As you probably know, I’m a huge believer that so much of ‘THE GAME’ is mental. Stress, fear, anxiety, and our natural negativity bias is always ready beat us down. One of the most powerful tools in my toolbox to harness positivity in a seemingly tough situation is a daily gratitude practice. As we head into Thanksgiving here in the states, in the middle of a pandemic and everything else, I wanted to dig into the archives and re-share my personal practice. In this episode I share the exact pract...
Nov 23, 2020•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Clear is a writer, speaker and the bestselling author of one of my absolute favorite books, Atomic Habits. His work on decision-making, continuous improvement and personal development has been instrumental in my life, but it's his focus on habits that fires me up the most. If you've read Creative Calling or listened to this show in the past, you've probably heard me describe the creative pyramid. On the bottom of that pyramid is mindset, and at the top are your goals. The thing that connec...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast We all know that this world is fast paced. If you're like me, there's never enough time to do all the things you want. Naturally, the feeling of overwhelm creeps in, hindering our ability to operate as creatives and entrepreneurs. But, when it comes to pursuing the things that we love in life, we have to create time for those things. My guest today, Ari Meisel, is a creator, speaker, coach, and the author of Less Doing More Living, a resource designed to help those of us who feel overwhelmed, be...
Nov 16, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Who Are You? You Are You. Learning to trust yourself is core to any artist on the way to actualizing their true self. For more than a decade Shantell Martin has captured the hearts and minds of audiences around the world. Her intuitive energy, skill, and passion unfolds in real time, as she often works with live audiences who take part in her creative process. A combination of characters, lines, and words, Shantell's art is language of its own. Her personalized style and unique voice stands out ...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the most powerful understandings I've internalized over the past decade hosting this show is this: the world's top performers, entrepreneurs and creators often feel like they are imposters to their own lives. Operating at the edge of their ability and constantly failing forward comes with the challenge of overcoming self-doubt and imposter syndrome. The good news? It's normal to doubt yourself. Even in areas where I consider myself highly proficient there are still moments in the unknown ...
Nov 09, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the last 30 years, Seth Godin has been turning on the lights for millions of people (myself included) through his blog, online courses, lectures, and 19 best-selling books. Yes- 19! If you’ve been following his work, you’ll know he’s one most brilliant marketing minds of our time. Now he’s out with his 20th book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work . If you’ve been listening to this podcast for awhile, you’ll know I’m a huge believer in nurturing a creative practice. So often we sit around ...
Nov 04, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast When you feel like you're running in place, not making progress, feeling overwhelmed becomes the norm. Often we gloss over smaller accomplishments, focusing on grand milestones out in the distance. We are biologically wired to focus on the negative, but that doesn't mean you can't take control and flip the script. By celebrating small wins we begin to rewire our brains to recognize the progress we are making. In this episode, I share my experience learning how to celebrate daily, weekly, and mon...
Nov 02, 2020•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're in or approaching mid-life and feeling a bit invisible, you might be under valuing one of the most important things you bring to the table: experience. Enter my guest, Chip Conley, who reminds us: Digital skills are will fade or evolve over time. Human skills such as good judgement, specialized knowledge, ability to collaborate and coach never expire. Chip is the hospitality maverick and NYT bestselling author who disrupted his favorite industry... twice. At age 26 he founded Joie de V...
Oct 28, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Your conscious mind is a critic. If you rely on it too much while you’re working, you’ll struggle to make progress. In this episode, I share a simple, repeatable process to finishing work you start without self-judgement weighing you down. The idea here isn’t to win the next high praise for your best work, it’s about taking whatever action you can, and repeat. Having your work recognized will come in due time. For now, the task is to continue honing the craft. Finish what you start. Choose actio...
Oct 26, 2020•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kindness is a super power and a breath of fresh air in a world where negativity and hardship aren't hard to find. Yet what my guest Adrienne Bankert found, is kindness isn't merely about being nice. A mindset of kindness ripples into a staggering amount of personal fulfillment, growth, and empowerment. Adrienne Bankert is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award-winning correspondent for ABC News, Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and Nightline. She reported live from Chiang Rai, Thailand, dur...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast I have been a long-time proponent of pursuing personal work. There's no better place to create a playground of ideas, explore curiosities, and give yourself permission to fail. In this episode, we take a little dive into the power of personal projects for growth and opportunities, including: Building a portfolio that reflects the work you want to be hired to do Growth, learning, and creative breakthroughs Growing a community Using your commercial work to enable more personal projects Enjoy! Toda...
Oct 19, 2020•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the most essential functions for health and wellbeing of a human is just breathing. Breathing air. In and out. In fact, we do this 25,000 times a day. Yet, as today's guest James Nestor will share, a wide majority of us have lost the ability to breathe correctly wreaking havoc on our health. But all is not lost. Modern science agrees, that even the smallest adjustments in the way we inhale and exhale can have dramatic downstream positive effects. James Nestor is a journalist who has trave...
Oct 14, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Too many of us start our days consuming instead of creating: browsing the web, watching TV, whatever. We become audience members and critics. Our thoughts get sucked into what other people are doing, how well we're doing it, and the response they're getting from thew world. This is super toxic and a surefire way to undermine your creative mindset. Creating before consuming is a seemingly minor shift that will have a profound effect on your daily outlook and creative capacity. So the consider thi...
Oct 12, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast This episode is a full circle moment. I met Stephan Moccio on the internet some years ago when I would often see him name in my social feeds. It was not long before I started paying attention to him and his work too. Come to find out he's a Grammy Award winning and Academy Award-nominated composer. He's written global hits for Céline Dion, The Weekend, Miley Cyrus and Seal. Now he's recently released his debut piano solo album, Tales of Solace . Born in Canada, as a three year old, Moccio began ...
Oct 07, 2020•2 hr 32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Just a few days ago, my book Creative Calling hit it’s one year anniversary. And what a year it’s been. One of my favorite things about the last year, has been the growing community pursuing their own calling and rallying behind creativity. Community is critical for support, feedback, opportunities, and of course, celebrating those wins. Yet, it’s one of the most overlooked areas for creating success in any field. So it seemed fitting to share this conversation I had last fall with my good frien...
Oct 05, 2020•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sophia Amoruso is an online educator, serial entrepreneur and New York Times Bestselling Author. She has been featured on the cover of Forbes magazine and featured in the Fortune 40 under 40, Forbes 30 under 30, Inc. 30 under 30, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business lists, and featured on the June 2016 cover of Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women issue. Sophia founded women’s network Girlboss as well as fashion startup Nasty Gal, which she built to over $100 million in revenue. In 2014, S...
Sep 30, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Here's the secret to getting out of a rut, to getting unstuck and breaking through that wall: Make. More. Stuff. No matter what's blocking you creatively, your best bet is always to just turn up the volume. MAKE . Can't make something good? Make something bad. Make something ugly. Make something crazy doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter what you make, only that you're taking action. Remember, you can't think your way out of a rut. You must do. Only through creating can you find clarity on what...
Sep 28, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Luvvie Ajayi Jones is a New York Times bestselling author, podcast host and an incredible speaker. She sits at this amazing intersection of comedy, justice and what she calls, professional troublemaking. Speaking of professional troublemaking, this episode Luvvie brings so much clarity around finding our voice, being intentional in our actions, and being unapologetically ourselves. Luvvie starts us at her journey through writing. What started as a fledging side project she worked on in her free ...
Sep 23, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast A creative life is built through consistency, not by lurching from one outsized explosion of effort to the next. If you're feeling a bit burned out, overworked, or even a little stuck, rest can work wonders. Enjoy! Today's episode is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world's largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes tau...
Sep 21, 2020•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is another doozy. Guy Raz is the creator and host of so many popular podcasts including How I Built This , Rewind , Wisdom from the Top, TED Radio Hour, and the children's program Wow in the World . Or you may have heard him on the radio as the host of the breakout NPR Radio show, All Things Considered . A journalist by trade, Guy has received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, the National Headliner Award, and the NABJ Award, among many others. Now h...
Sep 16, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Your most remarkable work won’t simply be your craft. I promise you. When you’re at the end of your career looking back, your best stuff will be on the fringe of your craft that makes your favorite projects feel whole…feel different…feel interesting and unique to you. In this episode, we explore why our craft is foundational and necessary, yet the richest fruit of our labor actually exists beyond it. Enjoy! Today's episode is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world's largest hu...
Sep 15, 2020•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Peter H. Diamandis, MD has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital and education. Inspired by the great storytellers of science fiction who imagined a world as it could be, Peter set his sights on making bold ideas into reality. Recently named by Fortune as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Peter H. Diamandis believes there is nothing we cannot do. He is a New York Times Bestselling author of two books: Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think a...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Dwight D. Eisenhower often said that what is important is rarely urgent and what is urgent is rarely important. I’ve found that the most badass people I know, the ones who are the best in the world at their craft, are rarely busy in the way we’ve been taught to think of it. Being busy is a disease, a terminal one. It destroys your precious time. Being effective is about using every minute thoughtfully and mindfully as you make steady progress toward your dream. The biggest surprise to ...
Sep 07, 2020•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast I'm excited to share my conversation with my dear friend Nabil Ayers. He's a multi-talented hyphenate who opened one of Seattle's iconic record stores, Sonic Boom at age 25. As both an executive and an artist who began his career as a musician Ayers has performed on several albums on both independent and major labels. Today, Nabil is the US General Manager of Beggars Group label 4AD where he has run campaigns for The National (GRAMMY award winner in 2018), Big Thief (GRAMMY award nominee in 2020...
Sep 02, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ever feel stressed? It's a question that almost is absurd. So much of our human experience involves stress and anxiety these days. It is further compounded by the fact that our brain is wired to respond to it. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Fight or flight... If a bear is chasing us, helpful. If you're reading the news? Not so much. Enter Dr. Cynthia Ackrill. She's a physician, a stress expert, and leadership coach and she is on a mission to keep dis-stress from eroding focus, creativity, health, success...
Aug 31, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the things I love about photography is it's a universal language. You can look at an image intuitively feel the power and the emotion, regardless of age, race, gender, social/economic status, geography, even time. Pete Souza is such a critical creator in not just the arc of the United States of America and world politics, but as a guy out there doing what he loves, chasing his passion and hoping to tell a story and represent history in a powerful and profound way. He's done cover stories ...
Aug 26, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today's episode is a little pick-me-up, a friendly reminder of three things to think about this week: 1- The happiness of our life depends on the quality of our thoughts 2- It's OK to quit stuff you weren't meant to do 3- Focus on actions that bring you joy We get all into it in this short episode. Hope it's a shot of goodness to keep top of mind. Enjoy! Today's episode is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world's largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/de...
Aug 24, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, speaker, and Internet Yeller. Her NYT bestselling book So You Want to Talk about Race has had a huge resurgence as of late, and it's no wonder given the times we are in. Ijeoma has been named The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans, one of the Most Influential People in Seattle by Seattle Magazine and Seattle Met for her work on issues of race and identity, feminism, social and mental health, social justice, the arts, and personal essay. In this episode: How to...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you turn back the clock a couple decades, you’ll find me in the following situation: I’m sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, explaining to them that I’ve decided to drop out of med school and a PhD in philosophy to become a professional photographer. In addition to being a tough conversation, this was perhaps the biggest turning point in my career (and life). It was the moment where I walked away from what I was told I “should” do and committed myself to building a career around my passion:...
Aug 17, 2020•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you've been a long time listener to this show, you'll know today's show is a combination of some of my most favorite topics in one episode. Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, and author of five New York Times best sellers, including The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). His work covers a wide range of topics from the worlds of neuroscience, moral philosophy, meditat...
Aug 12, 2020•2 hr 48 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
