Jeff Goins Shares How to Avoid Becoming a Starving Artist

Show Notes

The best-selling author of five books including The Art of Work and Real Artists Don’t Starve shares his thoughts on the art of work, the art of not quitting, why you have to really want it to become successful and much, much, more.

Book: The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do

  1. Before becoming a best-selling author, Goins was the former marketing director for Adventures in Missions, a Christian nonprofit organization, a position which he left to pursue a writing career.
  2. He’s the best-selling author of five books including The Art of Work and Real Artists Don’t Starve which is endorsed by New York Times best-selling authors Michael Hyatt and Ryan Holiday.

Show Introduction –

  1. Today’s guest is the best-selling author, Jeff Goins. Jeff Goins welcome onto the Thrivetime Show! How are you sir?!
    1. The path to getting to your life’s work can be a long and confusing path. This book helps you to discover what you were meant to do.
  2. Jeff Goins, I heard that you went to college and earned a double major in both Spanish and Religion. What motivated you to do this?
    1. I was interested in those things. I was going to a liberal arts school so I wasn’t really thinking about a job or my future. I wanted to go to Spain and travel. I am grateful to have been able to travel and see the world.
    2. When I was doing Spanish I was able to live in Spain for a semester. I lived in Sivil and grew up in the midwest. I never really went to the big city. When I was in Spain there was a large community of beggars and homeless people. This was the first time I had seem different kinds of people with different kinds of needs. This really resonated with me.
    3. The path to author was a windy one. I was a marketing director for a non-profit organization. I began marketing other people’s stories.
    4. I was telling other people’s stories of serving others. I loved doing that but I realised that I was creating stories for other people and not myself. That moment was when I went and started my first blog. One of the first blogs I created was called “The Toilet Seat”
  3. Jeff, when was the first moment during your career that you felt like your career was beginning to gain traction.
    1. My ninth blog called “The Goins Writer” had something going for it. That was the fact that I didn’t quit. I started blogging every day and after six months I began to gain traction. After a year I realized that I had over 10,000 people subscribed to my email as an audience.
    2. If you have failed at something and if you really want to be it you either stop or you succeed. There are two options.
    3. I started getting up at 5:00 AM and write for an hour before my wife got up.
    4. I started to measure the work and the process as opposed to the results.
    5. I started to redefine success and trusting that success would come.
  4. Jeff, I’ve heard you say that becoming a dad is what really pushed you into becoming a paid writer…I’d love to hear this story?
    1. My dad pushed me to become a lot of things and I learned a lot from him especially in regards to work ethic.
    2. He uprooted our family from Illinois to Alabama.
    3. When he was 48 I watched him do this and watched a man make his dream come true.
    4. He built it with his own two hands in the hot Alabama sun. Every night he would go to sleep in the restaurant that he was renovating.
    5. Dreams will cost you something. You have to be willing to make a trade off.
  5. How did you find your agent?
    1. You have to find the audience first. My blog had 10,000 followers that I had captivated. Because I had an audience, I had agents contacting me for a book deal.
  6. Jeff, when did you decide to become a non-starving artist, writer and writer coach?
    1. This was a limiting belief I had that artists had to starve on behalf of their art.
    2. This shift happened when I had my readers pay more attention to my work. I was writing everyday for free.
    3. If you give enough value, it is only in time when people begin to want to reciprocate.
  7. Jeff Goins, in Chapter 1 of your book Real Artists Don’t Starve: (WE SAY “In Your Book The Art of Work” BUT IT NEEDS TO BE REAL ARTISTS DON’T STARVE) Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age…you decided to title this chapter as You Aren’t Born an Artist. I’d love for you to share what this chapter is all about?
    1. Being a starving artist is a choice. If you want to starve, you will starve because that is your mindset. If you think there is a way to thrive, you can and will.
    2. The big distinction is that the people who succeed have a success mindset and are finding the path to success.
  8. How did you maintain consistency?
    1. Money is just a means and isn’t the main motivation for me.
    2. It was really a suspicion that “If I keep doing this it could lead to something.”
    3. It was faith, trust and the belief that I was going to make writing a big part of my life.
    4. I decided to do it for 2 years and if it didn’t gain any traction then I would move on. I was really tired of quitting. I wanted to master it.
    5. I got a lot of organic Google traffic through SEO.
  9. Jeff, your book is endorsed by New York Times best-selling authors, Ryan Holiday, Michael Hyatt and other thought leaders…when did you and Ryan become friends?
  10. Chapter 2 of your book is titled, Stop Trying to Original…what is this chapter all about?
  11. Chapter 3 of your book Real Artists Don’t Starve: is titled, Apprentice Under a Master. I’d love for you to share about your apprenticeship and why you are so passionate about this concept?
    1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “We live in this age where everyone wants to be a master and no one wants to be a student.” – Jeff Goins
    2. No one really wants to do the work of becoming a master. Back in the Renaissance age, becoming a master took the apprentice 10 years. So if we aren’t willing to train for 10 years, we should not complain about your job or wage.
    3. In any field, you are doing it for the gift of doing it. For the mastery of it.
  12. Jeff, you write in Chapter 7 of your book, Collaborate with Others…why is this so important as an author?
    1. Being a writer is thought to be a solo thing but that is rarely the case. Collaboration is what gets people to those breakthrough moments. Weather it be mentorship or partnership. When you get a bunch of smart people in a room, everybody is smarter than just as one individual. You create a mastermind.
  13. I’m hearing the echoes of the wisdom of Napoleon Hill, Robert Greene, etc. Are you big fans of Napoleon Hill and Robert Greene?
  14. Jeff, Chapter 12 of your book has the pragmatic title, Make Money to Make Art. I would love for you to educate us about what you mean by this?
    1. Someone wrote a letter to Walt Disney. They wrote: “You’re just doing this for the money. You are so greedy. How dare you.”
    2. He replied: “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” – Walt Disney
    3. Making a lot of money is a discipline for many artists so that they can buy art supplies so that they can create more art.
    4. Artists have a duty. If they are going to do their duty, they need to get paid enough to keep doing their duty.
  15. Jeff Goins, so many people struggle with consistency and bringing a great work ethic every day. When did you first gain the rise and grind work ethic?
  16. Jeff, throughout your career, what mentors have made the biggest impact on your career?
  17. What has been the biggest adversity that you faced throughout your life and career and how did you get through it?
  18. From your perspective, what is the biggest mistake that most people make with their daily mindset and overall approach to life?
  19. Jeff Goins, you come across as a very proactive person. How do you typically organize the first four hours of each day?
    1. I now have 2 kids
      1. 2 years old and 6 years old
      2. I get up at 6:00 AM
      3. I get the kids to school
      4. I go for a walk
        1. Think
        2. Dream
        3. Imagine
        4. Meditate
      5. I read something
      6. I write something
      7. I create something
      8. I don’t have meetings until the afternoon
  20. Jeff Goins, you come across as a very well-read person, what are 1 or 2 books that you would recommend that all of our listeners should read?
    1. Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

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On today’s show, we interview Jeff Goins, the best selling author about how to avoid becoming a starving artist. During today’s show, we talk about the art of work, the art of not quitting, why you have to really want it. Why Walt Disney once said, we don’t make movies to make money. We make money so that we can make more movies. Jeff Goins is the best selling author of five books, including the art of work in real artists. Don’t starve. Thrive nation. Get ready for a mind-expanding edition of the thrive time show right here on your radio and podcast. Download our interview with Mr Jeff Goins.

On today’s show, we have the incredible Mr Jeff

coins on the show as a guest. Jeff Goins. How are you sir?

Hey Clay, I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

Well, Jeff, you are a bestselling author of many books, but there’s one book I want to focus on today if we can. And that’s the book called the art of work. Can you share with the listeners out there what this book is all about?

Sure. You’re out of work. A book about finding your purpose and how that is more art than science and the path it takes to get to your life’s work might be a confusing and winding journey, but it’s also an incredibly fulfilling ones.

You know, your book isn’t endorsed by Michael Hyatt and, and Ryan holiday. I mean, just huge, huge authors. Ah, how did you first come in contact with, with Michael Hyatt to Inner Brian? And why do you think they did they like your books so much?

Um, that’s a good question. Uh, I bet people like Michael and Ryan, the way you meet anybody, you connect with them over likeminded interests them, like human beings. Uh, and you know, try to buy them coffee or lunch to kind of sweep the deal. Uh, but I think, uh, you know, anybody that endorses a, a book or work, it’s because it resonates with them and they see something of themselves in it. And I know that’s true with becoming friends with people like Michael and Ryan is that there were, um, they saw their own work reflected in some of my work and rightly so, I’ve been influenced by the work in many ways.

Now, before you became a, uh, a big-time author guy, uh, you to college and earned a double major in both Spanish and religion, what, what motivated you to study these two things? You just pick a box or just like, I got to choose something here.

Oh my goodness. That was interested in those things. I mean, I think it’s the reason why you would study anything in college. Uh, you’re interested in it and it, at least for me, I was going to a liberal arts school, so I wasn’t necessarily thinking about my future a or a job. I was just thinking about these things are interesting to me. Religion is very interesting to me at the time. And I wanted to go to Spain and learn another language. And so a Spanish was a way to travel and see the world and explore and experience other cultures. And I’m really grateful that I studied both of those subjects, maybe made me into who I am today. Um, but you know, not in a way that I would expect.

When you studied religion and what was one of the most interesting things that you found or you observe where you thought, take it back on it, you go, that was really eyeopening.

Well, when, um, when I was speaking Spanish, I was able to live in Spain for a semester. And um, one of the things that I’d never experienced living in a larger city, I lived in Seville and I grew up in the Midwest and the farmland of Northern Illinois. So I’ve never really been in the big city. I did, I’m like taking day trips to Chicago. And, um, when I was in Spain, there was really large, um, a community of beggars and homeless people. I had never experienced anything like that. And so that was the first time where I not only experienced another culture where people spoke a different language and lived and behave differently than I did, but I met different kinds of people that were, you know, had needs that I had never before encountered. And that, uh, connected, uh, that resonated with me in a way that I never really got away from him. In fact, it led me to get into nonprofit work, um, for the first seven years of my quote unquote, career after college, I worked for a nonprofit and those experiences in Spain in countering beggars everyday, which I’d never before experienced directly led to that.

So what was your path to becoming an author? You said you worked for a nonprofit nonprofit to author,

uh, it was windy one as a marketing director. I didn’t see, no, you’re already seeing how disparate the points on the map are. I studied Spanish. Um, then I toured with a band for a year and then I ended up in Nashville and I started working for this nonprofit organization and we, they needed a marketer. And so I started studying marketing and blogging and social media, which was pretty new at the time. And I became a marketer of other people’s stories. So we were doing international development and relief work all around the world. So I was telling other people’s stories of serving orphans and feeding the hungry. Yeah. And I was telling other people’s stories and um, and I loved doing that, but as I was marketing other people’s messages and sharing other people’s stories, it started to create this sense of longing in me. This question, well maybe I have a story, maybe I have a message to share and that question, um, let me just start blogging and sharing my message with the world.

What was your, your first blog that you started?

I think I started like nine different blogs in the course of about nine years. You got to take a shower and haven’t really brilliant idea, good startup blog, and then it wouldn’t succeed after a few weeks. And I quit it and start something else. I think one of them was called like the toilet seat. I don’t know why these blocks didn’t succeed.

I know. No, I do not know why. Yeah. So you, you, uh, when did you feel like you finally started to gain some traction as an author guy?

Yeah. Uh, with my, with my ninth blog, which is called the, it was just coins or my name going stridor.com. And the thing that that ninth or 10th blog I had going for it that the other eight or nine didn’t have going for it was that I didn’t quit it. And I really think that was the big factor for me was not that, uh, I was particularly inspired or had a better message or idea. Um, it was just that this one, this time I was not going to quit. And so I started blogging and writing on this blog every single day. And after about six months of doing that, I started to get some traction. And by the end of the year of doing this, I had over 10,000 email subscribers. And at that point I realized I had an audience. And now it’s just a question of what I wanted to do with them.

So you said that maybe one of the magic silver bullets was just not quitting. What did you do on this ninth time? Did you start taking a bunch of pre workout where you drinking coffee all the time? Listen to Aerosmith? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What were you doing that kept you motivated to not quit? Did someone come by and Taser you every day? Did you? What? What, what, what kept you going?

I mean, I think if you’ve tried anything long enough and you failed at it and you really want it, but it really wanted to be a writer. I really wanted to write books and share my ideas with the world. I have no idea. I thought that this would turn into a career. I didn’t think people could write, make a living off of it. So it was just a hobby. It was something that I want to do, but I wanted to do it seriously. And if you tried something for so long and failed at it for so long, Oh yeah. You eventually quit, eventually stop or you get to a point where you cannot stomach the failure anymore. And that’s right. Dot. I had tried the failure thing. I knew how to do that, but I’d never really tried the success thing. And so I obviously learned from all of the things that I had done poorly in the past.

But what motivated me was something intrinsic. I just started getting up early every day at about five o’clock in the morning and I would write for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning before my wife would get up. And, um, I would just, I would just go, just write and share it. And I started to measure the work, not the results. I started to measure the process, not the end results. Instead of going, well, I don’t have any readers, why isn’t anyone paying attention? I would instead measure, did I write today? Did I do this? Kind of like, you know, if you’re wanting to lose weight, you’re not going, you’re not just battling with the scale is saying you’re really battling the process of going, did I show up today? And, and I started to redefine success as that, showing up, doing the work and then trusting that the results would come. And they did.

No, your dad, I understand that because I think it was your dad pushed you. He really pushed it to become a paid writer. Is, is that accurate?

My Dad pushed me to become a lot of things. Um, but I learned a lot from my dad at particularly as it relates to, um, uh, work ethic. He is someone who is one of the hardest working people that I know is mostly have blue collar jobs his whole life. But I saw him uproot our family from northern Illinois to northern Alabama, um, uh, recently and in the past 10 years. And, uh, he started a restaurant and I saw, I mean he was uh, gosh, this way. He’s probably 48 years old at the time. Um, I saw what it took to pursue a dream and I, I saw him renovate and abandon hole in the wall place where he was going to start this little lunch shop that served pizzas and sandwiches and hot dogs. Awesome. In Northern Alabama. And, uh, he would, um, he built it with his own two hands and every night, this is a summer in the hot sun and every night he blow up an inflatable mattress and he would go to sleep in this construction site, in this hole in the wall place that he had just spent the day renovating. And he did this day after day, week after week. And so what I learned from my dad is that, uh, it’s great to have dreams, but dreams were all these costs you something and to get what you want, you really have to be willing to pay the cost.

You know, brought the people out there who are not super familiar with the industrial complex of book writing. You know, step one is have that book idea, right? And then step two, you’ve got to find an agent and you’ve got to get a proposal. And then you’ve got, can you talk to, how did you find your agent? What was your process for finding your agent?

Well, I think, um, a lot of people think about this backwards these days. They think if you have a great idea, but you could find the agent, the publisher, and they’ll help you find the audience. And certainly that happens. Although, uh, it doesn’t happen very often that way. The faster way to get a book deal is to find the audience first. So with my blog, I built an audience of over 10,000 people and these are 10,000 people whose email addresses I had who had told me they would buy something if I wrote it or created it and sold it to them. And so I had agents actually knocking on my door saying, hey, we want you to do you have a book idea, we can connect you with a publisher and um, and then help you publish a book. In fact, my first book deal, I, the Co the publisher contacted me first and then I had a friend who has an agent. I said, do you want to represent me? And he said, yeah, that sounds great. And so that’s how I got my first book deal.

No, Jeff Goins, when did you decide that you no longer want it to be a non starving artist?

Well. Um, I, I, this was like a limiting belief that I had. I believe that artists and creatives starved for their art and that you had to have a day job or something. And even when I started writing, um, I kind of hedge my bets a little bit where I wrote books that I didn’t expect to make much money off of. And then I was teaching other writers and bloggers have to do what I had done in terms of building an online audience as a way of making money so that I could work on my art on the side without having to make money off of it. But I think the big shift happened for me when I had my readers coming to me and I had this audience of, as I mentioned, over 10,000 people. It’s now grown to a hundreds of thousands of people. Um, but within a year I had a lot of people paying attention to my work and it really surprised me and I was very afraid to charge them anything for anything.

So I was giving away all my best work. I was writing everyday for free. I would do training. Sometimes I free Webinars, I would give away ebooks and then one day after about 12 months of doing this, I had somebody email me saying, hey, thanks, it’s great that you want to give me something for free, but I’d really like to buy something from you. Can I? Can I buy something from you? Like I’ve gone on your website, I can’t find anything for sale. Can you sell me something? And so I realized that if you give enough value, it’s only a matter of time before people want to reciprocate. And I learned how to not be a starving artists by helping enough people that some of those people said, hey, we want to pay you.

No chapter one of your books, the art of work, a proven path to discovering what you are meant to do. Real artists don’t starve. You talk about, uh, in your book is going to have real artists don’t have to starve. It’s somebodies up to, if there’s somebody out there listening right now, they’re very good at playing the guitar. Maybe they’re a great writer, they’re great songwriter, a great performer. They aren’t artists of some kind and they, and they’re just struggling to monetize it. What, what advice would you give for them?

Well, um, I would say that being a starving artist is a choice. And one of the things I’ve learned, uh, both as a writer and as a creative entrepreneur, um, and, and somebody who has met and worked with literally thousands of thriving creative people over the years, is that if you want to start, just start. If you think that artists starve, then you’ll do that because that’s the mindset that you have when you go into that. Um, but if you think that there’s a way to thrive, if you want to succeed at that, that, that thing, you’re much more likely to do that as well. And it’s a book obviously give practical steps for that. But I see major distinction between those thrive and those who start with the big distinction is the people who succeed, uh, how the success mindset, they’re finding the path, they’re finding the way to succeed. And I believe that in life you generally find whatever you’re looking for. So if you’re finding a reason to be a starving artist because you have some belief that this is how this works, yeah, you’re going to find a way to make that true. If you believe that you can succeed like those who’ve come before you have succeeded, you’ll find that too.

Jeff Goins one of our show sponsors Paul Hood, he’s a CPA. His company’s called a hood. CPA’s dot com they’ve got thousands of clients all over the country. He’s on the show today. I know he has a hot question. Paul, what is a hot question do you have for Mr Jeff?

Well, Jeff Goins, I first, I, I really appreciate you taking the time to visit with us and to educate us and to motivate us and to, to really inspire us because you know, uh, the wisest man in the galaxy, see clay goes beyond his reach is beyond this country, beyond this world. It goes to the galaxy. Oh Wow. Yeah. And the, and the wisest man in the galaxy, second only to two clay is Yoda. And Yoda says there is no try. There is only do or do not do. And I tell you, the thing that, that I like hearing from you is a lot of the people we interview, it’s just, you know, they just had this determination and, and that they’re going to do this. They’re going to be successful. You had the determination that you were going to do it. You just didn’t know that you’re going to be able to make money at it. So do you think, uh, you know, uh, do you, I would, the question I have is how did you stay motivated to, to, was it just a hobby, a pastime, something that you were really, really, um, loved doing even though you didn’t think you were going to really make money at it? How did you maintain that in a world of, you know, give, do something, get, get paid? How did you maintain that?

Yeah, that’s a great question. First of all, I am most successful people I know, do what they do, not for the money. The money is a means. It is a way to keep doing the work that they want to do. And it doesn’t mean that money is irrelevant. Obviously we all have bills to pay, and I, I don’t like money. It’s great. I use it for all the things that I buy. Um, but um, yeah, I think for me it was first of all just a suspicion and this idea that if I kept doing this, it could lead to something. And so I wasn’t doing it necessarily for the money, but I understood, I think intuitively that if I continued to pursue this thing that I love that one day somebody would just start throwing hundred dollar bills at me. Um, but that an opportunity would open up to get paid to do this.

And so it was a little bit of faith, a little bit of trust. And it was also just this idea that whether or not I get paid to do this, I’m going to find a way to make writing a part of my life because I’ve not done it for so long. I know what that’s like. I know what it’s like to just not do it and think about it and kind of do it on the side. I wanted to know that my writing, that my words could make an impact. And so I was prepared to do it at least for a while without getting paid. And so practically speaking, what I had done is I had actually talked to my wife about this and it didn’t like take out any loans or anything. It was just spending an hour or two every day working on this blog, writing, sharing my words with the Internet.

Um, but I had prepared to do this for two years without really seeing any big returns or response. And then after that, if I hadn’t made any money, he hadn’t really built much of an audience. I quit and go try something else. And so it wasn’t this idea that I was going to do this forever, but I wasn’t going to do the thing that I’d done before where I do it for like two, three, four, five, six weeks and then go well on board, I’m going to go do something else. I was really, really tired of quitting something that I could have been good at, but never gave it enough time to really master it. Um,

and so did you grow your blog audience primarily through search engine optimization or did you set aside some money for ad words and those kinds of things?

I had no money. I did use Seo. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just writing a lot of articles and titling them appropriately, but it, it was sci. I got a lot of organic Google traffic and then also I made friends with other bloggers and bloggers love linking to each other. Especially, you know, seven or eight years ago when I started this. That was a, a great way to get a lot of free traffic.

I love how search engine optimization works. It’s just so fun when people are searching for something and they find you. I that never gets old to me. I think that’s so exciting. Now in chapter seven of your book, you write about the importance of collaborating with others. Why is this so important as an author?

Well, being a writer is solitary activity where you’re like alone. And what I’ve learned through studying the of famous authors and artists is that that’s rarely the case. You may have somebody who has some sort of Eureka moment by themselves in a studio or office or cafe somewhere. But what has led to that person getting to that point is working with lots of other people, uh, at different times through apprenticeships, friendships, et cetera. And, and I think this is something that people don’t realize is that all of your favorite entrepreneurs, artists and writers, um, have gotten some of their best ideas from those who have come before them. And so collaboration is really important because when you get a bunch of smart people in a room together, whether that’s over the dinner table or over a coffee or some sort of formal partnership, yeah. Um, uh, everybody is smarter than just one of the individuals with some of its parts creates, um, you know, what, uh, has been called a mastermind. And I found those collaborations over the years to be incredibly beneficial. Some of my best ideas and best directions in my art and in my business didn’t come just for me, waiting for the muse to show up. It came from a group of people sharing their best ideas and bank being able to build upon them in a much faster, more collaborative way.

No. Chapter three of your book you’re talking about apprentice ship are the importance of, of, of, of, of apprenticing under a master. Can you share with the listeners about why you are so passionate about the concept of apprenticing under a master?

Well, because we live in this age where everybody wants to be the master, but nobody’s willing to be the students, right? And so everybody wants to be an expert without actually going through the really difficult work of achieving mastery. And so as a result, you know, I think an entire generation, my generation of young people who in many cases feel very entitled to be treated as an expert without doing the actual work of acquiring real expertise. And so if you go back to say the renaissance when the apprenticeship process took at least 10 years, I think that’s worth paying attention to. Um, and I’ve met so many of my friends and peers and their twenties, thirties, and forties, sort of frustrated that they’re not being taken as seriously as they feel like they deserve or they’re not getting the raises or promotions or attention that they think they deserve when in reality they just haven’t spent 10 years, at least in a certain field of study, getting really, really good at it to deserve that. Most of us are hopping around job to job every two Ruth’s Goodyears, we’re impatient. We want the results. And if you look at histories masters, and they spent a lifetime doing that. And so my contention is, uh, you don’t get to complain about your job. You don’t get, get, get to complain about your wage or the attention. You’re not getting for this kind of work that you’re doing if you haven’t spent at least 10 that years and years trying to master this particular craft.

I’m hearing the echoes of the words of wisdom from Napoleon Hill. Uh, Robert Greene, I’m picking up on a lot of that Mojo. Is that, is that you do like Robert Greene? Do you like Napoleon Hill?

Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I love thinking grow rich is a very instrumental book for me. I read that book and then joined a mastermind of cool local entrepreneurs and um, yeah, I love Robert Greene’s work, especially the book mastery.

Oh yeah, that, but that, but isn’t that book so dense with knowledge bombs? That book took me forever to read and I still feel like I only got like half of the knowledge out of that thing. Maybe a third of it. It was just so rich with knowledge bombs.

Yeah. What are my takeaways from that book is he says in any field that he gets to the point where I’m not doing it for the money. You’re not doing it for the accolades or doing it for the gift of doing it, of trying to achieve mastery in a certain field. And I love that.

Do you have a favorite football team? Professional football team?

Uh, I’m partial to the bears just cause I, uh, I grew up just outside of Chicago, but like the old 1985.

I just always loved the interviews where they interviewed Tom Brady and bill Bellacheck about are they going to stay together or are they going to keep playing? And Tom Brady last year said during one of his interviews, he said, you know that I don’t have any hobbies or interests. I just want to play until they make me stop playing. And I think, and bill Bellacheck said, you know, y’all, I want to just keep coaching till I can’t. I think there’s a certain people love to play the game and the people that love to play the game and are playing the game for the money, ironically end up making all the money. I’d like for you to talk about this idea of make money to make art, because I think you and I at the same world view on this, but I want to have you break it down with the westerners.

Yeah. So somebody once wrote a letter to Walt Disney when he was really kind of the height of his career, pinnacle of his success. So, you know, if you don’t know, um, uh, Walt Disney story, I mean, he almost went bankrupt. They did go bankrupt a couple of times and just really struggled for decades. Just trying to get what became kind of the Walt Disney empire off the ground. Um, and when he kind of settled into a certain level of success, somebody wrote him a letter and said, um, you’re just doing this for the money. How dare you. You’re being so greedy. Because they were doing, you know, they had just opened the park, everything, all these different kinds of films, animated films, nature comes, et cetera. And he very politely and respectfully replied and he said, we don’t make movies to make money. We make money so that we can make more movies.

That again, that was writing you repeat that one more time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don’t make movies to make money. We make money so that we can make more movies. And that’s how I think of artists. I think of writing. I don’t make art to make money. I make money so that I can make more art and making money, making a lot of money is a discipline for many artists so that they have money for art supplies. They have money for marketing. They have, uh, resources to run their business. A lot of creative people don’t think of their work as a business, but it is, I mean, if you’re selling something that you want people to buy, that’s a business. When I wrote real artists don’t starve, I interviewed Alan Bean, who was the fourth man to walk on the moon and it’s 50 years old. He quit his job as an astronaut. I mean, imagine this, you walked them a minute, like what achievement after that is going to top it.

Right. And he felt the sense inside of him, but there was still more work that he had to do and he’d always loved painting. And so what he did, so he quit his job at NASA, dedicate himself full time to his art and started painting sort of doing it the best that he knew how to do it. People thought he was crazy until he started telling his paintings for two, three, $400,000 a piece. Because what Alan Bean was able to do that no other artists in history is April to do, was first of all, he could paint the moon from firsthand experience because he had seen it and nobody else who was a painter and artists could do that. Second, when you get to walk on the moon, they give you your suit and they’ll eat, keep your suit. This suit had all this moon dust on it. So if you ever get to buy an Alan Bean painting, if you’ve got a hundred grand lying around, um, you’re going to buy a piece of the moon because every painting has a little bit of moon dust.

And he told me that was great for marketing A. Anyway, when I talked to Allen, I said, is this about money? You know, uh, he said, money, no, I don’t care about that. He said, I’m a navy man. Uh, I was a navy pilot and then I was, um, I was at worked for NASA for this many years. He said, the way I see it, I’m, I’m a man who always does his duty. And when I realized we had stopped sending people to the moon and nobody had painted it, nobody had captured it with an artistic eye. I felt that it was my duty to do this kind of work and if I was going to do my duty, I was going to get paid enough to keep doing it. And so that’s, that’s what I think about art and creativity. Need to value your contribution, your creative contribution to the world so much that you can get paid enough to keep doing it for a long, long time.

We just interviewed the head of NASA, a Jim Bryden Stein and the other day, so this show, I think we’ll air right after that, that that show there. As you’re talking about art, I was thinking about Michael Jackson. Did you like the music of Michael Jackson? Would you big Michael Jackson fan?

Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Are you, were you, did you ever hear about Michael Jackson’s art work has paintings and things like that?

I did not.

If you get a chance to do just way too long of a Google search. I’ve invested way too much time on this, but apparently Michael Jackson was a very accomplished painter as well, but he just didn’t want his, the world to take it from him. This was something he talked about does it, he just didn’t want that. So he wanted someone who when he passed away, uh, they were able to get into one of the storage facilities he had where I guess he had just next level paintings and he just didn’t want people to know that he could do that cause he didn’t want the world to take that from him. That, that art, and I think it’s so amazing all the time. Every time I’ve met at a top of sibling, author, musician, poet people interview, it just seems like that they all go back to what you just said there is that they’re not making their movies to make their money.

They’re making the money so they can make more movies. And that as a powerful, powerful knowledge bomb for somebody out there. And, uh, Jeff Goins, I have three final questions for you here. So here we go. Okay. Um, our listeners out there are very action oriented. They wanted, they want to take action. Is there a certain book in addition to your own where you would say, hey Mr Listener, if you are an artist or an author out there in addition to your book, is there a book you’d recommend that all the listeners should read for inspiration and advice?

I mean, thinking, grow rich, it’s kind of a top of my head. Yeah, it was a pretty instrumental book for me. True for no other reason than I realized. And I think the opening line and one of the first sentences in that book is fonts or things and it’s concept that whatever you think about, you become a, that’s an idea that continues to surface and resurface in my life. And so thinking grow rich by Napoleon Hill is a, is a good one.

No, it is. You come across as a very proactive person today. You come across as a guy who are you perfect. No, but you’re getting a lot of stuff done. You, you, you seem to have a kind of a proactive approach to life. How do you organize, tell you typically organize the first four hours of each day and what time do you wake up normally?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I was way better at this when I didn’t have kids.

Kids do you have

just to, okay. Kids a two year old and a six year old, uh, but they add enough chaos that, um, most days I feel like I’m scrambling. Uh, you know, I get up about six o’clock in the morning, not super early. Got It. Uh, and some days, you know, when the kids are, you know, waking up multiple times and Milana is kind of roll out of bed, but I get up at about six and the first part of the day is really spent getting the kids off to school and getting taken care of. And then after that, um, I do a few things and uh, I don’t want to care the order in which I do them. I’m not super structured about it. But within the first four hours of the day, I go for a walk, get outside, I get into nature. I think dream, imagine just kind of relax and it’s not, it’s, you know, it’s not, uh, it can be a meditative time, prayerful time, but it’s really just the time to be quiet and get a little bit of exercise, then a read something. Uh, and then I, uh, write something and I kind of ease into the first half of my workday getting filled up and creating something. I used to have early morning meetings and I don’t do that anymore. I don’t have a meeting until afternoon usually. And so the first half of my day is spent getting filled up, reading, going for walks, thinking, dreaming, uh, and then sitting down and writing, creating, working on creative work.

Well, since I’ve devoured your book in preparation for interviewing you, we’re going to go ahead and buy your book right now off of Amazon here, the art of work, and we’re going to leave you a review. You already had 704 reviews before I left my review here. But for accountability, you’ll see a review from clay Clark. We’re doing it. Andrew, we’re buying the book right now. And Andrew, are you, are you buying the book? Oh yeah. Here we go. Andrew Andrew’s buying the book. What can we placed the order thank you listeners out there for buying the book as well. We’re getting the book done now. Paul, you have one final question here for our, our guest here, Mr Jeff. Jeff.

Hey. So yeah, I’m a business consultant. I’m a CPA and we consult businesses. And the one thing that I hear a lot from businesses we work with is these young people these days just don’t work. They won’t work. That won’t work now. And so, um, you, you, you, you acknowledged that you knew it was going to tell you it took six months of you steady doing what you were doing for it to create any traction. What would you, do you have any words of wisdom for me to pass on to business clients when they say, you know, that that young people, you know, they don’t seek knowledge. They just want to get it right now. What would you say is, you think that’s a true statement? What would you say it could be a possible solution?

Well, I mean, let’s be honest, every older generation thinks the younger generation is full of crap and lazy. Right? Um, so we have to acknowledge that that’s always the way things progress. Got It. Um, but I, you know, is it more or less, I don’t know. Um, I, I get, you know, those questions a lot. What I do see is that, um, it never helps society to lower the bar. Right? And so, um, I think the job is to always raise the bar. So here’s the barn. If somebody is born, you may not be challenging them enough. Uh, and so my advice is it may result in people like fewer people stepping up, but if you raise the bar, uh, the cream will always rise to the top. People always step up. And I know, well, you know, we’re in, in regards to young people, uh, they don’t want it to be pandered to, they don’t want things to be dumbed down to them or made easier. So raise the bar increased. The challenge and see who steps out.

I like that, Paul, I’ve been offended. Just see now, but by using sock puppets to communicate with me during the show. Unbelievable young rippers never. All right. Now, Jeff Goins, I appreciate you so much for being on today’s show. And again, if you’re out there today and you have yet to purchase a copy of Jeff’s book, the art of work, no pressure, but I would encourage you to buy the right about now so that we, Jeff Goins knows that you bought the book as a result of listening to today’s podcast, we always like to end every show with a boom. And so now, without any further ado, here we go. Three, two, one, boom.

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