Give Yourself Permission to Do It Your Way with Master Technician John Paul Caponigro

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I am back with J. John Paul Campanegro. And John is, as we talked about last time, a holder of many awards, many achievements and one of the most recognized names in photography worldwide and a leader. Not only does he produce volumes of art that people could buy to go into galleries and things like that, he's really passionate about sharing. So he puts out, you need to go to his website and get on his mailing list because let's just talk. We'll talk about that. So welcome back, John.

Thank you Larry. It's nice to see you.

And what is your website?

My name john paulcaponigro.com you just have to learn how to spell Caponigro. C, A P, O N I G, R O. So it's my name dot com. It's a 16 year project that is basically three books and counting. Yeah, I've been sharing a lot of information for a lot of years for a lot of people and it's been gratifying to contribute to the community and to many individuals growth. You can find everything from information on digital printing to developing your voice and telling stories with pictures. Plus, I also kind of finally separated my fine art from the technical work. I just needed a clean space to just enjoy the work. So. JohnPaulCapaniquo art just came online last year and it's a space dedicated just to my art. But I've just started doing these virtual gallery talks. You know, a lot of times I'll have and we'll have a gallery show and people want me to come for the opening and say a few things about the work or have a special event there just to get to know the artist, hear their thoughts about making the work. So I've done a virtual equivalent of that that I just released last month and there'll be many more there. So if you sign up for that newsletter, collector's alert. I'm also giving away free ebooks this this year for that and let you know about all the new content. But I think the website, both websites, johnpocapniger.com and johnpochaenger art are so information rich with new content coming online so frequently they need a newsletter to let you know what's new?

And the thing is that this proves the point that if you want to be successful, you know, success comes from you using your 24 hour a day allotment. Well, you know, don't forget sleep.

Yeah.

You know, you want to accomplish what you want to accomplish, and you got to get the, you know, the necessities, the basics in there, the family, the relationships, the food, the rest. But when it comes time to work, the more organized you are, you know, where you can get, you know, you reach for a pen, you need a pen, you can get your hand up, you need paper, you get. But the more elaborate your life gets. The thing about success is eliminate the clutter. There's a certain amount of having to eliminate the clutter. You know, get rid of stuff, throw out things so you can make room in your life for new things. But there's another thing of you create a whole lot of stuff you don't want to get rid of, and then you got to catalog it and make it where you can find it and other people can find it. But one thing, and this is what I call being organized for success. You know, it's a lifelong project, you know, and I notice for, since forever, I've noticed that you do what I do, and that is get a lot out of quotes. Because the things that we have, we deal with people have been dealing with for centuries. And a lot of the pretty smart people, and a lot of them are pretty smart, pretty smart people who are good with words. And so you don't necessarily have to come up with your own sayings. But, you know, finding these quotes really helps crystallize thoughts. But also it's easy for you to, when you have these things, a way of reminding yourself in a really good way, the ideas that go behind that. And so when did you really get fired up about quotes and passing them on to people?

You know, I think that goes way back. And when I first started, I didn't have very good recall. And I was just impressed that people did have the recall for that. It's a skill and you can practice it. I've gotten better. I appreciate a Zen sensibility where things get boiled down into some very distilled form and it's memorable and sticky and actionable. So I encourage other people, people that I mentor, my alumni to think a little bit about, what are their maxims, what are the, what are the words they live by? And they don't necessarily have to be their own, but I find if it's short and sweet, they can remember it. They can reclaim it. They can come back and revisit it, and they can think about acting on it. So that goes way back. But it's come over time, and I've just spent a lot of time with it.

Do you find yourself referring to and repeating certain ones over and over, decades later, after you started, after you have heard that? You know, I've got a few. I've got certain ones that they just come up in conversations when I'm explaining things to people, I'm talking to people, and there's just no better way of saying it than, boom, you know, idea. You know, go ahead. And I'd be curious to hear what.

Some of those are.

Well, so I think they fall into several categories, you know, words that I live by and don't necessarily share as frequently with other people, but it's always on my mind. There's this one quote that I've seen attributed to Confucius, the Talmud and Anais Nin, and I haven't been able to figure out where it originally came from. I'm going to rule Anais out because, you know, more recent. But we see things not as they are. We see things as we are. Now, that's a little catchphrase that if you look at all of my work, when I say my work is about the nature perception, the perception of nature. Those two correlate. Those are words that will be with me to my dying days. When I'm teaching, I've got a whole other set. And I find that photographers in particular don't want to make plans. They realize how changeable the world out there is, and they have to catch it in 125th of a second or it's going to be gone. So it challenged this notion that one should plan. So I go through this little three quote series, and it helps that we start with Benjamin Franklin, because it carries a certain amount of authority.

Yeah.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

There you go. There you go.

I like to follow it up with Helmut von Moltke, the German strategist. You know, no plan survives an encounter with the enemy. That was Colin Powell's favorite quote.

Yeah.

And then I also like to follow it with. So you got to write your plans in pencil. This isn't a quote. I tell my folks, don't write them in stone, write them in pencil.

Yeah.

Because as Paul Allen says, you got to work your plan.

Yeah.

It helps when you're talking about German strategists and business moguls and founding fathers. There's all a certain amount of authority saying, yeah, you know, plan's a good thing. That cascade of it's good to have a vision, but you've got to stay flexible and respond to current conditions. And those conditions may also be us as well. As we change our plans, need to change with us.

Yeah, yeah. And I don't know of a better analogy than getting on the, you know, deciding where you want to go, get in the car and, you know.

I'm.

Headed that way and somewhere, and then if there's an accident, it's like, what do we do? We, we gotta go, we gotta get there, you know, and then you, you couch that in turn with a deadline, you know, it's just like we only got so much time to put. Put this, you know, and get this thing done. So that kind of narrows your choices or your money, you know, how much money do we have on this?

You know?

Right, right.

And I learned at Georgia Tech, we had one guy, you know, there's one in every group. I mean, he was the most gifted of the class, and he always turned in the best project one week late. So he turned in eight plus projects. You know, I got an F on it every time, you know, and so in the real world, he'd probably be good enough to be able to get by without, you know, because the excellence of the work. When you. What other kind of things do you find come up in your workshops where you're trying to get people to capture a scene or an get past a barrier of being afraid to put themselves out there? Things like that. What kind of things do you find yourself having to encourage people past, you know, bumps in the road in terms of them establishing themselves as a photographer and feeling good about it and confident about it? What do you. Where do you see yourself having to provide some push or shed some light or giving them another angle to look. Look at their. That situation.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business that's accrued over $5 billion in assets under management and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move.

I find myself constantly in the strange. Permission, sorry, in the strange position of encouraging them to give Themselves permission to do it their way. In so many cases, they're looking for their authentic voice, my images, my way of seeing, but they don't know what that is yet. Trying to discover that it doesn't just have to be a random walk. There are many ways of cultivating that. But I think the biggest challenge for many people is this reverence for authority or this playing by the rules. And the challenge is sometimes you're playing by other people's rules, other people's playbook. And does that necessarily serve you? Have you thought about your goals, what your photography is or what your game is, and how you might need to approach it differently if you have different goals?

And in life, it seems like there's a breakthrough when people realize they don't have to be limited by the number of things they pursue. Like yourself, you've gone in a lot of different directions and still evolving in where you're putting your energy. And like you said at the Smithsonian, it's like which devices you use, which programs you've used, and things like that. So there's. Did you come to a moment to where you realized I don't have to pigeonhole myself. I don't have to be just this or just that?

Well, I think I grew up with artistic parents, and particularly my father, the ultimate romantic. My image of my father as a young boy was this gorilla sitting at the grand piano banging out Beethoven. He's a classic romantic, and he rebels against any kind authority or restriction, or he celebrates freedom and spontaneity and creativity and in a great way. So I think having a father that celebrated that gave me permission in many ways to do it my way. And in fact, we celebrated that my mom as well. In our family, we respected each other's creative lives and our different voices, and that was celebrated. And in fact, as I'm going around watching my mom work with great painters, photographers, sculptors, designing their books or their exhibitions, as I'm looking at dad visiting his colleagues, wonderful photographers, I'm realizing every single one of those person. People do it a little bit differently. Not only their photography, but the way they run their business and the way they integrate that business with their life, that. That will change over time as well. The way dad thinks does things now is different than the way that he did them 50 years ago. And the way things I'm doing now is different than 10 years ago because my work is a part of my life.

Yeah.

So while I do do a lot of different things, I. I do my website, my blog, my workshops, my video Training, my fine art, my exhibits, my books, my. I do all of that. It's all focused around being visual in nature.

To wrap this one up, how would you say to them? They listen to these calls and they say, well, what do I do?

What do I do?

You know, they want to be told what to do. And, you know, I've listened to back when I watched college football, back when there was a normal world, there would be. If they would be interviewing Nick Saban on the sideline, the greatest football coach there is.

And they.

After a game, they're interviewing him and they've got like 20 seconds. And in 20 seconds, he gave the whole thing. He gave them what he did. And he did a matter of fact, you know, because he's tired, he's exhausted, he's thinking about going back to the locker room, seeing his players. It's like off the top of this has stream of conscious. Well, we got behind the third quarter and I told the guys we had to do this at the other coming in the game. We had to. This and the other. He told him like 17 different things just boom, boom, boom, that coaches who don't win or leaders who are running teams that are not winning could learn from. But it goes, you know, he said it so matter of fact. And this and the other, it goes right over their heads. So people are looking for the big dramatic do this, do that, the other. And how would you get it across to them, is what you said there. I'm trying to get people to give.

Them permission to do.

Do things the way they think it should be done. And they like you. I always, you know, we're in sales. And in sales, you'd have people say, well, I have nobody else to talk to. You know, I'm not a lease, no prospects. And I'd always tell them, you're lying to yourself.

There's.

And I said, there's one left, there's one left.

There's one left in there.

And they think. And they go, yeah, there's one left. I said, go talk to them. And you'll think of the other one you're forgetting about when you. On the way. You know, there you go.

Process. That'll work the process.

But you got to get her to focus in on rather than, ooh, you know, I don't.

I'm, you know, you don't have to.

Think of 50 right now. Just one and like that. That's a step forward. You know, it's. How would you. How would you say that? Help me say that to people. It's like all you need is the next step. Do the next step with what you got and see what that brings you.

That's right. A journey is made with. A journey of a thousand steps is made with the first one. Right, right. I'm paraphrasing. Anything is a process, and you've got to be as creative with your life, with your business, with your art, with your business of art as. As you are with the art you're making. Be creative. Get. Get really curious.

Yeah. And I guess, John, what we should tell people is that's how you become unique.

That's right.

That's how you establish yourself, is somebody that people will want to listen to, buy the products, pay attention to.

And stop trying to work so hard at fitting in.

Yeah.

I mean, you actually want to stand out. You want to be able to fit in just enough so that people can relate to you and so that you can relate to them and communicate your message. But honestly, you want to stand out, and you don't want to just stand out in some posed way because everybody's going to sniff the artificiality of that. You want it to be authentic. Find what's unique about you. Find what your passion is. Own it. You're going to have more fun anyway. I mean, even if that doesn't work out in business, you're going to have led a really fantastic life.

Right.

You're going to be the person you want to be.

Yeah.

So go do that. This notion, you're going to figure it all out. No, you. You figure it out by taking that first step, by doing it. Everything is a process, including you.

Yeah.

That's great stuff. Thanks so much, John, and look forward to the next time we can get together.

I look forward to, too.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works you in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.