63: Artist as CEO with Jenny Blake, Michel Karsouny & Kerri Lowe

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hi friends, Long time no talk. I am so excited to be gearing up the Pivot podcast again. I ended up taking a summer hiatus that I have to say, I didn't exactly plan for it. Just kind of happened. Those of you who read my weekly ish Pivot List newsletter saw my most recent mailing where I talked about dropping schedule shoulds and my mantra as a solopreneur, which is that I'm really in this for the long game. And sometimes that means forsaking consistency for sanity. In my case, I set up my first website in 2005, my first blog post in 2007. So this has been over 10 years of running various forms of output in my online media, whether that's blog posts, social media, podcasts, the book, emails. All of it adds up. And what I'm finding is that sometimes in a post Pivot stage like me, even now a year out from the book launch, that my business requires me to go a little bit slower than I do. I tend to go now rather than seeing it as just one long marathon. I go in sprints and periods of recharging and recovery, and I find that that works best for me. So thank you for your patience as I took a SL light podcast hiatus and I'm really, really excited about the fall lineup. Today's episode is a special one. My friend Carrie Lowe came over and turned the microphone tables over to me and my guy, Michelle Corsooni, to interview us for a podcast that she helps produce called Artist CEO. And funny enough, I haven't mentioned Michelle before on this show. We met over a year ago in June of 2016. We walking down a New York City street in opposite directions. How about that? On the Magic of Serendipity. He and his friend were looking for a pair of overalls. He's a painter, and they didn't know they were looking for a girl in overalls because there I was walking down the street and right as he passed me, he mouthed the words nice overalls. And as I turned and said thank you so much, his friend turned back, where did you get them? And next thing I know we're talking on the street. I was 25ft from my house, so there wasn't a lot of time to make this meeting happen, but we've been very close ever since, and now we live together in a studio apartment in Nolita. So this podcast really gets into things like routine, the creative process. Michel is a painter and he ran a design business for seven years before deciding to fold that to focus full time on painting. He also has a background doing voiceover work. So if any of you heard the Jeff Goins podcast, Michelle's the one who recorded the intro and the outro about Delegation Ninja. So that's just a fun little Easter eg that we decided to put in the podcast. But we're going to talk about his experience of moving to the States. He speaks four languages, our similarities as far as the creative process and our philosophy of artist as CEO and our differences, how we manage him being a Myers Briggs P and me being a Myers Briggs J. So very structured, whereas he's more go with the flow. He's a complete night owl. I'm a morning person and we talk about the blessing and the curse of burnout, how to listen to your body's intelligence and simplifying when you find that you're doing too many things in parallel. I hope you really enjoy this conversation as much as we had fun recording it. And before we jump in, the last thing I'll say is that Pivot comes out in paperback on September 19th, so if you don't yet have your copy, now's the time. Head over to pivotmethod.com to order from any online retailer and in any bookstore near you. And then if you go to pivotmethod.com toolkit there are a ton of free tools and templates that support the book. All right, without further ado, I can't wait to dive into today's episode, and I'm so excited that you all get to meet my love, Michelle Carswini. Enjoy this Episode. And thank you again for being here, for listening, and for your support of Pivot. It truly means the world to me.

We are here just having a conversation about business and art with two people who know a lot about it. But first, I actually would love to get into this burnout question, because that's what's been coming up for Shannon lately, and also for me. I feel like I experienced burnout for the first time when I was working on the episode that just came out today, and it was the first time where I couldn't work. I wanted to, but I had migraines, and I just was out. So I know that you've had experience with that, Jenny, and I'd love to hear a little bit about it.

Yeah, I feel like, especially for creatives, burnout comes from a good place. We want to work. We're passionate about our work. We can get in a real cycle of giving it so much diligent focus and attention. And then before we had started recording, we were talking about our body's intelligence. And it's so interesting when even our mind wants to work or think it wants to work or thinks that it should work, and the body says, no, thank you. No, I'm actually not in that mode right now. And part of I think, and Michelle and I talk about this a lot, but the challenge of being an artist and not having typical structures, it's the blessing and the curse. So the blessing is you get to set your own schedule and do your work whenever you feel like it. And then the flip side is knowing how to really listen to your body and tune into that body intelligence and that wisdom and take a break when needed. And so for me, I spent three years working on Pivot, my book that came out in September. And I thought, okay, for sure. I'll need a couple weeks to recover after that. That's a big push. And a couple weeks blocked off my calendar. Sure enough, three months later, I was still feeling completely wiped out, completely spent, and went on a silent meditation retreat at the beginning of the year over New Year's. And I said, okay, well, when I get back, it's January. It's time to get back on the horse, get back to it. And nope, didn't. That energy still was not there. And I realized that oftentimes, one, it's hard to see burnout coming or just even if we didn't even call it burnout, and just the need to rest and recharge and retreat. And then it often lasts much longer than the mind would think is necessary. But I do believe, and I know Michelle thinks this way, too, that our body's not wrong and it's not out to get us, that if we just give it the rest and the space that it needs, it will naturally bounce back when it's ready.

I think one thing I learned about burnout is to prioritize is the most important thing you can do. I really used to think that I had to do a million things so I could keep going and working in parallel. Doing too many things in parallel was my main MO I can tackle all of these challenges in different fields because I used to be in design.

Voiceovers, and art at the same time, and I thought they were going to help one another somehow. But taking a step back, taking a breather, and doing one thing at a time just helps your body, helps your mind, and gives you a lot of epiphanies that you wouldn't see coming.

Yeah, totally. It's interesting because this is the question of the podcast. It's like, okay, can you be an artist? Can you be a CEO? Can you do it at the same time? And I don't think that we have an answer to that. So it seems like part of what you've come to is I need to focus more on just one thing, but also there's this question of, well, is it possible to integrate two things so that they feel like one? Is that something that you're interested in?

Not necessarily in my practice, but if you look at other artists, like even Jeff Koons includes his business as part of his art. So there are a million ways to have it work in tandem or together or have it be the subject of your work. Business as art, that's not what I'm looking for. I look for freedom so I can have more time and space to ponder on what I'm working on to develop my own thing. So the idea of CEO is just having your own company to run your art, but be able to bounce back and forth, and I separate them quite clearly.

I think too so much of being an artist and being an effective artist CEO is allowing for space as part of that equation, that in order to be effective as a CEO, and particularly as an artist, space, rest, contemplation time is required. And we will spend often several hours reading every morning. And on one level, or maybe in our past lives, like 10 years ago, that might have seemed really indulgent and a waste of time, and now it is just fundamental to starting the day and raising our vibration to the day and getting new thoughts sparked. And so part of Artist SEO for me is redefining what it means to run a business effectively. It doesn't have to mean. I really think it's. We're long overdue to challenge the conventions of traditional business, especially in the factory model of five day work weeks, eight hour days. Says who? Like, what planet is that? What's best for our body? And if you're an artist, a CEO who doesn't have 100 employees, or who doesn't want to delegate the actual making of the art like Jeff Koons, then your body is your business and your body and mind and wellness and peace of mind is fundamental to creativity. And then of course, there are going to be sprints where you just know. Like when he was preparing for open studios, he's like barely going to see you this week, you know, comes in at 5am instead of 5pm Nap, power naps. And I think as long as you know, okay, the sprint is here, I know what it's about and I'm going to build in time on the backside. That's how we can throttle a more diverse.

Work pattern or vibration than what you might find in a traditional office environment.

There's definitely an ebb and flow that needs to happen. And yeah, reading every day in the morning, taking the time, meditating.

It builds you up so you can crash. Right. Be like water. The whole Bruce Lee thing, you can just, you know, be still, be calm and.

Gain all this wisdom from stillness. And then once the time is here to crash, to be there to either build your art or build your business.

This balance is.

It is so much more crucial.

Yes.

Yeah. It's like, I think with no planning.

Though, there's this inner wisdom that just gets you to either, you know, cram and crush it. Right, Totally.

And then the action that you do take is so targeted and specific and purposeful.

Yeah.

So it's very Bruce Lee.

Yeah.

More time. I mean, more, more output. Less effort.

Yeah.

More water. Less planning, more, you know, the way of flow. Yeah. The intercepting fist. Whatever comes in front of you, you, you figure out. We've been talking about planning a lot lately because Jenny plans her calendar quite rigorously. And I have these key elements in my month or in my week, and then I navigate around that depending on how my energy flows and whether I'm doing business or I'm doing art. So what's your take on that?

Well, I was just going to say I think the reason I schedule so much is so that when there's, for example, I'll schedule a week of calls and Podcasts and meetings so that the following two weeks I don't have anything on the calendar. And so I just kind of pulse in that way. And I do create space for myself to be free, but it's just in different blocks. And the nature of my work is more interpersonal sometimes than yours has to be as the artist for sure. So I probably straddle more of the. But the thing is, I really enjoy business. I love business building. I love the systems, I love the tools and figuring out how things work. There was one more thing I wanted to say on burnout, at least, which is when you feel yourself, as you mentioned, Carrie, reaching that point, it's such a good time, especially when your body gives you signals like, hey, slow down, I'm still here. What you're doing is not going to keep working, keep working, moving forward.

It's hard to hear it.

It's hard to hear it. Listening is already such a good thing. And then I believe that it's either one of two things. It's either that the work you're working on, it's kind of ready for a shift, or it's not the right balance of activities. Or maybe it's a signal that I'm kind of done with this thing that was working for me, but I don't want anymore. Or it's that, no, I love all of these projects and I really just need to create more space or delegate or create more freedom. So I think burnout is a really important and valuable time to say, okay, whatever point I've reached, it's usually a product of our success anyway. It's usually that, wow, like you were saying, Michelle, so many things are working and going on then. Now I'm exhausted. Yeah, okay, now it's time for the next level. Paring it down and looking at what's working and doing more of it and removing. The editing out process of just removing stuff that's no longer a fit is hard to do.

There's this thing as well about burnout being very related to fight or flight response. So we're all always on the go. We always want to keep making, producing.

And if not, we're going to retreat and be in our own cocoon. So maybe instead of having. So it's more about being in tune about whether we are in fight or flight or whether we are still in flowing. And that's been a challenge for me for a lot of years. And yeah, I'm slowly but surely learning to do that through meditation, at least through meditation.

And he broke his collarbone.

Oh, yeah, through that, too.

Yeah. And that was the first thing that he had. He has nine screws and a plate to keep his collarbone together. And for a couple months, he couldn't tie his shoes. Like, it forced him to slow down. Here is a man who just, like, has the fastest metabolism as a boxer, like, taking boxing classes running around the city. And it wasn't for him as well. It was a physical event that said, put the brakes on your body.

Slows you down. It's very funny because still after that, three months later, I felt that I had missed so much of life of doing that I pushed myself so hard that I wrecked my back, like, two months after. So your body at some point is just giving you all these signals, just, like, slow down. What are you doing? Just be centered. See what's going on. And funnily enough, another thing you mentioned, Jenny, is even when you decide to take a break, right, A week or two, like, all right, I'm gonna allow myself to just chill a little bit. Your body is just so exhausted, and you're not aware of it, and it takes you maybe a month or two, and you start feeling all this guilt. But then you realize that, actually, I just, you know, I made something, I created something. I put it out there. Hopefully it was successful. But it's time to just, you know, just gather your thoughts and not even your thoughts, gather yourself and be centered again and be ready for rebuild. To be ready.

Yeah.

And we're in a culture in America. It's become more clear to me because Michelle's from Beirut, Lebanon, and he's French educated, so he has kind of French and Lebanese and some Armenian in there anyway, that the American culture. Oh, values. Work and doing and hard work and capitalism and Hustle and there's been so many books that come out like Hustle and Flow, all of this stuff. And he often points it out to me because it's kind of like the David Foster Wallace, this is water story. Like, a fish doesn't know he's in water. Or she. And I didn't even realize the extent to which we're part of a culture that values doing and that does really does not value necessarily slowing down. I think we're seeing people demanding it now with more mindfulness and meditation kind of sweeping the nation and becoming more mainstream. But it's. I think we're in a culture where if you say you're slowing down or taking a break, people are like, okay, okay, that's nice. But when are you getting back to it?

Yeah.

Seth Price. So Seth Price has a book called Fuck Seth Price and it's really good. It's really worth watching, reading. Yeah. So he talks about four.

Four goals that artists have. First one is freedom. Second one is this every constant production, production mode. Then there's the scene. Being part of a scene.

It's open for everyone, right? You can enter, you could be a collector, you could be an artist, or you could be anyone. And it's open for everyone. So being part of the scene. And the fourth one is making money. So it really depends on the artist and what his goals are. But I mean you could have all four, like Picasso, but at the same time you could take a step back and choose what you really want. And it goes back to talking about priorities and why are you an artist? What are your goals? Is it to become a millionaire and make money out of commercializing your art? Or is it more of.

Finding your people and being part of a scene? For me it's just freedom and be hanging out with this one.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you, what your goals are. So that seems pretty clear. Jenny, what is it for you?

For me, freedom, definitely that informs how I structure my business. But the goal of my art, if you could call it that, of my writing, my books, my speaking, is to be as helpful as possible to as many people as possible. For me it's about service and I love, it's joyful. For me, it's not like I'm some kind of martyr, like, oh, my life is dedicated to others. But it's that if when I am helping others, and particularly one to many in that format, I feel the best. I feel like I'm just doing what I'm. What I was born to do. And so I don't have any attachment to specifically financial figure necessarily, but just to feel comfortable and happy and healthy. And it's such a privilege to have the space to read for hours in the morning.

I mean, I don't take that for.

Granted that Michelle and I both work from home. We get to hang out with each other all day, we get to read and meditate and no one's telling us what to do. And it's not something that I take lightly. And I just, it's. It's felt I've been in business now for myself. 6 years self employment as of next week. And it's just I work and I think I worked as hard as I did the first six years so that I could arrive at this point of having more space, more of a slow pace but it still can be scary because as an artist, as an entrepreneur, to say, well.

I don't know what's going to be your next project? How are you going to earn the next living? Do I have to hustle as hard as I did the first six years, or can I somehow have abundance with ease and joy? And that's my new question, is just how to create even more space, even more of a slow pace, and still feel abundant in time and financial resources and joy. So that the work I do is soul work, and that it's not coming from any sense of external pressure. And I know that's something so many artists grapple with, and it's not an easy thing to figure out. Like, if we could, probably everyone would be doing it.

It's. It's freedom of service.

Yeah.

So one thing I've noticed that we both have is.

Yes, money is important in the sense where it helps you.

Follow your soul path.

Yeah.

Let's say your soul goal. Your soul goal. Whatever. Whatever freedom you need. Right. And.

Yeah, it's just balancing it out in a way that.

You'Re more able to serve people. For me, it's dialogue, I think, if I think about it. Freedom of dialogue. Freedom of idea development and expression. Yeah.

Love it.

Where does that dialogue happen?

Right now? It's happening in the artwork. It really depends on. It really depends on where you want to have your dialogue. You can just have a conversation with someone. You could dialogue with.

All of these masters standing in a museum and looking at their old work, because there's this visual language that you acquire.

As a visual artist, but it's not really tied into production per se, so it depends on you and how you want to lead that expression.

Cool.

I guess one thing I would like to dive into at least a little bit is the delegation is working with a team. If you do it all, I'd just love to hear from both of you what that looks like for you, if anything.

For me, delegation, first of all, it's a skill. It's a muscle that one builds. And.

It'S so related to the burnout conversation because I just realized as I started to shift. My first website was called Life After College. I set it up in 2005. It's ancient now in Internet dog years. And the book came out 2011. In 2013, I just was ready to move on, set up a site under my own name, Jenny Blake me, that a few years Pivot came out 2016, and next thing I know, I'm running three web properties, two newsletters, I have so much everywhere in 2013 was really when I started to delegate out of necessity. I was hitting a wall. I needed space. I need some distance. And the. I can't even call it a mistake because I was aware of it. But the real problem that I was having was that I was the bottleneck in my business. And when I needed a break, I got sick. If I wanted vacation, if I just needed six months of creative incubation time, everything ground to a halt. That my income was directly tied to me being present to earn it. And that was so stressful. And I just. As I looked to the next 60 years of working this way, I was like, I can't. That's not smart. Like, I'm gonna need the space. Just even the luxury of creative space. But also, what if something happens? What if something really knocks me on my ass or I get hit by a car? Like, it's not smart to have a business that solely depends on my ability to show up for it. And so that's when I really started to say, how can I delegate in.

A way that I didn't have a.

Lot of money at that time. It doesn't have to mean. And nor did I want to have a Kunzian business where I have 100 employees or a googly business like where I came from. I looked at those large businesses and that did not fit my value of freedom either. I don't want to. I really didn't want to expand into some like mega Consulting monolith that I had all these employees and an office. And I know people who started at the same time of me who have seven or eight figure businesses with 30 employees. And I just. That didn't excite me. I love being location independent and I love being relatively solo in my solopreneurship. So when I finally first brought on a VA to just help with personal.

Tasks and I think.

I know. I mean, Michelle and I talk about this too. Like, he doesn't want to be thinking about the details of bill paying, and neither do I, even though I'm actually. I think I'd make in a parallel career like a great executive assistant. Because I love organizing things. It's not the best use of my time. And those little things add up and they start to impinge on the ability to really think big and expansively. So when I first hired a VA, it was $200 a month. And even when I got so low that I couldn't afford to go out to eat dinner anymore, I was willing to still pay for yoga Classes and still pay for my va. So for anyone who they're like, oh, I can't afford it. I once I was two weeks in, I was like, oh, my God, I can't afford not to. And it just freed up so much time. Things like moving logistics, travel research, scheduling, online purchases, bill paying, negotiating bills. It took so much off my plate. And then by the time that I brought someone on to help on the business stuff, and again, part time and remote, so we don't work in the same place again, it could really free me up. And Marisol is the one on my team who she's amazing to work with. We've been working together for years now, have such a rapport. So things like she'll draft a newsletter based on links that I've saved, and I just have to go in and write the blurb of what's going on in my life and hit send. It's still my content, it's still my curation, it's still my voice. But I'm not doing all the 10 logistical steps that lead up to it. And that's a very small example, but even I just created a delegation ninja course. So it's because I am so passionate about helping people free up their time so they can do what they really love. And even if that's free, your time, so you don't have to work as much, spend time with your family, I think we're all inundated. Like, I don't know about either of you, but I, like, I'm. I wrote this in an article draft the other day of, like, peak ping, too many pings, like Facebook, text messages, LinkedIn, my inbox. I cannot keep up. Like, I maxed out. And so for me, the only way to solve that and scale ourselves and free up our brain space is to learn the skill of delegation and dropping stuff.

You'd be surprised. Yeah. You'd be surprised that. I mean, I haven't checked my mail for. This is very funny, but I was going through an experiment. We just came back from Amsterdam and I didn't want to check my phone or my email. And a week went by and nothing happened. You know, I looked back at my email, I had, you know, triple the amount that you usually have. And you never really have.

A crisis. It's never really a crisis. And it's so interesting that, you know, you have Marisol skim through your email sometimes and answer when. When you want more free time. But for me, I just really realized that if you take a step back and you stop checking Facebook and Instagram and Twitter realize that all of these things compared to all the epiphanies or all of the thoughts or all of the freedom you have, being alone or without all of these technologies is so valuable.

Just going back to that delegation, I was running a design business for seven years before I closed shop and I did that because of Tim Ferriss four hour work week. And I was doing voiceovers in parallel back then, but I hadn't developed it that much. And being the ghost in the machine, I had a VA for a little bit, but decided not to even venture there.

And just built the website, reached out to different ad agencies and production houses and just slowly but surely developed the side hustle which allowed me to bounce around the world and do my art and.

Be free. Right. This whole idea of the new rich is you have the time, you have the space, you're free to do whatever you want practically while making money on the side. Yeah, just got me here.

I love it. I mean, even delegations. So we call. Michelle and I live together in my studio where we're recording now in New York, and we call it the Household.

There was a week where the laundry, like we were ready to do laundry and we put it by the door and it just stayed there for days and days. And I'm like, there has to be a better way. So next thing I know, I called the laundry the dry cleaning shop and it's like, oh, it turns out they pick up for free, do the laundry same day and drop off for free. And I know not everyone lives in New York, but that was an epiphany for me because here was this thing that really neither of us wanted to do. It's a couple hours of the day that we could be doing something else. Arguably, like anything we would do would be more important than laundry necessarily, even though it's necessary. And now I'm so happy to know that, okay, we solved that in a way that is creative and helps us both rather than even haggling over. Like, not that we ever did, but who's gonna do the laundry? Why haven't we done the laundry? When are we gonna. But even just so much friction gone by figuring out how to help ourselves.

And it got automated even more because instead of it being, you know, a one time thing, so every. Instead of calling the laundry and have them pick it up, now it's automated in the calendar once every two weeks. We don't even have to think about that. And.

There'S a very fun exercise that you have already embedded in you, which is as soon as you think about something better, do it now rather than do it later, so you don't have to even think about it twice. So even with the laundry exercise, it's looking at it.

In many steps over, like after the laundry, what's going to happen? We're going to have to do the laundry again in a couple of weeks. So how can we automate even that? So. So it's all. You're completely independent from it, you're free from it.

Yeah, that's what you said, is just getting it. Even if you're not going to do it that moment. There's some system so much of delegation and artists as CEO is creating systems to free up yourself. So even if something runs out in the kitchen, the minute it runs out, I add it to my Amazon cart. That's a very simple thing, but it means that I don't have to think about, oh, I keep forgetting to go buy toothpaste. It's just added the minute it's running out. And those things are important. And I think sometimes, at least there's a stereotype that artists or creatives can't be bothered with the details. But if you can just say, hey, none of us really want to be overly concerned with all of that. So what is this small system or small kind of habit stacking that you can create so that you don't have to think about it anymore. And going back to the social media thing for one second, it took me three years of conceptualizing Pivot, writing it, editing it, marketing it from start to finish. And first of all, I was single during that time. And then secondly, I don't think it would have been possible if I had been trying to keep up with or be good at social media. I am not good at social media.

I haven't checked LinkedIn messages in ages.

If you're trying to reach me that way, please email me instead. I don't post on Instagram, which I probably should. I don't. Twitter is mostly articles I'm reading, but I'm not necessarily engaging in back and forth conversation very much. And I sometimes feel bad about these things. But I remember thinking while I was working on Pivot, there is no way, there is no way that I could be doing that deep work if I had been worrying about social media. And now the flip is we spend so much quality time together and it's not really worth it to me if we could spend an hour together in the morning, I'm going to do that instead of feeling forced to post or keep up with social media, which is really never ending and doesn't necessarily contribute directly to my goal of deep, thoughtful, original content that's very helpful for people. Just doesn't make the cut, unfortunately.

I love this conversation. I feel like it's where.

A lot of people are of just reaching the max. Okay, what's important? All right. People are important. My art is important. Time to read and think is important.

And how can we create more of that space? Well, it might mean being systematic, more like a CEO than an artist. So you can have time to be.

The artist or build your system so you don't have to even think about it anymore.

Automate whatever.

You can automate everything.

We were having a conversation with a friend yesterday about vanity metrics. She had been working with her coach, and she also runs an online business. And, man, that is such a good reminder for all of us, especially when.

You have the CEO hat on.

What are the metrics that matter most? And then what are vanity metrics? Like, does it really matter how many Twitter followers you have or how many times you've posted on Instagram? Or is it. What are the metrics that matter for someone who is trying to build? My friend Dan kills it on Instagram. It's his core part of his business.

And it is fundamental to his business, and he loves it. He's a photographer. He takes beautiful photos. He now does sponsored posts every now and then. He's starting a photography headshot, automated business on the side. It's amazing what he's doing for Dan. Instagram makes sense for me.

I want to be present. I don't want to be taking photos in the middle of an experience and then uploading it and writing. I just, like, we're so bad. Michelle and I, we have, I think, one photo of us shared on Facebook from a year of being together. Yeah, I can see where we're both in it. Maybe two.

And by mistake, probably.

Yeah.

So it's like we.

We got other things to do.

In.

The relationship, not posting about it.

Right.

Yeah.

And so we have to remember to even send our families photos. Like, it really does exist. I promise.

You know, gotta automate that then.

That's another thing. It's been awesome to talk to you both. I'd love to just wrap up to see for each of you, like, if you've got something that you feel like, is your artist happening next? Like, what's. What's exciting to your artist right now? And then what's exciting to your CEO if. If there's something coming up.

That'S such a great question.

You first.

You first.

So, okay, I could start.

So I've been piloting many projects on the side to see what works, to see what works for the market and what works for me.

One of the pilots is called One psd and it's directly related to my practice. And it's this one Photoshop file. And it helps me tap into a mindful state of creation where the file keeps evolving. It's just one, so it doesn't have to be, you know, a million clutter your computer or.

Usually when I work on many, many paintings or many pieces, it kind of renders me add. And it's great to find connections between things. But I found a system where I could be present, create this work, upload snippets of where I'm at at a specific moment where I like the work, put it on Tumblr, and I'm trying to automate that so that it could be a shop. It's not necessarily.

A fine art gallery type of painting or art, but it.

Reaches out to people, gets the work out there, and allows them to maybe acquire a smaller piece or it allows me to be present in their lives at the same time. So that's what I'm mostly interested about. But in the meantime, as you can see, there are piles of books. So there's a lot of research being made about contemporary art and my next show. So that's how I'm thinking about it in terms of CEO, in terms of artists. I can't wait to make the work, and it really depends on how it comes out of me. And I'm for once giving myself the time to have the work mature and slowly but surely come together.

Perfect. Thank you.

I love it. Great answers.

Oh, thank you.

I'm excited about his one PSD as a Society six shop, because that's kind of the hybrid in between artist and CEO and my favorite piece there. Oh, yeah, he at least let me upload with this one piece. I keep being like, more. Give me more to upload, but I got to upload my favorite one.

I'm going to add something else.

Automation and art creation.

Was very tough for me to. Was very tough to wrap my head around because there's the sense of you want every single decision to be made then and there. And there's something about choosing frames that might work for you and choosing mediums that you want to work in and have these systems to art making that I wasn't very on board with, but I realized that it liberated my thought process so that this is what I'm experimenting with more. But if you can make these CEO decisions, let's say of Left brain, let's get it organized while having the artist be okay with it. Like, I like these frames. I like how this system works. This freed my artist side to be more creative, have more access to research, and give myself more time to explore all these venues that I wouldn't be able to usually.

Love it. Love it.

How about you?

My. My artist side? Well, it's very interesting to even use the word artist for me because I barely call myself a writer because writing is so challenging for me. I'm more of a. I really enjoy the speaking podcasting, but to get to know Michel and his. His work better, and my dad's a painter and an architect. I've been down the rabbit hole of reading art books, and I think Michelle and I counted we have 800 books in this studio apartment, which is pretty crazy. So for any curious minds out there who feel like you know nothing about the art world but want to, I've been really enjoying. I read the $12 million stuff shark seven days in the art world. The value of art was fantastic. How to see was really great. And then there's one more that I particularly wanted to say, but it will come to me. So I've been really reading a Duchamp biography. There's so much richness in this world. And I was wondering what. I've read probably 15 books now on art and artists and how to look at art and think about it. And at first it seemed like just kind of a personal diversion, let's call it like it didn't have to do with the main part of my work. But on the other hand, it has really opened me up to the mindset of different artists. Oh, what are you looking at? That's the last one that I really like. The mindset of different artists. How the names that we are familiar with, Picasso, Cezanne, Matisse, these guys each innovated on the body of work that had come before them and seeing how differently different artists work, how much freedom there is. I mean, even because I'm in the business and career space, I realize it's kind of opened my eyes to how much I'm trying to fit some norms around being helpful and having processes. And what would it look like to bust out of that even further? And it's given me a little more encouragement to have my next thing, which you asked about, Carrie, just really come from the heart and soul. And what would I do And I wrote these questions down. What would I do if I didn't have to earn a dime from it? And. Or what would I do if I didn't care what anyone thought? If no one was gonna judge me, if it didn't have to be. I don't know. You know, just these questions that I think very subtly affect what I work on or what I think I should work on. So I'm excited to just keep exploring that, keep opening up what it means to wear an artist hat. In a sense, how can you be.

As true to yourself as possible?

Yeah. Even like working with my hands. Maybe I will go take a ceramic. Or I asked Michel to print one of his pieces on ceramic so I could, like, break it and then make a mosaic.

Okay, great.

I mean, Julian Schnabel, this is.

She's the fan of Schnabel.

This technique, I mean, I just. It sounded fun. You saw that piece sounds like something I could have fun with my doing with my hands. Whereas I don't see myself as a painter or really a visual artist at all. I barely can see in visuals at all. I'm so much more of a worth person. And then CEO wise, I am really having a blast with the delegation ninja class. And I think that was fun because it just came to me in a flash and I purposefully built and launched it quickly, so I didn't have too long to mull over it and my perfectionist get in the way. So that was really fun. And then I'm excited to just let Pivot Engine continue to unfold, whether it's the podcast. And even at that, I've been slower than I was previously. But.

The best part about launching a creative project like a book is the serendipity that follows of I have no clue on any given day, I have no clue who's going to reach out or find it or what opportunities will come. So on the CEO side, I'm excited. Just keep following the threads and where there's the most energy to keep developing the business side of things.

Gotta say something.

Yeah.

So you were talking about art and how, you know, you like to work with your hands, but your medium maybe. But your medium is already there. It's words and communication and speaking. And speaking. So communication is your medium. We were talking yesterday about the label artists, and, you know, you could tie it to anyone can be an artist. You know, whoever. Whoever's really immersed in whatever they're doing can be called an artist because it's just a question of a medium or, you know, Artist as this. This. You know.

The term, the question, what is art? Is so diluted now. And it has so many answers that you can't really put your finger on one of them. But just going back to what I was saying, words are your medium. And the way you wrote Delegation Ninja really came out of flow. So you are immersed in all of these books.

You know your world very well. And in your case, I think the artist and the CEO are so enmeshed together because it's your craft. Being a CEO and a solopreneur is your craft. So just wanted to add my 2 cents on that thing.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And I feel like even that the course sounds so nuts and bolts and sounds so like. We call it like the 3D world of humanity. It's not necessarily some spiritual elevation to help you transcend. However, the thing that got me so juiced about it was, well, what if 100 artists are taking this class? How much art it would help people to create in the world or whatever their art is, or whatever their creative projects, whatever makes their heart sing. That sure, I can be of service in this way to free everybody up, all of us up to do the work we really care about.

You're capitalist.

Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

Thank you both so much. This was a wonderful conversation.

Thanks, Carrie for having us and everyone for listening. This is so fun. It's the first one we've ever done together. Thank you.

Awesome.

Do you want to stress less and earn more? What is your time worth? And are you happy with how you're spending it? Transform frantic into freedom with Jenny Blake's new eight week course, Delegation Ninja. Learn more and enroll now@pivotmethod.com delegate. Mention this podcast after you enroll and get $25 off the Delegation Ninja course or your first quarter in Momentum. This ad has been delegated by Jenny Bl.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.