Do You Need A "Plan B" To Become A Professional Creative?

What's up, everybody? Lennon here. This is another episode of this podcast live stream thing that we're doing here. I'm calling this thing Stop the Starving Artist, which, if you haven't noticed, it's kind of some stuff that I'm working with. I'm kind of doing some rebranding kind of things with this whole channel. And so if you follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Stop the.

The idea here is that I want to help artists and creatives figure out how to position themselves online in a way that connects them directly with their thousand true fans. And so it's good to have you guys here. Today we are talking about having a plan B. And what's funny is, as we talk about this right now, I am like, okay, I should have had a plan B in place for this live stream. Because what happened was, is as I was getting things ready, it got wonky on me. Like, I was three minutes away from having to start this thing, and all of the sudden everything changed because I was, like, trying to fumble to get everything together. I'm trying this new setup, as you can see. So things are a little bit different. It looks a little bit different. So I had to plug in my laptop and do some other stuff. So immediately ecamm's not working. The microphone isn't plugged in, nothing's in place. And I have, like, three minutes, and I am starting to kind of flip out a little bit. And I thought, how appropriate, because I should have had a plan B in place just in case none of this happened. But we're talking about Plan Bs in reference to being a creative and especially, like, trying to develop some sort of creative career. Because what happens is, and I was totally a part of this. Like, we have people in our lives that just for.

I'll say it, they do it because they care, but they encourage us to make sure that, like, okay, I just want you to have a backup plan. I just want you to have something that if this falls through.

Then.

Just make sure you got something in place so that if this falls through, you're gonna be good.

While inherently, I don't think that's a bad thing or a bad idea. There's something that that does to our mindset. There's something that has happens when immediately our first thought is, I'm so glad that I have other options, because this creative thing, this art thing or this music thing just may not work out for me. The reason I think a lot of people just think that it isn't going to work out or think that creative careers and stuff like that can't happen is because.

They know that it takes so much risk. And what's interesting to me now.

Is that when we look at risk and we look at it in reference to what's happening in the world today.

I'm so glad that I took the risk of getting into this world of like, learning online marketing, learning like the space of YouTube, learning how to. To think strategically, because I now have a job where I get to work with people online all the time.

So that sense of.

Having something that's going to support us, it's kind of false, right? I believe, and this is maybe just me, I believe that nobody's going to support or have our best interest in mind more than ourselves. Nobody's going to believe in our project or our dreams or any of that kind of stuff more than we will, you know, and that's like, that's really it to me is that we have to start with that in mind. What is our plan A and do we need a plan B? So I want to tell my story here real quick. So, Anthony, good to have you here. Anybody else that's in the chat, please say hello. I'd love to answer any questions that you guys have. Talk through any of that. So it started for me pretty early on in high school. I was the kid that was like, playing in a bunch of different bands. I was about probably a senior, I think, and I was playing in a community group. I was in a rock band. I was playing at my church. I was doing.

Another jazz band group playing trumpet. I was in a drum and bugle corps in the summer. So I was doing all of these different things at once.

This is in a town of 10,000 people. This is pretty small town. So to be in this many groups at once is actually.

Pretty crazy, to be honest.

When I think about that. I knew right away, this is what I want to do. I want to figure out how to make a living doing this. And so what happened was, is I went off and did the Drum and bugle corps thing and then immediately got a job as a freelance instructor for a marching band in Pennsylvania. Because if you aren't familiar, I was in a drum of Bugle Corps, which is like, there's an organization called DCI or Drum Corps International. So this is like the top groups in the world. And the one that I was in was like seventh in the world at the time. We did really well and we would tour all summer and then come back and do. Then I would just be normal again, except tan. Cause everything was outside, right? But that gave me an opportunity because I had this skill set to go take that and start to teach these local groups even at a very young age. And what was cool about that is that taught me right away, like, okay, there's a skill set here that I'm learning that can be turned into value for somebody else. Like, there's opportunity here. So that was an immediate. Like, I feel actually really lucky about that because having that moment where even at a young age, I was able to see that a skillset that I was learning could be turned into finances was a light bulb for me because that didn't happen where I was from. And. And while my mom and dad were both very supportive.

It still wasn't something where they were like, well, this is realistic. They didn't necessarily think that it was like a realistic thing. And that had a lot to do with just kind of what the struggles they went through. Again, it was more out of love than anything else. So fast forward some time. I end up joining a band and we start touring, right? And I remember giving myself.

This. It's interesting to me now in hindsight, but I gave myself these parameters and said, I'm going to give this five years, and if I feel like in five years it's not growing, then I'm going to quit. I know that that, like, that may seem like a long time. It may seem like not very long. Whatever it is to you, I'm not sure. But for me, I think it's interesting that even at that moment, I thought, okay, I got to give this some time. And so five years later was about the time that we started to really make some changes. Some things started to move, right? And so during that time, I was working.

I was working at Domino's as a pizza delivery guy, and so were the other guys in the band. So we literally would, like, tour through the weekends and then come home and deliver pizzas through the week. It was. Honestly, it was really pretty miserable because that time frame, we weren't drawing any people at any of the gigs. And, you know, the only money I had coming in was, like, pizza and everybody's competing for the best delivery slots. It was like so cutthroat in a frigging dominoes, right? But that was the lifestyle. And so what I. What I want to say to that is, like, I knew, though, that all that was, all the Domino's situation was.

Was a smart move for me to say, I need this to support myself. But this over Here is still where I'm putting all my eggs. Like my eggs are all here. But over here, I still have to make a living. I still have to do what I need to do. Right. So I gave up college, I gave up all of that stuff to pursue this thing. So, so fast forward 10 years into that.

We had been fortunate enough to be on a couple of Billboard Top 200 Heatseeker records and do a couple things I had co written with what would eventually be a Grammy nominee. And that just continued to be little bitty things that honest to goodness, I just never had any idea would even be an option. But the reason I believe that happened is, is because I never gave myself a plan B. I just gave myself an opportunity. I never gave myself this thing where I was like, well, if I don't do, I'm going to go to college to make sure I'm still supporting this thing. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't go to college. What I'm saying is like, when your heart is in this thing, but you're not at least giving it the majority of your time, there's something to be said about that. There's something to be said about not truly believing enough in what you're trying to achieve that you feel like you have to split time or even more so in this other place. So holding this other job at a pizza place was almost like just crappy enough that it reminded me how bad I wanted this other thing. Whereas I had other friends that were kind of in the opposite boat where they were pursuing the music thing. But they did like have these other options. I mean, and it just goes to say, like, those other options won out because when it got uncomfortable, it was easy for them to transition to this other thing because they had a plan B. They just made it easy on themselves to escape it. Right. We got some stuff happening in the chat here.

So I'm going to come back to that.

Then.

We'Ll see. Yeah, so, right. You know, I think that's really what it comes down to, is.

Not so much that we shouldn't have things that support our dream, because we should, but really we just shouldn't have things that overshadow it. Right. So how do we do that? How do we think about, you know, a plan B? So here we go. We're gonna look here. Hello. I'm a 19 year old female, horrible voice. Trust me, I sound like a dying donkey. With hard work and practice, is there a chance to get better? If yes, how can I get there? And can I make a career out of it. Yes, in my case, I do have a plan B and a plan C. Right now, all I have is a dream.

So. Yeah. So, okay, yeah, cool. Good question. I'm gonna sidestep that and come back to it. Okay, so the main thing here that I wanna talk about is how do we then put the thing that we want in the forefront? And to this gal's question here, how do we know whether or not what we're trying to do if we're good enough to actually do that thing? Right? And, yeah, I love this idea of, like, will we improve enough to be able to do this thing? And I'm hoping that by sharing with you guys the other side of my story, where I am now that you see how this plays out. Because here's what happens in our life. Like, when we pursue something with our whole heart and we go after it and we just try to make it happen, it never plays out the way we thought.

Even my plan A turned out to not be the thing that took me to where I am right now.

What happened over that time frame was 10 years pass, and I started to feel that, okay, I've done another five years. I started to feel that sense of, like, I want to be with my family. I feel like I'm kind of two separate people. I live these two different lives. That's not something I want.

I just want to be able to make more stuff and not feel like I'm a part of making one record every couple years. And then we go out and tour that for a long time, just my goals and stuff changed.

That was really hard for me because I thought, here I've invested 10 years into this thing, and it's actually somewhat like making me a living and doing the thing. Like, I've made it, quote, unquote, right? And so it was really tough to make that transition. So I came home and I said, okay, what's the option here? I can't have a plan B. I can't get a big boy job. I have to figure out how to make this work right now. Because if I don't, I'm just going to try to figure out how to get comfortable. And that's what happened, is I ended up going into production and working at a recording studio and doing some of that. And then as I did that, I started doing some YouTube stuff. And as I did that, I went to a conference. And then I got connected. But what all those things? Well, I'll finish that. And then I got connected with my mentor. In my space who's worked with everybody from, you know, Budweiser to Warner Brothers to all these big companies and help them grow their online.

Team and like build. Not their online team, they're like online video presence, right? Help them with their YouTube and stuff. And then I end up being a strategist for his team and then going to more stuff and learning more about marketing. And now I'm in this place where I'm building this business to help creators like yourself understand how to have that online presence for yourself that may not get the biggest following but gets the right one. You know what I mean? That gets the one that supports you and gets them to care about you. This isn't what I thought. I literally had a breakdown like two months ago where I was like, this isn't what I envisioned. My 17 year old self was like crying for my 38 year old self. Like it was just happening that way. And you know, it came down to.

Me realizing that because I pursued the things that I wanted in my life in these moments that I knew in my heart like were risky, but were things that I could learn. You know, to this gal's point.

Things changed and they shifted and I found some new people and I connected with them and I was investing thousands of dollars and tons of time into this stuff and into these things to find new mentors and do these things. And when we try to play it safe all the time, we don't take risks. And when we don't take risks, we don't get the opportunity for the big rewards.

So how do we know whether or not we're good enough to do something? I would argue that you don't know. I would argue that you just have to pursue it with everything you've got. You have to put yourself out there with everything you've got and you have to embody this thing of like, this is who I am, this is what I'm about, this is what I am striving to be. We have to get past. We feel like we have to.

You know, we feel like we have to have something, then we can do something and then we can be something. So I heard this from a gal today. We feel like we have to have more money so that we can then go and buy the thing that we need and then I can be a professional in the field, right? Like what happens if we just believe that we are. What happens if we, if we just say we have to be this thing that we want to be and then we will do the things that we want so that we have the things that we want. What if we start with being this person first and going after that? What does that do then for our mindset shift? What does that do then for the way that we start to approach our life and what we're getting into? And this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, a whole lot, as I've pivoted this little brand like three different times in the last year and continue to just kind of hone in on it. This is the hard work. This is the hard work that I know most people, most of my personal clients don't want to do, right? But the ones that do it are the ones that succeed. They're the ones that start to see things change because they pursue something with not only passion, but focus, with a plan, with an idea. When they take all those things and put them together and they plan it out and they know who they're going for and they know what they're all about and they know what they're trying to say and they know why they want it. When you understand those things and you can go for it and you put some parameters in there and say, here's some measurable goals that I'm going to try to achieve, just like, hey, I'm going to give this five years and see what happens.

What's better, like doing that and being ecstatic that you gave it the go and feeling good and connecting with somebody that you never would have connected with that led you down this other place of being really passionate. What's better that, or playing the safe route and going and doing the thing that feels like.

The right thing to do because somebody else told me it was the right thing to do. Like, I just can't.

I can't abide by that as a thing, I'm afraid. So. I'm just all about this idea of how do we make sure that we don't necessarily have a plan B, but we just have something that supports us. So when I say go full on, you still have to have a job, you still have to have money in the bank. You still have to be smart about your business. You have to. You still have to do these other things. There is no escaping that. That's life, right? But that doesn't mean that you need to go and like, try to juggle all these things and never give the dream that you have the full attention. That dream that you have deserves the attention. It deserves an opportunity for you to go after it. And it deserves the opportunity to give you something that you never thought was even possible. And that allows you to do something completely different that fulfills your life in a whole different way. I think that's the most amazing thing about my personal life experience is just all of these little trails that have kept me in a circle. Right. But they've all led to something new that has grown me as a person, that's grown me as someone in business, that's grown me in the arts, and helped me to be more connected in different ways. I hope this is helpful for you guys. I hope this feels like something that you can grab a hold of. If I want to recap a couple points. If you. It's. Make sure that you understand what your dream is. Write it down, get clear on what the dream is that you're trying to achieve, and put some parameters around that and say, give it time. You can't just say, I'm going to do this for a year and see what happens. Give it some time and say, I'm going to commit this amount of time and I'm going to see what I can do with it, but I'm going to go full on. And then make sure that when you give it that time, you also support it. Like, make sure that you have things there, make sure that you're getting paid, that you have a job, that you're doing something that, like, keeps you afloat, that keeps you going, that. That reminds you, like, where you're headed. Okay. And then lastly, just embrace the feeling that you get when it's like, this feels right, but it also feels pretty stinking scary because usually those are the nuggets that lead us down this trail of I'm about to connect with somebody that I didn't even know was possible. And I'm about to be able to really have opportunities that I didn't even know existed. And I think that that's pretty amazing. I went to VidSummit, which is like a YouTube conference, a couple years ago, and I remember thinking, like, next year I want to somehow be.

In the room with these professionals. Like, I want to be in here as somebody, like, in this industry. And I was. And it wasn't because I'm amazing. It's because I took risk. It's because I wasn't afraid to, like, apply for things and do things and go after stuff. And it was like, you know, the next goal is, how do I start speaking for more conferences, doing more things where I'm helping musicians and artists and filmmakers and photographers, like, creatives on a bigger level? Like, how do I Start to really develop an audience for this. Because I want to serve people. I want to serve a lot of people. Right? And so that's my next move. And what does that mean? Like, I have to take risk. Is it worthwhile for my time right now to be here, like, doing this podcast and this live stream for, you know, like, five people online? Yeah, it totally is. But that's the work that some people aren't willing to do. And what I know is that if I keep doing it and I bring you guys something that helps you, then people are going to talk. Like, it's going to help people, and then that's going to trickle down and it's going to keep moving. And that's all I want, is to help somebody. How can I, like Seth Godin says, if you just show up every day and say, how can I be of service today? How can I be of service to somebody today? And this isn't me trying to be Mother Teresa of the arts world. It's just me saying, like, I just want so bad for people to believe in themselves more so that they can do more with their life that, you know, for right now, in this moment, when I can and I'm not having to, you know, be with my kids or my family for half an hour, then, like, I'm going to keep doing these things, I'm going to see what happens, and then I'll pivot and I'll change and I'll move forward. And I want the same for you guys. Like, try things, test things, give them time, give them energy, and just see where it leads you, See what happens. Okay. And email me, like, let me know if you did it. Seriously, email me or send me a message on Instagram, stop the starving artist. Check it out. And I'm working on getting active over there because right now I'm putting all focus on YouTube because I know that that's just where I can spend my energy, and it feels the most right for me. So send me a message. Anybody got any questions? I'll take a couple minutes and answer those. But if not, I just want to say thanks so much again for listening. So we're looking here. We got four or five people in the chat.

Yeah. Anthony saying, you just got to be a good egg. I do agree. Like.

One of my favorite things that I remember from somebody was like, if they said, how do you get more gigs? Or how do you do more things? It's like.

Thank the people that.

You don't think about thanking in that moment. We used to go around and at a venue, we would thank all the staff at the end of the night, shake everybody's hand and be like, thanks for taking care of us. Really appreciate you. You guys are the best. Just really complimenting those people. And that stuff trickles down because I can't tell you how many times we ended up getting something else because somebody said, man, those are just the nicest guys. They're really hard workers, and they're just out there doing cool stuff. So that stuff goes a long way. It really, really does. Which I know seems surprising, but that's not just in real life. Like, that's online, too. Like, if more people started thinking of social media.

Like real life, which I know it isn't, but those same contextual ideas of, like, talking to each other and thanking each other and showing gratitude and respect and love, like, I think we'd see a lot more stuff happen.

Cool. Anybody else?

Great. Well, thank you guys so much again for checking this out. I'm trying to show up here every Wednesday.

This month, which I believe I missed the first one. So I'm going to try to at least do one more, and then I'm going to reassess and see what happens. So if you have suggestions here in terms of this podcast or these ideas, if there's stuff that you want to hear about, drop them in the chat, drop them in the comments below. Let me know what you'd like for me to discuss. I would love to go over those things, and I just want to remind you guys, like, I truly believe it, that when you're going after something and you're aligned with the thing that you're supposed to do, then it's all rigged in your favor. And I've been having to remind myself of that lately. And so saying out loud to you, I think, is important as well. I'm sending you guys tons of love. Thank you so, so much for being here. And I'll see you next.