#91: Uncommon Entrepreneurs As Creative Warriors with Jeffrey Shaw

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am really grateful right this moment for the breath that I just got to take as we started the show. And I thought to myself, wow, we're off and running again. I took 2 weeks break to not take a break at all, but actually go do some business development. And was speaking publicly at 3 different conferences in Florida and back. I'm happy to be home. I, I feel so blessed just to, to be in my own home and to have my family around and, and really to be able to take some deep breaths. So wherever you are right now consuming what will be an incredible show, I promise you, you're going to love the guests that I've got on and I'll introduce him in just a second, but take a couple of deep breaths for yourself right now. I'm going to do that. Join you. I'm going to join us in doing that. And I always love to start these shows whenever possible by grounding, not just grounding myself, but setting the intention that everybody that's hearing my voice, or if you're watching on YouTube, that you can use this as an opportunity to ground yourself, to get centered, to take a deep breath, to realize what a blessing it is just to be alive in this moment, to be able to listen, to hear, to see. These are blessings that I know I often take for granted. So I don't know if you're like me, maybe, maybe you're the same way. We take a lot of things for granted. What a perfect moment in the middle of the day, the end of a day, the beginning of the day, whenever it is you're watching or listening to this, to take that moment to ground, to get centered, and to be in gratitude. So I am truly in a state of appreciation and gratitude in this moment. I've got an incredible guest by the name of Jeffrey Shaw who's going to be joining us in just a second. I want to read a little bit about him from his bio and then of course bring him on and ask him some questions about that bio and we'll get started. He is somebody that, just incidentally, a podcaster himself. He's a thought leader. He's got a new book out. You're gonna really enjoy this gentleman. And I was on his podcast, had the blessing to be interviewed by him several months ago, and I really enjoyed that. Just before we hit the record button, I was thanking him for the fact that his team is so professional. I loved, loved that show and how it's been promoted ever since. So having a keen eye isn't just for what one sees. But also for what one senses. Having been one of the most sought-after portrait photographers in the US for more than 3 decades, Jeffrey Shaw, aka the Lingo Guy, uses this honed intuition to teach entrepreneurs how to attract their ideal customers by speaking their secret language. Check that out, their secret language. Jeffrey is the host of the popular business podcast Creative Warriors. It's right there, Jeffrey, by the way. A nationally acclaimed keynote speaker, A business coach for entrepreneurs and author of the bestselling book Lingo: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible. With a social media audience of more than 100,000, Jeffrey's commitment to promoting your show helps you reach new listeners. He's passionate about helping others to grow. Jeffrey, thank you so much for being on the show. Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast.

I'm honored to be here, Adam. I know it'll be fun and I love your show, so I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah. Thank you, brother. You have a wonderful bio. In fact, just before we started the show, I was pointing out to him, I didn't think that the podcast was in the bio. So, I'm calling myself out for my apparent inability to see. So, I'm being grateful for the ability to see. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, We have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes. And it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

Well, I'm now giving gratefulness for a team that I was about— it's like, hey, how did that get overlooked? So, there you go.

So, speaking of not so much overlooked, but what's not written in this bio, Jeffrey, that you'd love for people to know about you?

Oh man. You know, what's not written in the bio is, you know, for a lot of us entrepreneurs, those of us are, you know, what I refer to as creative warriors doing out there, doing big things. You know, if I could, I would be home every day in my pajamas or sweatpants and, you know, just living a really chill life. Because when one reads a bio, it all sounds like big stuff and you're out there and I'm out there doing stuff. I do what I do because of the impact I want to create. I do what I do because I'm fighting for other people, what I refer to as the uncommon entrepreneurs, you know, Those of us creative warriors out there. But man, if I could have the impact that I could just being in my sweatpants at home, I would be perfectly happy with that. But it's stepping up to the plate because you know you can't. And that's of course never written in anybody's bio. You know what's never written in anyone's bio, especially for those of us that are pretty introverted by nature, is that if I had my druthers, if I could have the impact that I want, I would just be home and chilling in sweatpants. But that's not a reality. Right? So we step up, we step out, we do what we need to do to create the impact that we want to.

And I'm gonna say this too, because I really appreciate what you just said, this idea of an unconventional or uncommon entrepreneur. I was thinking, I guess the word unconventional came to mind as well. I don't even know what that means because there are really very few rules. I mean, the old, whatever the sacred cows were about business and how you conduct business has changed. I'm reading a book called The Future of Work, and Thomas Malone is the author. It's an HBR title, a Harvard Business Review book. And Imprint, it's all about what the future is gonna look like for work. And 1.5 billion people will be working virtually in the next 10 years, which is amazing. So yeah, this idea of working from home in sweatpants, or, you know, sometimes I like to refer to it as podcaster's attire. You know, they're clean, they're clean from up here, but—

Waist up, yeah.

They could be sitting in their underwear for all you know. And I think some of them do from time to time. I know I love to wear my sweatpants and my shorts. Yeah. But yeah, what were you gonna say? Sorry.

No, I absolutely agree with you. And there's, there's some research done not long ago by— I think the research was done by Intuit and published by CNN— that by 2030, 60% of the US economy, which I think applies probably to other first-world countries as well, 60% of the economy will be driven by, you know, quote-unquote freelancers, which are basically, you know, independents and self-employed and entrepreneurs. 60%, right? So that's why I refer to as the uncommon entrepreneur, because I work with people and who I— the coaching and who I wrote my book for, I wanted to speak specifically specifically to needing to disrupt the traditional ways of marketing because when you are in an uncommon business, you need a different way to establish relationships with people. This is what excites me. This is what inspires me when I get up in the day. It's like fighting on behalf of us uncommon entrepreneurs that are taking our skills, our talents, creative ideas, innovative ideas, and building a business on it. I mean, Adam, it just thoroughly excites me. I think it's Really cool. It'll probably be a term I can only use for a short period of time because uncommon is the new common.

Interesting. Yeah, so let's close that loop then. What defines— if there's a way to define what an uncommon entrepreneur is, or at least give us some definitional guidelines for that, that would be great.

You know, it's— I think for the most part, it's people that are— they're selling their— they're marketing their talent, a skill, or they are their personal brand where traditional rules don't apply, where you need to figure out a different way to market yourself and connect with people. It's not a commodity. You know, I always say, I don't think I'd be very good at marketing groceries, for example. But Adam, I'll tell you a really cool story. Somebody reached out for coaching. I wound up not working with him. He wasn't quite there ready to take on my services. But man, I loved what he represented. So this guy reaches out to me and he's a credit card processor for Asian restaurants. Now, credit card processing in itself does not excite me, nor do I think I'm a great coach for a credit card processing company. Until I spoke to the man further. And what he realized is that as a credit card processor for Asian restaurants, he has the opportunity to be in front of a type of business that typically struggles, right? Restaurants have the number one failure rate. And then you niche that down into Asian restaurants, the cultural difference, and he is of the culture. So he felt like his business as a credit card processor was just a vehicle to get in relationship with business owners who he felt he could really help be more successful. Now that excites me, right? So because there's a deeper purpose and meaning to why he's a credit card processor. So I would definitely consider him a creative warrior, an uncommon entrepreneur, because he's trying to do something different. He's not just showing up as a credit card processor and processing money. He actually wants to use the platform to make a noticeable difference for the people that he's working

Yeah. This is so interesting. Just maybe 20 minutes before our show was starting, I was on the phone with our oldest daughter who's in Hawaii at the moment. And we were talking about the new book that we're incubating at the moment. It's a sequel to Pivot. And we were talking about what are the things that people have to do in an age of transformation, in an age of change. I mean, change, you and I were talking about this as well. It's perpetual. Change is constant. Change is chronic. I mean, you can't get away from it. And rather than trying to hide from it or be defensive about it, meaning try to protect yourself or guard against the change, guard against the disruption. It's a question of how it is that you utilize it and turn it into an opportunity, a creative opportunity for transformation. And when I think about your podcast, Creative Warriors, I'm thinking that is the epitome of creative opportunity. How do you utilize a creative opportunity and step into— I mean, warrior means someone who's willing to step forward, I think, in many ways. You could define it in lots of ways. But go ahead, please share what is a creative warrior because I want folks to be able to also check out your show. I mean, I've loved it and I want other people to check it out.

The name, first of all, comes from— first of all, I'm a photographer, as you read my bio, by my original trade. I still do some photography but very little. So creativity was certainly going to be a part of the essence of my show, although we certainly don't reach just people in traditional creative fields. For me, Warrior is a peaceful fighter. It's that— and I'm a longtime practitioner of yoga, and the Warrior 2 pose is a pose that really embodies to me resilience and strength and the different, you know, it's such a wide stance pose that it's hard to knock over. And that's the pose of it. That's the purpose of that asana is that, you know, when you're in a Warrior 2 pose, you, you're widespread with your arms. And so you're representing expansiveness and with a really wide leg stance, it's hard to knock you over. So to me, if you are going to be an uncommon entrepreneur, if you're going to be a creative warrior, it takes the spirit of a warrior. There's a fighting mentality inside you, although albeit a peaceful Right? A peaceful warrior. So that's where the name comes from. I really wanted to capture that feeling. So to me, any of us that are out there doing something uncommon, putting ourselves out there, being, as I said right in the beginning, being the person who's willing to step out of their comfort zone and get out of those sweatpants and be on stages. I mean, I speak professionally. I speak on stages, thousands of people, and I do it because of the impact I want to create. I enjoy it. I actually enjoy it a lot. I love speaking, and it always surprised me because it's the energy that comes from the audience that's really fulfilling. But again, it's still a stretch. It will always be. I always want it to be a stretch, right? Because when you stretch yourself out of your comfort zone, it requires that spirit of the warrior. Let me show up. Let me put on the good fight, a peaceful fight for the sake of others. And what can I do with that? So that's what being a creative warrior means to me. It is those of us that are doing something uncommon, putting ourselves on the line and doing it, getting out there and doing it.

I love that. And Jeffrey, I want to follow some of those threads. I mean, my background is having gone out of the law, so 18 years in the practice of law, pivoting into the realm of training, speaking, public speaking, having spoken all over the world. And now, many years now, our company's been training speakers, training people to, to get on stage and challenge their— not just their fear of public speaking, but really challenge them to step up and play a bigger game in terms of owning a message, being able to create and cascade a message, create a vision and share that vision with many, many people. And so there's no question that the willingness to dare to, to stand up and dare to, and sometimes we say dare to suck. Yeah. It's one of those things that keep people from, from doing more speaking in public, whether it's in small groups at the office or it's in larger groups in a more conventional way, is this idea that they'll be judged. So to dare to suck, to dare to challenge that part of you that still wants to be liked and approved improved and most of us are running that program for the entirety of our lives in many ways, I think is a big piece of it. And I also want to just add one distinction too because a lot of the training that we do these days is virtual. I mean, you and I are on a podcast right now but we're also recording it on Zoom and therefore it's a YouTube video. We use it for various things. But being a speaker, having or wanting to speak a message, so maybe people aren't going to identify themselves as a speaker per se but they have a message they want to speak, some transformational message they want to share beyond, even their immediate friends, family, company, etc., that message doesn't require them to get out of their sweats. I just want to challenge that one thing because I just got back from several weeks of travel where I stood on stages and spoke and I still, more than anything, my heart is opened in that arena more fully than any other place. And at the same time, when we do virtual trainings and a lot of our work is done virtually these days, live but But virtual on a Zoom like this, man, you can be in your sweats and still have a massive impact in the world. I just want to get that clear.

Yeah? No, you make a great point. I actually, and I should qualify or change the metaphor because actually I think it really is a metaphor for the willingness to just be out there, right? Because if you're going to voice your opinion, if you've got this message you want to give, you are subjecting yourself virtually or in person, you're subjecting yourself also to the opinions of others. Which in fact, if you're not igniting controversial opinions, then you're not stretching far enough, right? So in a way, it's almost a metaphor of just getting out there, right? It doesn't have to be the literal form, whether you're in sweatpants or not. Like I said, I mean, you can have huge impact virtually. It's the willingness to actually step up, step out, be clear. And, you know, talk about bravery and fear. I actually have come to believe through my experience of helping so many small businesses and entrepreneurs with their brand message You know, it's one thing to tackle the fear of public speaking. Here's a fear that I don't think a lot of people talk about, and I see every day. It is the fear of saying what they want to say. And you know this, Adam, as well. The journey that we encounter as we go through our careers is the ability to say what we want to say more succinctly and clearly than we ever have before. And it's the journey of clarity. It's really hard for people. You know, I was at an event recently where it was a social media, it was a podcasting event, and some 150 people had 2 minutes to make a pitch. pitch to try to be on the show, the podcast of us, what we refer to as Icons. And it was fascinating to me to watch people struggle to get their point across in 2 minutes, right? Which is why when you ask somebody, what do you do for a living, people rattle on and on and on, especially the more uncommon the thing is that you do, the more uncommon your message is. As passionate as you might feel about it, there's this gap in being able to communicate it, right? Because the hardest journey is one of clarity. And what I often say is, and it was part of the motivation behind writing my book, is like, you think it's hard to craft a 2-minute pitch? Your message in the world needs to be a 9-second pitch. Like, people need to understand what you're trying to say so quickly. And that to me is one of the biggest fears I see in people, is that they're afraid to say it. And I'm pulling it out of them. Just say it. And I learned from a therapist friend of mine, therapists call it doorknob therapy. I call the blurt. It's when somebody gets to the point of frustration, they actually drop a bomb and you're like, there, you finally said it. They've been dancing around it, right? And I go through this on the branding work that I do with people. They dance around what they want to say. They fluff it up. They make it all woo-woo and all this stuff is around it. And I'm like, just say it. There's a fear for people standing up for themselves and just giving their clear message. And I think it's so important to get past that.

Brother, yes, yes, and exclamation points. I think there's a lot of people who don't want to be social media shamed. And it's not the term of art here, but there's this shaming, there's this tendency these days when people are stepping, want to speak their message, that a lot of people judge them. There's this very, as you say, this idea that for a message to be impactful, sometimes it has to be, or it is polarizing. And as part of that polarization comes this judgment, comes this, you know, people aren't necessarily in conversation. conversation about it, they're in judgment, right? Their language is one of, you know, you suck, you're an idiot, or whatever it is. So—

I'll give you an example that I'm finding myself encountering more. So in my book Lingo, which the goal of the book is to help businesses attract their ideal customers, and I refer to the book about busting up the Pareto principle, right? The Pareto principle is the 80/20 rule, right? Okay, now hey, I'm not saying that it's not an accurate formula, but what I am saying in my book is that for small businesses and entrepreneurs, this no longer works because what the principle says is that 80% of your income comes from 20% of your customers. Now, I'm not saying there isn't truth to it, but if you buy into that as a small business owner or entrepreneur today, that's what that's really saying is 8 out of 10 customers are a waste of your time.

Exactly.

Right? With as hard as it is to even get noticed today and attract customers, none of us can afford to waste 8 out of 10 of our customers. So I'm out there talking about busting up this old long-held principle. And what's interesting about it, Adam, is the people that get that— and this, this is what is ironic to me— is I'm actually proving my point. The people that are like, God, Jeffrey, I'm so glad somebody's saying it, I agree— they're my ideal customer. I'm actually using my own strategy in action. Those that were like, no, no, that's just the way business is— I don't want to work with them. They're not my ideal customer. So it's been interesting that I'm putting something out there that's creating a certain amount of controversy, and yet it's actually doing exactly what I'm teaching, which is when you make your clear point, when you stand up for what you believe in, the people that resonate with your values are gonna step forward, and those that don't will go away. And you don't want to waste your time working with the people that you have to try to convince of something. Attract the people that buy into what the point is that you're, that you're making. So it's been really interesting to get this pushback. And I knew it writing the book. I'm like, this might not go over real well because it's a mathematical formula. I know there's truth to it, but it's the mentality that I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about the number of businesses and entrepreneurs when they go into business, they buy into that, that principle. So they take work just for the sake of taking work and they don't realize how difficult it is to get out of that loop. Right. this loop of, well, some money is better than no money. And I'm like, no, not really, right? Yeah. Maybe when you're first starting out for a very short period of time, but you have to make a conscious decision. You have to make that pivot to saying, no, I'm not for everybody. Some money isn't better than, you know, any money is better than no money. That's not necessarily true because if you only work with your ideal customers, you will get to your financial end goal quicker than being stuck in a loop of just taking whatever work comes along and wasting your time with 8 out of 10 customers.

Hmm. Saying no is a powerful pivot.

It's a very powerful pivot. It's one that I, you know, too many businesses, you know, they are entrepreneurs, they start their business thinking, well, I'll do what I have to do for the first 5 years and then I'll pivot. And the reason my business was successful as a photographer right from the beginning, and well, I mean, hey, I struggled for 3 years too, and then I pivoted entirely to becoming an entirely different type of photographer. So yes, I made the pivot, but when I made that pivot, it was a dramatic shift because what I changed in my mind was that I was only gonna work with the ideal customers. And then I developed, which is what I teach in my book, I developed the strategy to do that, right? So the result of that pivot was I multiplied my business by 5 times in 1 year. And this was in the 4th year of business for me. I was 24 years old and multiplied my business 5 times in a single year because of the pivot I was willing to make inside and deciding the way other— and this is again, this represents a creative warrior. I'm looking at the world and thinking this 80/20 rule, the rules that other businesses are working by just don't work for me. They don't work for me because I'm a high-end, low-volume photographer and I don't have time to waste on anyone who's not willing to spend the minimum investment that I need them to spend to make my business profitable. When I got that, that's when I understood I only want to work with my ideal customers. And then I figured out how to develop a lingo that would resonate with them.

Yeah. I want you to, Jeffrey, dive into that. I definitely want to speak about one of your significant pivots and maybe this is part of it, I don't know, but the lingo, the secret language that every market that you've detected is a part of the lexicon of every market. I'd love for you to define that, unpack that for our folks.

Sure. This was, I mean, I've had many, you and I were saying pre-show that, I mean, I mean, pivots are perpetual, right? You know, they're ongoing and I love it. I think you had said something about people are collecting pivots. Exactly, like I've got tons of them, but this was definitely a big one. And this is the irony of it. I mean, I just— Lingo was just released earlier this year. It's actually a 30-year story. When I made the pivot, it was 30 years prior to writing this book. And yet what's crazy about it, Adam, is that it's more relevant today than ever. And I love that because it's just, you know, what goes around comes around and we live in this—

What's the subtitle, by the way?

So it's Lingo: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible.

Beautiful, right?

And the way it makes your business irresistible is because you are speaking the lingo of your ideal customer. When I'm on stages talking about the book, I start off my presentation with a video playing behind me of an outdoor market in India. And, you know, it's all these people and they're all speaking Indian. And I say, well, imagine that you're in an outdoor market in a foreign country and everyone around you speaks a different language. Language, right? Suddenly someone yells out in your native language, right? You hear that lingo, that voice, clearer, crisper, and louder than everything else around you. Why? Because they're speaking your lingo. Now apply this to marketing. This is exactly what we need to do because our customers and prospective customers are surrounded with a really noisy market. They're bombarded with marketing messages. The only way you stand out is to speak a specific lingo to the audience that you are meant to serve. So when I started my photography business, which I had fantasies of it being a high-end portrait photography business, but I went back to my hometown. I grew up very lower middle class and in a small town a couple hours north of New York City. Struggled to get that business going, eventually recognized this is just a failing business. This was not resonating to the area, and I had that incredible pivotal conversation with a prospective customer who would never become a customer, and that's the point. She came in and I made my best pitch how family portraits are valuable, you want to hand them down from generation to generation, and she looked at me and she said, I don't have the luxury of worrying about my children's memories. I don't know how I'm paying my rent this month.

Mm-hmm. Yeah,

that's when I realized I was speaking the wrong language, right? I'm speaking the language of long-term thinking. People that are struggling to get by financially. And this is what was mind-blowing to me, is this was my own life, this was my hometown. And I suddenly realized that you can't speak the lingo of long-term investing, whether it's in money or in photographs, to people who don't know what tomorrow looks like. I needed to find an audience that spoke my language. I wasn't gonna change who I was. I wasn't going to change the values that I saw in photography. I needed to change who I was speaking to. And what I realized is I needed to work with an audience who could afford luxury, who had the extra financial means to buy luxury products and to invest in the future. So I realized that I needed to reach an affluent market who bought luxury brands. Sounds great. The problem was I was a lower-middle-class kid from upstate New York. I knew nothing about that lingo, but took it upon myself to study not the high-end brands, but to study the emotional triggers that affluent people felt in order to choose those brands. So it became a very— a study of psychodemographics. And I went to those high-end brands, brick and mortar. I read the magazines because I wanted to understand the lingo. What were these brands and businesses— how are they communicating to their ideal customer such that their ideal customer would show up? And what I realized is that, you know, I grew up with— as a family going to my— you know, we went to Kmart and we went to discount stores. Right? Just like people go to Walmart today. Well, Walmart has a very specific lingo to those that they serve. It's very cost-conscious. Target has a very specific lingo. It's very value-conscious. People are willing— Target shoppers will spend money. They just want to feel like they're getting more money than what they're paying. They're value-conscious. They're not as cost-conscious, which is why Targets and Walmarts, by the way, are always down the street from one another, because in the same community they're hitting a different psychodemographic and they know it. So Walmart's gonna— that's why they're always right down the street from each other, because Walmart's gonna pull forward those that are speaking the language of cost consciousness, and Target is going to pull forward the people in that community who are speaking the language of value. And they all exist in the same community.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that We must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than three minutes, and it's our. It's a gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. It's so interesting because— and I don't want to digress down this— just an observation that McDonald's and Burger King were always sort of side by side as well. You'd say, well, that's, you know, it's kind of almost like self or cannibalizing to have 2 fast food restaurants always sort of in the same vicinity. But you're right, the psychographics of the people that would go to a— or the preferences would be different. They're craving that fast food fix, but— or the quick serve today, quick serve restaurant fix, but yet are on different teams, so to speak.

And look at brands that have not done that for themselves. Sears and JCPenney, for example. Like, what does Sears stand for? No one knows.

Well, not anymore.

They lost their identity. They lost their lingo. Nobody— they're not speaking to anyone in specific. So if you're not speaking to anyone specifically, then no one knows who you're speaking to. So those are 2 brands that have really struggled and are failing because they lost their voice. So that's why, you know, auto dealers, you'll see on any street, you'll have multiple auto dealers lined up. That's because the lingo of Mercedes is different than the lingo of Hyundai, which is different than the lingo of Honda. So they can benefit from each other, but you just have to carve out your own voice. And that I think is the learning lesson here for those listening is that there's hardly any field today that we don't have more competition in than we've ever had today. But I do believe everyone can carve out a market for themselves by speaking the lingo of their ideal customers. And what you need to bring forward, here's just some concrete tip, what you need to bring forward is what is your unique perspective on what you do. I'm not the only business coach. There's a million of them nowadays. It's an uncertified field, so it's open to anyone saying, hey, I'm a coach. Granted, there are differences, right? I've received over 2,000 hours of training, etc., etc. But at the end of the day, that doesn't matter squat to my customers. Nobody's ever asked me, you know, no, my clients have— nobody's ever asked me what's my education, how many hours of training do I have. They come to me because my perspective on business is unique.

Yeah. It's interesting too. I want to just go back to the pivot that you started to describe moving from high-end photography where again your customer, your client was well-defined. These were people who could afford your services and would appreciate your services. I guess those 2 things kind of go hand in hand. The pivot out of that creative space, that creative entrepreneurial pursuit to the one that you're currently involved in which is speaking, podcasting, coaching high-end clients in business, etc. Share a little bit about, if you would, that pivot. That's

what I love about your show. Like, I've done nothing but pivot, you know.

Well, Jeffrey, we pivot all the time. We just don't realize we're making decisions consciously or unconsciously all the time.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and I think it's— I'd be actually curious to hear your view on this. I don't— there's a difference between a pivot and the classic term jumping off the cliff or the big leap, right? Let's call it the big leap. There's a difference between a pivot and a leap. I believe, right?

There is.

I also have my own personal views on the whole business of motivational speaking, right? We need motivation, but I also think we've evolved beyond shallow motivation, right? So there's been a lot of motivation over the years about take the big leap, big change. You know, if at best I tell my clients I'm into a safe leap, like I work with a lot of people pivoting from corporate into entrepreneurship and, you know, they're giving up the comfort of a steady paycheck and supporting their family and I want to do it safely for them. You're never gonna create the income that you need to replace that job entirely while you're still in the job. But hey, let's get 60% there. Let's get other markers. It's not just the money. Do you have the systems in place? Do you have the vendors in place so that you can make a safe leap? Because I think there's been too much emphasis on this big leap, jumping off the cliff, where a pivot to me can happen quickly and it can evolve a little more. And I think most pivots for me have been an evolution. Not a leap.

Exactly.

Right? So for me, evolving out of photography and towards what I'm doing now has been the pivot, sort of like planetary action, right? It's been spinning and evolving. When I first started coaching, there actually was no grand ambition for it to become a business unto itself. It was just something I wanted to do to give back to people in the photography field initially. But then people from other industries started coming, and then I said, I really love this. And I realized I can meet more people if I was on stages, so I started doing speaking in order to put my views out there, which only got me more clients. Next thing I knew, my coaching practice was growing. It was getting darn close to equaling my photography business. Next thing you know, it did equal the photography business, and then it started passing the photography business. I looked at it as levers, like they're pivoting levers. I was pulling back the photography business and pushing up the lever of coaching practice and speaking and all the things that come with it. And to the point now that I do, you know, maybe a dozen shoots a year compared to the 150 or so I used to do. do. So it's been a conscious pivot, right? And not— right, it's been a conscious pivot and not this, let me just jump off the cliff and make a big leap.

It's interesting because the language you're using, I think, is a language of recalibration. It's a language of finding the gradient between the extremes. Or, you know, if you're familiar with the Tao, the Tao Te Ching, it's this finding the way, a way of center, and not necessarily allowing the pendulum to swing wildly in both directions, which is typically What a pendulum does anyway. It'll swing 30 degrees in one direction, goes exactly the opposite direction 30 degrees until left alone, it'll find a center point, a harmony point, not necessarily a balance point, but a center point. Anyway, our position that the whole big leap jump ship way of looking at pivots is because for the most part it scares people. And that means that most people that I've come in contact with don't actually pursue their dreams. They don't pursue the thing that they would really be not so much that it's gonna be my new occupation or my new way of earning money, but it's something I'm passionate about. When I started my pivot out of practicing law, it took 2 and a half years, and I didn't start with the idea that I'm gonna give up practicing law. I started with the idea of this is something I'm interested in. This is something I want to put energy into. This is something I eventually loved doing. Loved to the point where then it became a reality to look at what is the opportunity here to do this more regularly. So it became— I was practicing law 80% of the time. And doing this traveling around the world speaking and training and coaching kind of thing 20% of the time. And then 2 and a half years later, those two flip-flopped and it became 80 on this side and 20 on the other until we were having a conversation, my wife Randy and I, about shutting down the law practice. So it's very much a building the second bridge while still utilizing the first one, not tearing down that first bridge and stranding yourself. Exactly.

And I want to reemphasize, I think the big danger I see in this mentality of the big leap is that people wait too long to begin the pivot. If it's in your mind that it's a big leap, you hang on, you hang on. And I typically think people, they begin the pivot process 3 years too late.

Hmm.

Right? And then there's a greater sense of urgency where if they had started earlier, if they followed their dream a few years earlier, they could have made a slower, more conscious pivot as opposed to, I want this to happen quickly because I now hate my job. My attention hasn't been there, so I'm no longer financially doing as well. And I've got to get back up to earning a certain amount of money. There's a sense of urgency where if they had started earlier, started the pivot earlier, they could have done it more consciously.

The death knell to me is when you take something that is— as you using this term, I really appreciate it— the conscious pivot is an evolution of us, of our spirit, of our soul. And to place money pressure on that, it's a killer to think that you've got to monetize this thing. Without allowing it to unfold and evolve. And without that process of embracing the change that's around and then utilizing that change in some way that's meaningful for other people, meaningful for you. And then ultimately, yeah, oftentimes it's meaningful financially as well. But as soon as you put the money, the requirement that that thing you're so interested in has to also pay for your mortgage and your Starbucks and everything else, it can kill it before it gets started. And I really feel interested or intrigued. it by what you said about starting 3 years too late.

Yeah.

Because there is this kind of waiting and waiting and waiting kind of thing. You just described the demographic or psychographic of people that we created our Pivot Incubator, which is our digital version of the book, 15 modules for people that are, are wanting to incubate something new and are looking at what are the recalibrations between what I'm currently doing and whether it's a corporate career or it's some other thing that they want to explore. So the book is out. I want people to be able to get the book. We're gonna have in our show notes information about you, about how people can get the book, etc. And before we wrap up, I do want to say, so we've been talking about business pivots. Now you've also had personal pivots, and personal pivots and business pivots are sometimes— they can be common themes in them, and they can also be wildly different. And there are lots of people who are a part of this community who are listening now who are in the process of some life pivot, whether it's their health, whether it's relationships, whether it's something else which is similar to the business concept, but it's also different. Do you want to share anything about

Sure. I mean, undoubtedly the biggest personal pivot I made was coming out as a gay man at the age of 44. I had previously been married for 19 years. I had been divorced for a number of years before I came out, so they didn't go hand in hand. And people find it hard to understand, how could you not have known, right? Because I do embrace the theory that we are born with our sexual orientation, but being born with your sexual orientation and not being clear to you are two different things, right? And I always make it very clear, I never lied. I truly had not come out to myself. And I could go on and on as to how messages of life were very confusing to me. I mean, I joke about it, but there's truth to it. I was always surrounded with women. I thought I was a chick magnet. I mean, I grew up a teenager. I always had tons of women around me and girls, and, and I had no problem getting dates because women loved my sensitivity and the way that I functioned, as women often like gay men, right? So when you're a teenager not clear in your own sexuality and you're surrounded with girls, I thought I was a, you know, home run. I thought I was a chick magnet. So there are a lot of confusing messages, plus coming out never felt like a safe endeavor to me in the age in which I would have come out. So it took many years, 44 years in fact, for it to unfold, for it to become clear to me. To me, there's almost no division between our personal lives, and yet we live in a time where we do want boundaries between our personal lives and our business lives. But But it's getting more and more challenging to navigate what that boundary is because showing up authentically and honest is an important part of who we are as entrepreneurs and business people as well. And I was absolutely shocked at my process of coming out and how my clients, the business world, absolutely embraced my bravery, my truth, my authenticity to the fact that I truly believe It inadvertently enhanced my career. It also brought up such a degree of bravery in me that business pivots after that are small potatoes, right? You know, I mean, pivoting from being a photographer to a coach, it's like, yeah, that's no big deal. And you know, when you've already gone through a personal pivot, which for me involved, you know, I have 3 kids I had to tell. So once you've gone through a major pivot, but to me it is the conviction by which I live my life in a way today. that refuses to ever be put in the closet again is what's important. And that's the way it shows up in business too. I will never be put back into a closet because I understand how it stifles who we are. So I don't let, you know, whether it's controversy or whether it's disagreement, I don't let those things let back me down because I will never hide in a closet again because the journey to get out is way too strong. So I then just recently gave a TEDx talk. The talk was called Validation Paradox, which is actually a chapter in my book. And that's what's interesting. In the book, it's presented as a business lesson, and on the TEDx stage, I presented it as a personal lesson. That the paradox, the validation paradox, is such that we're on this journey to find ourselves, all that we're capable of, our greatness, and we somehow believe that we're supposed to do this on our own, when the reality is we are inherently limited by our own preconceived definitions of ourselves, our own preconceived expectations, that the only way we really reach levels of greatness beyond what we expect of ourselves is that when we allow others to see greatness in us. Other people see what we're capable of in us more than we can see in ourselves. So in the end, I kind of wrap up my TEDx talk by saying we may think we're hiding in closets, but I've come to believe they're more like glass shower stalls— fogged up but far more translucent. translucent than we realize. And it's our job. If you think about what it means to be in a glass shower stall that's fogged up, the fog is on the inside. It's not on the outside. The fog is on the inside. And it's our job to wipe away that fog so that others can see us clearly and we can see out. And then you're living an awesome life.

Wow, brother. That's a beautiful analogy. And it goes back to something you said at the very beginning about how important clarity is. Clarity leads to confidence. It leads to so many things in our lives. And

I use that same metaphor, by the way, when in my branding work, I I do the same metaphor. It's like your job to make your message clear in your branding so that people can see you. Same metaphor.

Clear the fog. And it's inside. Beautiful. Last question. And I always ask this one because I both learn something when I do. And also, it's so interesting how we're built the same way. So we're all more and more, we realize the fact that we are unique and have our own free will, but yet there's so many commonalities, so much connection. And ultimately, that's the movement. I believe that's where we're always headed. I think we're headed toward closing the gap between us, not widening it. So I really appreciate you being on the show today to help close that gap as well. What are some, or one of, or some of the rituals that you use to just show up bigger and better every day?

So my favorite ritual, which I do present in Lingo as well, and it ties in so beautifully to your show because you talk a lot, as you did in the beginning, about gratitude and blessings. And I've always, to be honest with you, always been a little challenged by gratitude because I innately I'm grateful for breathing. I'm grateful for the blue sky. I'm grateful for so many things. For me personally, I was grappling to find something more actionable because I failed at a gratitude journal every time I attempted it because there was no end to what I wanted to write. I wasn't seeing it change my mindset. So I created what I call a What's Going Right Journal. And this is what I put out there as a— and it's similar, but it feels to me like it has a little more actionable. And other people have said it's really working for them. So what it is, it's a process of journaling and identifying what's going right for you. What we know, and we know this through science and we know it through spirituality, that what you focus on, you get more of. So if you start acknowledging more of what's going right, guess what? You start seeing more of what's going right. And then it brings up the really big question is, is it more actually happening or are you just seeing it? My frame of mind, I think it's a little bit of both. Again, it's not a black or white world. It's a little bit of both.

I'm a little more woo-woo than you probably, and I'm a former lawyer, but No, man, what you focus on does expand and you see it in a variety of ways.

Right.

Yeah.

So to me, the What's Going Right journal has been really actionable because it's got that spiritual component of just seeing what's going right and then seeing the results physically. Well, I'm seeing more of that. So it's been a great practice for me. And I personally do it as a 2-step practice. I get up in the morning and I start journaling about what's going right and find myself oddly struggling to identify, well, what is going right? You know, this life has so many problems and there's so many challenges and the workday is tough and So initially I'm thinking, all right, I'm struggling to see what's going right because as we all know, you can hear 9 compliments, 1 criticism. We're going to focus on the criticism, right? So I get myself as far as I can and then I go take my dogs for a walk on the beach for 45 minutes and the floodgates open. I start seeing everything. So it's like the gratefulness of being alive starts igniting what this is going right. And I was introduced to this person. I'm meeting amazing people. That's going I've got a new coaching client that's going right, and I come home and then I finish it off in my journal and it's like rapid speed. So for me, I do it in a 2-step process. I actually like to hit— I like to bump up against the wall. I got to bump up against the block of how ridiculous it is that I can't see what's going right because my brain is stuck with what's going wrong. So I like to hit against the wall, breathe, give myself space, and then let the floodgates open, and then I can see so much of what's going right. And that of course brings in, invites more of what's going right.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience Resilience Assessment Tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Beautiful, beautiful, brother.

That's my ritual. That's my morning ritual.

Super. And what a great way to segue into how it is we'll close out this show. And I love to close out each of these shows with a prayer. And it's a wish, it's a hope, it's also a prayer for me. And that is that we all get to wake up again tomorrow. So regardless of what may be going right or may not be perceived as going right in your life at the moment, by virtue of the fact that you've been watching or listening to this, something went right because you woke up today. And I don't believe there's any accident about that. That's— you can call it what you want. I don't mind using the word God. Some people say source or spirit. Some people, that's just not their belief system at all. But I don't believe there's any mistake about the fact that we receive this day for a purpose. And that's a blessing. And even for the most cynical of people, So that's certainly not a guarantee. We weren't guaranteed this day and nobody's guaranteed us tomorrow. So my prayer is that you all wake up tomorrow, that we, Jeffrey, that you and your family and your friends and everybody in your world, which includes everybody in my world, of course, that we all get to wake up tomorrow. And in that moment where we recognize at first that we are in fact waking up, that we are conscious again, there can be a recognition of the truth. And the truth is that at that moment tomorrow, or whenever that is for all of you, there are people who will be taking their last breath as you're taking your first, your first conscious breath, and others will be taking their last. And, and even in that moment as well, there'll be babies born, and in that moment they'll be taking their first breath as well. So it is not an ordinary moment. It's not a common moment. I'd even say it's a sacred moment. It's a holy moment. And that's something to be grateful for. So the 3 steps that are the waking practice I share with everybody and each time, because it's a reminder for all of you, but it's also a reminder for me. We get to wake up tomorrow. So I hope right now you'll put your hand up or on your heart and say, yes, yes, brother, I will wake up tomorrow. That's an intention. And in that moment of waking, you can be grateful for that blessing. And of course, if you feel like it, this is the part that I love doing as much as any of it, which is in my bed or when my feet hit the floor to say these words out loud. I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. I wish that all for all of you. Jeffrey, what a blessing to have you on the show, brother. Thanks for being here.

Really honored. Thank you, Adam.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.