The School of Greatness - 460 Make Money Through Your Art with Erik Wahl

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

"Fascination is greater than perfection." - Erik Wahl If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/460

This is episode number 460 with Eric Wahl. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to another edition of the School of Greatness podcast.

Now, if you are a dancer, an artist, a painter, a musician, a singer, a writer, if you have any creative artistic expression inside of you, then this episode is for you. And if you are an individual working at a career or an entrepreneur that maybe isn't as creative as you'd like to be, then this is also for you because we've got Eric Wall in the house and he's an American graffiti artist speed painter author and speaker and he's spoken at many big conventions by Microsoft Disney NBC and Honda now Eric makes paintings of thinkers leaders and cultural icons such as Michael Jordan Steve Jobs and Bono during his. And he does them in just a couple of minutes only with his hands. Now, prior to his art career, he worked for 10 years in corporate America.

And then after getting laid off and running out of money, he went back to his childhood love of art to discover his true passion and gift. And his new book is called The Spark and the Grind. true passion, and gift. And his new book is called The Spark and the Grind. And what we cover in today's interview is how an artist can build a successful business around their art. Also, how to get through a major career loss and transition to come out even better on the other side.

Why starving artists are a self-fulfilling prophecy. The reason artists need to understand people in order to be successful, how to brand yourself as an artist to be so desirable that you never go broke again, and how structure creates freedom in all creative activity. Guys, I'm super excited about this one. Make sure you share it out with your friends. lewishouse.com slash 460. And the review of the week. Big shout out to Carmilly Bence. Here's what she said over on iTunes. She said the best podcast out there for moms. And after listening to just one episode, I was hooked.

I have three kids all around the teen years and wanted to positively influence their day before school. I would find positive quotes online and make them repeat it before we reach their schools, hoping it would help them believe in themselves and encourage other kids to have a positive outlook on school and life. Since finding the school of greatness, we've been able to simply listen to one of the short motivational stories on the way to school. The influence this podcast has had on the lives of my children and I is beyond comprehension. I am very appreciative and want every mom out there to use this podcast as a tool in raising happier and greater kids. Well, Sharmelly, thank you so much for that amazing review. I appreciate it. And to all the moms out there, my vision is to bring education that schools don't give kids in the schools and to bring light on what some of the most successful individuals in all walks of life are doing. And that's with an incredible artist on this episode. So without further ado,

let me introduce to you the one, the only Eric Wall. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Eric Wall in the house. Good to see you, man. Thanks for coming in. I appreciate it. Now this is the first time we've met, but I've been hearing about you from a few different friends. Michael Port introduced us and I watched one of your videos and I was just in awe of what you can create from a stage. Now, you're a graffiti artist, speed painter, author, motivational speaker, but you don't sell any of your art. You perform it live for huge audiences and then sell it for charity. Is that correct? Gifted away to the sponsor of the event, either the client who brought me in or the

charitable cause, gifted back to them as a thank you for the opportunity to perform, to share with their audience. And then they auction it off to raise good money for a great cause. So you do sell it. They pay you to come speak and you sell the art essentially just to them. In my, on the corporate circuit, yes. I'm paid to come and deliver keynote presentations. During those keynote presentations, I happen to create two dope paintings choreographed. You do?

Yeah, I do one at the beginning. So before I even say one word, this audience maybe doesn't know me. Maybe they are investment bankers. Maybe they're realtors. Maybe they're coders. They don't know you. They don't know me. Maybe they are investment bankers. Maybe they're realtors. Maybe they're coders. They don't know you. They don't know me.

Our next keynote speaker, speaking on innovation, Eric Wall. Who's he? I come out on stage, and I don't give them the chance to Google me or Wikipedia me. I turn off the lights, crank the rock music, and choreograph a painting, an icon to music within three minutes. And then I turn around. Now it doesn't matter who I am. I just did something super cool and I changed the molecules in the room. So they felt like they were going to be hearing a keynote speaker, talk about leadership, talk about embracing change, talk about disruption. And now all of a sudden I just created an experience that went, aha, it was disruptive. And now I have their attention at a different level where

they're not critiquing me or critiquing if that slide matches the quote that they heard about innovation last year. But they were writing a real wave of attention and momentum and experience as opposed to an academic keynote. Right. Wow. So three minutes, you do an icon. Who are some of the people you would do in the beginning of a show? Bono, Dylan, Lennon, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs. Very recognizable.

In three minutes. Yeah. And it looks like them, huh? Google it. I've seen it. I've seen it. You've got a new book out called The Spark and the Grind, Ignite Your Power of Discipline Creativity. And when he showed up today, Eric gave me a copy, and he drew this with crayons.

A box of crayons, right? Is that- Crayola crayons. Crayola crayons. Yes. So you guys can see this here, and I'll take an image of it and put it up on the show notes. Crayola crayons with my headshot and the School of Greenness logo.

It's very cool. So thank you for the gift. I appreciate it. I will not sell it because I'm not allowed to. The reason I said Crayola is Crayola is actually one of those smells that if you pull out a box of Crayola crayons as adults,

it's one of the top 20 most recognizable smells as adults. And it actually lowers blood pressure upwards 10 points. I'm sorry, lowers it downwards 10 points. Fascinating. Learn something new every day. It takes us back to the neuroscience of why that is. It takes us back to a time when things were less stressful. We enjoyed coloring up until we were like five or six and we started seeing other people's art. We started

judging our art versus what they were doing. Crayola takes us back to a time when life was just more whimsical and free. So that kind of adult connection to childhood creativity is fun. Crayola has mastered that art. I work with Crayola quite a bit, which is why I'm giving Crayola a shout out because it's not just a crayon. Any crayon can color. Crayola crayons have that scent of childhood

that is unique. It's powerful, man. Now, did you go to school for art or did you kind of teach yourself as a kid growing up or how did this passion begin? I first started painting for the first time when I was 30. Wow. The first time. Yeah. So I- Did you draw before? Did you do anything? As a kid, I knew I loved it. I knew I loved to

paint and draw and color, but I was told by a well-meaning adult, one of my early school teachers that I really wasn't that great of an artist because I didn't color within the lines because I went too fast because I didn't pay attention to detail. And so I'm like a good kid. I listen. And so I kind of set that aside and I migrated towards that, which I was affirmed for, like getting 20 to 29 spelling test or history or mathematics. And so I was a very operationally efficient kid. I was an alpha dog. I also was with an athlete growing up. And so there was a lot of get good grades, do well on the ball field, eat clean, get a good night's sleep, rinse, wash, repeat.

That was my existence. And it's a great first half of life. It's a great chapter to open things up because there's so much that became habit for me as far as embracing discipline and routine and structure. And then that disrupted, got disrupted around the age of 30. If you do the math, that's the dot-com bomb. I wasn't the only one to get blindsided. There were many. But what was the most challenging for me is I realized how much of my identity,

my self-worth, my ego was tied up in money, in stuff, in security. And if you would have talked to me when I was 25 or 28 and asked me, hey, what's the most important thing in your life? I would have told you my family. I would have said the company line, but my life really didn't reflect it. And I didn't realize this until later. And I had to fall. I had to suffer. I had to lose that which was kind of a false oasis, which was success defined by money or by power, prestige, possessions, what kind of car I was driving, what kind of job title I had. None of them bad. All of those good things. had, none of them bad, all of those good things. But when it gets out of balance and that stuff becomes too much of what I was moving towards, things that I should have been paying more attention to, like humility, like empathy, like gratitude and joy, those things were just out of balance.

Through this kind of, my wife and I talk about an early midlife crisis at age 20. At this point, I'm married and have three young boys. Wow. In your 20s. Yeah. You have three kids in your 20s, wow. Yeah. My boys now are 21, 19, and 17.

Wow. So it's not my first lap around the pond. Yeah. So, and I didn't have, so we lost all of our money. What was the career you were doing then? I was an agent for,

at an entertainment agency. Okay. So, I brokered entertainment and keynote speakers around the world. So,

I kind of knew the business side of how to communicate with clients, what makes a speaker successful, what makes a speaker successful, what makes a band successful, what is the proper marketing that some keynote speakers had amazing presentations,

but really not that great of a marketing experience. And so they didn't get booked very much, even though they were great speakers. And then I saw speakers who maybe weren't that great that had incredible marketing skills and packages and that they were booked all the time. So I just learned about that through my time working in that world on the professional side, experienced this disruption in my life, lost my financial security. security and this pursuit of the American dream almost felt like an American nightmare for me, uh, because my job, everything that I'd wrapped up in my identity all of a sudden disappeared. And so now what, now what do I do? And so through it, and this was not a tramp,

now I'm an artist, you know, now I'm going to go. This was a dark period. There was a lot of suffering, a lot of self-reflection, a lot of times that Tasha, my wife and I would just talk about what happened. What do we think is going to happen in the future? And I started to spend time with other artists because they seem to be more pensive about life. They weren't as fast moving. They weren't as forward running. And there was just something attractive about that for me at that point in my life that I never would have seen before.

It was invisible in plain sight to me before. But all of a sudden, I saw these artists from a little different perspective. And as I spent time with them, just became attracted to their views, their craft. I started to study, just couldn't get enough art history. All those things that I glossed over in like, okay, Picasso this, yeah, the Enlightenment this. Now I looked at it with curiosity and fascination, and I just couldn't get enough of it. And the thing that spoke the most to me were street artists, graffiti artists, because they had this clever, cheeky, provocative message.

It wasn't just a painting on the wall framed that people in the Louvre would walk by and look at, or critique, or say this is a masterpiece or not, street art was meant for the people. And I just loved it. You've got some here. And it jumps off in a way that a traditional landscape maybe wouldn't. Even abstractions or modern art wasn't as attractive to me as street art. And so that's why when I started out, so I wrote this program almost overnight because I realized, oh, I have to put this in,

have to put this in. Artists, even though they had this genius, these great ideas, these fascinating lyrics or talents, they were operating on the fringes because they felt like the world didn't get them. The world didn't race to them and buy their number one best-selling hit, even though it really was good. They didn't go buy their art. Our grandma wouldn't pay attention to what they're doing with their sculpture because they didn't get it. And so I realized then that these artists became kind of self-absorbed.

They became kind of depressed because they weren't experiencing success or critical accolades or even financial compensation for their craft. And so I watched them just kind of wither. And the idea of the starving artist became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The reason it's cliche is because it's true. They're all out here in Beverly Hills and Hollywood

and San Fran and New York and Paris trying to unlock this code. How do I get noticed? How do I make my skill, my art, my love, how do I get attention and how do I get compensated for it? So I'm watching this from a business mindset because that's the world that I came from. And I realized, gosh, it's not simply creativity and art and imagination. And it's not simply hard work and discipline and structure and accountability and analytics and metrics.

It's yes and. It's this dynamic tension between the two. And I just thought that was so cool. And that was so unique. It's not a message that was out there. It was what I realized through real life experiences. And I'm like, let's take this on the road. Let's fashion

this. And so I have to go back and say that artists had this awesome sauce about them, but it wasn't everything. And so putting structure and branding and optimization inside of art, translated it, made it come alive. So how does any artist become financially successful? If they have a talent or if they don't have a talent, do you think any artist could build a successful business around their art? I would be very careful as an artist how you define success. And that's the biggest challenge. Should I make a full-time income for comfortable living?

Yes, it's absolutely possible. And it's possible not because they have a great voice not because they have are very naturally talented at being able to capture photorealism not because they were it comes naturally but because they do it because of their hard work and because they understand consumer behavior and pop culture. And so you can have the best voice in the world. And that actually can almost be an obstacle. If you have a really, really clean, perfect pitch singing voice, you're going to start to rely on that voice as being the top of the game.

And you might not work or practice on becoming a front man or a leading lady and how to, how to croon to an audience and pull them in and fascinate them. And so that perfect pitch, that great talent might actually be an obstacle to their own success. So being able to understand that your talent is, uh, necessary, but it's not all in all of those artists. Yes.

Anyone can be successful doing it, but you have to understand business and you have to understand social media and you have to understand people because people are the ones that buy art that make artists financially secure so unless you understand the people and can translate to them it's not going to work and so as much time as you spend on your craft you need to either have a team around you doing the marketing or you also, if you're not flush with cash, you need to get out and figure it out. You need to figure out what people are digging and how can you take your skills and make it match those who actually hold the purse strings. Because just because you created something cool doesn't mean it's going to sell. That's true. And there's a lot of stuff that other artists might think isn't good at all.

But that artist has learned how to package and position and brand and sell the art, whether music or art or whatever. And it becomes a huge hit because they know how to sell. So you don't have to be the best artist to be the biggest or the most successful. artists and to be the biggest and the most successful. That's where I'm, I'm watching this now and I'm, I'm cautioning artists who want to do this full time because there's a chance that you're going to sacrifice some of your authenticity. You're going to sacrifice some of your art to be able to translate. The ultimate goal is to keep everything authentic and original and have people want to purchase or have more of your authenticity

through your art but if you're trying to flip albums if you're trying to move artwork if you're treating it as a commodity people will the consumers will know that they've got a real high bs meter if you're being sold something or if that song is so cool i've got to have that i've got to work out to that song i've got to have that painting in my house because it reminds me of this person or reminds me of this idea of success. So really great artwork is just a reflection of your values and what makes you think. And so if I'm going to understand or want you to purchase this piece of art, I need to understand you and what lights you up, not always what lights me up. So there's a disconnect there you see with authenticity versus commercialism. So that's why I caution true artists, artists who are doing it for the

love of the craft to be careful how you commoditize or say, I want to be financially successful. Be real careful where financial success goes over into your personal craft. Be aware of it. You've got to be aware of it because if you want to make a living doing it, you have to understand it, but understand that there will be some morphing of your natural talent if you're going to connect to pop culture. Right. I had an artist on recently, Andy Grammer, a musician, a singer, a songwriter, and he said that for four years, he was in Santa Monica on the promenade playing eight hours a day, his music, because he wasn't getting opportunities. But he said that four years and he was just barely getting by to like pay the rent every month,

but he loved it so much. And he, he said it was a great experience of practicing his art and how to connect to the people and what they wanted. And he would play a song and he could see if someone would turn and stop and if they would pay money. And he said he learned how to connect with humans that way through that process, as opposed to just playing by himself all the time and kind of like doing his own thing. He,

he learned how to connect. He would play like, he would play like a cover song that he didn't care about to get the attention. It wasn't authentic for him, but he was like, Oh, this is what draws people in. So how can I write a song that's like this? That to get the attention. It wasn't authentic for him. He was like, oh, this is what draws people in.

So how can I write a song that's like this that is true to me, that sounds similar, that's as interesting, but it's my own words and my own way. And that's kind of how he developed his art with being kind of commercial and now he's a platinum award winning artist. That's Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000

Hours. That's where the Beatles were performing prior to becoming an overnight success. They used to play cover songs all the time, right? The Beatles. Here's the formula. If you're a street musician, cover, cover, cover, original. Cover, cover, cover, original. And the people crowd around because they're hearing Brown Eyed Girl.

The people crowd around because you just did an acoustic version of ACDC's Thunderstruck. That fascinates. That draws them over and then you do an original. And you don't need to announce that now this is original. You just start weaving in your genius right next to these other ones.

It is crafty. And that's the... People oftentimes don't understand with artists, there really isn't any such thing as an overnight success. Any artist who's worth a salt has slaved and suffered and endured and has spent days on the pier, just plain understanding what the people like. This idea of the voice,

you know, just bam, you sing one song and all of a sudden you're a best-selling artist it's it's created a uh an improper myth about what art is what creativity what fame is how to achieve and how many of those people on the voice have actually come out with a big album or been like after the voice do they do they do anything? I don't follow, and I didn't mean to throw The Voice under the bus if there's some voice folks out there. It is interesting to me that now artists

have these platforms. Now you have social media where you don't have to win a contest. And a lot of times, it's the person who got third in The Voice actually is the one that launches the album because they captured the hearts of the fans. And oh, I thought Susan was going to win this actually is the one that launches the album because they captured the hearts of the fans. And,

oh, I thought, you know, Susan was going to win this because I really felt for her. And she's got that, she's a single mom and her song about this. And I wish she would have won. I'm going to go buy her album instead of Tom's album,

Tom's song, who crushed it on the final finale of the voice and won, but maybe he didn't do anything after that. So it's a, it's an ongoing thing that there's a lot of, there's a lot of grind. There's a lot of hustle behind artistic success. And you started when you were 30.

How did you start, I guess, practicing? Were you just like in the cave every day painting or were you, how were you learning how to master your craft? I couldn't get enough of it. And so it was just, I didn't go to formal art school and artists that have seen me say, you know, if you would have gone to art school at, you know, if you would have been very talented and drawn your whole life, I would have gone to art school and they would have taught me logically how to draw. And I wouldn't be able to approach the craft the way that I do. So I approach it in

a very dynamic, emotional way. And when I paint, I'm painting in front of very large audiences. And so it's not about perfection. It's not about having the most photorealistic image. It's about being the most entertaining in three minutes of time and capturing the greatest likeness. So coming as close to John Lennon as possible in three minutes.

Now, if I had 30 minutes, I could do a much better round things off, push the darks back, pull the lights forward, make it look exactly like Lennon's album cover. But that's not as cool as seeing someone do it in three minutes with their hands.

So I realized that that's where you can't put a price on cool and fascination is greater than perfection. And that's kind of what I learned as an artist. And then, so as a, as a keynote speaker, as I'm talking, I'm, I'm experiencing creativity real time. I hadn't been educated on creativity. I hadn't been educated in the arts. I was unpacking this all for myself because it was just so amazing. And it was like a whole new world that was opened up. It was like an expanded consciousness where I was very linear.

Like I said, I was an alpha dog. And I saw the world in a very myopic, through a very myopic lens. Through disruption, misfortune, for me, misfortune, my view became peripheral. And what I also realized is that it wasn't a woe is me story. There's all kinds of people experience a relational devastation. They were experienced health devastation. They were experienced financial devastation. Pain happens in people's lives. For all of us. For all of us. And we can either numb it and insulate it and say, doggone it, I'm going to go and now I'm going to do this. Pain can't get me down.

Or we feel it fully. We allow the emotion to sink in, but then we don't let that emotion take control of us. We take control of the emotion. And that, so that's kind of what happened to me and kind of what I learned is, you know, in that cliche, what is it? Pain is mandatory. Suffering is optional. But there is, there's a moment of darkness

that's actually good for the human soul. It's, it's how, it's how we know what joy is. And it is a discipline. Gratitude for me became a discipline. Joy became a discipline. And I only knew what it felt like because I'd experienced the other side. That was an important realization for me that I wouldn't have been able to speak to before I was 30. It's hard to know what joy is if we don't know what suffering is or pain is. And I'm sorry that that's not very motivational speaker of me to say you need to suffer. You need to experience the pain and the hardship. You're an athlete. If you wanted to get stronger- You had to suffer.

You had to go to the gym. Yeah. Pain every day. athlete, if you wanted to get stronger, you had to suffer. You had to go to the gym and you sort of, you welcomed that sweat. If you didn't sweat, if you didn't feel the pain, you kind of cheated yourself. You didn't get that great of workout, but that's what allowed you to become a higher and higher level athlete was because you were willing to do the work that the other athletes weren't willing to do. You were willing to face more resistance, endure more suffering, more hardship, and that's what actually made you successful. That was where the joy was. Same thing in creativity. Same thing in the arts is you have to meet the resistance. You have to feel the rejection. You have to feel someone who doesn't like your art. You have to feel the pain and the loneliness and

dredge through it before you're going to know what that success really is supposed to feel like. And that's why I feel like it's a dangerous pursuit to commoditize it too early or talk about money or can I make a living at this? Because if you don't love it, if you don't love playing out on that boardwalk for eight hours a day, you're going to start finding reasons not to. You're going to say, you know what, I'm not making any money at this day, you're going to start finding reasons not to. You're going to say, you know what? I'm not making any money at this. I'm not going to do it.

Or you just become disconnected from the mastery of your authentic genius and you become attached to other people's perception of what you thought it was supposed to be or why this is unfair, why you have a better voice than that person over there. Your poetry is more majestic than those simple lyrics, but people just don't get it. Yeah. I talk about as an athlete, and you're an athlete talking about forcing pain upon yourself every single day. This is what I try to do, whatever it may be. And that could be five minutes of pushups. It doesn't have to be like this grueling, I'm dying every single day experience,

but some type of physical or emotional or mental challenge every single day I try to force on myself. It's usually with a workout. I feel like that's the easiest. Anyone can push themselves and sweat and at least go a little bit farther than you want to go with what your heart is telling you to slow down. farther than you want to go with what your heart is telling you to slow down. And when we do that, I feel like we build up this ability to endure any type of emotional stress or pain or rejection or whatever that comes our way. But if we're not building it up every single day, when we lose over and over or we get

rejected over and over, we're going to be like, this sucks. I'm in a dark, deep place like we could easily go to. You train to become physically fit. You also want to train to become emotionally fit. And that's the highest form of human intelligence is self-awareness. Is being aware of, are my emotions being hijacked? Why am I getting angry? What's happening around me? And building a little bit of a buffer zone between what actually happened and what you're thinking your reaction should be. And that's where, you know, I personally, I don't talk about in my presentations,

I don't talk about meditation or priming or spirituality, but I am living it. That's what I do before I go on stage. Those are the spaces that I access before I start to paint, before I start to write. Tony Robbins calls it priming, where he puts himself in that space. You probably, you know, before I go work out, I actually prime myself before I set foot in the gym, because whether that workout is going to be hard or not, or I'm going to get through it has already been determined in my head before I even set foot in the gym. So I take a moment to prime so that when that leg workout is crushing me, I can push back when I can't do as many pull-ups as I did last time that I realized I'm not giving up. I'm going to power through this and realize next time,

next back workout, I need to hydrate better. I need to sleep a little better. I need to eat a little cleaner because it's showing now. Granted, my age is catching up with me too. So I need to factor that in as well. But priming is a big part of success, whether you're working out, trying to lose weight, trying to create, trying to network, trying to build a business. What do you think about before you go on stage or as you're painting in front of 10,000 people? What are your thoughts? Two separate things. Before I go on stage, and I'm very introverted. I'm not a glad hander. I shouldn't say glad hander because that puts the label on extroverts. I gain energy by being alone. So I will go and I am completely alone in this space of quietness, priming, meditating, connecting to the audience. So each audience could be different. It could be

bankers. They could be wearing suits. It could be a morning keynote. It could be an afternoon keynote. I need to find the rhythm of the room. And I can't make assumptions that this is a conservative group. This is a liberal group. This is a sales group and very loud or very pensive or academic. I have to get in there and listen and feel the audience kind of behind the stage so that I can find their heartbeat so that when I take the stage, I'm fully present. And so I have a team of show producers who kind of make sure all the AVs dialed, mics, sound, lights, everything just with militaristic discipline, ensuring all of this is in place so that I'm freed up. So there's zero friction between am I mic'd? So I'm getting myself in the right headspace. When I take the stage, I don't come out like I'm going to share now these four pellets of wisdom.

It's just being connected to them. So there's a lot of improv. There's a lot of freestyling that I'll do, but that's because I'm so confident in the structure of what's taking place around me. That's another kind of structure creates freedom. That's a tag for me, but that's very true that I'm so disciplined. I'm so structured in my setup that when I actually go out, I'm completely free and fully present in the moment and can add lib, can improv, can mix things up. Maybe this audience, uh, dug the pain so much that I need to do another one. Maybe they, maybe they want more case studies, more business examples, more pull quotes. I cringe a little bit when people say I'm a motivational speaker. I get it.

I get why people say that, but that's not what I am. I'm a performance artist who's sharing cool ideas, but just doing it in such a fun way that it happens to be motivating, but I'm not a rah-rah guy. I'm very much a performer that I want them to feel the beauty of the lyrics and the chord progressions and changes more than I want them to go home saying,

these are the two actionable takeaways on how to become a better leader tomorrow. There's lots of awesome speakers that do that and hats off to them. I love that they do that. I'm just not a huge fan of the keynote speaking industry for that reason. This stuff isn't pull quotes. This isn't one buzz clip is going to change your life or all of a sudden open you up. It is about a shifting of your mind, mindset. And so that's what I like doing is, is making these ideas accessible to people who don't think they're creative or that, uh, can't even draw a stick figure. Right. That's like me. Yeah. But I can, I can reverse engineer that,

uh, back to when you probably started, stopped drawing because anyone can draw. Here's the funny thing. I used to, I used to feel like I was horrible at drawing. I mean, I was actually not that good at it.

And then I started to find, and I started to draw Cowan and Hobbes and like trace. I had tracing paper that traced over it. And then I would look at the book and then I'd have my own paper and I'd just draw what I saw. And I got pretty good at copying these like Calvin and Hobbes

cartoons or whatever. And I would try other things, Disney characters, and I got pretty good at kind of copying. But when it came to me doing it on my own without seeing it, it just felt like doing it on my own without seeing it, it was felt like a different muscle. I didn't develop yet. That was it.

That's the first step. I would say you're on what? Episode four, 60, some four 50 something. I'm guessing your first one wasn't that good. Or it just was, it, maybe it felt good out of the gates and you knew you loved it,

but there were ways to improve. There were things that you could have done as an interviewer that i think i can do better next time and so now 400 somewhere later you're a master craftsman so the same thing in art if you you know do 464 calvin and hogs and see if you don't improve a little bit and so with everyone that they have that same but most of us stop after the second, either because we feel like we're copying or because ours wasn't as good as Jenny's or Tommy's. And so I'm probably not that good or I suck as an artist. And then we don't pick it up again. So all of our reading and writing and arithmetic skills, a lot of us did postgraduate

levels, but our art skills kind of stopped around age five or six. Why is that? Because that kind of was learned out of us from the system. And one of the things that I'm passionate about is that art is not about producing a product. It's not about a noun, but it's about a process of thinking. Art is about producing thinking. And in that way, English is an art. Language is an art. Communication is an art. Being an entrepreneur is an art. It's about being a bearer of risk and that our school system really doesn't do a great job helping us be bearers of risk or be explorers or be courageous. They teach us how to memorize yesterday's history assignment or math problems.

And so our kids aren't fascinated by school. School is imposed on them. So they become efficient in school for that test. And then oftentimes it goes away. Who was the 18th president of the US? It's like, or can you tell me all 50 states and capitals? Oh, well, I could when I was 12 because I knew that song and I could test for it, but we don't know them anymore because we're not required to. If we made it fascinating,

if there was another number one best-selling hit that came out today with states and capitals, you'd know them again. So I'm a big proponent of fascinating our kids for the future of education as opposed to standardized testing or SAT scores. We're losing some of our best, most creative, awesome kids because they don't fit into this standardized testing mold. Yeah. Now I want to go back. How many years did it take for you to kind of get your stride as an artist? You started when you were around 30, right? Kind of getting into it right around 30. Now was there, you know, how many years until you were like, okay, now I can go out there and perform this and I can, I'm still striding. That's the thing is I haven't. And so people will look and they're

like, Oh, that's, that's sweet. That must have taken you forever. Um, I've done a lot, a lot, a lot of practice in my studio because, because I love it. I developed fairly rapidly. Um, just almost accelerated learning in art because I loved it so much. You're obsessed with it. I was obsessed with it. Yes, and so... Did you have teachers?

Were you teaching yourself? Were you watching other people? I went and sought out. I would not be taught directly. I would go and just hang out. Yeah, experience. How did you capture light? Wait a second.

You just did one stroke there inside the iris and the pupil pops and the whole image was activated and came to life. I have to learn that. And so it was through my seeking, not being taught. And it's very difficult for me to go to an art school and have them say,

here's the color wheel. Here's balance. Here's the gold. So there's a lot of knowledge that goes into mastery of the craft, but that wasn't what I was seeking out at first. I was seeking out just everything awesome about it that I loved.

And then because I loved it so much, I wanted to know about the golden ratios. I wanted to know about how Rembrandt captured light. I wanted to know about how street artists and can control and calligraphy. And then I wanted to know about photography. And then I wanted to know about photography. And then I wanted to know about writing. Then I wanted to know about music. It was all a post 30 mind shift fascination with curiosity and creativity than it was

natural prodigy. There's no natural prodigy in here. I happen to, I think, have found what others would have perceived as some success. So it was encouraging for me. I'm like, cool. But I didn't paint on stage until probably two years after that. And that was a huge leap. Yeah. Maybe a little bit later. I don't know the exact, And that was a huge leap. 32. Yeah. 32-ish. Maybe a little bit later. I don't know the exact. Because there was a dark period of just writing and creating and figuring out what happened to me.

Right. Who are you? What's your? And I didn't have, yeah, I wasn't booked solid. I didn't know that this was going to be a career. I thought I redefined success from being financial success or 401K or kids' college education. My wife and I really redefined it because we didn't have any of that. We kind of redefined it to being what if success was having a great meal as a family together at the end of the day?

I can do that. Like today was a crappy day. I don't feel that great. But if it's a successful day because I had dinner with my family at the end of the day, life's kind of awesome again. And so it was that gradual climb back to experiencing smaller gratitude and joys and letting go of this idea of success that was really a false oasis. It never would have been enough for me. And all of those things are good things. I don't want to

rip anyone's American dream or goals away from them. The ironic thing now is after I let all of that go, it has come back to me more than 10x. I made a decent salary before, but if money's my goal, then it's far superior now. The only difference is I don't care. It just doesn't matter. It would have mattered a lot to me when I was 28. I would have been super proud of how much I was making

and who I was speaking in front of and pimping. And those things are coming now, but that's not what I'm seeking. Yeah. And how many times are you speaking a year right now? A hundred. A hundred times a year. And we cap it at – we've been capping it at 100 for the last 12 years in a row. Wow.

Fortunately, the demand – and it's been inside this closed circuit. So I don't do public shows. These are all corporate events, but we've been booked solid at 100 year for the last 12 years. And it's been the quiet sniper. Microsoft is having their annual sales meeting and we're hired to come in and blow them away

or Coke or IBM. And then people don't know your name. So it's who is this guy and wow yeah because you do something so unique on stage that no other speaker does right or no other presenter does right and it's difficult to define people who see it they was that a keynote presentation was that a multimedia performance but we're that's because we're delivering keynote content, but we're rocking their world like they just attended the U2 concert. So it's that, again, that mashup. I feel like there's a space, maybe I shouldn't say this for you, but there's a space for more artists to do something like that,

whether they're a photographer or they're a musician or whatever, to make a great living doing what they love, speaking to people or performing in their own way. I just feel like there's a huge opportunity for that, isn't there? There is. There's only one of you. There's only one of me. In this space.

This job hadn't even been invented when I was a kid. So we invented it. But the reason that that's difficult and the reason why I have kind of a unique competitive advantage is there's a lot of incredible talented artists out there who have incredible work that I, in my lifetime, will probably not be able to compete with them at their level. And there's a lot of phenomenal authors, former CEOs, business coaches who really can speak at a very high academic level. But there's not many who are walking in both worlds.

And if you're very logical or analytical, have great content, you're oftentimes maybe lack some of the showmanship or skills that an artist would have. And if you're a really talented artist, you might lack some of those analytical, critical take-home content skills. And so that's where my presentation kind of catches people off guard.

Number one, that they're even seeing this in a corporate environment at all, this cool rock show, and this kind of dude that doesn't look like the keynote speaker they had last year. And then this long-haired Gen X graffiti artist all of a sudden turns around and starts talking their language. Starts talking about business and competitive advantages and differentiating from the competition

and elevating brand awareness and value. And they're like, well, I wasn't expecting a graffiti artist to know that much about business. So it is the mashup. It's a balance. And that's what's kind of unique at this point. It's funny. We had a Matthew Hussey's a dating coach for women. He teaches

women how to get the dream guy, how to bag the elephant, right? How to get the, how to get the dream guy. And he talks about, you know, if you want to be an attractive, uh, or, or a dangerous man is the one that's not just brilliantly smart by itself or extremely athletic or talented in one thing only. It's the one who's got a combination of both, who's smart and intelligent, but also is fit and loves his mom and all these other things. It's like the person who's both. If you're just one, you become very boring after a while to a woman. You just have one talent. But when you can do all these things and put it together, you're like a unicorn. And so you're like the unicorn of graffiti artists, right?

Because you can- Or the unicorn of keynote speakers. Right, exactly. So how can you not mean, where all the dudes listening, they realize that, yeah, love your mom, also be successful, be loyal, be funny. It's the balance. It's the balance in all of this, which is why the balance in analytics and creativity.

If you are overweighted or overbalanced like I was, life becomes stressful. Life becomes hard. Obstacles in my way pre-30 were very inconvenient for me. I did not care for them at all. And I've learned to just ride waves of disruption, but it's because of balance. It's the yin and the yang of life, joy and pain. Spark, grind. It is how to date. There's so many elements of balance. There's beauty in balance. And we silo things off. And that's the way we learn as humans. We kind of categorize so that

we can understand. But once we build labels, sometimes we disable cultures. We disable people. We disable ourselves by our own cognitive biases or narratives. And we need to understand, but not be limited to those silos or containers. So that's expansive thinking that that kind of stuff is super cool to me. And that's what I'm trying to get through in my art, in my presentations, in my writings is there's always a beauty in balance. And I happen to be branded as a graffiti artist who speaks on the corporate lecture circuit. But I'm just a guy. I'm just a dude who has kind of come up, thought of some stuff that I think is kind of cool.

And now I'm trying to figure out what's the coolest way to share this at the biggest scale so I don't just kind of sit on it in my studio. Yeah, I love it. What's the challenge you have to continue to innovate yourself and continue to grow as an artist and not feel like, Oh, I've been doing this for the last 12 years, a hundred, a hundred gigs a year. You know, I'm sure you've drawn Bono or whoever Abraham Lincoln a million times now. Do you ever feel like I need, you need to innovate or you need to continue to grow or do you feel stagnant ever? Yeah, constantly pushing, constantly doing new stuff. And actually, podcasts are kind of new for me.

I'm actually a little bit self-conscious. As much as I am, when I take the stage, I'm like, I'm free as a bird. I love it. I'm thinking and I'm feeling at a state with adrenaline that I don't experience all the time. But when I take the stage, it is just, it feels amazing. When the cameras say action, when I'm inside of an interview or on television, I become a little more self-conscious.

Like, did I already put my hands here? Like, how do I? Is this? So I'm practicing, and I realize that I'm not that great at it yet, but if I do another 450-some-odd podcasts, I'm going to get better. And so it's that idea of if I'm going to be preaching about pushing the envelope, about courage, about being vulnerable, about being creative, I've got to practice it. I can't become too pat or rote or routine. So I knock myself intentionally off of center with, like you said, little mini vaccination labs in the workout. How can you push yourself beyond what you thought you were going to do. So I pushed myself as an artist. I pushed myself as a writer.

I pushed myself as a performer just beyond what I thought was kind of the comfort zone, out on the skinny, skinny branches. And then I'll scamper back to the trunk and feel safety again, but know that I was just out there. I didn't die. So I'm going to push a little bit further. And it's that process of exploration is I think what I've gotten pretty good at over the years is my tolerance for risk,

my tolerance for fear and failure. I still experience them. I'm just aware of what they are sooner and can either put it to the side or step forward in confidence. So it's just an awareness game. If there's an artist listening, a musician, performer, dancer, anyone in the arts, traditional creative arts, I look at myself as an artist, as a business person, as a speaker, as an author. I think of it as an art myself.

But let's just say the traditional arts world, and they're listening because I know there's a lot of dancers that listen, actually. Shout out to Antoine Troop, who's a dancer that always listens. And I know that they struggle with making a full-time living because they're so passionate about what they do, and they're incredible artists. And they struggle to make full-time income around it. What would you say to a young artist, again, it doesn't matter if you're a dancer, a drawer, graffiti, whatever, on the best way that they can build a business or full-time income around their art?

I keep the day job. And that is different than a lot of people will say. They'll say, do what you love and never work a day in your life. They'll say, you know, do what you love and never work a day in your life. That devalues artists in some ways to me, because I feel like there's an authenticity to what these dancers, what these writers, what these painters are doing. And again, that's where I'm like, we want you to become financially secure. I want them to be successful. I want them to have money and maybe even a lot of money, but not at the expense of what their craft is. So if you're a dancer and you're part of a troupe, you might be wanting to

have your own solo career and you might want to be freestyling out and you be the lead out on the stage. But because the money is in being a troupe, being a backup dancer, hitting someone else's beats, you're doing your art, but you might not be as completely fulfilled as you were maybe when you were the lead out on the pier dancing and just collecting money in a hat. There might be something more fulfilling in doing your own art as opposed to someone else's art. And if you look at what's available in art, it's oftentimes graphic design or backup dancers, backup singers, light. It's oftentimes offshoots of what the art is. So they're around what they love. And I think that's great to be around what you love.

I want them to be, but also understand that your own connection to your dancing, to your art, there's something very intimate and very personal there that should not be too quickly attached to making a living. I think after 10 years of hard work and grinding and feeling what audience is like that, you know, after you go cover, cover, cover, you start putting out originals. And if people like it, that's when you start to feel success, but don't go away from your covers too quick because you're a pure artist. People won't understand you. They need the covers to be lured in. And then you give them a little taste of your brilliance next to those. So, uh, that's why I, I'm, I'm, I kind of zig is everyone else zags. And I said, keep that day job.

You are still working at Starbucks or busing tables so that you can fund your dream and keep your art pure. Until you can make it the full-time thing. If you want to make it a full-time. There's very, very few people that are doing their own original art and getting compensated being being paid full time. And our society doesn't value art at the level that, and that's not on society, that's on the people.

That's on the artist. If they have to figure out ways to build the value proposition, they have to figure out ways to make this such a great song, such a great painting. But people have to buy it or listen to it. They have to. So much intrigue that they're like, what is this?

How are they doing this? Like, I need to learn more, right? Understand hooks in music. Understand lyrics. Is it a love? You're not going to hit a heavy metal thrashing band with a love song at first. You might need to adjust.

It's all adjustments in understanding the audience and being emotionally intelligent and self-aware about your relationship to your craft, your relationship to money, your relationship to social media. All of them, neither good nor bad. How we use social media can be both very good and very bad. How we use credit cards can be very good. It can also be very bad. It's not what it is. It's how we use it.

What is our relationship to it? And what do you think about individuals who maybe are listening that don't think they're creative at all? You know, someone like maybe yourself when you were 25 and we didn't think you were talented as an artist. What would you say to someone on how to unlock their inner creativity? I would first of all tell them that their opinion is completely valid, that they probably have a lifetime of narratives.

Conditioning. Conditioning as to why they're not creative. But if I could sit down with them for an hour and just walk them through why they've built up those barriers, I can start breaking through and showing them that creativity is a big word. It's not just about art. It's not just about painting. It's about a way of thinking. It's about a way to navigate ambiguity, a way by which we master complexity, a way by which we live. And once I demystify and open up the scope on what creativity actually is, it's really an energy that you don't conquer it or you don't achieve it.

You just kind of access it. You, you tap into your own creativity that oftentimes we've shut off from the age of five or six. So if you're human, you're creative. I've kind of, any lack of creativity is really just a lack of curiosity. It's, we've stopped becoming curious about this particular thing. And so we've stopped doing it. And so that's what I'm trying to reignite in adults, in our educational system, in communities is the relationship to creativity through curiosity. How do we open this back up? My kids like Snapchat. I don't want to say Snapchat's good or bad or label it. I want to understand how they use it and then use that as a tool for them to understand more about business

or about love or about life. So I want to use their tools, their gamification, their social media. I want to, I want to adapt to them and not have them make sure that they sit in street rows and they're reading, writing, and arithmetic homework is done on time. Right. Yeah. I'm excited about everything you're doing, man. I want to watch you perform live one day. I'm excited.

The Spark and the Grind, Ignite the Power of Discipline Creativity by Eric Wall. Make sure you guys go pick it up right now. I've got a few final questions for you. The first one is called The Three Truths, and I'm guys go pick it up right now. I've got a few final questions for you. The first one is called The Three Truths and I'm going to ask it a little differently. If this was the last day for you

many years from now, however long you want to live, you live as long as you want and then it's the last day and you've written all the books you want to write, you've painted all the paintings, you've done all the art you want to do,

you've spoken everywhere, you've done everything you wanted to do in your life. For whatever reason, everything's been erased that you want to write. You've painted all the paintings. You've done all the art you want to do. You've spoken everywhere. You've done everything you wanted to do in your life. For whatever reason, everything's been erased that you've ever created. It's been gone. It's poof. No one has access to it anymore. You get to do one final painting or piece of art.

This is the final piece of art. The only thing that the world has access to to see your creations. This is the last thing and only thing. What would be on this painting, what would you paint and what would be the three things that it would

leave behind for the world? So what would be the three truths that this painting would represent for you that would be the message for the world? It would be something shocking. It would be something shocking. It would be something slightly disruptive. It would be visually eye-popping. I would probably use very bright colors since this is my masterpiece. This is the one that's going to define me. This isn't going to be about subtlety or blending lines, shading balance. This is going to be about leaping out, grabbing attention,

and then sharing a message. So the art itself would be very bright, very angular. But the message behind it would be to, it would be about love. It would be, so the painting itself would be very probably aggressive and red and jumping out and getting people's attention. But then as they look at it further, it would, it would lead them into kind of a mirrored reflection of themselves where I want them to see love and empathy and gratitude. Those would be the three truths that I want to seduce them into this beautifully shocking piece, but have the end takeaway or the punchline be love, empathy,

and gratitude. I love it. That's great. I want to see it someday. I want to create it now. I want to create it. Well, before I ask the final question, I want to take a someday. Yeah, yeah. I want to create it now. I want to create it. Well, before I ask the final question, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you

for your incredible courage to be creative at an age where most people don't jump out and do something disruptive. And to shock and awe people to get them to wake up from their day-to-day norms and show them what's possible for their lives. And I think you do that every time you step on stage and you perform and you create something for them,

magical they've never seen, and you create an experience of emotional movement. And I think that alone is unlocking their creativity when they feel that moveness that you create for them. So I want to acknowledge you, Eric, for stepping up and for being a unique human being in this world that we all need so much. Thank you very much. I would be remiss if I didn't also say that behind every great, successful, even standing man is a woman who made him that way. And I've been married for 22 years now. And that through all

of this is my single greatest accomplishment. And that's important for me to say and to broadcast out there because divorce and disconnection and anger and hate is kind of grabbing the headlines right now. And loyalty and marriage and success experienced with another person hasn't gotten the headlines that it should. And so I'm pumped that you're saying these things that I've had this kind of career that people are noticing or that I've had this connection through art or performing. But it's through my marriage and my family is where I found the most joy and connectedness. And this would not be happening without her. Awesome.

I love that. That's nice. Where can we connect with you online? And the book, is that your website it is where books are sold yeah theartofvision.com you guys can put it in the link it up yeah right right there okay but i i am i'm on i'm on social media uh i'm new to the game so i'm just kind of learning how to how to do it all but it's it's fascinating to me and it's not like this can create so much dialogue with people maybe a year from now. I saw you and my son's doing this in the arts, or I saw this.

So I love that about social media. So please hit me up on social media. You're just at Eric Wall everywhere? Yes, at Eric Wall everywhere. W-A-H-L. E-R-I-K. E-R-I-K, W-A-H-L. Final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

It's embracing love. And I say that not as a platitude, but because I've wrestled with this question, what's the meaning of life? Not like, oh, it's family. Oh, it's helping other people. Oh, it's this. Like each one of those, I couldn't stand behind fully. But when I finally realized that the meaning of life for me is love and the purpose of my life is love that if there's going to be greatness in my life,

it's going to have to include love. So that would be greatness for me. Eric Wall. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this one.

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