Lessons

Lesson Info

The Big Ideas: Your Mindset

Here we go. So first segment is all about howto build a business that will support the creative life you need again, notice the word need not want we're going to focus on your mindset and your goals. All right, lesson one I'm gonna lay out some big ideas here for you. The first one is a question creatives plus business question mark, right? Because a lot of creatives tell me I'm not a business person and j k o, I'd be interested to know how many people in the chat room say this to themselves also. So let's see what they say will first talk to the people in our studio audience, right? How many of you have said to yourself, I'm not a business person, anybody? In the beginning? I did, but that was a while ago. I think I've learned to be more of a business person. Excellent, sane. Yeah. In the beginning, I started off as just a creative person and quickly realised that in order for me to grow as a business core the business, I need to focus on the business of moving it on guy, you know, le...

arn learned the business acumen, so you've become a business person. Yeah, and justin, what about you? Yeah, I mean, I think that especially what I've learned to crave live now like I have the skills that I didn't have before I had kind of understood what to do as a producer and now I'm like now I know and kind of better understanding so I do feel like I'm like I have the knowledge to be a good business person now excellent, because I submit to you all of you that there is no such thing as a business person, right? I would even say there's no such thing as a creative person, there are business things that you do business activities and there are creative activities which you probably enjoy more right? But the reality is there's no such thing as a label you don't label yourself because if you compartmentalize these ideas is and start saying, well, I'm this kind of person and therefore I cant do this, then you're going to limit yourself and success will not really be available to you. So there's no such thing as a business person and besides business is not tricky, right? We're not talking about science here we're not talking about astrophysics, we're talking about business one o one, which is essentially common sense and I submit to you that you can do this not because I say so but because it's just really not all that complicated and I imagine the people who have become business people write have changed the way they see themselves by their actions have realized that it's actually not that tricky once you focus on it and that's what I want to show you also over the course of these sessions I will show you exactly what to do lisa's saying am I say I'm not I don't even like the word business was saying, you know, I need to be more business savvy that's why I'm here today sparrow in flight says I have said that to myself for the past two years, and I finally decided that since I'm not a natural business person, I need to figure out how to do it absolutely that's perfect cause I have another slide that says that exact thing but there's another idea here about creativity that I want to propose, which is that you can be very creative in the business side of your business. But if you compartmentalize and say I'm a creative person than your creativity doesn't seep into the business side of your business but if you say I'm going to be creative in my business and let that creativity flow it's kind of amazing that's what will set you apart all right, so just think about that now here's a corollary concept or question what about creatives and self promotion because these people that I was helping get organized for fifteen dollars an hour, then I mentioned that that's what I was charging in nineteen, eighty eight, fifteen dollars an hour I charge a little bit more now um they did not want to do self promotion and there are all sorts of reasons why people don't want to do self promotion. And on my website I'm showing a screenshot now from the form on my website that people fill out when they want to do a free mentoring session with me and it's got five options to choose from and these are all the things I hear people say I have no time to do it. Why don't you want to do self promotion? I've no time it's too overwhelming it's too expensive? I don't like self promotion and the most popular one is this my mother told me not to brag. All right, I see people laughing in the room so there's people identifying and this is really the most popular. But I proposed to you that your mother had no crystal ball about your career. She did not know that you would be needing to make money and support yourself with your creativity, so this may not be the advice to be following from your mother at this point in your life, all right, plus talking about your work is not bragging it isn't in fact, if anyone said to me I'm the best fill in the blank in the world that's put that's very much of a put off right? Nobody should say that that's the image we have about people bragging but that's not what marketing and self promotion is really you on lee talk about your work in the context of your client's problems and how you can help solve them that's what you're going to be talking about but I'll talk a lot more about that later actually, so here's something else I hear people say I want my work to speak for itself I hear this a lot so you don't want to talk about your work why not? I want to know why people don't want to talk about your work let's put that question into the chap from anyone in the room want to answer that question or feel that way I don't want to talk about my work it should speak for itself. Yeah, I feel that way as well. I mean that kind of uh you know, I don't like to brag about myself it's not a good feeling afterwards and uh but I mean and I would like to get to a point where I like, you don't want to talk more about my work and uh now I feel that I'm at that position it's amazing to me what you said I don't want to talk about where I work I don't want to brag about myself as if those two things are somehow intrinsically connected they're not going to try to break it apart in your mind today okay you with me? Okay, good. Um besides, you know it's not realistic to think that your work could speak for itself literally it can't and in this cluttered environment that we all live in where there's mohr and maur media everywhere and we are just buried by it it's impossible to think that your work could speak for itself maybe fifty years ago maybe so you will need to talk about your work you will need to speak up, you will need to speak out. In fact, part of my coaching is often having people slow down and articulate and speak louder because you may notice as you're talking in the room also it's easy to not pay attention to what you're saying and therefore being mumbling a little bit, but I'm going to encourage you all to speak up so that we can all hear you because that's part of marketing and self promotion and finally just one other thought about this idea it's not really about talking it's about asking the right questions when you have a new prospect when you have someone that you are interested in working with people imagine that they have to go blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and that's why they're going to want to work with them and I I have a client who told me a story last week about someone that he hired so he's a designer he hired a writer to work with him on his website and he said to me, you know, she didn't say that much, but she asked all the right questions and that made me trust her so we think that this trust is going to be built by bla ba ba baba baba ba baba but that just mose everyone down right and that's not what we want we want to ask the right questions and then shut up so they can talk because really they want to talk all right? They want to tell us what their problems are so we can solve them, so that leads me to what I think of as the secret to self promotion it's not really a secret, but I'll tell you what it is it isn't about you self promotion is not about you right? It's about your client's is about what they need to hear it's about what they need from you and if you can demonstrate that you understand that then you're golden that is the secret to self promotion it's a simple idea but it actually requires a very um, complex mind set shift inside to essentially step out of yourself and see yourself and your services from their perspective, and then speak from that perspective. But you might have an opportunity to practice that here. That's how you build trust one more idea. The self promotion paradox comes out of the secret to self promotion. This is a new idea, so let me try to articulate it. So the idea is that you don't want to talk about your work, okay? But self promotion is not about you, so you don't have to talk about your work. It's kind of perfect, right? If you could get that. You don't wanna talk about your work, you don't have to it's not about you. That's the secret. All right, one last idea. This is one related to what uh, someone in the tap room was saying, right? Selling myself doesn't come naturally. All right, I hear this a lot there's so much wrong with this idea. I'll try to tell you what it is. Number one, we're not talking about selling yourself. We already established that it it's not about you also it doesn't come naturally. I don't think selling comes naturally to anyone, it doesn't come naturally to me, although often people think it does. But over twenty eight years I have learned to do this and I'm still learning, right? We are all learning so that's the whole point you should not expect it to come naturally if that's your expectation you're going to be very disappointed and that's really a good excuse not to do it actually, right? And finally, what do you do when something doesn't come naturally? I mean, do you only do what comes naturally? I hope not right you learn and that's what will we are here to d'oh? We're here to learn the things that don't come naturally. Are we ready? Take a check in in the chat room. Yes, so many people identifying with everything you've been saying here that a ll the things you've been covering, elisa saying it doesn't come naturally they are today, and a lot of it is this sudden seems to be is your same parental, not pressure, but the way people were brought up I was so I certainly identified with that my mother still struggles to it. I have to say anything positive about what I just on discourages me from doing the same fascinating. I think so many people online recognizing that, so I'm just gonna riff off of that a little bit if you don't mind before I get to the three steps to success because I do I think that, um, we're not going to do therapy here, but there is a therapeutic aspect to this for creative people and for people who are self employed, and often I see people behaving as if their clients are their parents and they can't say or do this because my mother wouldn't like it or my father didn't like it, right? So really, the mind shift is also you have to take care of yourself. No one is going to take care of you anymore, and it is up to you to figure out what you need and that's actually a perfect segue way to the next idea, which is this thing I call the three simple steps is to success, and, um, I really think that without taking thes three steps, which I will go into a little bit now and then much more later, but the idea is that if you don't do this, you basically take whatever comes along. You get boring clients or boring work from annoying clients who can't pay you, but you can't afford to say no to them because you don't know where the next project is coming from. That's the crux of it and that's what we're trying to solve here. So decide what you need. This is the first step in the process and this is what we're going to be covering mostly in this session. Decide what you need. And I focus again on the word need here. Because usually you're asked for what you want. What is your vision for your business? What is it that you want? And I really think it's not about what you want, at least not at first, because there are so many options that we could choose from in terms of what we want. How do you know what to choose? What's your criteria. What is it based on? And I think it's more important, we can talk about what you want later on, but let's focus first on what you need, let's. Make sure that you can get your bills paid let's. Make sure that you can have a full time business and cover your expenses and then some. And then we can talk about what you need. So first we're going to talk about what you need, and then you can talk about what you want. Step two. This will be the entirety of session, too. We're going to focus on seek and you will find a little biblical reference they're right because once you've decided what you need then you go out and look for the people and pursue the people who can give you what you need no more of this expecting people who can't give you what you need teo try to persuade them to do it it's not possible so again it's up to you to figure out what you need and then go find the people who can provide it and then step three which is what we're going to cover for the most part in session three this is the essence of taking care of yourself asking for what you need whether it's time more time whether it's money and that often comes up and that's why we're going to talk about pricing whether it's clarification I need more information write whatever it is that you need that's what you're going to need to ask for they're not going to volunteer it nobody knows what you need but you and if you haven't decided what you need then they're not going to know either they're not going to read your mind right so all of this thinking and doing is what you have to do in order to what I call these three steps to success all right and when you do that I propose that what will happen is peace here my images for peace simplicity, clarity calm the cutest puppy you have ever seen right that's what we're aiming for not the most of anything or the best of anything but just ah peaceful simple life that's what I think is important so now we are at the end of lesson one and at the end of each lesson I have an exercise all right, so this is lesson one the big ideas in the workbook that goes along with it we have a short article you'll find that outlining the three steps that I just talked about plus the exercise and here is the exercise and maybe we can do this with the online audience but we'll do it first with our in studio audience. So which of these have you said for just thought off the top of your head raina all of them eyes there one that's more prevalent than another I think the first one I think my mother told me not to brag but it wasn't necessarily my mother but the whole culture I was what bragging is just a no no interesting. All right, justin, what about you? I guess selling doesn't come naturally to me has one stands out and zane number three my work will speak for itself I think that if someone else comes across your work and just a better feeling right to tell you about oh I saw your work there you know, they find out on their own just a better, better feeling, yes and no, I do think part of the problem with that is that if you're not controlling it, then they have all of these fantasies let's call them about what your work is that may not be connected to the reality that's. Why it's up to each of us in our marketing to clarify what it is that we're offering to the people that we want to work with, because otherwise it can cause a lot of confusion so good. All right, so we've got one for each that works all right, j k. What about in the chat room used to be two and three seems to be the most popular one really selling doesn't come in actually, in my work speak for itself. That seems to be the majority decision. Drew's got a complete different east, and I worry about what folks think about me. Another one. I think, that maybe come from parental influence.