Standing out as an artist is about standing up for something.

We feel this weight when we say that phrase. It's all been done, Lennon. How am I supposed to do something unique? How am I supposed to stand out when it's all been done before? Woohoo hoo. Right, so here's the truth. I think we are in such a cool time to be alive as a creative person. Why? Because we now own the opportunities to put out the message that we want people to experience on our behalf. There was a point in time where depending on the artist, depending on who represented them, depending on, you know, for visual artists, like if it was the galleries or it was their management, for musicians, if it was a record label, we are in a position right now where they no longer have control of those stories. As a creative, you have control of your own story. So how do you stand out? Right. How do you start to stand out is through your story. In order for us to stand out, we really have to start standing up for something. Sometimes standing up for something is as simple as standing up for yourself.

I've had this happen recently where.

I've just felt like.

The same. Like there's tons of people out here saying what I'm saying. There's tons of people out here maybe teaching similar things. It's all been done, right? And then what I realized is the thing that I stand up for, which is the person that doesn't want to be famous, it's the person that doesn't want to go out and just live the elaborate rock star lifestyle of the arts industry. It's the person that just wants to have and support a career. It's me. That's the difference. I was never the guy that wanted to to be huge in my career path. I just wanted to love it. I always said I just want to do what I love. I just want to make a living doing what I love to do. And you know what's amazing is I've been able to do that for pushing 20 years now. That's nuts to me, right? Were there ups and downs? Were there days where I didn't make it happen? Absolutely. But for the most part it's worked because I realized that I had to stand up for something. And it started with me. It started with me. And now as I've learned more and more and more about marketing and branding and how that really plays into the story that we talked about a second ago, when we start to not only stand up for ourselves, and often when we're standing up for ourselves, we're really standing up against ourselves. It's our own oppression it's our own doubts and fears that come over us and say, ah, you're not ready for that, dude. Why don't you just hang low? Let's just keep it cool. We don't want you to get too good at something. We don't want you to actually succeed. We don't want you to really do the dreams thing because then, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. That's the fear, right? That's this thing up here that lives. So when we start to stand up for ourself and we can realize that we are not those feelings, we are not that fear. We are more than that as creatives, and then we start to stand up for something or someone else, then it's a game changer. What do you think about minimalism as a music art form? Maybe you don't know much about it, but what minimalism was, was an opportunity after, I believe. Forgive me here, because I'm not a music scholar in the least. It was after a certain era of music where everything was crazy. There was like all this just like just lots of notes, lots of crazy stuff happening. And minimalism was standing up against that. Standing up for something. Standing up for simplicity and for this idea of music being anything that we hear. John Cage believes that anything that you hear in the moment is music. I actually believe that too. I think that's a beautiful sentiment. So that's such a cool thing. So he stood these, these artists, they stood up for something, right? What about all of the abstract painters of the world? They were standing up for something, for a style, for a thing, an ideal. So what is it that you believe in? What is it that you want to stand up for? And usually it's a type of person, right? When we think of story, stories come in really.

Five categories. Joy and pain, life and death and status. Joy, pain, life, death and status. That's the story options that we have, right? So we talked about this idea of our story as a brand. We have a brand story.

Take the like sick, icky, gross part of brand away. We're talking about something different here. I'm talking about you, right? Talking about you in the good way, not the. Like, we're Apple, okay? We're not apple. We are a brand. But we're something different than that. So when we have this story.

What'S the story that you're trying to convey? What's the thing you're trying to stand up for or up against? Is that you're standing up for joy, against this idea of anxiety and depression is that you're standing up for civil rights and. And for.

The oppressed people of our country who so desperately need more artists to stand up for them. Is that who you're standing up for? Right. If you just make things, there is no story for me to attach myself to. There's nothing for me to get excited about and feel like I can join you in this fight to stand up for something. So I want you to think about this. If you want to stand out as an artist, what are you going to start to stand up for? And maybe today, step one is just starting to stand up for yourself, for your own.

Dreams to come true. Stand up against your own fears and learn to not identify as those fears. Then to figure out what is the thing that you want to make that stands up for something, that stands against something, and then start to talk about that. Start to talk about how your art works for that. And I guarantee this is going to do way more for you than any social media tactic that you can think of. Okay, Love to you guys. Sending you all of it. Thank you so much for hanging with me these last few days. This has been so fun to just show up and talk to you guys. I'll be back tomorrow.