to it right now, is if you feel a yearning to go back to it, is it still coming to mind or are you still missing it? You know, do you still feel like there's a part of you that's left there? I think that means there's still a

passion there waiting to be rekindled. And rather than let that fire go out completely, I like to stoke it. And every seven weeks I go and I dabble in it. And I also like to bring that into whatever I'm working with business. Maybe I can make something by hand. Maybe I can produce my own music for this video that we're about to do. So basically just keeping them alive all while really focusing on whatever it is that I'm choosing to be the task at hand. So it's kind of like you put them in maintenance mode. Yeah. Never just saying I'm done with this, but just kind of like, you know, they're kind

of like on coast in the background and I'll move into them and play with them when I want to. But in the back of your mind, maybe there'll be another season where you roll back into that and it becomes the focus. You know how I like to picture it is imagine several little campfires. Like say you have five campfires and they all represent your passions. And what a lot of us do is we run around and we poke at the fires and try and keep them all going and they all stay medium, small level. But what if you really focus on one of them and you build it to bonfire status because it's just everything that you're focusing on right now? Then it's raging, it's roaring, it's huge. You can move on to the

next one and not even worry that that's going to die out by the time you come back around to it because you focused on it. And so I guess in these different seasons where, you know, some years ago I was in a band, I was doing music and then I transitioned to design and then art and then business and coming back around kind of full circle to music. It's not dead yet because it was my sole focus at the time. And then I have these intervals where I'm keeping it alive. Love it. Love it. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you, to live a good life, what does that mean to you? I would say to do work that fulfills you and provide value to other people.

That's the simplest way I can put it. Thank you. Hey, I really enjoyed that conversation. If you found it valuable as well, would so appreciate if you would just head on over to iTunes, take a couple of seconds, and let us know. Share a review or rating. Always honest.

And if you found this episode, the conversation valuable, and you think other people, maybe friends or family would enjoy it and benefit from it, go ahead and share it with them as well. And as always, if you want to know what's going on with us at Good Life Project, then head over to goodlifeproject.com. And that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll see you next time. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push.

Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The Apple Watch Series 10 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 eight 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 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 going to 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.