Just One Joey: photography

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Monday, January 9, 2017

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Neil Strauss

When you meet someone at a different level in their perspective, it is best to take notice. Neil Strauss has seen a lot, lived a lot, paid attention, and learned. His wisdom on life and creativity pour out in this interview. Limiting it to an hour is a shame. Good thing he is an introspective, share the dirt kind of an author, so we can delve as deep in to his knowledge as we want through his books. A fascinating guy.

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.

Forget Zero To One As A Business, How Do I Go Zero To One As An Artist?

If you are struggling even getting started there is a reason. You are allowing your limiting beliefs to keep you at the starting line. I consider “one” being the day you share your art. There are artists that don’t create because they are waiting for everything to be perfect, and there are artists that create, and adjust, and wait, and change, and end up sitting on the project without ever releasing it. If you are in either of those situations, you are allowing your limiting beliefs to get the better of you.

You need to embrace your fears, accept them, and do them anyways.

I think it is extremely important to recognize exactly what your limiting beliefs are, recognize that they are not true and not your voice, accept them, and either deal with them or reprogram yourself to get passed them. That will be vital for you to get to “one.”

Let me address the two different types of “zeros.” I think there is a true zero, an artist that hasn’t really created anything, and there is a 0.9, an artist that just hasn’t shared.

For the true zeros, just create. I love projects where I only know the beginning. Where it goes from there? Who knows? That’s the art. That is creativity. Don’t question it. Whenever you do, you are dampening the actual creativity. Don’t focus on the outcome. Don’t focus on anything outside of the actual creating. Not knowing how something will turn out feels good. It gives you a chance to explore. If you knew the outcome, why would you do it? Give yourself the chance to surprise yourself. Start exploring, go with the path and see where it leads you. Don’t resist where the propulsion is leading you either. You can’t realistically plan out where your art is going to be, who it is going to please, how successful it will be, so don’t focus on it. Everything that takes away from your focus on the creativity is taking away from the creativity.

Now for the 0.9 artists I have a quote, “When you throw a pebble in to the culture you have no idea where the ripples will go.”

Just share.

Please.

When you take too long to release a project you change. When you change, your view on the art changes. It should be a moment in time. It will never be perfect. Do your best, and let it go, see what happens, and start working on the next project.

Your inner critic is a monster, telling you it’s not good enough. Are you strong enough to silence that voice and produce anyways? Don’t fear judgement and criticizing. Do your best and be comfortable with that. Placing yourself in uncertainty is a very confident place to be.

Once you silence the inner dialogue, give yourself a deadline. Nothing crazy, not tomorrow, but a reasonable deadline, and stick with it.

Having that deadline is huge for a creative. You could sit on something for years without one, and how much better would it be? I’ve had stories that I had to write in 2 weeks that were better than stories I had years to write. It pushes you, streamlines your thinking, and will build up your creativity.

Listen, notice, pay attention, and then share.

Don’t plan too much, don’t focus on this style or that style too much. Don’t limit your creativity at all. Just create. Just explore. Then share.

You can spend your whole life trying to get everything just right.

But honestly? What is just right anyways?

Let it go.

Get going.

Quotes

I’m always thinking about the next thing, not where I’ve been.

Storytelling is teaching through metaphor.

The first question in an interview sets the tone: you know something, you are connected, but not too

connected.

Honesty equals a book.

Everything is creative.

If you could just take a helicopter to the top it wouldn’t be as special.

Neil Strauss Links

Website

Books

Chase Jarvis Links

Joey Links

Friday, January 6, 2017

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Austin Kleon

A self-described writer who draws, Austin Kleon is an artists’ artist. Assuming he would have to take on the Bruce Wayne/Batman approach to his life as an artist, he surprisingly found that he could do what he loved for a living. This is his advice on how you can too.

Please enjoy.

My Parents Always Told Me That Being An Artist Is Only A Hobby

I would love to tell you how wrong they are, but I had the same outlook when I was younger. My impressions of being an artist were of the “starving” variety. Like Bruce Wayne and Batman, I assumed my life as an artist would be night and day, literally. Doing something I didn’t love during the day in order to support the thing I did love at night.

What I started to realize was it wasn’t as “night” and “day” as I thought. I wanted day jobs that would inform the art. Learn from the day job, taking jobs that would make me better at my craft, then my growth in the craft would help me land the next day job. It turned out to be a beautiful cycle. What was even more beautiful was having the income to create. If you handcuff yourself by having to use your art for money, you may head down a path that you don’t want to be on. Monetary freedom is creative freedom. Keep your day job until you can support yourself with your art. But use your day job to push the art forward.

Don’t assume that because you can’t make money yet that you will never be able to. What do you need to get better at? Start there. There are so many aspects to being an artist besides the art, especially today. Not only do you need to create the art, but you need to market it and manage it. You are your own business.

Doesn’t sound appealing? That’s fine, just find someone who loves your art more than you do, then they can do all the stuff you don’t want to. Where you going to find that person? Exactly, get to work.

My advice is to decrease the tension between creation and self-promotion by combining the two. Make sharing a part of your creating and vice-versa. Sharing should become a daily practice as much as the actual daily practice of your craft. A great thing I have found is the added perspective of an audience helps create the art you are sharing with them in the first place. You will start to build community and networking around your art. The bigger the community, the more likely you can do what you love for a living. Sharing creates an ecosystem of creativity and connecting.

What Do You Feel Is The Foundation Of Creativity?

Everything around you is your foundation.

Too big?

Try this:

Take bits and pieces from everything, and create something completely new. Extract as you go and save it for later. Look for patterns. Create, study, make, study more, create more, etc. You should study as much as you make, and share as much as you study and make.

Got it?

Being a creative is as much about the community as it is the individual artist. The best artists in their respective generations are always products of their environment. Being that person that is connected to many different things allows you to create things that no one else can. The more input, the more output. Look at what you are doing, what other people are doing, and more importantly what they are NOT doing. Once you start recognizing that, you can take it on and create your own niche.

Time is also a huge foundation of creativity. You need to spend time every day sitting in your art. Visit it, listen to it, absorb it, and practice it. Schedules and routines free you. Knowing when you have time for the thing you want to be doing every day is liberating. If this is something you really want to do, you need to make sure you are actually doing it.

Never get caught up in the FOMO (fear of missing out), because you are not missing out. You are doing your thing. Let go of what you think you should be doing, or what everyone else is doing. You are an individual with their own goals and dreams. Following what other people are doing will pull you away from them.

If you need to refocus yourself, if you feel like you are not doing the thing you should be, ask yourself: what would I do if no one was paying attention? Or if no one was looking? That will usually be the thing that seems boring, or not cool, and not what everyone else is doing. That is also the best part. The time you are putting in the effort to reach your goals is the same time that will keep everyone else from reaching theirs.

One day you won’t be here, but you get today. What are you going to do with it?

Quotes

The artist welds their theft in to something completely new.

Don’t flatter through imitation, flatter through transformation.

It’s about content.

Make sharing a part of your daily practice as much as the daily practice on your craft.

Austin Kleon Links

Website

Newspaper Blackout

Books

Chase Jarvis Links

Joey Links

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Brandon Stanton (Humans Of New York)

Quite possibly one of the best “follow your dream stories” I have ever heard. Humans Of New York creator Brandon Stanton lays out the framework for dreaming wide awake. He may be one of the most selfless artists I have ever come across. He is nothing, the art, and its connection to the audience, is everything. How refreshing is that?

Please enjoy.

Following My Passion Should Be Easy, Right? Because I Love It?

Absolutely not!

In fact, that is the most common misconception I hear. If you are truly passionate about what you are doing it should be extremely hard. Why? Because whatever that “thing” is, you should be doing it all the time. Do not use following your dreams as an excuse to not work. Please. There are so many people out there that do just enough to be able to tell themselves and the people they are close with that they are following their dream, living their passion. Generally, those people are doing a little here, a little there, and getting very little to nothing done.

When I moved to New York, all I did was take pictures. All day, every day. I lived and breathed photography. Why? Because when you follow your passion, you need to completely immerse yourself in to it. It is a sacrifice you need to make in order to make something of your passion. I lived in an apartment with three strangers, in a room that barely fit a mattress, and I loved it. I was never there, so it didn’t matter. I was out and about, taking photos, refining my craft, and making sure I was better when I got home than when I left in the morning.

I never planned on having art that connected with tens of millions of people. If I did, I would never have been able to create Humans Of New York. I wanted to take photographs, and make enough money to be able to take photographs. That’s it. Get better every single day. Produce 4 pieces of content every single day. That’s it.

Forcing myself to create so much, 365 days a year, put me in a situation where I had to bust my ass. Those four pieces of content were not going to create themselves. If I didn’t work, I wasn’t producing, or getting better, or really following my passion.

If you are not working with passion, then you are not likely working on your passion.

In the world of art, that passion, or lack thereof, comes through in the work. It amazes me that on Facebook, basically a medium of stories from millions and millions of people, HONY stands out. I think that is because it is real. There is no bs, no ulterior motive. I tell stories of real people, their real lives, with a caring and attention to detail that they deserve, and people are drawn to it. Without that passion, both for putting in the work and caring about it, I truly believe it wouldn’t connect in the same way.

What Should My Goals Be?

I am assuming that you want to follow your passion because you think it will bring you happiness. I agree that it will make you happy, as long as it truly is your passion, but what that happiness is, is different for everyone. There is no one version of happiness.

My goal was to make enough money to keep doing what I loved.

I, personally, think that is a healthy way to start. That way, you are focused on the craft, the process, and the work. Pressure yourself to work hard, and keep growing. Like I said, come home better than when you left. Each day has the goal of being better than the day before.

Do not pin your values on external measures. I understand that there has to be a certain level of paying attention to money, but if you are not making enough, use that as a challenge to get better at your craft. Be so good they can’t ignore you. Keep pushing. Be competitive with yourself. Not hard on yourself, competitive. Make yourself work every day, all day, in order to get better. It is the one thing you can control. Put in the time, value your work, and constantly get better.

Working with passion, every day, pushing yourself to be better and better every day, will allow you to experiment, and take some risks. When you try something new and different, look back and see if it worked or not. If it did, keep it, if it didn’t, either refine it or trash it. That is the benefit of working with the intensity you are going to work, it is a constant evolution.

Think of it this way: if you get 1% better every day you work, and you only work once a week, that’s only a 52% increase a year. If you work every day, you are able to condense a year’s worth of growth in to a little over a month and a half.

50% better every month and a half?!?! Think about that!!!

What If I’m Scared?

You should be.

It’s a scary thing to do.

How many people truly follow their passion? They talk about it, but rarely do it.

We are paralyzed by the need to make something great, which keeps us from doing anything at all. Having the daily goals made my “goals” small, attainable, but difficult. Don’t think about the final product, the end game. Think about today, tomorrow, and maybe next week. That’s it. It is a growth process. Have you seen the movie Big, with Tom Hanks? What happens when you jump from 13 to 30? You skip all the growth, all the lessons, the skills, then you are just some 30 year old goofball. That’s what happens when you try to go to big too fast. Focus on the craft, the day to day, and bust your ass. Things come from that. Always.

Be better when you go to sleep than when you woke up. Goal accomplished.

Quotes

“It is such a blessing to be the first one bored with your own work.”

“Work without a motive.”

“The more I disappear, the more my work becomes.”

Brandon Stanton Links

Humans Of New York

Chase Jarvis Links

Joey Links

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Jared Leto

A multi-hyphenate, artist, actor, musician, and entrepreneur, Jared Leto has been a leader in all endeavors he tackles. A true artist.

Please enjoy.

How Do I Decide What To Do? Photography or Music?

Everything works together. It is all the same thing, an all-encompassing creative path. You don’t need to choose, you have already chosen art. It is a better time than ever to be on this path. You no longer have to ask permission to be an artist, you just create. Technology has given us all the permission we need. The “gatekeepers” are obsolete.

So create.

Experiment.

Experimenting is the foundation of art.

Andy Warhol said, “keep making art, let others decide if it is good or not. And while they are deciding, create more art.”

We all have the right to succeed or fail gloriously. Don’t pigeon-hole yourself to one medium, they all work together. My approach to acting is the same as it was with photography, sculpting, and painting.

It is all about the immersion. You need to figure out all of the aspects in order to dive deeper. The reward, contribution, and authenticity all exponentially increase the deeper you go. You never know where you are going to find the bit of information that will take you over the top, which is why you look everywhere, even in other artistic mediums.

You can express yourself in a lot of different ways, even failure. I have had mistakes that turned out to be great art. If I had known the error in my ways while creating I never would have uncovered the greatness, or as I like to call it, the Holy Mistake. I will take it a step further and say that I only have a little success because I have made a lot of mistakes. Failure leads to success which then leads to more failure. It’s a beautiful, tortuous cycle.

You have to put yourself out there, stretch yourself, your art, your learning, and your creating. It all works together for the collective good: Art.

Can I Just Create, Or Do I Need To Learn The Business?

Whether you like it or not, you will learn the business. It’s inevitable.

You will learn as you go through the process. From starting, to sharing, selling, repeating, then making a living, making it sustainable, who can help you, connecting with them, etc. It is self-fulfilling. Unless you want to create for creations sake, the business aspect will come. You might as well embrace it so you can get the most benefit out of it and not have to rely on others as much.

Quotes

“We all have the right to succeed or fail gloriously.”

“I only have a little success because I make a lot of mistakes.”

“Failure leads to success which inevitably leads to more failure.”

Jared Leto Links

Website

30 Seconds To Mars

Twitter

Chase Jarvis Links

Joey Links

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

30 Days Of Genius Blog: Brene Brown

This interview has been the most difficult to write. There is so much tangible information I had a difficult time deciding what to leave out. Here is the link to the podcast. I pieced out the information for entrepreneurs specifically, but she has so much wisdom for life in general, you should do yourself a favor and check it out.

I have taken her 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 there are on.

Please enjoy.

How Do I Win?

The most important aspect of winning is making sure that you are not losing. Sabotaging is the easiest way to not only lose, but to feel like a loser.

You need to learn how to sift through your emotions, let go of the thoughts and feelings that are

holding you back, and push through.

The sooner you push, the sooner you break through, the sooner you win.

Storytelling

This is not the kind of storytelling where you sit around in a circle and no matter what happens, everyone lives happily ever after. This is a conspiracy theory type of storytelling, and you are the main character. The good thing is, you are also the author of this story, and you are the one that chooses the ending.

There are two things that happen when we storytell: we get emotional, and we fill in information that we do not have. After that, we react to the situation where we filled in information as if it were fact, and it’s not.

See how that can work against you?

What was that look? What did they mean by that? Are they being sarcastic? They hate me. I’m not good enough. I suck.

Sound familiar?

It should. We all do it, until we learn not to.

Rising Strong

Remember this: You WILL fail.

Expecting something more positive?

I bet you did.

But I would rather be honest and realistic, because that is what is going to help you. If you are truly putting yourself out there, truly engaging in work and life, you will fail. If you are not failing, you are not trying hard enough.

I want you to have an honest and realistic perspective. You can get that by asking yourself a few tough questions: 1. What am I feeling? 2. What is the story I am telling myself? 3. What facts do I ACTUALLY have? 4. What information do I still need?

Turn directly to your storytelling self, listen to what you have to say, acknowledge the feelings, then look at the situation and the information you REALLY have.

After you ask yourself those questions, ask the people you are dealing with questions. Ask for clarification, maybe even go so far as to let them know you are telling yourself a story based on your interaction and you want clarification.

Show them you have the balls to ask tough questions.

They will have more respect for you because you are showing that you have respect for yourself. You will not allow yourself to storytell, you would rather know the truth. Bravo to you!

Dealing With Discomfort

One thing I found consistently with people that are able to recover faster and rise stronger are the ones that are able to endure discomfort the most.

Will it be uncomfortable clarifying a point with your boss? Probably.

When you don’t get the outcome you want at a business meeting, will it be uncomfortable to go back and possibly get beat up digging deeper in to where you went wrong? Absolutely.

But after those tough discussions, after the discomfort, you will have a crystal clear view of the situation and how to handle it. You will learn about them, you will learn about yourself, and you will be better for it.

Keep reminding yourself that it will be ok. You will get through it. How do I know? Because when you keep pushing through the darkness you eventually get to the light, every time. Think back on other difficult times in your life, other difficult situations. How did you feel at the beginning? Awful, I am sure. Well guess what? You are still here. And you will be after the next one. It will be hard, but you keep pushing. That’s how you win.

Quotes

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

“Unused creativity. Creativity that has been disowned, is not benign. It’s painful, it metastasizes and turns in to dangerous things.”

“When you own the story, you get to write the ending.”

“Your ability to rise should never be predicated on other people.”

Brene Brown Links

Webpage

TedTalk

Author Page

Chase Jarvis Links

Website

Creative Live

iTunes Podcast Page

Joey Links