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We Don't Succeed Alone

Welcome back to fulfill your creative purpose con creative live. My name is andrey, and we have just finished up lesson twenty six recharging your batteries hope you've been recharging your batteries and this next lesson is lesson number twenty seven and the fact is we don't succeed alone. So where? That's what this what this lesson is going to be about just that try to do it on your own oh my god! It's hard it's just too hard. So if you're following along in discovery journal, you'll want to turn to page forty one where gives some detail about this and some detailed instructions? We're going to cover it actually during this broadcast. So kathy let's, start off with a question that you had andi let's just dive into that was so before, before the cameras came on. You asked me a question I said, hold that question that's a good question for everyone else to hear. What was it? Well, I know we'll be talking about mentor ship, and I was trying to come up with a list of who I would have is a...

mentor, and I don't know if that means someone who is like felix was saying, maybe somebody was doing exactly what I would like to be doing, or is it sometimes not always? Not really I don't know how to choose a mentor and then I don't know how to tap into them without using them or over using them or taking advantage of their time right like what is it going quite ask for a mentor that's a great question and having approach one well, first of all a mentor is, um it's a friendship you know, it's a relationship but there's obviously it's not like a regular friendship, right? Because you are in a position where they know more than you d'oh so obviously the first thing is you have to have some respect for their specialized knowledge we don't succeed alone one of the main reasons that we need to support we can't do this alone. The other reason is we need specialized knowledge to get to where we want to go. No, you don't because you know there is not necessarily a university or a course that you could take to gain all of that specialized knowledge, so I'll give you some examples of mentors in my life um and you khun maybe these could inspire some examples for people listening so again, the first thing I would encourage you to think about is who knows something that you would is expert in something that you would like to learn more about and that you have a great deal of respect for um and understand that you you know, you have to be deferential because they know more than you, um, a mentor, someone you khun, you can pay for mentorship for specialized knowledge. You know, you could pay for consultant, but typically, um, the traditional definition of mentor, it could be someone you don't actually pay for it. There's. Just you just have a relationship or rapport, and they're willing to support and guide you on your path. So the first mentor that I had was wayne tebow. So wayne tebow is an american art icon, and, um, I, uh, met him because someone, when I first started painting again after ten years of not painting, I met an art collector. And he said your color palette is reminiscent of wayne tebow. Did you study with him? I said, no, I did not study with him, and then I just got it into my head that I should meet him, and I thought, well, how the heck am I going to meet wayne tebow? Right? It's, very famous he's more famous now than he was a very famous then he's even more famous now to give you some contacts. When I met amos, campuses were starting to sell for over one million dollars, and he had a retrospective touring the nation. That was at the new york metropolitan museum of art. So if you crack open our history book gonna find, wait thibault in there more than likely that's kind of a hard guy to approach, but right now, it's, like I'm intimidating. So here's what I did, um, I had slides of my paintings back then, we still had slides, and I wrote him a letter and I just said, mr tebow, I don't remember what I said exactly, but I said, you know, I admire your work and wondering, um, if you'd be willing to critique my work, I didn't ask him to be my mentor. I just asked if you'd be willing to critique my work. I know that he taught for free at uc davis, so it wasn't completely with him outside of the realm of possibility. I was in a student at uc davis, but I lived in davis at the time, and I said in the letter and I said in the letter, if you are willing, would you please phone me? So at the time I was working as a development director and a battered women shelter, a dismal environment paid my paintings on the wall and, uh, phone rang news wait chemo and he said, wow, you know I mean, you know, he said I like your paintings and I'd be happy to critique your work. I was thrilled so I went down teo went down and met with him and I just developed a reporter with him and he would critique my work and I would take his feedback and the other thing you had to take their feedback, he asked someone for help and you don't take their help or if they tell you to do something and you don't do it going to be going to be kind of a pain quickly so you have to be my experience with mentors is that especially if they're not especially for not paying them, but even if you're paying them they're going to be really disinterested in helping you if you don't do the work if you don't if you're not eager to learn so if you want to and if you want teo ignite or improve a mentoring relationship, you could do the work because the satisfaction that they get is actually helping someone. So if you're not, you got to be willing to help yourself in order for them to help you so I said that's an important dynamic to understand so wayne was my first mentor and then um gregory condos also very famous painter um uh he's also a good friend of wayne's I met with him and I he was doing a book signing at a gallery and was a gallery that I was represented by at the time and so I went to the signing and I just want to introduce myself and I said I admire your work um I I've been mentoring opened wayne has been mentoring me would you be willing to critique my paintings? So gregory started to critique my paintings and give me feedback and then I went to the south of france and I studied painting he said you should come to the south of france and you should come to the workshop and you should learn like okay, well, you know more than I do so I'm it was wonderful I mean, we I still remember being this little fishing village having a cappuccino with gregory condos one of my painting idols looking up at the wall and there were picasso there was a picasso where he had traded this sketch for a meal when he sat in there and had a cappuccino and I was there with my painting mentor all sorts of wonderful things blossom out of relationships remember, like one of my an isms is relationships equal revenue you never know what's gonna happen, but you're not going to succeed alone, right? You six so that's the point of this exercise less than twenty seven so those air two examples another example is correct craig craig swanson who you met you know, obviously on part of what I do is I teach I teach this course you know, when I do have a mentoring ship program now I'm going to be launching my own online business course who knows how to do this? Craig looked he built so um craig and I during my first course hit it off we developed a report and I thought, well, what the hell asking us free so I asked him if he would mentor me and I'd I didn't actually expect him to say yes because kind of busy and he not only said yes he thanked me for asking him and he has been so we meet on phone he's in seattle and I'm in san francisco and we just try we just we talk we talk about all different things but he's brilliant he's really smarmy met him he's really smart look but he built this was a twenty seven dollars webcam look where we are now there's two recording studio is a man who has something to learn now can he teach me about painting? Probably not probably, but he can teach me about something I really want to learn more about really dio so there's a couple examples I also formed an advisory board so I thought, why have one mentor when you can have many and so this was an advisory board ahead before but I have a friend actually I met him and he he taught me meditation in golden gate park was very random meeting I decided to take this meditation course and met a gentleman who um I thought was just interesting is teaching meditation he went to harvard he went toe worton and he was an officer in the in the army smart really smart so I said, hey, you have dinner plans you want to come to cinema and come to an advisory board meeting on our I'll um you know it's great wine and I'll give you dinner and he said yeah sure now he advised like really really a successful entrepreneurs um oliver silicon valley with his heart harvard warton background and all I did was ask him and he said yes and he would make a suggestion and if it made sense and it usually did I would act on it and we've be became friends and come to my birthday party and so bottom line is it's just about developing relationships with people who you want to learn from now don't approach someone who charges for that time normally and asked them to mentor you for free of you ever had that happen um duh deal you're gonna goto attorney and say I want some legal advice you know his friends just give it to me I can't do that so on what we're gonna do is you're gonna identify it the end of this exercise going to identify some people who could be your mentor you're going to help you with but you say that's exactly right see the examples I cited I didn't know these people I also asked wolf khan now and if you know who wolf khan is a very famous painter again in every major art collection a contemporary of wayne t boz and I thought well I'm on a roll here I'm gonna call of all of the famous artist if they'll help me out here so I wrote wolf con a letter and to my surprise he wrote me back and said I really like your paintings but I'm losing my eyesight so I'm taking all of any all the time I have left and devoting it completely to painting which of course I respectfully understood and I appreciated that even replied to my letter I actually didn't think he would reply to my letter I still have the letter inside of my wolf con coffee table painting book just even that acknowledgement I mean it still does wonders for me that wolf con uh who's all about color and if you've seen my work I'm all about color the fact that wolf khan said that he liked my paintings I mean that just give me a boost real boost so I have this letter um and then I have this that you have a letter from wayne tebow um I have framed to remind me in case I feel like my workers crap I can look at that letter where he clearly says your work's not crap so sometimes their long term relationships and sometimes they're just little conversation to the mentor you could have a mentoring moment in just one conversation I think it could turn things around for you significantly does that help? Okay so let's let's talk about this a bit so there's there's also you know there's agencies like I've taught through the small business development centers here in the united states they give free help ast long as you have a business plan free uh that's a resource s o sometimes you don't have to pay for the assistant's sometimes you d'oh creative live is an amazing resource I was telling somebody who has a teenage daughter who's thinking about going to art or design school and I said I hope she's watching creative live because it's gonna learn so much more than she ever could if she I chose one degree and went to an art school I mean so much is like this is a tremendous resource and there's lots of channels were on the money in life channel but got a photography channel I mean it's just amazing so that's a resource and you could get into the chat rooms and you could connect with people so that's free ah, you can go to join artists who thrive dot com if you want to come into the facebook private facebook group for awhile you khun people I know people are making friends uh in the facebook group john you you were in there and you did google hangouts with some people wait talked for like two hours really? Yeah it's a really long nice chat with ron from toronto and a few other people that's really cool so I mean so what did that do for you like how did you feel after that? I felt great yeah feel fantastic. Yeah. So you're not alone in this journey, right? There's other people trying to figure this out yeah and you were all there to support each other. Yeah, yeah so asked for help. Be gracious if someone says no they have every right to say no to you just be gracious thanked them for considering it in the first place no one owes you a damn thing no one has an obligation asian so don't be put off if they say no and don't take it personally just say thank you for even now is saying anything and then go on to the next one not everybody has time to devote to your cause if they do man it's wonderful dr pratt has actually mentored me also I've worked with dr pratt I've paid him lots of money and I um but I've also become friends with him which is why he was willing to come on this show for free so that's a that's a relationship that's a mentoring relationship he knows a whole lot about healing and energy psychology and getting into states of october optimal performance that I really want to learn about and I'm e want to learn about it for my own benefit but I also teach it to the artists I mentor and I also have blogged about it so there is another example ofthe mentorship so but okay that's enough about me let's talk about you you invited one to an advisory board meet dinner you actually gather all your mentor's together yeah so what I did was I can't afford these people because they're all really smart and we did a brief one where I did so I had an advisory board for an reincorporated around selling my paintings and then I had and on that board I had someone who is expert in in marketing and pr and who is very well connected in the napa valley I had a set amid friend simon stokes who is an expert in sales within luxury market I had michael fernandez who's my harvard warton military strategist he said he was actually a military strategist so he's a brilliant mind and he would come to my meetings I had one of my patrons uh, from napa, who was a very smart businessman and he would attend my meetings and I paid them. And I got a discount at this cinema, um, lodge and resort because I their client of mine you go. If you go to the dining room, you'll see a bunch of prints in my paintings, and so I became friends with them and they cut me a break on the dinner. Um and then my my I had one of my one of my advisory board members would she just knows all the star winemakers in napa and cinemas just shoot, bring wine so we would have the meeting. He had an agenda I was very respectful of everyone's time I stopped, I started on time, I stopped on time and I had an agenda that I sent out to them in advance so that they had time to consider their input. And then after done, we would just tab wine and have dinner and just chat and just hang out with one another and I'd gordon you ther gordon, who ther is a very it is amazing entrepreneurial artist in napa, he's got a multi million dollar studio. He does public art installations all around the world, um and private commissions and he is he is like willy wonka, the chocolate factory he's so entrepreneurial and he's probably he's been he's been a tremendous mentor to me because he was the first one of the one of the few artists who I've had the privilege of getting to know who is really entrepreneur like an amazingly creative and just an amazing artist like there's no divide between the two so as soon as I found out about him, I was like, oh god and when he's going to be my friend that's all there is to it and he loved it because he also was looking for other artists who had an entrepreneurial mindset so we just hit it off and he would he would be he's like he would suffer no b s no excuses and he would just like tell it like it iss and he would be really straight with me and say, you know, you need to think about this this and this and I would listen to him so he'd come back again for more dinner and but I was appreciative, very appreciative um something's I would sometimes they're good suggestions they didn't always make a hundred percent sense, but it was because they didn't understand the whole background but yeah, I can't emphasize that enough do the work they ask you to dio thirty day and really process and decide understand where it is that I definitely want to go before you actually come up with my mentor list no, I don't think so, because I think it's easier if you don't do it on your own. So maybe you stay connected with the people in the group. I mean, I would avoid being by yourself in this what I mean is I when I was looking at actually imagining my board, what who would be on it? Um, I was trying to think, well, who's really great at doing video like who's, a good presenter that I would choose to mentor me. Well, you're assuming I'm going into video, so yes, exactly, so I would say go with the low hanging fruit like, you know, just start I wanted a time relationships take time to build trust and report takes time to build, so, you know, if there's just one person start with that, would clearly you would you would benefit from learning from then just start with that one person, and then you'll start to see other people will start to show up. Um, I had one advisory board meeting I haven't haven't had another one since because I've been pretty absorbed in developing this course for creative live and some other things I'll probably bring them back together if they will come, um, for artists who thrive and my head john on my advisory board because he knows about developing content for online courses so I had john on my advisory board that what the one meeting I had a friend who owns a branding firm here in san let's go in washington d c we just happen to hit it off for both from the midwest he's funny and he came up with my branding architecture er for making art making money so you'll see that some of his intelligence is going to be part of the relaunch of making art making money course it kind of happened organically and naturally you can't force it can't force someone to be your friend and give up the goods just as toe and then you look for ways to help them so like tony, you know I have so I'm still trying to find him a big paying client to pay him back haven't been able to do it yet, but I have like the law of reciprocity has kicked in, so I am determined to pay back my friend tony for the guidance we would just we just have tea at samovar tea lounge here in san francisco and we have a four o'clock and we just talk and sometimes he talk about his business sometime we talk about mine but um he's an expert in branding he's hell of a lot smarter than I am in that area so that's that's how it's gonna work? Just an awareness of it's not working out if you're doing this all by yourself, I already know it's not working out, right? It's not working out very well. I'm not very happy if you're all by yourself, you're you're struggling and you're frustrated, so we already know we got a problem if that's the case, yes, I was going to say to kathy into everyone I've been asked to be people's mentors before, and I've asked people to be to mentor me before and the more you understand your purpose, which is obviously so much of what we're talking about here. Yes, like I recently had a gentleman, actually his name's edwin marino, he asked me to mentor him and he he's starting a project about, um, kind of about becoming fearless and it's ah, content related podcast related blood related, a type of, um, endeavor average say, and I just meeting him and seeing how passionate he was about helping people overcome fear, I was like, I'll help you do anything like I'm so excited because you have a sense of purpose, and so when you understand that and you approach people, they're so happy in my experience. Oh, yeah, yeah, I've never said no to anyone, I've never had anyone say no to being a mentor. And I'm sure, like, after doing this course like, I'm so much more clear about what I want to do, that it is easier to know who I want to help me, and I don't know that that, uh, the passion is infectious, I guess okay, yeah, I mean, it people, people do want to help, and they and they will when they normally they will when they can if they can't, they can, but they will they'll try, I mean, most successful people they did, they're successful because they formed solid relationships along the path and somebody helped them. And so there they almost have this built an obligation to help back, you know? So he was I don't think there's a shortage of people willing to help. What do you guys what's your experience, john? No, I mean, yeah, I've been crazy fortunate with mentors, yeah, and but you also work about off so that I do on I wouldn't be insulting if I if I asked him for advice and then didn't work my butt off right and didn't take it. Yeah, yeah, horrible, yeah, you wouldn't hear you wouldn't it wouldn't last long, you know, so that's key that's what I mentioned upfront, like don't don't ask if you're if you're not willing to do to do the work and follow up just be careful what you ask for because they might tell you something like you've got it backwards or some things you don't want to hear but they're right often because they're smarter than you and more experienced well, I say the more experience than you and I so smarter than you yoni here's your hand up I was just going to say that um as a mentor you also receive a lot in that experience and so it's a two way thing you're not the mentor is not just giving their time and their expertise there also getting something from the experience so that's why people do it because it feels good that's true and I would say that craig I kept thinking craig overly thanking craig and he said, you know you don't trust me I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't getting him out of it yeah so you ugo gets something out of it that's a good point you're not just taking it has to be two way for sure I didn't you have a mentor felix yes. Early on I had a mentor his name was hans christian king he's the one that told me I could do this in front of fifty people when I wasn't sure about what I had uh yeah so if you're just tuning in felix is a clear audience psychic medium so uh that's what you had the ability to teo his approach to be in my mentor was very much ok go off and just open your mouth child standing for the people talk and it will come to you that was like, well that's not really like I want him to hold my hand he's like no no and he would put me on the spot and throw you in the deep end at the learning annex in new york city downtown manhattan four hundred people in the audience during the time I was having anxiety attacks I was sitting the honesty says my friend is going to have a hard time with this but he's sitting the audience his name is felix and he's a medium he's right there and looked at me and surprisingly enough, I didn't have an anxiety attack but it did something for me really that's how I got my first client very first really was from that dramatic I'm your announcement in front of everybody and he said he went on and said much bigger things like this guy's gonna be bigger than me and and it was really heartfelt and I I want to do that for other people someday well, I think that's what your mission is about, um ways right? Sure, yeah, I think that you can't we've come to that conclusion wow, okay, so is everyone agree. We don't succeed alone. I made that point. Go find some help, you confine you, khun, find a mentor. You can find resource. Is that air free ones. You gotta pay for somebody's gotta pay for it. I wouldn't want to do my taxes by myself. I gotta pay for that. Like, all sorts of resource is, you're gonna have to gather and they're gonna do it one at a time. So don't overwhelm yourself with this happens over time. So that is the end of lesson twenty seven. We don't succeed alone. Our next lesson coming up is less than twenty eight, and we're going to talk. Maura about activating your resource is so. See you, unless in twenty eight.