The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Side Hustle & Flow: 10 Principles to Live and Lead a More Productive Life in Less Time by Cliff Beach

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Side Hustle & Flow: 10 Principles to Live and Lead a More Productive Life in Less Time by Cliff Beach Ten chapters, chronicling Cliff's journey in music from getting kicked off "American Idol" to finding success with his hit song "Confident". It tells people how to start doing more passion projects while continuing to work their day job. It describes a detailed and realistic approach, unlike those which promise that you can become a multi-millionaire with minimal effort. Rather than setting lofty, unobtainable goals, Cliff embodies the "every man", taking slow and strategic, methodical steps to my version of success, which the readers can also aspire to and achieve in their own right.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big tent, the big circus in the sky of the Chris Fosh Show family. I'm not sure why I'm using a

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That's a joke. We're not really an MLM. And if you're expecting checks, you're not luck. Anyway, for the show, your family, friends, and relatives, go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss. The LinkedIn, the LinkedIn newsletter has been blowing up too. LinkedIn finally made the newsletter, people's newsletter on LinkedIn public. So you don't have to be a connection of mine on LinkedIn to be able to read the amazing newsletter that we have over there. And of course, it features the podcast guests that we have on this amazing show. If I say amazing one more time, sue me or not. Do what you want. I don't know. I'll do what I want. It's my goddamn show.

If I want to say amazing, call it the Amazing Chris Voss Show. Maybe I should rename it. I'll do that. I'll do what I want because that's how I roll. And today, I've done what I want. I've invited an amazing author and artist, musical artist on the show. He is the author of the book Side Hustle and Flow, 10 Principles to Live and Lead a More Productive Life in Less Time. Because that's what we do in the show. We make you smarter and everyone knows that if you're

smarter, you're sexier to whatever sex you might be attracted to or they're attracted to you. So this will make you smarter and you'll glow. You'll get like a glow. Cliff, are you going to help people glow today? Is that what you're going to do? Yeah, we're going to grow up and we're going to glow up all the same time. We're going to glow up. All right.

I love this. Cliff Beach is on the show with us today. He's the author of the aforementioned book. He's also a musician. So we're going to learn a bit about music and stuff. He's been performing live for more than 20 years. His single, Confident, is featured on Spotify, All Funked Up, and Funk Drive playlists with over 850 plus streams. He is the host of the Deeper Grooves podcast and Deeper Grooves on 885 FM.

Beach is the author of The Side Hustle and Flow, as we mentioned before, the new book, and chronicles his musical journey while still working at Day Job. He's written exclusively, if I can learn to say that on a Monday, for Beauty Tap, Pepperdine, and Rockstar Life. Welcome to the show, Cliff. How are you? I'm great, Cliff. How are you? I'm great, Cliff. How are you? Good, good, good. I'm sorry to put the pressure on you, make everyone glow today, but I don't know.

You seem like the kind of guy who can probably pull that off. I don't know. If anyone can, I think I have a good handle on it. There you go. It's Monday Glow Day. Maybe I'll declare that as a national holiday or a weekly thing we'll do on the Chris Foss Show. So, Cliff, give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on those interwebges,

those giant pneumatic tubes in the sky. Definitely. Well, they can find me for the book at sidehustleandflow.net. They can find my music at cliffbeachmusic.com or my record label, California Soul Music, at californiasoulmusic.com or for the radio show at thesocatsound.org. There you go. So tell us a little bit about you, your upbringing, what got you into music, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, well, I am originally from Washington, D.C. I grew up playing music in church and in school. I graduated very early at 16, went off to conservatory at Berklee College of Music in Boston. I graduated at 19 before i could drink legally but now i'm sober um and so uh yeah it just was always a mutual love of music i come from a huge extended family where my family actually they were part of creating their own church and it's kind of a hybrid of christian Judaism. It's called Hebra-lites,

but essentially they outlawed musical instruments. So my family is very versed at singing very intricate acapella music, all vocal music. And so I grew up, everyone's singing swapping parts. I probably come from a family about 300, 270 are amazing singers. I would say I'm probably not even the best singer within my family, but one of the only ones that does it professionally outside of the church realm.

So I tried to bring elements of that into the stage. I never wanted to be on a pulpit, but I did want to be on the stage to be able to give people that infectious joy that comes from very jubilant, upbeat, call-and-response type music. And I've been very fortunate to be able to do it for over 20 years and uh foray that into radio into podcasting into being a music director and band for a television show on discovery channel with josh case tonight and so uh yeah i just put one foot in front of the other and that's kind of how the book came along as well there you go and and you talk in the book about this uh you were on American Idol and something happened. Give us a lowdown on that.

Yeah. Like everyone else, I moved to L.A. in 2002. In 2003, I was on American Idol, went through multiple rounds. What they don't show you is that obviously there's a bunch of rounds that happen before you actually hit TV. So when people are like, oh, I didn't make it on TV or whatever, that's actually like four rounds in. So I made it through all the preliminary rounds. Producers loved me. Then the executive producers loved me. And then when I finally got to Simon, Randy, and sadly, no Paula for reasons unknown,

they stepped in Ryan Seacrest. And so I did not make it past. I feel if I had Paula in my pocket, Simon was on board, which is crazy out of everyone. He liked me. And it was pocket Simon was on board which is crazy out of everyone he liked me and it was Randy who was on the fence and then Ron Seacrest who who threw the veto and which would seal that deal but it was okay I realized very quickly that I did not want to be a reality TV star I wanted to just do music and it's actually better sometimes to uh to get kicked out of something because it forced me to grow up and grow up very quickly

there you go and you can at least get you know you can at least say hey man i i gave it a shot i gave my best shot i was there and and uh doesn't randy do country music am i thinking the right guy uh that's a different randy i think randy was mariah carey's musical director oh well i mean mariah carey music i mean that explains everything uh i'm a metallica fan so i i can't yeah and actually i have issues with mariah carey and her paola if you understand the old uh mca days and what went on with that one of my favorite bands uh kansas was putting out just one of the greatest albums ever would out just one of the greatest albums ever,

would have been one of the greatest albums ever. And it was at MCA. The MCA CEO was having an affair, and I think he married up Mariah Carey. And so he literally cut off all marketing for any new albums coming out, and they just bought Paola from Mariah Carey, and that's the reason she's a star. They just bought all the radio stations it was pay to play and that's it was actually prosecuted by the justice department i believe um or investigated so that's my issue of mariah i mean she she makes nice music i mean it's okay but i'm just trying to give you some

shade to throw it whatever but i'll throw it yeah well nasa just keeps making all that money off the christmas oh that damn christmas yeah we should probably send her back to wherever she came from just over that christmas song alone but that's me bah humbug anyway uh so uh what type of music what genre do you uh do with your music uh yeah i do funk soul r&B music with a 10-piece band based in Los Angeles. We're going to do a foray also into jazz this year. It's nice to have a lot of organic instruments, not electronic, not beats, but real musicians playing with heart and soul. You sing. What other instruments do you do? I play keyboard as well. I'm endorsed by Nord Keyboards, so the red keyboards, if you ever see them on stages across the world.

I'm always in red and black. But yeah, I've played piano since I was five years old. Oh, wow. I have an organ, clavinet. I have a Rhodes. They're very vintage. I think my Rhodes is a Mark II 1979 edition. But you can't emulate the real thing.

So you wrote a book. You talk about some of your stories, some of your journeys, and things like that. Give us some tease out on what's inside the book. Yeah, I mean, I had the pandemic. This was my big pandemic project. I knew music was shut down. I needed to do something with my life and I had actually been doing music online during the pandemic but got picked up by CNN and so during

that time I was like you know I just want to condense my ideas obviously doing anything within the arts is very difficult and I feel like it's almost impossible to just be a starving artist especially in a city like LA so I wanted to give people the opportunity to understand that you can work to make money, to live, and then also still work on your passion project. I think a lot of times people have this misnomer that I have to do one or the other. Like if I'm not a starving artist, then I'm not a true artist.

Or if I take a nine to five or something else, then that's, you know, taking away from my art, which is not true. I think you can do everything. You can't do it all at once, but it's better to do a little bit of something towards your goal every day, baby steps and incremental changes than to do nothing. And I feel like if you have all or nothing approach, then people do the latter. They end up doing nothing nothing and then we don't get those songs or those books or those podcasts or those ideas out there that only you can give because you've given up on even making a little niche for yourself there you go there you go i mean that's that's really the way to do it and everything and uh all that good stuff and it's available on hardcover

uh do you anticipate coming out with the paperback anytime soon? Yeah, the paperback should be rolling out momentarily, probably tomorrow. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and then Audible audiobook is out last month. Yeah, so all the versions will be out. Kindle version is out at the end of last year. So I'm excited to have

it in the four major formats. I looked at your book on Amazon as well. Congratulations to you. Obviously, it's a huge following and and really just promoting thought leaders and ideas i have a high respect for for anyone getting their dreams out there there you go there you go uh so uh what's the future hold for you what are you working on for your future stuff and and do you have are you doing the album thing or the song thing on spotify how do you produce your music and publish it that's a good question so i have my own record label california soul music i've put out my music and a handful of other artists that i like in california the last

probably since 2017 right now i do have a label in denver that's interested in putting out one of our soul records so we're in the process of mixing a new soul record, 11 songs, 10 originals, one cover. And then I'm also doing my first jazz record with a whole new rhythm section band. And that has 13 songs, doing an Ella Fitzgerald tribute album, essentially, but really a tribute to the great American songbook, great writers uh you know timeless music and so i'm very excited to be doing that to stretch projects for me um you know really having to you know you have the chops but you have to always constantly be pushing the needle forward doing something different getting out of your comfort zone because that's where all the growth really happens and so i try to always with every project do something different so that I don't get bored

or I don't become stagnated. So I'm super excited about both of these records, which will take up primarily most of the year, shopping them around before releasing. But that'll be at least 24 new songs coming out within the next year or so. There you go. There you go.

Well, that should be exciting to have. Can you tell us the name of the new album yet? Or is it ready to go? Or is it going to be a while? Yeah, the name of the new album yet Or is it is it is it ready to go or is it? Yes ready. So the full record is called Beach, please Play on my name and then and then the jazz records called you showed me the way which is the title track and was one Of it was actually Ella Fitzgerald's first cool written song that she did and Billie Holiday a very young Billy I Billy Holiday did it first before Ella. So it's exciting to be able to show and she was very adept at doing these songbook series from

the 50s with Norman Granz and Verb Records and so they would pull back all these original verses that got cut out of song. So we did that for this song too, really paying a true homage to the many layers of greatness that I feel Ella, who has never had a biopic because I don't think anyone can play her easily, but she should. And so I'm excited. And men don't normally tribute women in this way, typically. So it's exciting to be able to show it. Women will tribute male songwriters

or male singers often more so. There you go. There you go, man. Well, this has been pretty interesting anything more you want to tease out on uh future works or the book or whatever else you're working on yeah well i mean we have our podcast deeper groove that's currently in season five so we're releasing that on tuesday through march uh super excited we talk with you know people who have won grammys been nominated for grammys people that are up and coming really again just reiterating that people should be pushing their art, pushing their music, getting their dreams out there, trying new things.

And I find just like with this podcast, you know, listening to people tell their stories, it helps to inspire and motivate. And there's really never enough of that, I think, within the space. Sometimes it can become a little saccharine sweet. So I try not to be on that side of things. We're very realistic, very tactical, very tangible in that way way and then i have my radio show on 88.5 uh the socal sound in la but it can be listened to the archive we're just about to go over our 100th show next month so there's plenty of archives to choose from saturday night 10 p.m locally for streaming worldwide and that's super exciting because i get to play an hour's

worth of some of the best funk soul jazz blues groove oriented music so really taking people sometimes we'll play a few mainstream things but we really try to be more on the b-side more on the deeper cuts uh really giving people kind of a musical history and just showing them really great artists that may not be at the main stage, but I think people should know. There you go. There you go. Well, this has been fun to have you on the show, Cliff.

We really appreciate it. Give us your.com so we can find you on the internet, please. Yes. So you can find me at cliffbeatsmusic.com, californiasoulmusic.com, sidehustle.net, and thesocalfound.org. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on once five.net and the Philcowfound.org. There you go. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on once again.

I love your sign in the back. It says, God made me funky. Yes. There you go. Well, continued success, my friend. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortuness Chris Foss, and all

those places on the interwebs that you may find us. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.