Just One Joey: hard work

Showing posts with label hard work. Show all posts

Thursday, October 20, 2016

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Sir Mix-A-Lot

This interview has been the most pleasant surprise so far. I only knew him as the “Baby Got Back” guy, but he is so much more.

I have taken his interview on 30 Days of Genius with Chase Jarvis, extracted the information, and used it to answer common questions by readers just like you, who are looking to take their lives to the next level, or at least a different level than the one they are on.

Please enjoy.

How Can I Be Great At Something?

The first step is you have to WANT something.

This takes some serious self-reflection, because you want to make sure YOU want it. Too many people “like” what they think they are supposed to, and end up unhappy. I started out messing with gadgets and electronics, and it opened doors to everything else. You run in to danger when the foundation is not set on something solid, on something that is truly you, tied to who you are.

Once you figure out what that something is that you want, you can start honing in on your identity. When you are growing up, you don’t really have a sense of who you are. You try on different hats. Some fit, some don’t. Some are good, some get you in trouble. As you have these experiences you start cutting out the things you know are not you so you can focus on the things that are you.

Everyone has a calling. There is something out there that you are supposed to do. You fight it, because different is uncomfortable, especially when you are younger. You are looking for a cookie cutter, easy approach to life. Fight this. There is something out there, you just need to find it. The more you do, the more you explore, the more you create, you start finding things you are good at, things you really enjoy, and that’s where greatness lies.

After I Find That “Something,” What Do I Do?

1. Talk to all the successful people you know.

It doesn’t matter what field they are in, success is success is success. There are bits and pieces that you can take from everyone around you and apply it.

One thing that I found in my discussions is work was work, but it was also leisure. Work is what they loved to do. From the outside it looked like they worked too much. From the inside, they were having a blast. All of that comes from my answer to question one. When you find that something, it changes everything.

2. Work hard.

Our life is our habits, and our habits are our life. Get in to the habit of busting your butt. Chances are you won’t have much money at the beginning, and that’s ok. One thing that I found, but didn’t realize until I got there, was that necessity breeds creativity. When I didn’t have much, I had to work with what I had available to me. Working with different sounds and equipment, taking on tasks because I didn’t have money to hire someone (like MCing my songs, not what I was looking to do. But look what happened!). Once I “made it” and had all the gear I could ever want, I got lazy. I wasn’t as creative. And my work suffered. Appreciate the creativity you will have to develop when you are starting out, when you are striving to make something from nothing. Remember that feeling for later.

Don’t let the amount of work deter you from your dream. If it was easy to be successful, everyone would be successful. Hard work is preparation for a lucky day. Get yourself ready!

Expose your work to as many people as possible, and expose yourself to as much work as possible. It is hard to get a true scope of your ability level until it is compared to other peoples’ work. I am not saying compare your work to others, but compare it (if you know what I mean). I thought we were killing it until I did shows with NWA. It took my vision for what I could be and wanted to be to a whole new level. Without it I would still be thinking small. Exposure forces you to think outside yourself, to something you didn’t even know you could be. You HAVE to give yourself that opportunity.

3. Be you.

No matter what level you get to, stay connected to the real you, the old you. Success can be the nail in your coffin. There is a lot of work that comes after that, but you need to be grounded in who you are.

Knowing who you are will help you pass on things that don’t fit you and focus on the things that are you. Success comes with new opportunities. Low hanging fruit and big paychecks will be tempting.

You need to make sure you are focusing on the long game. What is your brand? How are you going to grow that brand? Expand your name? Be thinking of that from day one. Chasing the dollar will only lead to heartbreak (and bank account-break).

Success

Once you gain success, you need to figure out how you did it. When you are coming up you are trying anything. Once you reach a certain point, you need to look back and evaluate how you got there, so you can recreate it.

Connecting with the real you will also keep you hungry. Success can breed laziness. Once you are there, success will be much harder to come by. Laziness is a success killer. You have to keep in the chase. You have to keep wanting. Keep striving. You need the journey. That’s the truly satisfying part of it.

Never forget that no matter what your level of success, you didn’t do it alone. Some people will have bigger parts than others, but it is a collective. Never forget those people. Forgetting them is forgetting yourself.

Quotes

“If you are comfortable with your success you won’t have it very long. Remain hungry.”

Sir Mix-A-Lot Links

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

Chase Jarvis Links

Joey Links

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Gary Vaynerchuk

If you don’t know Gary Vee (@GaryVee), he is in the business of building businesses. What separates him is his ability to create an environment and culture of no nonsense, hard charging, realistic, and self-aware partners and employees. I have to admit, I will listen to any and all keynotes this man gives because there is always something different, something golden. That’s how good he is. He can take his perspectives and strategies and apply them everywhere, to anyone. No matter who he is talking to, he is able to take the “story” and apply it to them. He is incredible.

Please enjoy.

How Do I Win?

The first thing you need to do is think long game. Don’t worry about what is hot right now, or what is viral right now, think 5, 10, 20 years down the road. How are you going to get there? It starts with steps today. I believe social media is necessary for every business, period. Did you miss the Twitter boat? The Instagram boat? Are you on Snapchat yet? Get there as soon as you can, and absorb it. Learn how to use it, watch other people using it, and master it. No followers? Who cares? We are looking years down the road. The ability to story tell on a variety of platforms will only help you.

Maybe you missed out on the apps today, but you have built your skills up so when the next thing pops you are all over it and can make your mark there. Long game. Patience is key.

You will eventually need to learn how to translate the context of whatever medium you are dealing with to your message. Writing, photos, videos, clips, GIFs, whatever. You need to be able to tell your story in a way that allows the eyes and ears of your targeted audience can hear you. The only way to do that is to learn how to use those platforms, and how to get your message across. If you are in the creative field, it has never been easier to stake a claim in your market. You are creative! This allows you to move sooner, adjust more quickly, and buy up “real estate” sooner than your contemporaries. This time that we are living in now is geared for your skill set, you just need to take advantage of it and stop complaining.

Effort is such an undervalued component to “winning.” Outwork people. Period. In time, you will win. People sell themselves short, they are too busy binge watching TV, complaining that the chips are stacked against them. That’s who you are competing with, complainers. You want to be one of them? If your grandparents heard your excuses for why you weren’t where you wanted to be they would come out of their graves and punch you in the face. Wars, famines, ethnic cleansing, dust bowls, etc and you are bitching about your followers? Opportunities? Complaining is for losers who never get things done. Think about that the next time you are trying to explain your position in the market. Boo hoo. STFU and get to work.

If you are a complainer, you need to seriously sit down and evaluate where and how you spend your time. You can’t complain your way to more talent. You can’t complain your way to more opportunities. Self-awareness is the game. Control your time. You don’t have to do things that waste time. You are choosing to. It’s all on you. Catch the game. There is always something new, something different. If you are outworking people, if you stop wasting time, if you are the best at your craft, you will win.

How Do I Build My Business/Brand?

The answer is the same, be self-aware, focus on the long game.

Know where you are at. Get business before you start acting like you are the shit. Do something first. Play the small clubs to get to stadiums. It is a building process. If you are looking 10 years down the line, what are the stepping stones to get you there? It doesn’t happen overnight. It is grinding and grinding day after day for years and it slowly builds up. Keep doing. Keep learning. Remember to come down from the clouds and play in the dirt, work hungry, and learn.

Two tips to make sure you don’t get stuck while building out your business:

1. Doing the right projects for the right people and the right time for free can lead the big ones you really want to do. Play both ends of the spectrum and stay out of the middle. Either you get paid $XXXX to do a job because they are paying you, or you do it for $0 because it is something that can jumpstart your career, or take it to another level.

If Metallica wants you to open up for them at Met Life Stadium, do it for free. It can lead to much bigger things than the few grand you would demand.

2. Never do the next job for the same price you did the last one. Keep doing that until the market tells you it is too much. If you are always the $500 guy, you will never be the $10,000 guy. Build it up, when you can’t get a certain amount, the market has told you that you have reached the ceiling. Find the ceiling.

Quotes

“Your grandparents would come out of the grave and punch you in the face if they heard you complaining about what you can’t do compared with what they had to deal with.”

“We are so lucky. You could have been an ant.”

“If you are a white man in America, you should go to jail for complaining”

“Scale the un-scale-able.”

Gary Vaynerchuk Links

Chase Jarvis Links

Joey Links

Friday, July 15, 2016

How Do I Become More Creative?

Is there anything more important in business than creativity?

Grit?

Perseverance?

I actually think creativity is limited without grit and perseverance, and I think grit and perseverance are counterproductive without creativity. You know people that are always busy but never getting anything done? That’s a lack of creativity (and self-awareness if we are being honest, and, well, self-aware).

So here is my list of important traits to have in business (I am even ranking them):

1. Self-awareness

2. Creativity

3. Grit/Perseverance

With these three things, I guarantee you will be successful. I also guarantee if you think you have all of these things and you are not successful, you should focus on self-awareness because something is obviously off there.

Let’s focus on #2 today. I will hit the other ones in upcoming blogs.

I am a writer (obviously), but I am also a songwriter (sort of). I am going to reference those two mediums but the strategies can be applied to any and everything. It’s all about ideas, right? Finding ways to have better ideas, more frequently? This can be applied to absolutely ANYTHING: money, writing, video, podcasts, sports, bogs, management, and whatever else I didn’t mention.

Here we go.

This is the key:

Attack From All Angles

This is vital!!!

Don’t wait for inspiration, just do it, and do it often.

I used to wait for inspiration.

No songs, no stories, no nothing unless I was inspired.

Problem?

No inspiration = zero productivity.

Not the best formula, but I was an artist, I needed to be inspired (said like a hippie), until I didn’t.

Isn’t that the way it always is? Impossible until it isn’t? Remember that.

Before I wrote my book: Prison Diary(a) — A San Quentin Comedy, Kinda (on Amazon, iTunes, Audible) I was writing songs. I made a life decision to focus on things that I loved. Things I would be willing to grind at all day every day, learn about, develop my craft, and music and writing were two of those things.

But I was only writing when I was inspired.

You know what that means?

I was not writing very much.

So I decided to write every single day, whether I had an idea or not.

I still noted everything that came up sporadically (my inspired moments), when I was in the shower, when I was cleaning the house, when I was out running. I took down notes for everything, but I forced myself to sit down for 4–5 hours a day and just write something, anything.

It started out easy. I had a handful of ideas, and just focused on those. But then I ran out of ideas. The inspiration was gone. What did I have left? Riffs that went nowhere. Single lines of lyrics. And not much else.

This is where you become creative.

This is how you become creative.

When you are out of ideas, and you need to actually create.

You are stretching your brain.

You are pushing beyond your limits.

It’s painful.

It’s scary.

But it’s how you grow.

And it’s how you get better.

This is the best position to be in.

I was forced to find new ways to write. I forced myself to force myself. Make sense? Strain your brain! That should be the slogan for this article: Strain Your Brian.

I as forced to write songs with music and no lyrics. I was forced to write a songs with lyrics and no music. I had melodies and nothing else. I even had to start songs with nothing. I played a chord, found a note I wanted to start the melody with, and went from there. Completely from scratch.

Know what happened? I started getting more ideas. I had more riffs, more melodies, more lyrics, and when I sat down, because I had practiced “squeezing blood from a rock,” I wasn’t blocking the creative process with anxiety. It took time, but it was awesome.

That is when I really started seeing gains in my abilities. I would start the day with nothing but a G chord, and finish the day with a whole song, great melody, and written about a topic that wasn’t even on my radar.

You know what that feels like?

Like an out-of-body experience. Like magic. It’s fantastic.

It is the same thing with writing. I write about things I know a lot about. I write about things I know nothing about and need to research. I write personal pieces. I write sports. I look at what I need to practice and I start writing about that. I need to work on writing stories based on interviews, so I took on writing a blog for Chase Jarvis’ 30 Days Of Genius series. I was sh***ing my pants yesterday. Why? Because I have never written anything from an interview, and I was doing it for Chase F’ing Jarvis! I was nervous. But I will keep writing, I will get better, and then I will have another way to “attack.”

The more avenues of attack, the easier it is to conquer.

Boo-ya!!

This can be applied to anything. You look for the different angles. You don’t allow for a cookie cutter approach. Any football fans out there? The Patriots are constantly looking at different angles to attack. That’s why they have been successful for so long. You have an idea of what they are going to do, but you aren’t positive. They can attack you from so many different angles.

Entrepreneurs out there? Look at Mark Cuban. He advises cookie companies!! The tech billionaire? Advising cookie companies? WTF? He is able to do that because he looks at all angles of business. He constantly develops his craft by taking on new challenges, and scanning for new opportunities. Because of that, when one of his companies (even if it’s a cookie company) needs a shift in strategy, he can analyze and strategies efficiently and effectively.

That’s what you need to do. Understand all the routes. Know the ins and outs. It will make you more versatile, which will make you more successful. You will have opportunities to make something work that a less creative person will miss, because you have more strategies.

Just Do It

This is not a Nike slogan. I mean it is, but I am not using it like one. Unless they want to sponsor me, then I will use the s*** out of it. Just saying. I love the state of Oregon.

The best way to become more creative is to just do it. It’s practice. The first time you create something or figure something out out of thin air, it will feel like magic. You will have stretched your brain to it’s capacity, and in that moment of “something from nothing” you will truly become creative, an artist in your craft. It is at that moment where everything changes for you, then you just keep going. You have developed a new neural pathway. One that you can come back to later. One you didn’t have before. A new angle. A new strategy. Greater creativity.

Attack from all angles, then all of those avenues become a part of your repertoire, and you become a creative machine. Like James Altucher says, an idea machine. Flex those muscles. Pump that iron. Hans and Franz time for your brain.

Health

I will make this brief, but I have to put it in here. The healthier you are, the better your body works, the better your brain works. The less inflamed, the less crap is running through your system, the more energy you will have, the clearer your thinking, the better your output will be. Are there people who are extremely creative and totally unhealthy? Yes. But imagine what they would be if they actually took care of themselves?

What are they leaving on the table?

What are you leaving on the table?

What could you be?

Think about that.

If you truly care about your craft, your business, your productivity, you will take care of your mind and body, because that is what gets it done. Help you, help you. Does that make sense? Because it seems a little shaky…… and I wrote it. But it’s the most concise way to put it.

Let’s See What You Can Do

Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Stretch your brain. Create new pathways of problem solving. It will be hard. It will be frustrating at times. And then it will be awesome.

Good luck.