14: Embracing Creativity, Courage, and Service with Brian Perry
What if your biggest creative block isn't talent, opportunity, or resources, but the fear of being fully seen?
Brian Perry's journey is a testament to transformation, moving from struggling with depression and feeling like an outsider to becoming a communication coach, singer, and songwriter. Through his music and coaching, he's found a way to bridge creativity and personal growth, while helping others do the same.
His path wasn't linear. Critical moments, personal setbacks, and the constant tension between art and business shaped a powerful philosophy:
"The value of creating is its own unreasonable reward."
Brian now shares the hard-earned lessons that helped him find his true voice and how you can embrace yours.
Creativity as a Sacred Space
For Brian, music was more than a hobby; it was a lifeline. It provided a way to process emotions, connect with others, and build the foundation of his coaching practice.
"I just picked up a guitar and started writing songs."
"It was like going home."
This act of creation became more than self-expression; it transformed into a tool for service, helping others find clarity and meaning in their own stories.
Actionable Insight: Treat creativity as a sacred space, not just a means to an end. Protect your creative time without the pressure of monetization.
Bonus: Spend 10 minutes journaling about why you create. What draws you to your art?
Creativity, Courage, and Finding Your True Voice
Brian believes the most impactful creativity emerges from a place of truth. The more personal the work, the more universal it becomes.
"Authenticity is being you unabashedly, unapologetically."
By embracing his unique path, including neurodiversity, he discovered that discomfort is part of the process. Creativity is about navigating uncertainty and reframing setbacks as integral parts of the journey.
Actionable Insight: Instead of trying to fit into an existing mold, lean into what makes you different. That's your greatest asset.
Bonus: Identify one aspect of your creative process that feels uniquely you and amplify it.
Balancing Art and Business Without Losing Your Soul
The intersection of creativity and business is complex. Many artists fear selling their work might compromise their integrity.
Brian's perspective? Stop trying to sell. Focus on serving.
When creating with the intent to serve, marketing becomes about connection rather than pushing a product.
Actionable Insight: Shift your mindset from selling to serving. Who benefits from your work? How can you show up for them?
Bonus: Write down three ways your creative work has positively impacted someone else.
Creating Space for Quiet Reflection
In a noisy world, Brian emphasizes the importance of stillness. Your deepest yearnings are directing you toward your greatest joys, but only if you take the time to listen.
"Create room for quiet. Our deepest yearnings are guiding us."
In moments of uncertainty, instead of forcing answers, allow yourself the space to hear them.
Actionable Insight: Make space for creative silence. Whether it's meditation, long walks, or simply stepping away from distractions, quiet moments allow your best ideas to emerge.
Bonus: Try a "silent session"—30 minutes of intentional quiet before diving into your creative work.
Key Takeaways
- Creativity should be nurtured, not pressured to generate income.
- Courage and self-expression lead to deeper connections.
- Your unique path is your greatest asset—embrace it.
- Serve through your art instead of focusing on selling.
- Create space for quiet reflection to strengthen your creative voice.
Step Into Your Creative Truth
Brian Perry's journey proves that courage, self-expression, and service can transform not just your art but your entire life. If you've been wrestling with self-doubt or feeling lost in your creative journey, this is your reminder:
Your story matters. Your voice matters. And the world needs what you have to offer.
Ready to take the next step? Book a free strategy session at TheStandoutCreatives.com and unlock your creative potential.
The world is waiting for what only you can create.
Transcript
I was also measuring myself and feeling like I was failing the art, failing the creativity, because I hadn't broken through financially.
Speaker A:And I was measuring my whole life by that same metric because I didn't have the Grammys on the shelf and, you know, didn't have the seven fingers or more in the.
Speaker A:In the bank account.
Speaker A:I wasn't in that place, you know, that wasn't the right thing to be measuring by.
Speaker A:I was ignoring the person that the art had allowed me to become.
Speaker A:And I was feeling broken when I wasn't broken.
Speaker A:The world was broken for sure, but I.
Speaker A:I wasn't.
Speaker A:And in fact, it's the thing now that, like, people would come to me, that clients come to me specifically because they're like, I.
Speaker A:I want you to tell me how you show up in the world so vulnerably and authentically.
Speaker B:Welcome to the standout creatives, where making money and creating meaningful work go hand in hand.
Speaker B:You're already passionate about what you create.
Speaker B:Now let's turn that passion into a standout business.
Speaker B:Marketing your work doesn't have to be overwhelming.
Speaker B:It can actually amplify your creativity.
Speaker B:I'm your guide, Kevin Chung, and this podcast is your roadmap to creative business success.
Speaker B:I'll show you how to turn your unique talents into a business that truly represents who you are.
Speaker B:Let's get started.
Speaker B:What if building a meaningful creative business wasn't just about perfecting your craft, but about embracing honesty, sharing your work with courage, and finding harmony between artistry and entrepreneurship?
Speaker B:Brian Perry's journey took him from struggling with depression to becoming a communication coach, singer, and songwriter, using his music to help others find their true voices.
Speaker B:In this episode, we explore how Brian's creative path has shaped his philosophy on self expression, resilience, and the power of serving others through your art.
Speaker B:If you're ready to step into your unique voice and elevate your creative business, this one's for you.
Speaker B:Now, onto the episode.
Speaker C:Welcome to another episode of the Standout Creatives to have on Brian Perry.
Speaker C:Brian lives at the intersection of art, authenticity, and purpose.
Speaker C:He's a singer, songwriter, life coach, copywriter, and speaker.
Speaker C:Brian's story is anything but ordinary.
Speaker C:He earned his degree 12 years late.
Speaker C:He has a healthy dose of neurodiversity, is on a mission to help people uncover their truth.
Speaker C:Most importantly, he wants to help you live your own story more deeply.
Speaker C:Brian, can you tell us a little bit more about your journey and how you got into some of the work you're doing right now?
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Hey, Kevin, thanks for having Me.
Speaker A:Glad to be here with you and glad to be having this conversation.
Speaker A:I love talking about creativity.
Speaker A:I will tweak just a little bit what you described just then because some of those things things.
Speaker A:One of the things I've learned as a creative, living a creative life, being a creative entrepreneur is that I'm constantly evolving, particularly in my titles.
Speaker C:Yeah, that was the latest on your about.
Speaker A:That's and, and right now how I present myself as I was on my about page.
Speaker A:Good to know.
Speaker A:I need to go in there and I'm about to do a redo of the website anyway.
Speaker A:But what I'm focusing my time on primarily these days is I serve as an authentic communication coach, singer, songwriter and speaker.
Speaker A:And in the work as an authentic communication coach, sometimes that does involve copywriting still.
Speaker A:But, but it's more about helping people find their own authentic voice so they can as.
Speaker A:As you, as you correctly said there and as apparently I correctly said on my about page is very much about helping people live more of their life more, more of their true once in any lifetime story.
Speaker A:So with the question my what I do.
Speaker A:What was the question again?
Speaker A:It was a very good start.
Speaker A:I feel like we're off to great start.
Speaker C:Just how you got into the work that you're doing.
Speaker C:So you evolved obviously over many years into becoming the authenticity coach that you are now.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's, it's I.
Speaker A:So how I got into it initially, way back in the day, I was going to school at Loyal University in New Orleans and had had a variety of majors, but I had settled into majoring in English and then I was in a very severe depression and, and needed to take time off and ended up dropping out ultimately.
Speaker A:Um, but around that same time I had just picked up a guitar and started writing songs and found after a lifetime of feeling other feeling kind of outside and relatively without home, I just, I didn't feel at home anywhere.
Speaker A:And I always, I always was too much and never enough in, in the spaces that I was in.
Speaker A:And when I picked up a guitar and started to write songs and, and started to perform, I mean I remember the very first night I performed at an open mic that my girlfriend at the time asked me afterwards.
Speaker A:She said so how was it?
Speaker A:And I said it was like going home.
Speaker A:I, I, I understood myself in that space because in that space there was this sense of feeling too much, being too emotional, being too all the things in the regular world, the things that were t o o fill in the blank in the space of performance, in the space of the song were exactly what you came for.
Speaker A:And I was sort of reborn in that moment and kind of went, oh, okay, my life starts now.
Speaker A:And to be clear, I was not good at all.
Speaker A:But that's.
Speaker A:But that's what it meant for me.
Speaker A:It's what it meant to me, you know, and, yeah, in.
Speaker A:In the impact that it could have felt almost immediately like something sacred to me.
Speaker A:I've met a lot of people over the years and certainly heard a lot of people over the years that have expressed getting into music at an early age, at least in my generation, at an early age, to.
Speaker A:To meet women or pick up, you know, whoever.
Speaker A:Whatever sex they were into, and then that was the reason they got into music.
Speaker A:I never understood that.
Speaker A:I never understood getting into it for fame or getting into it for.
Speaker A:For that.
Speaker A:For me.
Speaker A:And people are free to get into it for whatever, what they want to.
Speaker A:But for me, the moment people came to a show and cried during a song or, you know, we're clearly expressing a lot of excitement and joy and, you know, am I.
Speaker A:I'm a folk singer, so they weren't dancing.
Speaker A:That was not a thing.
Speaker A:But it immediately for me became, oh, this is a really sacred space between us.
Speaker A:You're letting me in where you don't let other people in.
Speaker A:And somehow with these.
Speaker A:If you.
Speaker A:If I can get five minutes of your time, you're going to let me go places that you don't go with some of the people you're closest to in your life.
Speaker A:So that became the creative act, became as much.
Speaker A:Yes, it was about creating the song.
Speaker A:It was about the thrill of performing that song.
Speaker A:But the connection with the audience was.
Speaker A:Had this whole other creative aspect, which was how do I create a container for us to be in together to have this conversation and perhaps to offer some relief, some healing, some laughter, catharsis, any variety of things, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, I feel like I can go on for about an hour or so on.
Speaker A:On this topic alone.
Speaker A:So I, I.
Speaker A:That fast forward, and I knew pretty quickly that that's what I needed to do.
Speaker A:As a matter of fact, there was a.
Speaker A:Is a story that's.
Speaker A:Are you familiar with an artist named Melissa Etheridge?
Speaker C:I know the name.
Speaker C:I don't know her story too much.
Speaker A:She's, I believe, a Rock and Roll hall of fame artist at this point, but she's a.
Speaker A:She was a.
Speaker A:Well, she is one of the most successful, particularly female rock and roll performers ever.
Speaker A:She was an artist that I was very into at a time in my life.
Speaker A:And long story short, on One of her tours before she had become really huge.
Speaker A:Friends of mine and I in New Orleans had gone to see her in New Orleans.
Speaker A:And then we had learned that she was playing in Houston the next night.
Speaker A:And we decided to.
Speaker A:That that would be a great idea to go hop in the car and drive to Houston to go see her there.
Speaker A:This was during final exams in college, so this was an unwise decision on its face.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But we piled in the car and we drove to Houston and we, you know, scalped some tickets.
Speaker A:We were able to buy some tickets there at the show and beg still and bar our way into the show, saw the show, we're on our way home in the car.
Speaker A:And one of my dear friends, he's still a very dear friend of mine.
Speaker A:And I should note by this point it had become clear that I was sick.
Speaker A:I don't know what it was, but I had some kind of a virus or something which wasn't great for anybody in the car.
Speaker A:So I was kind of in and out of consciousness.
Speaker A:And the reason I'm telling this story was that my friend Sonia, she says we were talking like you do late at night about big things, big dreams when we were young.
Speaker A:And she was like, what do you want to do?
Speaker A:I said, well, you know, I'm studying to be an English teacher.
Speaker A:I'm going to be like Mr.
Speaker A:Keating from dead Poet Society, which is an old movie.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And she said, right, right.
Speaker A:But I mean, what do you really want to do?
Speaker A:Like if you could do anything.
Speaker A:And I had never thought.
Speaker A:Thought out loud, let alone spoken out loud, what I said next.
Speaker A:And I just.
Speaker A:I gestured back to Houston.
Speaker A:I said that 100% that.
Speaker A:And she said, me too.
Speaker A:Let's do it.
Speaker A:And I said, okay, let's do it.
Speaker A:She didn't own a guitar, had never written a song, didn't know how to sing.
Speaker A:I owned a guitar, I didn't know how to play, had never written a song, didn't know how to sing.
Speaker A:She went out and bought a guitar.
Speaker A:We behemoth duo, we went off and started performing.
Speaker A:And in lo and behold, long story, I guess long at this point we ended up that we both ended up being professional musicians in different ways.
Speaker A:We ended up not staying together as a duo, but went off and so I started touring full time and started while I was touring was at one point, I feel like I'm going on for a really long time.
Speaker A:I want to give you an opportunity to speak if I don't want to be just be boring you that my.
Speaker A:The long this life of Brian here.
Speaker C:Oh no, I'm investing in what happened to you now.
Speaker A:Well, so I, after I started touring for a hot minute and I was.
Speaker A:And I got, I got married and was on the.
Speaker A:Was touring and my, my wife and I were living in North Carolina at that point and I got really burned out on the industry pretty quick and what they expected of you and, and all that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And I needed to take a break.
Speaker A:And so I went off and fulfilled a dream that kind of had been deferred when I dropped out of college because I had to go right straight to, you know, working to eat and in.
Speaker A:In.
Speaker A:I really wanted.
Speaker A:I'd longed to work at a summer camp.
Speaker A:I was, I'm an Eagle Scout and in.
Speaker A:And have done a lot of backpacking and that kind of thing over the years and a lot of outdoors high adventure stuff.
Speaker A:At that point in my life, I went to the summer camp and the reason I mentioned that is at the end of the summer is this large organization called the American Youth Foundation.
Speaker A:And at the end of the summer after the camps and they have a few weeks where they did at that time international leadership conferences, which involved high school and college students from around the globe that would gather and learn about servant leadership and what does that look like?
Speaker A:It was a four year program and such.
Speaker A:And during the course of those conferences they would have speakers come in every night to share something and offer some insight and think in the vein of a sort of a TED Talk sort of thing.
Speaker A:But well before TED Talk was even a thing.
Speaker A:And one night there was a guy who was supposed to come in from town to be a musical guest and he canceled on them.
Speaker A:And at this point I had come to camp and basically tucked my guitar under my bed.
Speaker A:I was like, I'm taking a break.
Speaker A:And the camp staff was scrambling going, what are we gonna do?
Speaker A:What are we gonna do?
Speaker A:And I'm like, yo, hey, right here, right here.
Speaker A:I can sing.
Speaker A:And like, well, are you gonna be able to talk to them and everything?
Speaker A:I'm like, I can totally talk to them.
Speaker A:You want me talk to them?
Speaker A:I can talk to them.
Speaker A:So the next thing I knew, I'm playing in front of.
Speaker A:There's like 500 students.
Speaker A:We didn't have a sound system outside.
Speaker A:And I would sing a song and then I would take questions and I would take the answer to the question and I would kind of craft it to bring in some.
Speaker A:What we might characterize as a morality tale would bring them to some sort of this is this can Be about following your dreams or about leadership or about, you know, the result of which was we came back from camp, went back to New Orleans, we moved back to New Orleans.
Speaker A:And I was preparing to go on tour again.
Speaker A:And I got an email.
Speaker A:Email was a very new thing at the time.
Speaker A:Oh, he's still there.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Saying.
Speaker A:Trying to reconnect.
Speaker A:All of a sudden in the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The email said, was from some student in Cincinnati saying, you know, look, I know you're a terribly busy famous musician.
Speaker A:In which I was neither busy nor famous.
Speaker A:And she said, I wonder if you could come and do your program at my school.
Speaker A:And I remember saying to my wife, hey, guess what?
Speaker A:She's like, what?
Speaker A:I say, I have a program.
Speaker A:And I had long had this vision of serving through speaking.
Speaker A:I knew I could speak.
Speaker A:I had spoken in a variety of settings, including serving on retreats and such during college before dropping out.
Speaker A:And I had, when I was younger, intended to be a priest.
Speaker A:That was my.
Speaker A:One of the things that I thought I was going to do, a Catholic priest.
Speaker A:And I had this vision in my head that, hey, you know what?
Speaker A:If I could reach a certain level professionally as a musician, I could come into a town, play, show, place the theater at night, but during the day, go and speak at local college or high school or what have you, and be of service in that way and somehow help other people like me who felt other and felt lost and felt unseen.
Speaker A:And suddenly that opportunity just kind of fell in my lap.
Speaker A:And so I started then folding in, speaking into what I was doing on tour and kind of built on that same model of take questions, offer thoughts.
Speaker A:And that morphed into developing talks that integrated music and stories in comedy and interaction, you know, conversation with the audience and built around a theme, a variety of different themes.
Speaker A:And yeah, so that's what I did for many years and.
Speaker A:And then ultimately went back to school because being out on the road, I learned things that I wanted to know more about.
Speaker A:Like when I went back to school, I said to the.
Speaker A:The dean, when I went back in, I said, hey, I'd really.
Speaker A:I think I want.
Speaker A:I would like to come back.
Speaker A:I was working at Overnight Bellman at the Ritz Carlton at that point, trying to be on the road less because it become a burden on my marriage.
Speaker A:And I decided at.
Speaker A:That I needed to go back to school because one of the things that kept coming up in my travels was that I would have these people, like, I was grinding it out.
Speaker A:Like, this was an era where There was no YouTube, there was no American Idol.
Speaker A:There was no, you're not going to hit it unless you're out there playing gigs.
Speaker A:You can't just sit home and get your music out there.
Speaker A:It's not how it worked.
Speaker A:So I was.
Speaker A:I was out there grinding it out and sometimes playing for larger crowds, more often than not, just hoping to be outnumbered and sleeping in my van, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker A:But I would go to.
Speaker A:I'd do a show and I'd have people come up to me after the show that were wildly successful people who were expressing how much.
Speaker A:How unsatisfied they were and how envious they were of what I was doing.
Speaker A:And so when I decided to go back to school, it was because I said I wanted to know more about how that works.
Speaker A:And I went and studied something called human and organizational development, which is the study of how.
Speaker A:How do individuals connect and create the highest vision for their life?
Speaker A:How do organizations do that for the organization?
Speaker A:And how can the two support each other on that journey, knowing full well they're not going to be aligned forever?
Speaker A:In other words, that you're not going to stay at that job forever?
Speaker A:So how can the two create a space where the employee's showing up fully to the company's vision and the company showing up fully to the employee's vision?
Speaker A:What does that look like?
Speaker A:What's the psychology of that?
Speaker A:What's the.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I never.
Speaker A:I went back to get that degree because I just wanted that knowledge.
Speaker A:I wanted to understand it.
Speaker A:I didn't understand why people were out there just agreeing to live lives that they hated.
Speaker A:It didn't make sense to me.
Speaker A:Um, and when I finished that degree, I thought I would go.
Speaker A:I thought I might get a.
Speaker A:A, a study, give an MSW or lpc, and basically become credentialed to do therapy again.
Speaker A:More about trying to understand how do humans tick?
Speaker A:But I didn't want to incur that cost, so I went off and went to the relatively cheaper, but still at the time, well, actually even more so now.
Speaker A:I went to a relatively prestigious coaching program to study less.
Speaker A:Therapy tends to deal with the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The whys of things.
Speaker A:Wh y of things in the past.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And coaching tends to deal with the how and the what's next of things.
Speaker A:And I was more interested in that than I was trying to help people uncover their wounds.
Speaker A:Not that their wounds don't influence the how and what's next.
Speaker A:They certainly come up, but I was more interested in.
Speaker A:In that.
Speaker A:So, yeah, so I did all those things and then kind of had to just come to a thing with my.
Speaker A:Well, as it turns out now, ex wife that I.
Speaker A:I needed to be on the road.
Speaker A:That's where I needed to be.
Speaker A:And so that's.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that's what turned me into someone who was doing and continues to do music speaking and coaching in a very large nut.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's the broad strokes of it.
Speaker A:Having not tried to summarize that in a long time, I'm sure I left out a lot that I will be thinking about later tonight when I'm trying to go to sleep.
Speaker A:But I know that's.
Speaker C:That's just a great overview.
Speaker C:I think you recognize a lot of inflection points in your life.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So you realize, yeah, here are the moments in my life where I made a decision, and that decision ultimately led me to where you are now.
Speaker C:So I think it's always good to recognize those points.
Speaker C:And when you.
Speaker C:When you do, it's easier to figure out where you want to go from there, as opposed to if you were just living off the seat of your pants, which you kind of were.
Speaker C:But also some of it was in.
Speaker C:Most of it was intentional because of something that happened to you at that moment.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, let me ask you a question, because I think.
Speaker A:Because don't you find like the seat of the pants versus kind of having that inflection point moment for people that are feeling called to live a creative life, what we're terming a creative life.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Sometimes there's not a vision so much as just that sense of internal pull that there's more.
Speaker A:I mean, is that your experience or what's your experience of that?
Speaker C:I feel like there is that thing where what I'm doing now isn't necessarily what I want to be doing.
Speaker C:And I know there's more that I could be doing if I had the ability to do more.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker C:So it's just making the time and concerted effort to give that thing space.
Speaker C:So my current thing is like creativity.
Speaker C:It's been this for my whole life.
Speaker C:But allowing other people to see paths forward, to use their creativity in a way that allows them to create more one and actually be able to make money and a living off of it is the other.
Speaker C:Because you can do one or the other, but I think doing both is the best way to be able to make use of your creative life.
Speaker C:Because if you don't make money, you can be resentful that your creativity is only used to be an expression, which is fine, but you still got to do other stuff in life.
Speaker C:Creativity isn't the only thing for most people.
Speaker C:It's like a thing and that's very important thing.
Speaker C:But when you are able to.
Speaker C:To make some money off of it, you can sustain that practice by continuing to put more resources towards it.
Speaker A:I think I certainly.
Speaker A:What do you think what calls you though to.
Speaker A:So it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that your sort of.
Speaker A:Your current call is to foster others creative paths.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:Is that what I understood you to say?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Because I think I can use my creative thinking in order to help other people.
Speaker C:I don't necessarily have a specific creative act like music or like.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:Art particularly.
Speaker C:But I think being able to show people ways to think.
Speaker C:I think my thing is probably thinking creatively is where I want to help people to understand.
Speaker C:Here's ways that you can do things that aren't necessarily the right quote unquote right path.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:So thinking creatively and Well, I guess to sort of cliche but to think.
Speaker A:Thinking outside the box, looking at people, helping people to see things from different angles.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C:I think that's where I'm best suited to help creative people.
Speaker C:I'm not the best like designer or I don't really make music or anything but I think I can show people just because I'm so interested in so many things.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Ways to use different ideas in order to kind of build off of your creativity in a way that you might not think of.
Speaker A:What happens for you when you see somebody that you've done that for?
Speaker C:I usually, it's like, wow, that's.
Speaker C:That's interesting because when I say it they're like, I never thought of it like that.
Speaker C:But for me it's like, oh, that was like just top of mind kind of thinking.
Speaker C:So it's.
Speaker C:It's really interesting to.
Speaker C:To know that obviously some of the stuff that I give out is useful to people.
Speaker C:I think is always good to know.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:I know you see that a lot in your work.
Speaker A:Well, I do.
Speaker A:Well in my work.
Speaker A:It's more.
Speaker A:I would say that it's.
Speaker A:There's an element of what you're talking about in terms of giving people things for sure.
Speaker A:Certainly in the speaking where a lot of it is at you.
Speaker A:Of course, you know, I try to make it as collaborative, as much of a.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker A:A back and forth conversation as possible.
Speaker A:But, but like.
Speaker A:Particularly like in the coaching realm, it's the gift you're giving is reflecting back what they're not hearing themselves say.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Is more often or Very much in line with what you do.
Speaker A:It's asking a new question.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's mostly what.
Speaker C:That's how I would put it in my terms too.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It's more like, have you ever thought of.
Speaker C:Whatever.
Speaker C:I'm not saying go do this.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Here's an option that is available to you that you might not have thought of.
Speaker C:Feel free to use it if you want to.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:There's a.
Speaker A:There's a spiritual text called A Course in Miracles and one of the things that it says, I'm not, I think it's great book, but I'm not telling somebody they need to go follow this.
Speaker A:But what, but there's what I love.
Speaker A:One of the things I love about A Course in Miracles is the way it defines a miracle.
Speaker A:And it defines a miracle as a shift in perspective.
Speaker A:H.
Speaker A:I was blind, but now I see.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:It's fundamentally sort of a metaphorical shift in perspective and, or, or more of a parable of a shift in perspective.
Speaker A:And I think that that's fundamentally those kind of.
Speaker A:Somebody hits you with a new question or a new perspective on a situation that you've been hammering away at forever.
Speaker A:It's miraculous when suddenly there's a new, A new way of looking at it.
Speaker A:And I love that what you're, what you're doing in the world because I think there's a book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Big Magic.
Speaker A:I think you and I, you and I may have talked about it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I adore the book.
Speaker A:I, I should say that I'm like you mentioned in your intro, part of the healthy dashes of neurodiversity that I, that I'm, that I get to have are.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I'm ADHD and I'm dyslexic and.
Speaker A:And yet I, I read that book three times cover to cover, and it just really resonated with me.
Speaker A:And one of the things that really moved me in that book was there's a part in which she talks about our tendency and it's particularly true here in the US culture.
Speaker A:I don't know how it is in other cultures, but in our sort of ambition obsessed culture here, you can't make a pie well without somebody telling you you should turn into a business.
Speaker A:And I'm not saying that to diminish pie businesses.
Speaker A:It sounded like I was saying that's such a silly thing.
Speaker A:No, I love a good pie.
Speaker A:But, but you know, you go to a friend's house and you have a slice of pie with dinner that they, and they're like, my God, this is the best pie I've ever had.
Speaker A:And they're like, oh, thank you.
Speaker A:It's, you know, it's something I just, like, do.
Speaker A:And you're immediately like, oh, you should totally turn that into a business and you should be on Shark Tank and you should be all these.
Speaker A:And she's like, stop doing that.
Speaker A:Stop forcing your creativity to be measured by the financial gain that it provides.
Speaker A:Not that you shouldn't pursue fostering or cultivating a way for your creativity for your.
Speaker A:The joys that you get from that to turn into a way to support your life.
Speaker A:But the.
Speaker A:I'm badly explaining this, but the.
Speaker A:But the way that she flips it on its head.
Speaker A:For me, what landed for me in that passage of the book was she was basically saying, your job is to support your creativity, not the other way around.
Speaker A:And supporting your creativity can mean, like, for her, she had published two or three books, like with a publishing house, not like I did self publishing and was still working day jobs.
Speaker A:And it wasn't until Eat, Pray, Love hit and was doing really, really well that she finally started doing writing full time.
Speaker A:Until then, she saw her job as creating enough abundance in her world that she could show up to the art and be fully available.
Speaker A:And I found when I read that passage, I remember at the time I was at a cabin in North Georgia that some extended family owned for a time and.
Speaker A:But they lived out of state, so they needed people to go up to, to look after it.
Speaker A:So I suffered through that and went up there regularly and.
Speaker A:And it was glorious because at the time I was barely making ends meet and working in retail and it was just such a great escape that I wouldn't have been able to afford myself, right?
Speaker A:And so I was sitting out there reading this book on the porch there, and it was a covered porch, it was raining.
Speaker A:And I got to that passage and I started crying and I had my guitar.
Speaker A:Sitting there with me is Taylor.
Speaker A:Sitting here now is also often with me.
Speaker A:And I turned to Taylor and I just said, I am so sorry.
Speaker A:All these years, I have been begging you to keep talking to me.
Speaker A:I have been telling you how there's nothing that brings me greater joy, a greater sense of fulfillment than the space when you and I are creating a new song and then I get to share it.
Speaker A:But I've been begging you all these years, just keep talking to me.
Speaker A:It's such a privilege to keep writing with you.
Speaker A:But over that same period of time when you have been consistently honoring that request and giving me the opportunity to be a songwriter, which is this astonishing privilege.
Speaker A:As soon as you gave me a new song, I've been like, now pay me.
Speaker A:And that's bullshit.
Speaker A:I'm wrong for that.
Speaker A:That's not on you, that's on me.
Speaker A:And so from here on out, I'm gonna.
Speaker A:I'm gonna take care of us.
Speaker A:I'm not gonna look for you creativity to.
Speaker A:I'm not going to demand that everything you offer me every time I enter that creative space that it needs to generate a hit, it needs to create the big moment.
Speaker A:I just want to create.
Speaker A:And at that point, it started to shift.
Speaker A:Everything started to shift.
Speaker A:And I started to approach the business of creativity in a different way.
Speaker A:I'm doing this motion right now.
Speaker A:This is circular motion because for years, I put it this way for years.
Speaker A:So the.
Speaker A:The epicenter of the songwriting world with the.
Speaker A:There's arguably two or three, but Nashville is clearly the top of the list.
Speaker A:And then to a lesser extent, LA and New York for songwriting.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But I used to drive by Nashville in particular when I was on tour, and I'd roll down the window and flick the city off as I was driving by because I had such disdain for the business and what I saw it do to music.
Speaker A:And I realized in that moment with big Magic, that I was like, no, man.
Speaker A:The business supports the music supports the business supports the music if I let it.
Speaker A:And I don't have to be a part of that business machine, but I can begin to look for ways that I can be taking the things that being a songwriter has made me good at and look for being a speaker and being all these.
Speaker A:And look for ways to turn them into things that the world actually needs.
Speaker A:Things that people that aren't stepping onto a stage at 10pm on a Tuesday, but that are actually working 40 to 60 hours a week and have a 401k.
Speaker A:The people that I'm trying to sell records to, the people that I'm trying to connect with, the people that I'm trying to serve, what do they actually need?
Speaker A:And how can I actually serve them in the spaces they're in?
Speaker A:And it just changed my relationship with the creativity such that I.
Speaker A:It's a much.
Speaker A:It's a much more easeful relationship with that.
Speaker A:I'm not looking.
Speaker A:I don't.
Speaker A:I'm not pushing the art in the way I used to.
Speaker A:I used to force it in a way that wasn't good for me for the art or for the audience.
Speaker A:And I have friends that in that time.
Speaker A:Since then, have talked about how there were times you showed up with kind of a desperate energy on stage.
Speaker C:I can tell.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And now you.
Speaker A:You're just there, just present.
Speaker A:And the result is that the.
Speaker A:The art is better, the reach is better, and it brought me and it's in.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that's.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's a longer.
Speaker A:I'm about to move in a different direction.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:Yeah, so that's been my.
Speaker A:It's been an interesting relationship between.
Speaker A:For me, step one was stepping free of forcing the art.
Speaker A:The step one to.
Speaker A:To making a living as an artist was stopping trying to make a living as an artist, trying to make.
Speaker A:To make them.
Speaker A:To make the value of the experience of creating contingent upon whether I'm making a living at it.
Speaker A:Now they're independent of each other.
Speaker A:There's making a living and there's creating.
Speaker A:And the value of creating is its own unreasonable reward.
Speaker A:And then the journey of supporting my life.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And subsequently supporting my ability to meaningfully engage my art can be its own journey.
Speaker A:Does that make sense?
Speaker C:Yeah, I think obviously there's multiple perspectives on business and art coexisting.
Speaker C:So you can create art meant just to sell, which was what you were almost doing previous to reading that passage.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:And then there's people who create art in hopes of selling it, but it's not necessarily the main goal, which I think is where you are now.
Speaker C:It's the art is created for art's sake.
Speaker C:And if it happens to resonate in a way that can support you as an artist, that's what it does.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah, but still with the.
Speaker A:I mean, it is paramount in my mind.
Speaker A:I wear a lot of hats now and figuratively and literally, I suppose.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I still, I.
Speaker A:It's not that I would turn down if Oprah called.
Speaker A:I'm answering.
Speaker A:If I suddenly had a hit, that would be great.
Speaker A:You know, I'm.
Speaker A:I again, I make folk music more in the realm of.
Speaker A:I'm not saying I'm as good as.
Speaker A:By a long stretch, but more in the realm of sort of the melancholic Leonard Cohen's of the World then, you know, I know Taylor Swift.
Speaker A:That's not what I do.
Speaker A:So the point is that I can be where I am, a bald man in his 50s and still have a path to be selling art, selling my music, you know, have an audience.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But I guess what shifted, Let me put it this way.
Speaker A:And this is something that used to come up a lot with my purpose driven copywriting clients.
Speaker A:And I I would just drill this in.
Speaker A:Stop trying to sell, focus on serving.
Speaker A:If you, if you seek to serve, not to sell, the selling starts to take care of itself because you're not.
Speaker A:It's like the equivalent of when you go to a website and all the is happening on the website is the people are talking about themselves, the company's talking about themselves.
Speaker A:When you go to a website, the website should be talking about the ideal person they want to serve, should be helping them feel seen.
Speaker A:Like, what do I do?
Speaker A:What do I do in the space of performance?
Speaker A:My goal in the space of performance is not to go as a songwriter.
Speaker A:Look at these cool songs that I'm very proud of making.
Speaker A:My goal is to help you feel seen in the space of that song.
Speaker A:My goal is to help serve that thing that you're trying to heal, that thing that you're trying to move through, that thing that you're trying to dream up.
Speaker A:My goal is to serve you in that moment.
Speaker A:It's not about me.
Speaker A:And that's what shifted was shifting from selling to serving and continues to shift because during the pandemic I shifted into adding, folding and copywriting to what I do at that time because some damn algorithm on Instagram kept spitting me ads and I clicked on the ad finally.
Speaker A:And, and for this program that turned out to be a really great program, that I went through this copywriting program and learned how to take what at that point was pretty reasonably well honed ability to write and turn it into writing that's specifically designed to sell, you know, and I thought I have some resistance to that.
Speaker A:But also it'd probably be really good if I could write in a way that would be more attractional.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:There's, there's more than one value to that.
Speaker A:And what I found and my intention when I did that was specifically at that point I had put out a book.
Speaker A:Well, my second book I put up my most recent book called the Myth of Certainty and other great news.
Speaker A:And I was making, writing more songs.
Speaker A:I just put out a new record and at that point and I had really wanted to be back on the road to a certain extent, not, not to the way I used to be.
Speaker A:I didn't want to be doing.
Speaker A:I didn't want to be grinding, but I wanted to be out there performing, connecting and serving in that way.
Speaker A:But frankly just wasn't taking off in the way that I needed it to, to support me at that point.
Speaker A:And I thought, well, hey, if I could do copywriting, I get to write, I get to do that.
Speaker A:From anywhere.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And people pay people to do that.
Speaker A:It serves a very specific need.
Speaker A:And that would support.
Speaker A:Allow me to support my art and set my own schedule.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So that's by means.
Speaker A:I sort of started kind of trying to.
Speaker A:There was another way.
Speaker A:How can I take what I know I love to do?
Speaker A:So I'm in an adjacent thing.
Speaker A:I'm still prioritizing.
Speaker A:This is entirely about supporting a life that allows me to do the music, to do the speaking, to serve in those ways, but also allows me to be using those same skills.
Speaker A:I keep knocking my microphone over here.
Speaker A:I keep meaning to get one of those arms, you know, because I keep knocking this thing over because I gesture so much.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But where I'm headed is this.
Speaker A:There's a reason I'm saying all that, and that is that very, very quickly into doing copywriting, there's a.
Speaker A:Every time I'd start to do something that was sort of a.
Speaker A:For lack of a better way of putting it, a muggle activity, you know, an actual identified job in the world that people, you know, get 401ks and such for doing it.
Speaker A:Always felt I.
Speaker A:I'd wanted to run because I don't do art because I think it's cool.
Speaker A:Although I do think it's cool.
Speaker A:I think it's amazing to get to do.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I do the things that I do because I can't not do them.
Speaker A:They're just.
Speaker A:It's what I do when no one's watching.
Speaker A:And what I found when I started doing copywriting is once again I was like, okay, I guess I'm departing from the vision in some meaningful way, but this could support me in doing the vision.
Speaker A:So you can see.
Speaker A:I feel like I'm.
Speaker A:I was in conflict.
Speaker A:Even as powerful as that insight that I have reading Big Magic was, I was still sort of trying to figure out how to inhabit it.
Speaker A:You know, what is.
Speaker A:What do I do with that?
Speaker A:I'd gotten good at making sure I wasn't putting the pressure on Taylor, but I felt resentful of the universe for kind of giving me this passion, giving me the ability to have impact, but not giving me a path to be really thriving at that point.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And very early on starting to do the copywriting.
Speaker A:I got on with a dear friend of mine up in Washington D.C.
Speaker A:who has been sort of in that field.
Speaker A:Ish.
Speaker A:In the marketing field around, particularly for non profits.
Speaker A:She serves up there for decades.
Speaker A:She's been very successful and owns her own company and everything.
Speaker A:And I reached out to her to kind Of I said, I kind of need you to show up to me as a bit of a mentor, not just my friend in this moment.
Speaker A:What do I need to know as I'm kind of adding this into what I do?
Speaker A:And the first thing she said was, I need you.
Speaker A:You're going to have the instinct to hide your weird, winding, funky path as an itinerant folk singer, speaker, poet, writer, dude.
Speaker A:Don't do that.
Speaker A:That's your greatest asset.
Speaker A:That's what people are going to be clamoring to work with you because it gives you a completely different perspective than anybody else they deal with on any given day.
Speaker A:And I have found that to be wildly true in a way that I had no idea was the case.
Speaker A:Things that.
Speaker A:Because I was.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:What the problem was, I wasn't just putting pressure on creativity in the art.
Speaker A:I was also measuring myself and feeling like I was failing the art, failing the creativity, because I hadn't broken through financially.
Speaker A:And I was measuring my whole life by that same metric because I didn't have the Grammys on the shelf and, you know, didn't have the seven fingers or more in the.
Speaker A:In the bank account.
Speaker A:I wasn't in that place, you know, and I.
Speaker A:But that wasn't the right thing to be measuring by.
Speaker A:I was.
Speaker A:I was ignoring the person that the art had allowed me to become.
Speaker A:And I was feeling broken when I wasn't broken.
Speaker A:The world was broken for sure, but I.
Speaker A:I wasn't.
Speaker A:And in fact, it's the thing now that, like, people would come to me.
Speaker A:I've had clients come to me specifically because they're like, I want you to tell me how you show up in the world with so vulnerably and authentically.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And I legitimately was like, can I swear on this?
Speaker A:I don't know if I can swear on this.
Speaker A:Yeah, I got a bit of a mouth, so.
Speaker A:But legitimate was like, I don't know what the you're talking about.
Speaker A:What is.
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker A:Like, how do you see this thing?
Speaker A:How do you say.
Speaker A:I was like, why would I not?
Speaker A:And I realized what had happened was that the art had given me a different.
Speaker A:Going out there and having to kind of.
Speaker A:I'm digressing wildly, but having to night after night be on a different stage in a different town every time.
Speaker A:You have to prove, you have to earn that audience, you have to serve that audience.
Speaker A:You have to get on stage, light yourself on fire, give them everything you got, and open wide or it's just not going to land.
Speaker A:And you Gotta be able to then pack up the car, drive to the next town and do it again the next night.
Speaker A:Whether the people in that audience were like woohoo.
Speaker A:Or if the people in that audience were like Free Bird, you know, or get off the stage and they were, you know, and you had to be able to weather both of them and essentially you had to be able to get to a place of going.
Speaker A:The value of what I'm sharing isn't.
Speaker A:Is an effort to show up fully to you and serve you and offer you something.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:But it's not contingent upon what you do with that.
Speaker A:And something about that changed how I felt freed to continues to change the way I feel about the restrictions or parameters of which, with which within which I'm allowed to operate.
Speaker A:Shareholders be in the world.
Speaker A:All of which is to say what I learned is that at the very moment that I was endeavoring to say to creativity, I got us.
Speaker A:I'm going to take care of the pragmatics of this whole journey while continuing to try to sort of till the fields and prepare the way for one of these seeds to pop eventually so that we are really thriving and I'm just full time devoting myself to it in a way that doesn't require me to travel 11 months of the year.
Speaker A:You know, at that very same time that I was making that commitment, what happened was the creativity was able to represent itself in my life, saying look at all the ways that I've already basically given you a PhD in things that are unique, skills that can help you with the pragmatics and subsequently support me creativity.
Speaker A:And that's how I got to what I do now.
Speaker A:I mean as an authentic communication coach.
Speaker A:It's, it's almost entirely because of what I do as a singer, songwriter and a speaker, much less.
Speaker A:So yes, the things I learned in coach training, but it's more.
Speaker A:But coach.
Speaker A:Coach training is really about teaching you how to be a better listener when you're not on a podcast, apparently.
Speaker A:But how to be a better listener and how to ask the right, deeper questions, more meaningful questions.
Speaker A:But, but being.
Speaker A:But what I learned as a singer songwriter, as performers, how to listen in a different way, how to know when an audience is with you or not, when a song is right or not.
Speaker A:How to know when you've stumbled upon the.
Speaker A:The idea that's longing to come into the world is the song or when you're just being clever.
Speaker A:And so when I'm helping people kind of birth a book or figure out new copy for a website or figure out a new way of a talk they've been longing to give.
Speaker A:Because what happens with the authentic communication coaching piece is that people come to me because, you know, as a grown up, we tend to get to a place where we can get, we can get really good at checking the boxes that the responsibility boxes and the people that I end up working with, they tend to have gotten really, really good at that.
Speaker A:And somewhere along the way, the process of getting really good at that made them really good at being a different person in every room they enter and they.
Speaker A:So now they've reached a stage in life where they're like, I really want to write that book, do that talk, make that change in career, have that conversation even with their own mirror, or give a toast at a friend's wedding in a way that feels true, you know, and they're like, suddenly the process of trying to show up actually as myself feels frustrating and confusing at best, but more often dangerous and scary.
Speaker A:And that's where that vulnerability piece comes in.
Speaker A:And they've kind of lost that sense of where does that live?
Speaker A:Where does my voice live?
Speaker A:How do I know when I'm telling the truth?
Speaker A:How do I know when I'm being me?
Speaker A:And so I get to, with the coaching, help them through a process of sort of mining for dissonance and resonance through conversation, comfort and discomfort.
Speaker A:Figure out, learn again.
Speaker A:Oh, do you see how you just lit up?
Speaker A:Do you see how something is?
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:That's how you know.
Speaker A:And that all.
Speaker A:There's a straight line between that and songwriting to.
Speaker A:When I sit down and I'm trying to figure something out and then all of a sudden a line pops up and I'm like, oof.
Speaker A:That's, that's the song.
Speaker A:That's the story I need to tell.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's, I just, I, I, I adore the way that the creativity has emerged in this moment that I was going, I'm going to be very serious and not focus on that so I can support the creativity.
Speaker A:The creativity went.
Speaker A:I can help.
Speaker A:And, and it's, yeah.
Speaker A:I don't know how much of that made sense, but I hope it did.
Speaker A:Hope some of that made sense.
Speaker A:So, yeah.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I think the main ideas are, one is to use every part of you in everything you do, especially if you're using it creatively.
Speaker C:Like every part of your being can help fuel that creative life because everything that you were trying to do was separate, but it led to your creativity being able to come out of its the seed, I guess.
Speaker C:Like if you're planting a seed and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It sprouts out of the seed.
Speaker C:And that's.
Speaker C:That's because you were using other parts of you to kind of sustain yourself.
Speaker C:But that also.
Speaker C:Every idea that you learned, especially through something like copywriting or learning how to be a coach.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Shows you different aspects.
Speaker A:All of it.
Speaker C:Creative life.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It's again, as long as your focus is on serving and.
Speaker A:And where does this.
Speaker A:The focus on serving come from?
Speaker A:Is it sort of.
Speaker A:There's nobody I know that.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That writes songs or creates art or.
Speaker A:Fundamentally, for.
Speaker A:For all of us, there's a.
Speaker A:At least kind of in the realms that I'm in, we do it for the love of it fundamentally, because it feels really, really good to do it.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's an amazing feeling when that new song is born.
Speaker A:I'm assuming it's an amazing feeling when that new piece of art comes to fruition and on and on.
Speaker A:But to what end?
Speaker A:Like, what's after that?
Speaker A:Why are you sharing it?
Speaker A:What do you hope comes of it?
Speaker A:What's.
Speaker A:What is it you hope.
Speaker A:An audience.
Speaker A:How they.
Speaker A:How are they going to respond?
Speaker A:And why do you hope that that's their response?
Speaker A:And if their response is X, what does X mean in their life?
Speaker A:What's the transformation for them?
Speaker A:Like, for me, coming to realize what I find intolerable is how many people feel like they're not living their true story.
Speaker A:How many people are sort of getting up every day to, like, going to the closet, metaphorically speaking, going to the closet to get ready for something they really want to look their best for.
Speaker A:You know, imagine you're going to some event that you really want to kind of walk in and kind of have a little bit of swagger and be feeling.
Speaker A:Be feeling.
Speaker A:Be feeling your best.
Speaker A:And you're kind of looking at your clothes and going, nothing looks like me.
Speaker A:Nothing feels like me.
Speaker A:And there's this profound dissonance between who you feel like you are in here and who the world is getting out there.
Speaker A:And for me, that became intolerable.
Speaker A:Still intolerable that I did that.
Speaker A:People are walking around only living part of who they are.
Speaker A:It's, you know, the last night.
Speaker A:Well, yesterday they had the AFC and NFC championship.
Speaker A:If you're not playing your position, your team's going to lose.
Speaker A:We need you playing your position, not somebody else's position, because you think that's what you should do.
Speaker A:You know, if the quarterback's trying to be a linebacker because he Thinks, well, that's just what I need to do to make a living.
Speaker A:And well, then we never got to know that you have those skills to be a quarterback.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:Here ended my sports bowl analogy.
Speaker A:But it's a.
Speaker A:That's my thing.
Speaker A:I think that, yes, it's freeing the creativity from the pragmatic, but it's also by focusing on who do I actually want to serve?
Speaker A:What's the level of service?
Speaker A:What's the level of impact I'm seeking to have in the world?
Speaker A:And what's that flavor?
Speaker A:For me, it's helping people live more than once in a lifetime story.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker A:What are ways I can do that and what are ways that I can be engaging aspects of my art in the process of doing that and continue to cultivate the art which cultivates me and continue to leave the door open that the art on its own would flourish in a way that creates a path for me to just be doing that.
Speaker A:But it's.
Speaker A:But for me, I.
Speaker A:I have found that it starts with that service piece and then looking at what are ways that I am.
Speaker A:Because I have this passion for this thing that not a lot of people have a passion for.
Speaker A:What are the ways that.
Speaker A:That gives me a different perspective on the world, different skill set, different, you know, ability to, like, it might be that that visual art is your thing.
Speaker A:Well, like, that's why a lot of people that visual artists end up going into design.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Or interior design, because they have a real passion for an aesthetic and what it can do.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I just think the more we can free our art to be art and yet lean into the things that we love most about the experience of it and what our vision is for, what it will ultimately mean in our lives and the lives of others, and cultivate the practical aspects of life around that service, life just becomes a richer experience.
Speaker A:All in.
Speaker A:In.
Speaker A:In my experience, I just think it's.
Speaker A:They're not.
Speaker A:They're not either.
Speaker A:Or I think too many of us, we set up the ideal.
Speaker A:I'm either going to be pick your idol.
Speaker A:I'm going to break through in that way, fill in the blank, or it's not working.
Speaker A:And I think you're missing out on the joy of bringing more of you into the world, bringing more of your art into the world and bringing more experience, or having more the impact in the world that you could have.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And none of these, by the way, are, if they're.
Speaker A:If there's any coherence to them, that this is all for me, when we were about to start.
Speaker A:You were talking about the wanting to explore creativity.
Speaker A:What's it like to be overcoming obstacles in the creative life?
Speaker A:What's it like to find a way to make a living?
Speaker A:I do make a living.
Speaker A:I don't make a huge living at this moment.
Speaker A:I'm on my way to that.
Speaker A:Part of that for me is getting out of my way around how to run a business.
Speaker A:I'm, I've gotten good at finding things that are like I've been talking about here with the, about practical, practical things that I know have value that I can use to be of service and, and, and make a living off.
Speaker A:I've gotten good at doing that and it brings me great joy and satisfaction.
Speaker A:But I'm not as good at managing the business and that's an ongoing journey.
Speaker A:But, but I would say that the setbacks are real.
Speaker A:I mean the number of times that you think this is it, this is it, this is it and, and then it just turns out not to be around 9 11.
Speaker A:I think we have somewhat of an age difference.
Speaker A:I was fully adult enough touring and out in the world when 911 happened.
Speaker A:And I had just invested $20,000 in producing a new record, recording and producing a new record.
Speaker A:And it was most I'd ever put into recording.
Speaker A:And you know, it involved a lot of creative financing and unwise financing.
Speaker A:And I was supposed to release it like within a week of 911 and then 911 hit and the whole everything, everything ended.
Speaker A:The music industry was done overnight.
Speaker A:Like they just did everything shut down and so many other things emerged from that.
Speaker A:And obviously that was the least of the implications of that tragedy and time in our history.
Speaker A:But my point is that that was one of those inflection point moments.
Speaker A:I thought this is it, here we go.
Speaker A:And I look back and I listen to that record and I'm grateful for the songs and I'm super grateful for the people it's resonated with.
Speaker A:And for me personally, as it should to a certain extent as an artist, it's kind of cringe worthy for me to listen to.
Speaker A:And I'm like, I'm so glad that didn't happen because you know, I'm, you know, if that had been the hit then that would be the thing I'd be out having to sing every.
Speaker A:And that's not what's for me.
Speaker A:So I thought that was supposed to be it and then it wasn't it.
Speaker A:I thought this.
Speaker A:Other things, you know, all these different things that I thought, oh, this is it, this is it, this Is it.
Speaker A:This is it.
Speaker A:And I'm moving toward this because I think it's.
Speaker A:I want to touch on the things you overcome and how they're not really overcoming, they're actually part of the thing that the discomfort is part of the comfort.
Speaker A:The soreness from the gym is part of getting in shape.
Speaker A:That's, it's all the exhale is part of the inhale and so on and so forth.
Speaker A:I went through a stretch where I did get a day job.
Speaker A:I went through a very difficult financial time post divorce in part because of things like putting that record out.
Speaker A:And I just made bad financial choices about how I did that, you know, and ended up working a day job.
Speaker A:I was working full time for a company that put on music festivals on cruise ships for very big name artists.
Speaker A:And so it had its own coolness to it.
Speaker A:It was fun.
Speaker A:I'd spend most of my winters in the Caribbean.
Speaker A:That didn't suck.
Speaker A:But a big, big part of me was starving and ultimately I was let go.
Speaker A:And that was an awful time for me.
Speaker A:And I thought, well.
Speaker A:And I ended up, I like it was bad.
Speaker A:I ended up kind of at a, at the, getting a job at like the last branch I caught before I hit the ground kind of thing.
Speaker A:I was working at a shoe store and in my early 40s and going, what the hell is happening to my life?
Speaker A:You know, And I thought, well, this is, that's fine.
Speaker A:This is a wake up call.
Speaker A:I, I want to be back on the road anyway.
Speaker A:I want to be back out making music.
Speaker A:I want to be back out speaking.
Speaker A:Let's get back at it.
Speaker A:And, and then I had something called Bell's palsy.
Speaker A:And, and Bell's palsy is this thing that causes paralysis of half of your face or how it comes on.
Speaker A:It's a virus that attacks your facial nerve and, and it basically makes it look like half your face melted all the way down from your top, your forehead to your, all the way down your neck.
Speaker A:And there's no real effective treatment is you just sort of have to hope that it goes up, gets better.
Speaker A:There's some things they throw at it, but they're not really.
Speaker A:They haven't solved that problem because it doesn't involve getting an old white man's penis hard.
Speaker A:But that's just how I feel about that.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:But anyway, they.
Speaker A:One of those things that doesn't get solved by, you know, the powers that.
Speaker C:Be until they get it right.
Speaker A:Yes, exactly, exactly.
Speaker A:And it's the kind of thing you're only supposed to Go through once.
Speaker A:Like it's a very rare thing to happen for most people, it happens once.
Speaker A:For me, it happened three times.
Speaker C:Oh, wow.
Speaker A:And, and after the second time, what happened?
Speaker A:And the reason I'm mentioning it is, I mean, it's a process and you have to, it's, it's, it's intense enough that like you have to, you have to blink your eye manually because your eyes don't blink.
Speaker A:Your eye doesn't blink anymore.
Speaker A:You have to tape your eyes shut at night.
Speaker A:You have to hold up your mouth because it won't, you can't speak.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's awful.
Speaker A:And I went through it with each side of my face.
Speaker A:One side was twice, the other side once.
Speaker A:At the second time, while I was trying to get back on the road, I found that I was trying to get my chops back up, you know, and when you're traveling like that, when you're doing music full time, you need to be able to do like half hour sets, hour sets, three four hour sets.
Speaker A:You know, the three four hour sets are the kind of, often the breadwinner ones because that's where you get hired playing a restaurant and be background noise.
Speaker A:And those are gigs that kind of suck.
Speaker A:But they're for me, they did anyway.
Speaker A:They, you know, they had their moments, but, but they pay the bills.
Speaker A:And suddenly after the bell's palsy, I would choke unexpectedly because there was an issue in my throat and it felt like identity theft.
Speaker A:Like I just, I didn't know how to be.
Speaker A:Who to be in the world absent my ability to sing and commune with the audience like that, have that conversation.
Speaker A:And the reason I mentioned that is that period of losing the job, working these jobs because I couldn't get back on the road because I couldn't sing, led to me writing the book because I was trying to figure out how do I deal with uncertainty like this.
Speaker A:I was realizing that this whole notion that I was going to arrive somewhere was always, there's nobody, nobody.
Speaker A:Oprah's not doing the same thing she was five years ago or 10 years ago or 20.
Speaker A:Everybody's.
Speaker A:We're all passing through.
Speaker A:The highs and lows are.
Speaker A:They're just, they're not here to stay, you know, so what does that mean?
Speaker A:What do I do with that in terms of this whole thing?
Speaker A:How do I embrace uncertainty and what can I get from that?
Speaker A:Which led to me giving talks about embracing uncertainty and the power of curiosity and the value of comfort and discomfort and where our power truly, all these different layers, the process of going, I can't perform in the way I used to, but I still write songs.
Speaker A:I still need to do this.
Speaker A:And upside, the world has changed, and I can make music from my room and share it with the world.
Speaker A:And psych.
Speaker A:I was never particularly kind to my voice.
Speaker A:I was always trying to sound like somebody else.
Speaker A:So it required me to sing more within myself.
Speaker A:So now I find myself on the other side of all that.
Speaker A:I'm a better singer than I ever was.
Speaker A:I feel like I'm.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I feel like I'm 30 years in and just getting good as a writer.
Speaker A:I feel like the process of going through everything I went through has created.
Speaker A:I have a much different relationship with certainty and uncertainty in my life, and it's created this whole other area to be speaking from and serving through.
Speaker A:My point is that the process of navigating the ups and downs is more a process, in my experience, of not viewing him as such and using your experience as a creative.
Speaker A:Every creative pursuit, every.
Speaker A:Every one of them that I'm aware of, involves being comfortable with messy.
Speaker A:Because every creative endeavor, whether you're a chef or an artist or a dancer or a jazz musician or a classical artist, there's a process of going, this isn't working.
Speaker A:You know, letting it be chaos until it becomes order, and then looking for ways that it's still not working.
Speaker A:And it's a process of mining that resonance and dissonance, the comfort and discomfort and the less I can attach to, oh, this thing that I thought was going to bring me the next thing, get me that moment that now I've made didn't happen, therefore everything's ruined.
Speaker A:No, it didn't happen because it's not supposed to happen in this way at this moment, and it becomes information rather than sort of indictment of where I'm at.
Speaker A:Does that make sense?
Speaker C:Every.
Speaker C:Everything that you go through is a piece of your journey and just allows you to.
Speaker C:I mean, that's just life, right?
Speaker C:It's just like everything that happens not necessarily happens for a reason, like the saying goes, but it happens.
Speaker C:And you must deal with what has happened instead of worrying about what has already happened.
Speaker C:So going forward, this happened to you, but what do you do with that now?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And what value might it hold?
Speaker A:It's almost like.
Speaker A:Did you ever see the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:When you're on desert island like that, right?
Speaker A:And he's.
Speaker A:The plane crashed, he's all alone, everything's gone, but some random stuff is washed up on the beach.
Speaker A:And what does he do?
Speaker A:He goes through the process of, please let this not be what's happening.
Speaker A:You know, hoping I can just attract attention and somebody's going to come, and this isn't.
Speaker A:You know, this isn't really my fate.
Speaker A:And then he.
Speaker A:Then he gets to a point where he's like, okay, this is what.
Speaker A:This is what's happening, and starts going through what he has there.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I have this box.
Speaker A:I have this soccer ball, you know, this soccer ball that I can.
Speaker A:What can these become?
Speaker A:How can these become assets you just change your relationship with?
Speaker A:And it doesn't mean it's not uncomfortable.
Speaker A:It doesn't mean that it's fun, doesn't mean you're not disappointed.
Speaker A:You get to be disappointed.
Speaker A:It's just.
Speaker A:It's just that it meaning something.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's stoicism.
Speaker A:You know, stoicism is 101, is.
Speaker A:You know, Epictetus said that we were not disturbed by things, but by the view we take of them.
Speaker A:It's that, you know, it's.
Speaker A:It's going, okay, maybe this thing itself isn't.
Speaker A:Doesn't have this meaning that I'm giving it, but that my view of it does.
Speaker A:You know, you and I are talking about the state of the world when we were getting on this call here.
Speaker A:And that's part of where I'm at every day, all day long these days.
Speaker A:It's kind of looking for what is mine to do in this and going, okay, this is what's happening.
Speaker A:How do I show up and be of service in this moment?
Speaker A:Yeah, And.
Speaker A:And that's.
Speaker A:I think that's.
Speaker A:That, again, is the gift that I think the art gives.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because it just requires a different kind of listening and a willingness to.
Speaker A:To mine for what's.
Speaker A:What could be useful.
Speaker A:I mean, a spoiler.
Speaker A:In that movie, there's a piece of a plastic door, one of the pieces of a Porta Potty that washes up on shore, that he ends up going, this could be a sale, you know, and uses it to get off the island, you know, And I think that that's.
Speaker A:That's what can happen.
Speaker A:Kind of leaning into some of that wisdom of the ancients and combining it with the experience of being a creative and living a creative life.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker C:I know we.
Speaker C:You have to get going soon, so we're gonna move on to the.
Speaker C:The final questions.
Speaker A:Okay, good.
Speaker C:Do you know anyone personally who also runs a standout creative business, and what do they do to stand out?
Speaker A:Well, yes, I know loads of people.
Speaker A:Thankfully, I'm gonna name the first, first three that came to my mind, one we have in common, who was apparently on another episode recently that I haven't gotten here yet.
Speaker A:Bridget.
Speaker A:He's relatively new soul to my world the last year or so.
Speaker A:But she's just a light and she's constantly iterating and leaning into that which is most alive for her in her creative journey and creative business.
Speaker A:And she hosts these free calls, by the way, called right Monday that are fantastic opportunities to come together and create.
Speaker A:You and I were on one earlier today, and so that's one.
Speaker A:Another is a woman named Katie Boyce who's a dear, dear friend of mine I met at the very beginning of the pandemic when I was first getting into copywriting.
Speaker A:And she's a copywriter for interior designers, but she's a writer fundamentally and she's a creative fundamentally.
Speaker A:And she helps people feel seen in the world.
Speaker A:That was the question.
Speaker A:The sub question, right, Was, wow, what are they doing?
Speaker A:And yeah, what are they doing to see it?
Speaker A:And again, the key for her has been iterating.
Speaker A:It's going into.
Speaker A:We have those moments when we're having conversations about the business where we've run into moments in the time that I've known her where she's like, yeah, this thing I've been doing for a minute, it's just not, I'm not loving it.
Speaker A:And then one or the other will say, hey, just a reminder, you work for yourself and you get to love it, so change it.
Speaker A:So she's always iterating and now she does things.
Speaker A:She built a quite successful copywriting practice for herself, turned it into realized that a lot of the clients she was serving, interior designers is her niche.
Speaker A:But a lot of the clients she was serving were really eager to get things done quickly.
Speaker A:So then she developed, she stopped doing sort of traditional, traditional copywriting work, particularly like websites and that sort of thing could go on for months by necessity.
Speaker A:But she started doing vip, VIP weeks where she does focuses on a client in the whole week with them and at the end of it they have their full branding.
Speaker A:And in the process of building this business, she found that she, she was a really radiant light in some other entrepreneurs lives and she loves throwing parties.
Speaker A:She's one of these people that like, if you go to a dinner party at her house, it's going to have a theme and it's going to be so.
Speaker A:And it's not going to be like a overdone, cheesy thing.
Speaker A:It's going to be this intimate, rich, amazing time.
Speaker A:And so now she also leads retreats for women entrepreneurs that are cool locations.
Speaker A:Like she did one a couple weeks ago.
Speaker A:It was a week long retreat in Mexico, right on the ocean there in Pacific Ocean.
Speaker A:So, yeah, and the last one I'll just say is.
Speaker A:I'll just say much more briefly.
Speaker A:A dear old friend of mine who actually did the, the art for a couple of my CDs.
Speaker A:And she's an artist and she ultimately also moved into being a graphic design professor and continues to do her art and.
Speaker A:And now also leads communities of designers and leads camps and that sort of thing.
Speaker A:And we're not in each other's worlds on the regular anymore, but she just inspires the hell out of me.
Speaker A:And her name is Diane Gibbs.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The copywriter is Katie Boyce.
Speaker A:That one I just mentioned is Diane Gibbs.
Speaker A:But yeah.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker C:What's one extraordinary book, podcast or documentary that has had the biggest impact on your journey?
Speaker A:Well, again, I'll go with my first reaction.
Speaker A:The two that I recommend right now, there are many, many.
Speaker A:But the two I recommend are the.
Speaker A:The Creative act by Rick Rubin.
Speaker A:Everybody I know has read that book, ended up talking about it somewhere like, you got to read this book.
Speaker A:And Big Magic.
Speaker A:Elizabeth Gilbert.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Well, you know, I will throw in one more.
Speaker A:There's a book, what the hell is it, Called Leonard Cohen On Leonard Cohen.
Speaker A:And it's this collection of interviews that he did over the course of his career and lifetime.
Speaker A:And I read it cover to cover, ended up buying it because he, you could see he spoke to the creative experience really powerfully in the conversations he was having like this over the course of his lifetime.
Speaker A:And I found that to be really heartening.
Speaker A:So, yeah, there you go.
Speaker A:Leonard Cohen or Leonard Cohen.
Speaker A:Big Magic and the Creative Act.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker C:Yeah, you recommended Creative act to me and I listened to the audiobook, which is.
Speaker C:You get to hear his voice as well.
Speaker C:Talk about.
Speaker A:Oh yeah, he's got a great voice.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Cool.
Speaker A:Did you like it?
Speaker C:Yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker C:There's just so many different nuggets.
Speaker C:I don't even know.
Speaker C:I would have to like listen to that a thousand times in order to get everything he's trying to get out.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's one of the gifts of it.
Speaker A:So as a, as a, as a written book, is that it's the kind of thing that's not a, it's not an arc.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:You just narratively.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You could just use one you could put in your bathroom and just, you know, when you're having A seat, read a little chapter and then, and get something out of it.
Speaker A:You know, it's, it's, it's that kind of a book they can read in nuggets.
Speaker A:But yeah, awesome.
Speaker C:What do you think makes a creative business stand out?
Speaker C:And what is one piece of advice that you would give someone based on your experience on how they can stand out?
Speaker A:The authenticity.
Speaker A:Fundamentally, I think it's being you unabashedly, unapologetically.
Speaker A:And I will add as a caveat to that, because I know some people, I'm not just saying wear your heart in your sleeve willy nilly.
Speaker A:I had an artist friend who had gone through some rough times with social media and such and people kind of some backlash to some things.
Speaker A:And she asked me how do you know when it's time when a piece is ready to be shared?
Speaker A:And I would put that in this context too.
Speaker A:How do you know how, when it's safe to be authentic in this way?
Speaker A:And what I said to her, in short, was first tell the truth in whatever you're doing.
Speaker A:Let it be true.
Speaker A:It doesn't have to be literally true.
Speaker A:You could be fiction you're writing.
Speaker A:It could be.
Speaker A:But, but does it feel true like you've represented that idea in an authentic way?
Speaker A:When you know you've done that, then you don't share it until such point as you realize as you're clear that I'm sharing this because I know it's true and I know it holds value and it matters to me and it's, and none of those things are contingent upon how you receive it.
Speaker A:In other words, it can always going to feel good when somebody loves what you do and it's always going to feel a little bad when they don't.
Speaker A:But as long as you are sharing something you know to be true, you know to hold value, you know mattered to you and you have gotten to a place where you're like, I'm going to share it and if you don't like it, that'll be kind of a bummer, but it won't be crushing to me.
Speaker A:I still know it's true.
Speaker A:That's when it's ready.
Speaker A:That's, that's what, that's what it feels like to be able to show up authenticity authentically and unapologetically.
Speaker A:And then you, there's, you unavoidably shine.
Speaker A:You can't, you can't help it.
Speaker A:When somebody's really in that authentic place, being who they are, they're attractional, they just radiate.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's Just like when you were saying earlier with your music, if you go into audience, they can receive it in any way they want to, but as long as you're the one bringing it in a way, that's you.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:It doesn't matter what they thought.
Speaker C:It matters how you feel about it as you're presenting it to them.
Speaker A:And the beauty of that is that when you do it that way, it actually becomes more theirs somehow.
Speaker A:And I don't know.
Speaker A:That's the magic part.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:I don't know how that works, but I know it to be 100 true that when I do all those things that, though it's often around the most personal of things, it's when it becomes most universal.
Speaker C:I think it's just the sharing of the human experience because we're all here and we have no idea what we're doing.
Speaker C:None of us.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:We are all making it up.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker C:Everyone's making it up on the spot.
Speaker C:So it's like when you feel that from somebody else, you feel a connection because you're also like, oh, yeah, this is.
Speaker C:This is just life, you know?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Anybody who tells you they're not making it up or pretends that they are, no matter what office they hold, they're lying when they're selling something that's.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:It's all.
Speaker A:We're all making it up.
Speaker C:So it's a funny story about the.
Speaker C:The people.
Speaker C:I think it was Obama's White House, where they're.
Speaker C:They're in the.
Speaker C:The White House, and they're like, oh, we're the ones in charge.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:I don't know what they're doing, and they're in the White House.
Speaker C:So that if that says that nothing else to you, you're in the most powerful building in the entire world.
Speaker C:And they're like, oh, why are we in charge?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker C:I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker A:Why do they give me the keys?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker C:Can you give the listeners a challenge that they can take action on right now to start standing out?
Speaker A:I guess the challenge that I would.
Speaker A:That I would.
Speaker A:I would give is create room for quiet in your life.
Speaker A:And there doesn't have to be a lot of it to make a big difference, but give yourself even three to five minutes a day to be quiet and to listen to where your yearnings are.
Speaker A:I just finished reading a book called Bittersweet by Susan Cain, and she talked about the power of listening to our yearnings, because our deepest yearnings are Directing us to our greatest joys.
Speaker A:And I would say in the creative for creatives that our deepest yearnings are directing us to that which is ours to express and birth and share in the world.
Speaker A:But we have to be willing to go to lean into the parts that feel a little bit scary, that are calling us in the form of a yearning, in a form of a need, an unexpressed want.
Speaker A:There's some part of your brain's going, yeah, but.
Speaker A:Or I can't do that.
Speaker A:Listen closer.
Speaker A:That's probably where your unique thing to express lives.
Speaker A:That's the thing where you get to go.
Speaker A:I bet you there are people that have this same yearning.
Speaker A:How can I serve those people?
Speaker A:And somewhere in there when you do that creatively, you're going to be satisfying your own yearning as you do.
Speaker C:So that's also a key component of creativity is allowing yourself to not think about whatever it is that you're thinking about.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker C:When the best ideas.
Speaker A:Oh, that's so great.
Speaker A:That's the low apart.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I've the number.
Speaker A:I've lost time in a similar vein.
Speaker A:It's not exactly the same thing, but I've lost count of the number of times that I've been wrestling with a thing that I'm creating.
Speaker A:Whether it's for work work or.
Speaker A:Or just.
Speaker A:Or the art.
Speaker A:And I've taken a nap.
Speaker A:Big fan of naps.
Speaker A:Taking a nap.
Speaker A:And I'll be laying there and I'll be like, I got it.
Speaker A:You know, it's just.
Speaker A:And it just comes up because that's.
Speaker A:That's how it works.
Speaker A:That's how it works.
Speaker A:Creativity never really stops.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's in there.
Speaker A:That's why making that quiet can make a huge difference.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Well, Brian, this has been really great talking to you.
Speaker C:I feel like we could have gone on for another one and a half hours.
Speaker C:But same we'll end it here and we can come back to it if we want to.
Speaker A:Well, I appreciate that it's been a pleasure and a privilege to be.
Speaker A:To be here with you.
Speaker A:I hope that my ramblings were hold some use to someone.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker C:They will let people know where they can keep up to date with you and some of what you're up to.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:My website is yes, brianperry.com that's Y E S like the opposite of no.
Speaker A:And I spell my name Brian with an I.
Speaker A:So it's Y E S B R I N P E R R Y dot com.
Speaker A:Go there, sign up for the mailing list.
Speaker A:If you would.
Speaker A:I'm doing a lot less on social media these days just because I'm disenchanted with the way the algorithms can kind of get in the way of our conversation as well as some of the decisions some of those platforms are making.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:But I really love the space.
Speaker A:The conversation I'm having with the mail enlist and we're doing, I do free events with them.
Speaker A:I do severally rich conversations there.
Speaker A:So that's.
Speaker A:Yes, BrianPerry.com is the place to go.
Speaker A:And you can also, you can email me through there as well too.
Speaker A:And yeah, and keep, keep an eye out.
Speaker A:I'm, I'm on, I'm in all the places, you know, Spotify, that kind of thing for the music.
Speaker A:And I will be, you know, my intention.
Speaker A:I'm about to put together a new album.
Speaker A: My intention for: Speaker A:It's been a slow crawl out of the pandemic for me.
Speaker A:But this year is going to be a bit of a shift in that.
Speaker A:So stay tuned.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker C:All right, thanks again for coming on, Brian.
Speaker C:It's been a pleasure.
Speaker A:Thank you, Kevin.
Speaker A:Be well.
Speaker C:All right, bye.
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Speaker B:Ready to turn that potential into impact?
Speaker B:Head to thestandoutcreatives.com to book a free strategy session.
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