Conscious Creators Show — Make A Life Through Your Art Without Selling Your Soul

On this week's episode, Sachit (@sachitgupta) sits down with Regina Gerbeaux (@_rpgbx) to discuss how creative founders can find business operators, onboard them, and create action trackers that keep everyone on the team efficient and accountable. Regina is the executive coach for top-tier CEOs, Operators, and Investors. She is best known for her work as an operator scaling companies in size and revenue using the Mochary Method. Regina is also an excited founder of a bootstrapped music business she started in college that hit $1M of annual recurring revenue by the time she was 20. Tune in to hear Regina explain the primary role of a business operator, the resources they need to be successful, and how you can help them deal with the added stress of juggling multiple positions in the business. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. [00:00] Introduction [01:11] Why creative founders need business operators [04:58] You don't have a company if you don't have people [08:12] How to find people who are an ideal fit for your culture [11:33] Don't underestimate the importance of great onboarding [17:39] Reasons you should never hire takers [24:16] How the CEO's psychology defines a company's leadership and success [30:00] Benefits of cultivating trust with your people [32:45] Effective ways to stay grounded [37:35] How much process is too much process? [42:05] How to start building processes from scratch [48:48] Finding your zone of genius [53:42] What are the different stages of an operator? [01:02:11] How to create an environment where your operators thrive [01:06:55] Why investing in your operators makes for good business [01:08:30] 30-60-90 day plan: How to onboard new operators with ease [01:14:55] The dos and don'ts of giving feedback to new operators [01:19:10] Understanding the journey of creators [01:23:53] You need to learn to let go [01:26:31] What Regina is most excited about going forward [01:35:40] Parting thoughts Links and Resources: Regina's LinkedIn Connect with Regina via Twitter Coachingfounder.com Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam M. Grant PhD

“I want self-managed people, especially for Halocracy. It's a self-managing environment, that needs people that are capable of individual self-management to be part of a team that is self-managing.” — Brian Robertson This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Brian Robertson (@h1brian), Co-founder of HalocracyOne — A company that integrates the collective wisdom of individuals throughout an organization and offers a toolset for each person to enact meaningful change at any level of work. Brian is the world's foremost expert on Holacracy, a revolutionary framework for self-managing organizations. After years as CEO of an award-winning software company, he co-founded HolacracyOne to share this innovative method with other organizations. The result is increased transparency, greater accountability, constant innovation, and agility across the company. Holacracy is used by over 1,000 companies today – in healthcare, insurance, banking, retail, technology, nonprofit and government sectors and in places as diverse as Dubai, Shanghai, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, New York, Bangalore, Las Vegas and rural Africa. Brian is thrilled to see this method take root and grow with such force. Brian is the author of the book Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World. He speaks at conferences, holds trainings, and consults for organizations across the globe. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. 0:00 - Introduction 02:25 - What does Brian do in Holacracy? 03:25 - Why is Holacracy better? 11:05 - While building a system, how can someone initiate from their first instinct? 15:00 - Where the concept of having a centralized structure came from 25:50 - Your vision for distributing power, even when not everyone is ready for it 28:35 - What does support and mentoring the people in your company look like? 33:27 - Who decides the roles in Holacracy? 37:35 - The hiring process within the company 45:05 - Great questions to ask when hiring someone 49:36 - Some of the common pitfalls you should watch out for 58:32 - Personal transformations that leaders go through 01:03:30 - Why companies without hierarchy perform better 01:07:19 - How to manage teams better 01:13:21 - How Holacracy helps in decentralized systems 01:22:15 - Some of the types of companies that are using Holacracy 01:25:30 - What being a conscious creator means to Brian 01:26:40 - Closing Remarks

“You must succeed. This company cannot take care of its people, unless the company itself is succeeding. So you can't have bloat, you can't have dead-weight. You need everybody to be at the tip, top shape, tip, top form, really pushing like superstars do.” — Faith Meyer This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Matt Mochary (@mattmochary), CEO and Coach and Faith Meyer (@FaithKMeyer), certified Executive and CEO coach at Mochary Method — A company that provides the practical tools that a CEO needs to be an effective leader. Matt coaches the heads of Silicon Valley tech investment firms and companies on how to be the best leaders and build the best organizations possible. His philosophy and method are captured in both Mochary Coaching Methodology (CEO) as well as his book The Great CEO Within (on Amazon, or online). Matt specializes in helping a CEO and company (or investment firm) transition from free-wheeling startup to dominant enterprise. Faith is a certified CEO and Executive Coach with Mochary Method. She is a prior COO, CEO and VP, has over two decades of experience in leadership, building high performing teams, managing hundreds of direct reports, and scaling companies. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. 0:00 - Introduction 02:40 - How to prepare before you start coaching other people 05:35 - The boundaries between coaching & becoming friends with your clients 07:40 - How to create a strong culture  25:55 - Examples of companies that have taken their advice on culture + how it created a ripple effect 31:20 - How to upgrade the behavior of your teammates 36:45 - How to create a culture of transparency and candor in a company 42:15 - How to go about creating a culture based on joy? 57:20 - Can a person actually be trained in a year and then run a business for you? 01:10:00 - How shadowing can help run great businesses 01:12:11 - How you can bring your own perspective into coaching curriculum  01:17:50 - What aspects of coaching bring Faith and Matt joy? 01:24:10 - Some of the hard coaching sessions that Faith and Matt have had 01:26:30 - Some of the most common complaints + funny moments that they've had 01:28:22 - What you can do with your free time as a leader 01:32:20 - Growth spirals 01:35:00 - Why seeing a business as a force for good is so important  01:38:45 - Closing Remarks Resources Heard:  how to make people feel it (2 min) Motivating your team (3 min) Brainstorming written (2 min) Loudest voice in the room (1 min) Energy Audit (3 min) CEO role (2 min) Onboarding a new hire (3 min)

“If you want to be a conscious creator, part of what you need to do is become skillful in facilitating the dialogue between your conscious mind and your subconscious.” — Charles M. Jones This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Charles Jones (@adaptaboy). Charles began the research project that led to the Effectiveness Theory of Emotion in 1982 while pursuing an interdisciplinary degree at the intersection of Computer Science, Cultural Anthropology and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Michigan. After graduating with a B.S., Charles continued the research project in his spare time for the next 35 years, studying with Fernando Flores (Ontological Coaching), Richard Strozzi Heckler (Somatic Leadership) and Marshall Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication). In parallel, Charles had successful careers as a software engineer and organizational and leadership development consultant. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. 0:00 - Introduction 02:10 - Why do you describe yourself as the Maverick Cognitive Psychologist? 07:10 - Looking back at your high school period, do you think you were suppressing your emotions? 17:40 - How do different emotions work? 30:17 - How to stop procrastinating and start working 36:22 - How does your body keep a score of your emotions? 1:03:25 - How do we cultivate emotional literacy amongst people? 1:10:45 - Stories of people who have changed by reading your book 1:14:20 - Fast five questions with Charles 1:26:25 - Closing Remarks

“You got to like people, and you gotta recruit the people you want to be around. And then treat them cool and make sure you like your partner. And then find someone who can do organizational things.” — Michael Lovitch This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Michael Lovitch (@michaelovitch) and Hollis Carter (@hollisc), co-founders of Baby Bathwater Institute — A community comprised of some of the world's leading minds and entrepreneurs, with a focus on helping bootstrapped entrepreneurs navigate the crazy world of business ownership while having good times and making lifelong friendships. Hollis Carter is a serial entrepreneur and avid skier. He started his entrepreneurial journey in the early 2000's, founding multiple companies, including a SAAS company he built into a 7-figure virtual business in less than a year. In 2013, he became a founding investor in Utah's Powder Mountain Ski Resort. Michael Lovitch, MA is a former special education professional, over-educated grad student, and floundering tech sales guy who decided at the age of 34 to take the entrepreneurial path because nothing else was working. He started a publishing company in the psychology space that ended up being a 7-figure endeavor, then parlayed that into a physician-based nutritional supplement company (RealDose Nutrition) thatended up with annual revenues of $50 million dollars before he sold out his stake. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. 00:00 Introduction 00:26 What is a successful community? 09:19 When did your events start turning into a community? 13:55 How do you encourage your community members to connect with each other? 17:21 The process by which people come into baby bathwater 21:41 Patterns in people from the same type of business 26:53 How to create a good experience for people 37:00 How to deal with people that take advantage of the community 43:17 How to get feedback from the members of the community 47:40 What you should be thinking about in order to build a successful community 53:56 How to agree in a moment of disagreement 55:54 The vetting process for the Baby Bathwater community 58:12 In the process of building the community, what have you learned about yourselves? 1:02:29 What does it mean to be a conscious creator? 1:07:21 Closing Remarks 

“Persuasion doesn't mean to manipulate. Intention is everything. If it isn't in the best interests of the person you're persuading, you probably shouldn't do it.” — Dave Lakhani This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Dave Lakhani, former Entrepreneur, Founder, C level executive and event producer. As a founder, Dave started more than a dozen successful companies. Several of the companies he led have been on the coveted Inc. 500 list. He successfully set new sales and marketing records at every company he was with. As a consultant, he worked with more than 500 companies to develop profitable growth strategies. As a professional speaker, he addressed more than 2 million people in the past 15 years, and his books have reached hundreds of thousands of people. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. 02:53 - Three things that people want in life 08:25 - What makes Donald Trump a great influencer and persuader? 19:35 - How to read people and spot lies 32:45 - Practical tactics and hero's journey 58:46 - Books recommendations

“Creators need to understand that the game being played around them is rigged. And basically, if they don't understand a different way to play this game, they will get sacrificed in the algorithm and burnout because the platforms doesn't care. — Sachit Gupta Recently I was a guest on Creators Are Brands with Tom Boyd — Creator of @BonusFootage on TikTok and Instagram, creator strategist for billion dollar brands, and all around hilarious person. Highly recommend his podcast! In this episode we discuss content strategies, inventory, and 6-figure sponsorship deals. After re-listening to this podcast, I knew I had to share it here, with you. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (0:00) - Introduction (03:56) - What is Platforms Media?  (06:00) - Who the first person that anyone should bring on in their team, is. (09:14) - How to start playing the content game differently (16:15) - How to apply the 3M Method to fine-tune your niche (19:40) - Is there a blueprint for six-figure sponsorship deals? (22:55) - Selling content inventory in advance (32:10) - Selling content inventory for short-form content — Should you do it?  (34:30) - How you can build a team & start monetizing your audience (41:08) - How to cater to cold leads and inbound leads (46:09) - Should you partner with influencer agencies? (48:55) - What infrastructure have you built for recording & delivering the content? (52:45) - Who the first person is that you should partner with for content distribution (1:02:45) - Closing remarks

“If you have good people and the right person in the seat, they're going to have a better hit rate than you. Which, may be jarring to people who are like, “I'm really good at business.” Well, it turns out, you, with limited information and partial focus, is not better than somebody else.” — Michael Girdley This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Michael Girdley (@girdley), business entrepreneur and investor. Michael is Chairman and co-founder of Dura Software, the second-largest software company in San Antonio, Texas. His Holding Company includes a variety of businesses including Codeup, Effectual Ventures (a venture studio), Red Runner Coffee, Near (a talent platform), and others. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (0:00) - Introduction (02:15) - The difference between a CEO, an operator, and an idea guy (03:30) - The transition from being an operating CEO to a holding company's CEO (08:47) - Describing the HoldCo model and why he switched to it (13:46) - Advantages & disadvantages of the HoldCo structure Vs one company model (21:08) - How he quick started the HoldCo model of operating (26:45) - What he has learned about hiring and retaining top performers (34:02) - The process of finding & hiring CEOs, with some examples (39:20) - Tests or questions you ask a candidate to check if they're a good fit (46:52) - How do you separate yourself from being a HoldCo's CEO from a company's CEO? (51:21) - The day-to-day differences between being an operating CEO Vs a HoldCo CEO (53:43) - The moment when Michael realized he don't know everything (57:12) - What the operations of HoldCo actually looks like (1:04:57) - Some of the early mistakes in the HoldCo model and how to avoid them (1:10:33) - Rapid fire questions with Girdley  (1:17:35) - Closing remarks

“More than half of the people I talk to are burned out and that's why they want to sell. And if you're burned out, it's not too late because you can still sell the business, but it's not the optimal time.” — Alexis Grant This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Alexis Grant (@alexiskgrant) Founder & CEO of They Got Acquired — a media company that features acquisitions of online businesses and the founders behind them. Previously, she was EVP of Content at The Penny Hoarder, a personal finance media brand, where she worked alongside the founder as the third employee to scale the company's content operations. She also founded The Write Life, an online community for writers she sold in 2021. Lexi began her career as a reporter at the Houston Chronicle and U.S. News & World Report, before growing a boutique content marketing agency, which was acquired by The Penny Hoarder in 2015. She lives with husband and two young kids in Harpers Ferry, WV. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:49) - Experience and highlights from building content teams (04:41) - How big the content side of Penny hoarder got (05:24) - Is the company a media company? (06:40) - Ways to monetize before advertising (09:07) - Her fav content niches / companies that got acquired (11:22) - Elements to think about when determining how to position or frame a media site — How to monetize or set up to sell  (12:49) - Lessons from research she did on how media companies can be sold (14:56) - How much a content site would sell for (17:37) - What should creators do to monetize their audience and content, properly? (20:28)  - How creators can sell their businesses (22:23) - The process from buyers reaching out, to finally selling the company (23:57) - At what point should you hire lawyers, agents and other people? (26:13) - The most common mistakes everyone was making, in terms of selling their business (28:34) - Things you should have in order before going down the path to sell (34:32) - Is it possible to sell some of the pieces of business that are burning out the owners? (39:01) - Other things creators should be thinking about during the process of selling the business (40:10) - Will increasing revenue using services, increase the multiple? (44:39) - How does one start building a team? (46:59) - What Lexi's team looks like (49:04) - At scale version, what does the team look like? (51:42) - What do editors do? (53:29) - Principles creators should know about while building a team (56:14) - Commonalities in great hires (58:54) - Tips on training and managing creative talent (1:00:28) - Things they have taken from writing, to podcasting (1:02:46) - How much of an investment it takes to grow from good to great, in terms of podcasting and content (1:03:08) - AI-generated content and where it's going to go (01:05:06) - Finding the voice for your writing and newsletter (01:06:51) - Alexis's three favorite creators (01:08:29) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:09:09) - What she is most excited about in the next 5-10 years

“Figure out — What is the business that you want to run? What's the level of involvement that you want to have? Make sure that your business model matches your psychological desire for your involvement with the business.” — Tim Geoffrion This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Blake La Grange (@blakelagrange) and Tim Geoffrion (@this.walking.life). Tim Geoffrion is an investor, consultant, and an executive leadership coach to small business leaders. Since starting his practice in 2020, Tim has partnered with the founders of over 20 start-ups to work through both the practical and interpersonal challenges of starting and scaling a new business. His work has included helping founders: determine initial equity splits, communicate more effectively with lawyers and bankers, mediate long standing conflicts, part ways with key employees, implement strategic planning processes, create long-term hiring plans, set-up financial tracking systems, negotiate license agreements, and prepare companies to sell themselves or raise venture capital funding. Blake, graduated high school early (16), started a self study through music, theology, real estate, and business. He became a record producer for a decade, then built an online mixing and mastering business which pivoted into the premiere online education business in the music industry. He scaled that business to a point where he was able to sell it. Through that journey, launched other successful offers online using other peoples experiences and expertise. He now works as a "record label" in the company Kollege, by finding underground talent and applying lessons learned from the info-product world to help create offers that help creators get paid to do what they love. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (0:00) - Introduction (01:00) - Where was Blake, in terms of business, when he reached out to Tim? (02:59) - Tim's first thoughts when he saw Blake and his business (07:55) - How can people perceive business fundamentals correctly? (11:42) - How does Blake look at a business in hindsight? (17:08) - What levers a creator should be looking at to grow exponentially later on (19:36) - Why did Blake decide on sharing profits with his teammates? (29:20) - How Tim looks at things from an IFS perspective (34:51) - Decisions that entrepreneurs should make through a psychological lens (44:30) - Context on the partnership between Tim and Blake (51:06) - Things co-founders should do during a partnership and while integrating teams (1:03:33) - Different elements one should consider before selling a business (1:05:42) - Specific changes that Blake made when selling his business (1:12:11) - Different ways people can make money as a creator (1:14:58) - Is there an idealized business structure that is best to sell? (1:22:06) - Did Blake feel off while letting go of his business? (1:27:11) - Psychological changes one goes through while selling their business (1:30:56) - How the process can be made easier for them (1:33:25) - Blake's experience of letting go of his business (1:40:48) - The difference between income and wealth (1:47:07) - Tim's advice on where to invest money after selling the company (1:48:43) - 5 Fast Questions with Tim and Blake

“There is something incredibly powerful when the design is for connection versus the design is for content. Community is designed for connection. Social media is designed for content.” — Gina Bianchini This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Gina Bianchini (@gbianchini / @ginab), CEO and Founder of Mighty — Where creators, entrepreneurs, and brands build digital communities and courses with cultural software. She is also the author of the new book Purpose: Design a Community and Change Your Life. In 2019, she also launched the Community Design™ Masterclass, where over 8,000 people have learned how to build a community so valuable you can charge for it, and so well-designed it essentially runs itself. Before Mighty, Gina she was the CEO and co-founder of Ning, a pioneering global platform for creating social networks she started with Marc Andreessen in 2004. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. Resources Mentioned: The Art Of Asking A Great Question | The Secret to Community Engagement 1,000 Creators Predict 2023 | From Mighty Community Design Accelerator (02:35) - What role “purpose” plays in culture (07:59) - How she refocuses a community to think about the depth, rather than expanding, while building a business  (13:57) - How she knew years before that the market would need a software like Mighty Networks (16:18) - How she learned the ideas of community (19:06) - Second-order effects that come up with thinking about community, from a cultural perspective (22:55) - Why she's confident that anyone can become a creator (28:47) - The revelation that the biggest revenue earners on Mighty Networks had an average of 8,500 social media followers (30:32) - Difference between audience and community (33:52) - Compounding results in a community (43:25) - “I am an introvert, I don't know if I should build a community” — How she handles these statements  (46:19) - What to do in the first few days and weeks of building a community (53:58) - What a 5-star community looks like (59:02) - How to create loyalty within the community (01:03:38) - What it looks like to manage a community at scale (01:05:25) - How her thinking about business has evolved since she started (01:08:10) - How she became so well connected in Silicon Valley (01:09:17) - Did she face imposter syndrome? (01:14:18) - Community leaders that inspire her  (01:16:32) - What she's excited about in the upcoming years and Mighty Network's future

“Whatever point you are at, you kind of have to go back and say ‘what is the thing that you're building?' And ‘do people really want it?'” — Immad Akhund This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Immad Akhund (@immad), CEO of Mercury — The company trusted by more than 100,000 startups for banking*. Mercury gives founders free checking and savings accounts, debit and credit cards*, domestic and USD international wire transfers, Treasury*, venture debt, and more. He co-founded the company in 2017 after his own frustrations as an entrepreneur with the traditional banking hurdles founders face as they set up and run their businesses. He started Mercury to remove that friction by building an intuitive product experience for necessary financial products in order to help founders manage their business with confidence. Launched in 2019, Mercury has raised $163M from a16z, Coatue, CRV and others. Immad is a serial founder who cuts through a problem and catalyzes change for the industry around it. Born in Pakistan and raised in the U.K., Immad immigrated to the U.S. to join Y Combinator with his previous startup Heyzap (acquired by Fyber). He is a former part-time partner at Y Combinator and is an active angel investor, with more than 250 investments in startups including Airtable, Rappi and Substack. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:27) - Dichotomy of being a business person and a creative person (04:42) - The impact and rise of no-code tools to build stuff (07:15) - What trends to look for to determine what to build and whether you should raise funds or not (10:00) - YC for creators (14:36) - The process they followed to build Mercury (17:44) - Product-led growth — What is it? (19:26) - 10x improvements they made during the building phase of mercury (21:46) - How they structured the production function (27:07) - Times when Immad wanted to give up (31:11) - How they were iterating to build, without having feedback from customers  (33:39) - Things they did in the early stages that have been giving them massive results (38:07) - What he looks for in people when building a start-up team (40:24) - The difference between great investors and people with money (43:18) - The transition from the building phase to the growth phase (45:50) - Best practices — Product first growth mindset (49:14) - How he enables the culture in order to make sure people support each other (53:45) - What are the first hires to make (55:09) - Has he ever hired 10x engineers (59:02) - Building a remote company with a strong culture and doing rapid innovation (01:03:28) - Mercury as a bank account and platform (01:06:49) - How has his love for SciFi influenced the product building (01:12:28) - How he propagated his ethics in the team (01:14:58) - Politics — His thoughts on banning people  (01:17:15) - Scifi books that have impacted him (01:18:45) - One piece of wisdom that changed the game for him (01:20:30) - One person he is grateful to (01:21:31) - How he has evolved as an entrepreneur (01:22:54) - What it means to be a conscious creator

“It's not just the people who are interested in you, but who's going to believe in you, who's going to support you, who's going to care about you as a person, not just as the brand.” — Coach Carey This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Raia Carey (@coach_carey). As a 3x Certified Life Coach and motivational speaker, Raia is passionate about encouraging others to tap into the confidence they never knew they had. After overcoming various hardships, she was able to transform her mindset and begin a career that empowers others to do the same. By openly sharing her triumphs and tribulations, Raia's vulnerability helps foster a welcoming and safe environment in every room she enters. She strives to inspire and lead those around her by providing unwavering support, guidance, and motivation. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. 02:41 - Where she began her journey and how the business is doing now 04:29 - How she started working with big brands 06:44 - Impact over numbers  07:46 - Her first events — Free or paid? 08:58 - The transition from charity to corporate events  11:06 - Telling her first big clients about her charges  13:30 - How she overcame the fear of charging “fairly” for her workshops 15:43 - The next jump in her pricing structure 17:18 - Coach Carey's marketing strategy 19:43 - How creators can build self-confidence  22:06 - Self-trust and its importance 23:19 - Learning how to set boundaries 28:22 - How she landed a commercial with Nike 31:34 - Does she still have imposter syndrome 32:51 - How to become comfortable with imposter syndrome 32:46 - Forms of self-care 38:49 - The twisted definition of self-care 40:13 - Practicing joy 41:55 - How building a safe space and confidence are related 48:08 - Elements of creating a safe space for the community 49:23 - Brave space Vs Safe Space 50:01 - Active Allyship and Heart-Centered leadership 51:14 - Leading with love Vs Leading with fear 54:23 - How she makes sure people are being heard 56:04 - Certifications to become a better coach 58:13 - Three books that have made the biggest impact 59:18 - One piece of wisdom that changed the game 01:00:08 - One person she is grateful to 01:00:44 - What it means to be a conscious creator 01:01:07 - What she is looking forward to the most in the next 5-10 years

“Your job and your goal should be ‘How do I continuously build the systems in place in order to have an empty calendar and empty tasks list?' In the beginning, you are the firefighter. Your job as the CEO is to create the fire departments.” — Ayman This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Ayman-Al-Abdullah (@aymanalabdul) — Former CEO of AppSumo where he grew them from $3M to $80M+ in annual revenue). Now he coaches CEO's to go from 7 to 9 figures. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (06:39) - Internal psychology evolution that happens when going from solopreneur to CEO who manages people (07:36) - Tools that he uses to help leaders (09:58) - The different steps that he takes a CEO through in order to transition from black pen writer to red pen editor (12:45) - The first step Ayman takes with a creator that is earning less than a million (16:07) - How and why to double down on one revenue stream instead of multiple (17:49) - Example of what Sachit should do (19:59) - Internal psychology of creators who are diversifying too much, way too soon (23:50) - Do you need to start selling the courses before you maximize your profits on services? (27:04) - Price, client selection, and other levers in a course + how to get them right (31:09) - Why you should focus on removing things, rather than adding (33:39) - Benefits that come with only focusing on one thing at a time (34:33) - Other things that distract founders (37:27) - How to know when you are ready for the next phase in your journey (41:18) - The core team that a founder needs in the early phases (43:57) - Where he starts with businesses that are doing 5 million (47:31) - How to decide which tasks to keep and which tasks to delegate, as a creator (49:28) - The next steps - Process, people, and performance (52:04) - How to create and run the master dashboard for your business (54:23) - When should you start hiring leaders instead of specialists? (57:24) - Why no one is able to break through a certain cap when it comes to selling courses (58:36) - How to level up as a leader if you're working with a CEO (01:00:47) - Mindset shifts required to hire leaders in the company (01:02:45) - Story of a leader who let go of total control and hired someone + the changes that it brought to the company (01:05:15) - What happens if a founder actually achieves a clear calendar? (01:11:20) - How to be a complete person as a CEO (01:14:17) - Tools that can improve the psychological aspects of CEOs (01:18:08) - Three books that have made the biggest impact (01:19:33) - One piece of wisdom that changed the game for him (01:20:29) - One person he is grateful to (01:21:36) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:22:36) - What he's looking forward to the most in the next 5-10 years

“What really kind of gets me going to grow this business is I never want to make this something to where it's like - Oh, I don't know that person's name or they're just there because they're good at this. This is a family first. Beyond that, we are able to kind of sell some deals and make a business successful. “ — Matt Cisneros This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Matt Cisneros (@mattcisneros) — Founder of Backyard Ventures (BV), a full-service partnerships business for creators. BV focuses on Podcasts, Newsletters, YouTube, and Social Media monetization so that creators can focus on creating content. While BV manages sales/partnerships, Matt's focus and passion are on growing relationships into long-term partnerships. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:39) - What they have done in aggregate in brand deals since the company has started (05:55) - The conversation they are having with brands in terms of sponsorships and brand deals (09:16) - How they convince and commit brands to work with creators and podcasters (13:03) - How they're evaluating creators while presenting them to brands (16:17) - Higher end numbers that they have seen (21:11) - The conversations that they have with creators (24:28) - Signs that a creator will make a great partner  (27:07) - Things creators can do to make great partnerships with brands (29:34) - Things that creators do to make campaigns a great success (35:04) - Deal structure difference — YouTube vs Podcasting and other platforms (38:01) - Things creators should consider during the deal making process (39:55) - Red flags creators should look for when working with brands (42:11) - How creators can take relationships with brands to the next level (43:43) - How big the numbers can get for creators if the relationship with brands grows (47:43) - How he managed the 100s of relationships with executives of companies and creators while simultaneously building the business (51:19) - Personal and professional relationship — How he keeps them separate (53:58) - The biggest challenges, wins, and losses while building the company (56:09) - The story of the first hire they made (01:00:16) - Matt's view on delegation *** (01:03:09) - Long-term vision and targets for the company (01:07:37) - How creators should decide who to bring on to represent or manage them  (01:12:05) - Books that have made the biggest impact (01:13:41) - One piece of wisdom that changed the game  (01:14:47) - One person he is grateful to (01:16:33) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:17:38) - What Tiago is looking forward to the most in the next 5-10 years

“People are burned out of courses and no one really enjoys them. So like notice what people like, people like masterminds - they like hanging out with other people and interacting. It's more about the people. It's less about the content.” — Sam Ovens This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Sam Ovens (@samovens), CEO and Founder of Skool — a community platform for creators. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:37) - Balancing family and business (03:28) - How his mental models about business changed since having a child (04:51) - The process he went through to find his tech co-founder (11:11) - His approach to building a great team, so he can get his time back (14:25) - When Sam was working 15-20 hours a day - Would he do it again? (15:51) - When they downsized the company to make ensure it's fun end enjoyable (17:55) - Example of how he turned non-fun tasks into fun tasks (20:28)- Tasks that he got rid of during the process of downsizing (25:09) - Lessons learned on building great products/courses in the online education world (29:01) - How the product evolved over time (30:08) - Thoughts on cohort-based courses and their future (33:44) - Non-intuitive lessons he has learned over the last decade (39:44) - The switch from trying to pull things from the market, to listening to what the market wants (41:27) - Importance of communities in courses and education (43:17) - How to create more engaging communities (46:41) - Transitioning from a creator with an audience, to a seven-figure zen style business (50:26) - Sam's unique approach to launches and selling (53:37)- How Sam sells using Loom videos (54:54) - Core mechanics of an offer (56:24) - How to create rush and scarcity at the launch of a course (58:55) - How he goes from beta testing a course to the next step (59:57) - Getting good at pre-empting things in business (01:01:42) - Why he decided to go fully-in on Skool (01:07:17) - The convergence of info marketing, creators, and tech (01:11:01) - The pseudo-abundance of content on the internet (01:17:44) - The gamification of communities  (01:20:27) - Creative trade-off decisions they made in Skool (01:21:53) - How he thinks about the community's success and KPIs (01:23:34) - How he keeps the quality of the community high since it's gotten big (01:29:59) - The importance of mindset as a creator (01:32:36) - How a community can create unsaid rules based on members personalities and how to deal with that (01:35:54)- Personal ideas that he changed his mind about after learning about them from a community (01:36:53) - Books that have been most impactful to him (01:37:16) - One piece of wisdom that changed the game for him (01:37:44) - One person he is grateful to (01:38:11) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:38:47) - Things he is most excited for in the next 5-10 years

“I believe that we have the ability to solve someone's problems and in doing so that produces loyalty, commitment, addiction, attention, but I don't believe it comes from selling. Selling is nine times out of 10 — When someone is trying to get you to have that. But if I can find out what motivates you and what helps you and what impacts you, then I can solve anything” — Steve Sims This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with entrepreneur Steve Sims (@stevedsims) — Quoted as “The Real Life Wizard of Oz" by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine, Steve Sims is a best selling Author with "BLUEFISHING - the art of making things happen”, sought-after coach and a speaker at a variety of networks, groups and associations as well as the Pentagon and Harvard. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:06) - Why most people are bad at communicating  (06:37) - Steve's approach to communication (13:07) - How to build relationships with people you don't know  (15:43) - Why he thinks email marketing is weak (20:36) - How and why simplifying is the key to everything (22:49) - “Just pick up the phone” (32:23) - The most fulfilling requests he fulfilled for people (35:12) - Lessons he learned from his roots (37:31) - How Steve defines Conscious Creators

“Every stakeholder is even. So your customer, or your stakeholder, or your janitor, or your employees, are just as important as the investor. This mentality changes everything.” — JP Newman This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Entrepreneur JP Newman, Founder of Thrive, FP — A top tier lender and investors real estate investment firm specializing in the multi-family sector with over 15,000 apartment units owned and over $200+ million in private equity under management and $1.75+ billion in total transactions value, since 2011. His commitment to enriching lives continues to evolve with a solid business model which outperforms his competitors through higher resident retention. JP's vision is driven by his unwavering commitment to using the best practices of putting people first, coupled with a core value for respect for everyone — all stakeholders — investors, residents, and employees. His vision is for a world where everyone lives in thriving communities and building wealth and helping others are one and the same. He is passionate about enriching lives with every touchpoint and this solid business model creates opportunities for their residents and stakeholders, making them healthier, wealthier, and wiser. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:14) - What makes a great community (03:17) - How meaningful purpose acts as the strongest connector in a community (06:12) - Concept of Conscious Capitalism  (10:24) - Why you need to find the “Why” for your business (13:12) - Serving people should be the “Why” of your life (18:18) - How JP is using real estate as the vehicle to being a conscious creator  (22:27) - Lessons he has learned by working in the film industry (27:45) - The inspiration behind building a sports complex (31:28) - How JP pulled himself out of a rut after looking in on his friends' successes, while feeling like he had nothing to show for his own (34:35) - JP's life after he started working with his dad from his childhood bedroom

The second brain grew so slowly from one little use case to now I use it for basically everything, but you cannot start like that. That is trying to boil the ocean. That is trying to skip to the end. — Tiago Forte This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Tiago Forte (@fortelabs), one of the world's foremost experts on productivity. He has taught more than 20,000 people worldwide through his programs, while writing and speaking on how technology can help knowledge workers revolutionize their personal effectiveness. Tiago's online course, Building a Second Brain, has produced more than 5,000 graduates from over 70 countries. The course draws on his experience in academic disciplines such as information science, practical fields such as user experience design, and his work with top organizations and leaders in Silicon Valley. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:55) - It's not about the tool, it's about the system (04:44) - Why people are distracted by finding the tools (05:43) - How “Building a Second Brain” relates to shifting the internal psychology and unlocking the creative side  (06:53) - Things he has taken from other industries that helped him build the principles (09:57) - What creators can learn from fields like manufacturing and bring to their knowledge management (11:44) - Theory of constraints and its elements (13:22) - Biggest bottlenecks when it comes to being a creator (15:36) - How he navigates the bottlenecks that he faces (19:43) - How personal transformative experiences have changed things in the business (20:52) - The roles of surrender and perfectionism in his life  (23:48) - How to start building a second brain (a live walkthrough with Sachit) (31:55) - Inflection point in the second brain as a product and idea (36:26) - How things changed for him when going from 0 to 5 and now 17 employees (39:31) - A time when Tiago thought of shutting the course down (41:25) - Biggest challenges he has faced while thinking about scaling as a creator (44:02) - Mistakes that creators usually make (47:17) - Tiago's advice to people who are in the process of exponentially growing, in terms of scale and team (50:00) - His experience of running a thousand student cohort (52:020 - The transition from cohort to a membership model (53:52) - The impact of launching a year-long cohort, on marketing and sales (58:33) - The transition and journey from ”people buying from Tiago”, to people buying the product (01:00:32) - The experience of finding a new audience and finally feeling like the product is great  (01:02:46) - Actions he took to shift from early adopters to the next phase of customers (01:05:29) - How he is looking at Building the Second Brain over the next few years (01:07:36) - How the A.I. writing tools will change the consumption, curation, and creation for content (01:10:38) - Whose second brain he would like to access to (01:11:28) - A person he is grateful to (01:12:08) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:13:02) - What it might look like to give a starter second brain to his baby

The ultimate question for every creator, marketer, and entrepreneur is if you read and consume your content for the first time, would you go and say -that's legendary content! If you're a creator when your shit goes out, do you rush to consume it? Are you the biggest fan of your content? Because if you're not, it's telling you something. - Chris Lochhead This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Christopher Lochhead (@lochhead). Chris is the thirteen-time #1 bestselling CoAuthor of Play Bigger, Snow Leopard, and Category Pirates and #1 charting business dialogue podcaster, who is best known as a "godfather" of Category Design. He's been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups, is a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO (Mercury Interactive, Scient, Vantive), and entrepreneur. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (2:37) - Chris and Sachit's first conversation (06:45) - Chris's content matrix and approach to becoming a great creator (11:52) - The obvious content and how so many books fall into that category (22:20) - Live example of how Sachit can take his non-obvious content and reach an audience (25:17) - How to make a difference at scale (27:41) - Different types of thinking (32:24) - Figuring out what your category is, using your existing point of view (41:24) - How Sachit has helped Chris identify that he has fallen into a trap (43:27) - Why creators become creators (46:18) - The only sane reason to use social media platforms (49:45) - The big creator lie (51:08) - Chris's category — science research (55:10) - The evils of hustle porn culture (57:27) - How to monetize insight, not envy (01:10:44) - Deep dive into category design and examples of obvious and non-obvious content (01:12:04) - Why non-obvious content and ideas are the ones that scale (01:15:26) - The content trap (01:17:47) - How niching down super tight can make you more money (01:22:48) - Category designers that inspire Chris (01:26:39) - One person he is grateful to (01:27:46) - Chris's definition of a conscious creator (01:31:12) - What he is most excited about in the coming years

As best as you can, let your team in because when you let them in, they will see opportunities to support you that you won't even see because you've got your little blinders on. — Trivinia Barber This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Trivinia Barber (@trivinia) — Founder of Priority VA. She is a speaker, author, and leadership consultant who helps entrepreneurs in businesses of all sizes scale growth, sharpen leadership, and build teams they can trust. She developed The Momentum Method™ so clients can achieve better synergy between their products, people and processes for greater growth & efficiency. A global, in-demand speaker, Trivinia hosts the top-ranked podcast, Diary of a Doer, and has been a featured guest on dozens of other business podcasts like The $100 MBA, Eventual Millionaire, Screw the Nine to Five, Entrepreneur on Fire, and The Daily Grind with Colin Morgan. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:43) - “Everybody wants a team until it's time to lead them” (04:37) - What people should be doing before thinking about building a team (05:37) - How doing personal work helped prepare her and enhance the business side (07:16) - Examples of small things that can change things in a big way (07:34) - Description of what a leader actually is  (14:49) - How they help leaders figure out who they really are, so that they can hire a great team (17:08) - Other common patterns they identify and how they help to resolve them (20:37) - Stories of how they help to transform weaknesses into strengths (23:34) - Things or situations that come up in the process, because of the way creators think (25:27) - Other things you should be doing to prepare yourself to bring on an EA (29:42) - How she makes sure the person she is working with is not a narcissist (32:38) - How she identifies who the problem is - herself or the assistant? (34:39) - How to create an environment of psychological safety for your team (40:54) - Trivinia's structure and her approach to management (43:76) - Unexpected steps that brought the team together (51:31) - Ways to lead the assistant to become a leader (53:55) - Why CEO and EA relationships fall apart (57:26) - What toxic leadership looks like (59:38) - How she manages the balance between being vulnerable and not becoming co-dependent on her team (1:02:35) - How to call the fight (01:07:38) - The first step you can take to start building a team (01:12:20) - How to set your assistant up as a gateway, instead of a gatekeeper (01:13:41) - How to use a calendar (01:17:10) - The three books that have made the biggest impact  (01:18:24) - Wisdom that changed the game for her (01:19:12) - Who Trivinia is grateful to (01:20:18) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:21:08) - What she is most excited about in the next 5 years (01:21:63) - Parting thoughts

Trigger Warning - The audio contains sensitive content that might be disturbing to some audiences. It's not easy to be a leader on a team and it shouldn't be. It should be a burden. I think most people think it's a status, rather than the ability to change other people's lives. — James Guldan This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with James Guldan (@jamesguldan), co-founder of Vision Tech — An agency that will give any Information Product, Coach, or eCommerce Business, their best chance at 10x growth. They have done over a billion dollars in sales for their clients and have 10x growth on over 12 companies. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show/ Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (02:48) - Most common things that are holding creators back (03:57) - Examples of how mindset can change the game in terms of growth (06:09)- First thing they do with a creator who has a course and wants to grow (11:18) - Questions they ask customer service people to get the insights that they need (12:33) - Why some courses keep selling, without being good (14:46) - Things they look for in a product  (21:54) - Specifics they look for in a community (24:19) - What surveying customers and community does for a business's growth  (25:55) - What happens after someone “passes” their checklist (27:05) - What you can do, right now, to start building a community (32:41) - Things you can do to achieve 10x growth (35:13) - How they improve the customer journey of a client (37:27) - How many customers you should have to start + solely focusing on the customer journey and not acquiring new ones (40:17) - James's thoughts on delegation (45:28) - Overcoming a perfectionist mindset (48:55) - 5 words that he lives by and why they are important (51:54) - How he uses those 5 words in his business (55:41) - His health journey and how he got better (01:00:54) - Tools he used to get better + to a good place (01:03:46) - How his business was running while he was going through the health journey (01:05:22) - James's journey of finding and becoming the best version of himself (01:11:29) - The three books that have made the biggest impact in his life (01:12:25)- One piece of wisdom that has changed the game for him (01:13:33) - One person he is grateful to (01:14:32) - What it means to be a conscious creator

“Privilege is only negative if you don't use your privilege to elevate others. That's when it's negative. So for me, I express to people I have a deep privilege and a deep responsibility given my upbringing to give back.” — JeVon McCormick This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with JeVon McCormick (@JeVon McCormick), the CEO of Scribe Media, a multi-million dollar publishing company that was recently ranked the #1 Top Company Culture in America by Entrepreneur Magazine. JeVon's experiences shaped a mindset for modern leadership that now guides his service as the CEO of a massively successful company that's redefining the world of publishing. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. Show Notes: (03:16) - Why Sachit is grateful for Jevon for writing the Modern Leader (10:45) - What happened once he reclaimed his own name and went from JT to JeVon (14:11) - How he built his mindset up after ending up in solitary confinement (15:46) - His internal talk after being in juvenile prison at the age of 12 (19:13) - Taking what happened to him and turning it into doing good for others (27:57) - His emotional growth and the impact it had on the business (35:34) - How Tucker Max helped him recognize he's a fast learner and how he teaches that to other people (40:40) - Who helped him reach his greatest potential (48:43) - How Scribe Media hires people while keeping diversity and representation in mind (53:03) - The dichotomy of prioritizing people and profit (56:56) - Culture: recruit and retain vs offer and provide (58:66) - Culture: work for vs work with (01:02:57) - How to find a JeVon for your company (01:11:05) - Three most impactful books (01:13:14) - Who he's thankful to (01:16:59) - What it means to be a conscious creator (01:17:43) - What he's most excited for in the next 5-10 years

The fundamental thing to understand is that being a creator is not a normal job. Being able to create high-quality content, talk about products in interesting ways, and influence people to take an action - that's a skill set that the vast majority of people will never be able to do. — Justin Moore This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Justin Moore (@justinmooretfam) who is a Sponsorship Coach & the founder of @CreatorWizard, a school & community that teaches you how to find & negotiate your dream brand deals so that you stop leaving thousands on the table. Along with his wife April, he has been a full-time creator for over 8 years and has personally made over $4M working with brands. He also ran an influencer marketing agency for over 7 years that has helped other creators earn an additional $3M. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (01:47) - Justin's early years buying and selling art (08:05) - The connection between selling art and supporting creators (08:52) - How he went from selling art to creator to sponsorship coach (12:40) - The big mindset shift from their first paid YouTube partnership (15:04) - His operational evolution as a creator after the first paid collaboration (17:25) - Other mindset shifts from first paid engagement (19:42) - Rookie mistakes that most creators make (22:28) - Why he started sending brand deals for creators to his newsletter (26:54) - How sponsorships should fit into a creator business (29:54) - What they make now and their journey of growth (32:47) - Amazon Live and what they are doing right (35:15) - Amazon's approach to creators and how it's different from other platforms (37:39) - The mindset you need before you go talk to sponsors (43:15) - How to negotiate with brands (50:05) - Live example: how to decide what to charge brands (56:17) - Live Example: how to reach brands and pitch them (01:01:30) - The first time Justin and April pitched packages to a brand (01:07:02) - Building long-term relationships with brands (01:11:29) - How you can reach out to brands (01:15:29) - How to balance between being a creator x consultant for brands (01:17:07) - Big mistakes creators should watch out for when pitching (01:20:04) - How to think about exclusivity, paid media, and other ways you can charge brands (01:34:09) - Building and portraying confidence as a creator (1:37:31) - From pitching to getting paid (1:43:55) - Other mindset shifts to fine-tune yourself (1:46:59) - Three books that impacted his life the most (01:47:51) - One person Justin would like to thank (1:51:24) - His big 5-year goal and why he wants to help creators

When was the last time you'd been bored? So there's this new problem that's been created that we need to be online. It's more important, but at the same time, our time spent in the real world now has to be much more effective than it was before.” — Robbie Bent   This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with entrepreneur Robbie Bent. Robbie is the CEO and Founder of Othership which is a platform that includes physical spaces, a mobile app, a concert tour and a global community. They also run live breathwork concerts in NYC, LA, Miami and Austin. Prior to Othership, Robbie was an early employee at the Ethereum Foundation Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. (01:02) - Genesis and inspiration behind Othership (02:34) - Robbie's perspective on the direction of the world that is moving towards more and more time spent on screens (05:17) - How humans operate differently in a virtual world Vs real world (08:24) - Why he took the leap to make physical spaces instead of focusing on crypto (18:20) - Robbie's approach to designing spaces (24:36) - When do they know when to stop in terms of creating the best (27:00) - How do they apply reverse engineering during the design process (28:37) - How to facilitate more connections in online courses and communities (33:59) - Stories that fuel the inspiration and delight during his travels (36:10) - Robbie's history of dealing with addiction and visiting Iran (41:24) - What do most people don't understand about going through addictions (46:18) - Meditation Vs Breathwork (52:37) - How to unleash your creativity and bring that child-like wonder back (59:04) - How the name Othership came into the picture (01:04:45) - Bootstrapping Vs Venture-backed (01:14:52) - One person he is thankful to (01:19:82) - His definition of being a conscious creator (01:21:05) - What is he most excited about in the next 5-10 years

Most people don't understand that money is neutral. And like the amount of money you have is also your willingness to look at your money. So money has a lot to do with intimacy. Like I think most people are not good at taking care of money, but still, they want more. So it's not only about generating money. It's also about the ability to hold money. - Alisha This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with entrepreneur and business mentor Alisha Belluga (@alishabelluga). Alisha is the founder of IntuGrace. She is based in Germany and she helps business + lifestyle coaches, experts and trainers to create the business and business lifestyle of their wildest dreams with inner soul alignment and associated strategy. In this episode, Alisha shares her journey from zero to now an 8-figure business, her mindset about money, what makes her an unstoppable creative machine, advice for creators and why she wanted to start a podcast, working with Sachit, and building a #1 business podcast together. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA Resources Mentioned: The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery The Manifestation Babe Podcast Show Notes (01:27) - Growth IntuGrace had seen in the last few years (03:16) - What Alisha was doing before starting IntuGrace (04:33) - What it looked like before things started to work out (07:03) - Her early experiences in business (08:26) - How she builds a story for a brand (09:42) - What she was doing in business before doing IntuGrace (12:08) - What led to her creative destruction (13:17) - The moment she realized what deep-rooted thoughts were running her story and what happened after (15:07) - The transition phase and what got her to the other side (16:27) - How manifestations and other techniques helped her to change her identity (19:07) - How she used Chinese metaphysics to remove obstacles from her life (21:10) - Why she didn't talked about Chinese metaphysics earlier and what changed after (22:41) - Having two identities and how she navigated that (24:37) - Things she thought were a weakness earlier and now are strengths (27:43) - Going from 100K debt to 4.5 million in revenue (31:21) - Advice for creators on how to start building business (33:20) - Creating a story around a product - a live walkthrough (36:30) - The elements she added to make the products more fun and better (38:28) - Things that worked and things that didn't work in her storytelling course (40:27) - Alisha's school of product development - What will she teach? (42:00) - This episode is brought to you by CreatorsMBA (43:33) - Example of how she structured her courses as cinema (47:19) - Patterns she has recognized in the outside world and using to grow her business (49:50) - Elements she uses in her products to stand out (51:42) - How she uses points systems to create engagement (53:06) - How to build an engaging community and the importance of a community (56:30) - Are communities about the connections between the audience members? (59:14) - How does it feel to create communities where people can belong (01:00:33) - Stories of the impact that stand out (01:02:18) - Why do creators have a hard time accepting compliments (01:04:42) - Going from chase to the craft (01:05:17) - What happens after when she was earning 500K (01:07:58) - Why she was selling products for a higher price range (01:09:22) - Insecurities and fears that lead to really good business decisions (01:10:22) - Why she keeps building businesses from scratch (01:11:43) - Identity shifting and how it works (01:15:15) - Top 5 identity shifts she made that helped her to achieve so much success in business (01:19:16) - How she jumps to the next version of herself (01:21:44) - What are the things she subtracted to go from 1 million to the current revenue (01:25:06) - How creators with small audiences can earn millions in revenue (01:28:06) - Customer progression from a stranger to membership in her business (01:32:07) - What most people misunderstand about money (01:38:43) - Generating vs Keeping Vs Investing Money (01:41:43) - The business and creative sides of Alisha (01:43:09) - How to become an unstoppable creative machine (01:49:36) - Mapping an ecosystem and the role it plays in course creation (01:53:07) - Why she started a podcast (01:55:27) - Her podcasting journey (01:58:54) - In an ideal situation how will her podcast look like in 3 years (02:00:12) - Her experience of working with Sachit (02:03:43) - Thoughts on fame before and after the podcasting journey (02:07:25) - What it feels like to have financial freedom (02:09:43) - Is the growth worth it? (02:11:18) - Her fears for the next phase of growth (02:14:13) - Alisha's core skillset (02:15:55) - Books and podcasts recommendations (02:17:24) - One piece of wisdom that changed the game for her (02:18:58) - One person she wants to thank (02:21:13) - What it means to be a Conscious Creator (02:22:28) - What she's most excited about in the next 5 years

“If you shouldn't be the CEO, don't be the CEO. There's a lot of baggage that comes with being the CEO or the COO where you're like in charge of all the people or in charge of moving the business forward in a way - make sure you're really the person that should be at the helm of the company” — Jenny Thompson This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with entrepreneur Jenny Thompson. Jenny is the founder and CEO of SafetyPIN. She is a mission-driven business leader and natural-born marketer who knows how to build and promote companies for the benefit of shareholders, employees, and customers. Her skills include strategic business development, customer acquisition and retention, win-win negotiations, marketing strategy, business "pruning," and idea-driven marketing and product development. She spent 20 years at The Agora Companies, most as the CEO of NewMarket Health. During that time, she grew the company from $2 million to $70 million, oversaw the migration of the company's marketing from 100% direct mail to 100% online, and was responsible for 14 brands. Jenny left NewMarket to start SafetyPIN Technologies, an innovative trust badge that incorporates criminal history and an exclusive behavioral assessment. Designed mainly for the gig and sharing economies, as well as dating apps, SafetyPIN lets you see – at a glance – if someone you met online is safe to meet offline. She's also the creator of the 3-Day Business Cleanse, a novel process that helps companies get “unstuck” using a review, eliminate, and rebuild philosophy. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Thank you to Cathryn Lavery (see her episode here) for her help with background and research on this episode. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. Resources mentioned: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership - John Maxwell Show Notes: 01:11 - Your toolbox as a creator to navigate conflicts 04:53 - How to navigate conflicts 08:45 - Questions to ask yourself to navigate business and your role as a leader and creator 12:49 - Lessons Jenny learned during her time at Agora 17:24 - Why customer support should be the biggest priority of a company 21:09 - Lessons to keep in mind while building a team 24:33 - How to decide whether you should be the CEO or not? 27:40 - Why you shouldn't trust too soon 31:14 - Is paranoia a normal part of being a CEO? 33:40 - How Jenny managed her psychology during her career 37:34 - Decor vs culture: why most CEOs get culture wrong 40:59 - How to make business and life decisions using the grandmother test 43:10 - Building SafetyPIN and what's next for Jenny 47:24 - How Jenny defines a conscious creator

Warning: This audio episode contains material that may be disturbing or traumatizing to some audience Fear is unconscious. It's insidious. It's silent. Fear knows everything we know. It knows every book we've read and knows everything we've ever done and uses against us to keep us safe. Although you can transcend fear, you can master it, but you can't eliminate it. This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Life Coach and Best Selling Author Rhonda Britten(@rhondabritten). Rhonda is the founder and CEO of Fearless Living Institue. She is also an Emmy Award Winner and a repeat Oprah Guest. In this conversation, they discuss how fame has two sides, what is fear and tools to transcend the fear. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show About Rhonda Britten An Emmy-Award winner and repeat Oprah guest, Rhonda was the first Life Coach on reality television in the world on the first show of its kind, Life Doctor (Second Season the series name was changed to Help Me Rhonda). Next, Rhonda changed lives on the hit NBC reality show Starting Over and named its “most valuable player” by The New York Times and heralded as “America's Favorite Life Coach” by TV Guide. To date, Rhonda has altered lives in over 600 episodes of reality television that aired in more than 25 countries and impacted millions worldwide. Rhonda is a recipient of the “Smart Women of the Year” Award, “Coach of the Year,” a blog favorite at HuffingtonPost.com, speaks at TedX and for numerous corporations and organizations such as; Southwest Airlines, Blue Shield of California, Northrup Grumman, and many more. Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. Resources mentioned: Fearless Living Training Program - Rhonda Britten Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regret - Rhonda Britten 11 Reasons Not to Become Famous by Tim Ferriss Show Notes: 01:03 - Why Fear? 08:16 - How fear is stopping you from achieving your full potential as a creator 09:29 - The experience of winning an Emmy and going on Oprah 12:56 - The dark side of fame 16:25 - The positive side of fame 19:39 - How Rhonda re-built herself after TV 23:00 - What is Fear? 25:43 - How to know whether you're driven by fear or not 28:09 - Is fear about the unknown and how to prepare for it 32:29 - The journey of “Who Am I” 35:17 - The burden of unrealistic expectations on yourself 37:57 - The wheel of fear - a tool to help you transcend your fears 45:18 - How fear evolves as you evolve 50:30 - Other tools to help you deal with fear

Schools are driven to give lectures and homework. But the reality is you actually learn by building stuff. The lecture is there but vaguely useful. You learn the exact amount as you spend fingers on the keyboard – writing code. If you're not fingers on the keyboard writing code whatever you do is going to round to zero. This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with entrepreneur Austen Allred (@Austen). Austen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bloom Institute of Technology (previously Lambda School). In this conversation, they discuss how Bloom's way of approaching education is different than traditional colleges, Income Share Agreements vs Outcome-Based Loans, the thought process behind building Bloom Tech, and where they're headed. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. Show Notes: 01:02 - Core insights that drive Bloom 03:01 - How Bloom defines student success 05:39 - Students not paying upfront and creating skin in the game 08:11 - Student Loans vs ISA vs Outcome-based Loan models 15:32 - How hiring companies make education  free for the students 17:37 - The criteria for finding the right applicants 21:41 - Is there a reverse correlation between imposter syndrome and intelligence? 24:05 - Austen's early background 27:23 - How Bloom helps students get disproportionate results 31:39 - Instructional design - not one curriculum for every student but one curriculum for each one 33:14 - The experiential learning and platform 40:32 - The seamless integration of admissions, school, and matchmaking 43:54 - The future of Bloom Tech and managing the quality while scaling

“Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. It has a huge amplification to all aspects, to performance, motivation, productivity, learning, creativity, innovation” — Steven Kotler This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with New York Times bestselling author, and award-winning journalist  Steven Kotler (@steven_kotler). Steven is the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. In this conversation, they discuss the meaning of exponential technology, the future of content creators, how to ask the right questions, getting into the state of flow, and about his new upcoming book. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA. Resources mentioned: “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” - Peter H. Diamonds & Steven Kotler “A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life” - Steven Kotler “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” - David Epstein “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't” - Jim Collins “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change” - Stephen R. Covey - but in a negative context Show Notes: 00:27 - What is exponential technology? 04:48 - Disruptions in the world of entertainment 15:41 - How to think about the future as a content creator 24:59 - How to get into the flow state (22 flow triggers) 30:11 - Why devotion to craft is all that matters 33:24 - Success as a compound interest function 34:56 - Steven's framework to learn anything 40:14 - How Steven picks what to learn and write about 42:01 - How to get better at asking questions 45:43 - #1 way to win in life and career 47:08 - How he and his co-author came up with the title of his new book 50:58 - How to find your extraordinary

If you don't have self-awareness, you think you are God and can do everything. And I'm sure many entrepreneurs have tried that and we all fail when we try to do everything because there are things I'm really good at and things I'm terrible at. And I think if you've got some awareness of that, it makes it a lot easier to hire the right people to do the things you suck at - Juliet Starrett This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Entrepreneur and Philanthropist, Juliet Starrett (@julietstarrett). Juliet is the Co-founder and CEO of The Ready State. She is also the founder of the nonprofit Stand Up Kids. In this conversation, they discuss building a business as a couple, self-awareness, taking smart risks in a career, and stories from running and building businesses for more than a decade. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA Show Notes: 00:51 - How Sachit and Juliet met at the Baby Bathwater Institute 04:11 - Why Juliet left her career as a lawyer and chose to be an entrepreneur 16:25 - Two strategies on navigating risky career decisions 18:40 - How Juliet and Kelly cultivate a mindset of entrepreneurship in their kids 21:24 - What most people get wrong about the 4-Hour Workweek 22:14 - Tools to become more self-aware 26:17 - Lessons from building and managing a team 30:41 - Juliet's strengths as an entrepreneur and manager 34:35 - Lessons and stories from running a business with a spouse 40:02 - How they balance their different ambitions 41:25 - The inspiration behind the rebrand for The Ready State 48:46 - What next for The Ready State and Juliet

Look at everything with curiosity. Look at everything with an open mind. Don't take shortcuts. I think that is so important when you are building something because it's important to have that north star. Sometimes that can change but how you get there is always gonna change. — Dave Nemetz This week Sachit (@sachitgupta) chats with Entrepreneur, Startup Advisor, and Angel Investor – Dave Nemetz (@davenemetz). Dave is the founder of Bleacher Report and Inverse (both acquired). In this conversation, they discuss Web 3 and its impact on media companies, building a small team as a creator, his journey of building and selling companies, and lessons from entrepreneurship. Find the show notes of the episode here - https://www.creators.show Follow our host, Sachit Gupta on Twitter and sign up for the Creators Collective Newsletter. Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the Creators MBA Resources mentioned: Creator, meet operator - Dave Nemetz Founder - Creator - Investor - Dave Nemetz Show Notes: 01:03 -  Building a media company in Web3 and how it will be different 14:23 -  Web 3 and investing world 17:58 - Projects that Dave is excited about and invested in 23:13 - What inspired him to be a creator 25:01 - The insecurities that stopped him from becoming a creator earlier 27:43 - Difference being a creator vs running a big company 29:36 - Examples of creators with small teams and overview of their operations 31:11 - The steps of building a great team 33:55 - Patterns in Founders - Creators - Investors 38:56 - Start of Bleacher Report during a trip across Europe 44:30  - The pivotal decisions that made Bleacher Report successful 51:16 - How he spent his time between Bleacher and Inverse 54:22 - Tools that helped during his wandering phase 57:37 - Difference in environment and approaches during building: Bleacher Vs Inverse 67:04 - Philosophies and guiding principle of Dave's to navigate entrepreneurship 71:35 - How to be focused even after being successful 73:00 - Final thoughts

”Your subconscious' job is for you to be alive tomorrow. It's not for you to be successful. So it wants you to be fed. It wants to have a roof over your head, and it wants you to have a partner, and to reproduce effectively. So long as all of those things are in place, more success could potentially bring risk because it's changed, and your subconscious doesn't particularly like change.” — Elliot Roe Our guest is Elliot Roe (@ElliotRoe1), a leading expert in Mindset Optimization for High Performers and the world's #1 Mindset Coach for poker players. In just the last 3 years his poker clients have won over $50,000,000 and nearly every major tournament title, including the World Series of Poker Main Event. His clientele also includes Olympic Medalists, UFC champions, Hollywood actors, business executives, and wall street traders. In this episode listen to hear: How self-sabotage is preventing you from unlocking your full potential Why recommendations and referrals are the best recognition for a coach Growth mindset and navigating competitive environments How to face challenges in a team of high performers Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get in touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Books mentioned: “Relentless” by Tim S. Grover Show Notes 01:04 - The methods Elliot uses to unlock the full potential of top performers 04:18 - About the levels of self-sabotage and its implications on performance 06:29 - How Elliot's career path took a turn, and the lessons learned 08:41 - The importance of having recommendations, besides knowledge, for coaching 10:39 - Why rapport is the biggest factor in deciding the success of coaching business 13:53 - Different approaches and types of coaching 15:58 - On setting up the process and how to build a relationship for success 19:16 - What lies behind the mindset of becoming the best 21:52 - How not to be overwhelmed with success and competition 25:34 - Why growth mindset is the game-changer 27:47 - The challenges when building a team of high performers 31:48 - How people's mental program hold them back and Elliot's way of dealing with it 34:49 - What it really takes to become one of the best in your field 36:48 - The importance of a coach 39:06 - How he practices his own coaching methods to stay on top 41:26 - The benefits of regression hypnotherapy 45:54 - Why the subtle clues are crucial for progress both personally and professionally 49:22 - How he puts into practice deep regression vs. pressure during the hypnotherapy process 51:51 - The difference between Audio vs. Video sessions 53:17 - About the idea, criteria and requirements of setting your own coaching business 57:15 - How Elliot manages with the coaching ecosystem 59:58 - Why the prices on the coaching market should match the value offered 64:54 - The essence of building a good reputation in this industry 66:58 - Elliot's advice on mindset growth and optimization for constant progress Tweetable Quotes “If you have the knowledge of what you need to do, but you're not doing those things, that's where it's a mindset issue. And that's why you'd be working with a mindset coach.” - Elliot Roe “The idea that that failure is something to accept and it's part of the process. There are a lot of people who get stuck on this idea. If I fail, it is wrong, they create a fear of failure and then they don't put in a 100% effort.”- Elliot Roe “The high-performers have more of that growth mindset and they accept that failure is just a route to success. It's just something to learn from.” - Elliot Roe “If you have someone who is literally as driven, as motivated as you are, probably they're not going to stay working with you for that long because it's very difficult.”- Elliot Roe "The good performer can get away with blaming the staff and the high-performer will take responsibility and then try and learn the lessons from it. It's the fixed versus growth mindset.” - Elliot Roe “Doing that deep emotional work makes a significant difference in the chances of reaching that level of success."- Elliot Roe “The very simplistic program running from the seven-year-old you that was embarrassed in front of the class still thinks it's keeping you safe rather than thinking it's being a detriment to you.” - Elliot Roe “You want your issues. You've learned your issues. So if you say I'm an angry person, you've just learned to be angry. If you think you're an anxious person you've learned to be anxious. If you look at life from that framing, it gives you a lot more space to evolve than if you look at things that you're just fixed as a certain way.” - Elliot Roe About Our Guest Elliot Roe (@ElliotRoe1) is a leading expert in Mindset Optimization for High Performers and is the world's #1 Mindset Coach for poker players. In just the last 3 years his poker clients have won over $50,000,000 and nearly every major tournament title, including the World Series of Poker Main Event. His clientele also includes Olympic Medalists, UFC Champions, Hollywood Actors, Business executives, and wall street traders. From his early days, in his twenties, he realized he had a fear of flying. This prevented him to be a part of some amazing experiences, on top of feeling embarrassed and stupid from knowing that fear was holding him back. One of Elliot's friends, trying to help him, suggested hypnotherapy as a solution. Skeptical in the beginning but ready for digging the root of the problem, he opened up to the memory that was holding him back. Returning to his travel freedom, free of stress and anxiety, Elliot signed up for hypnotherapy training, since it had such a huge impact on his life, so much so, he felt compelled to pay it forward. The passion he has had to this day is seeing others achieve their maximum potential. His unique mindset coaching system leverages the power of hypnotherapy to eliminate fears and breakthrough mental roadblocks allowing you to operate in a state of peak performance every day. You can get in touch with him on his website or twitter, or on the #1 Mindset App: Primed Mind.

“I came to realize that as the influencer, you're your own best marketer, you're your own best advocate, you know your audience best, you know your content best, and people want to hear from you anyway.” – Tessa Arias Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience. In today's episode, Tessa Arias, founder of Handle the Heat, shares her experience going from a hobby-blogger to published author and social influencer. What I love about Tessa's background is she's grown a platform online mostly organically, reaching audience numbers that a lot of my friends who spend a ton on paid ads aren't even able to reach.  We also get super tactical into her experience working with sponsors and partnerships and how Tessa now acts as an advisor for companies wanting to work with influencers. We close with her experience going back into the world of publishing and why she's self-publishing her next cookbook.   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today's episode — click here to send a Tweet directly to Tessa and Sachit or find Tessa on Instagram.  Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Episode Highlights:  Tessa began as a hobby blogger with no expectations of making money, until she was offered a book deal in 2012. Even though she was making money from her website, she didn't feel like it was a real business, so she started attending Masterminds to learn more. Tessa found she needed the emotional support of having a team of like-minded people around her. Someone can have a six or seven-figure business, but hate their business and not feel fulfilled by their life. Find groups and resources where you're actually getting advice and tools that you can implement. Surround yourself with people who understand and respect that you are the one who knows your business and yourself the best. Bringing someone else into your business forces you to operate at a higher level. You don't need to post on major job sites; look within your own community first. For example, Tessa hired through Instagram at first. When hiring, Tessa suggests you ask them to tell a story about a time they overcame a challenge, and ask them their opinion about something trivial to see that they can make a commitment and not be a yes-person. Tessa realized she was approaching burnout when she stopped feeling excited about her work. Growing your business depends on being flexible and adapting to the changing online landscape. Tessa challenged herself to post something every quarter that is more controversial or more personal and that scares her. If you buy a course online, make sure you have an accountability buddy to do it. Her past experiences with sponsored posts were formulaic and based on how other food bloggers did it, but she learned from Sachit and others how to build larger partnerships and create relationships from sponsorships. Through her success with building partnership relationships, Tessa has become a case study and an advisor for how brands should work with influencers. Tessa learned to ask open-ended questions of her sponsors to understand how their organizations work so she learns what would work best for both of them. No one opens Instagram excited to see sponsored content, so you should prioritize sponsorships that work with content you already post organically and that you care about and whose products you use. Question your assumptions that something has to be done a certain way. Sell your own content to your audience and remind them of the work that goes into it. The most important fundamental skills you need to be a successful published author are marketing and sales. Tessa is writing a second cookbook but is self-publishing it. The hardest part is marketing the book for pre-sale while creating it in order to fund it at the same time. Don't do something you don't like just to see if it'll be successful, because if it is successful, you'll have to continue doing something you hate. If you're bored with your content and the content others in your niche are putting out, do something surprising. Tessa's favorite part of her job is the ability to do whatever she wants when she wants to and to structure her day how she feels comfortable.   3 Key Takeaways: Give yourself the space to be creative and stay recharged and excited about your work. It's important to build relationships with sponsorships, partnerships, and PR representatives. You can have a big impact on every person who takes the time to follow, subscribe, or comment.   Tweetable Quotes: “I think the biggest thing for me was realizing I couldn't do it by myself and I didn't want to do it by myself. Owning an online business can be really isolating, you're not in a room full of people unless you choose to be.” –Tessa Arias “Following someone else's definition of success means that you have no intention or vision for yourself.” –Tessa Arias “The things I complain to my friends about in private, sometimes, those conversations need to be made public, because you're going to find your true fans and followers.” –Tessa Arias “Working with a sponsor gives you resources that you wouldn't have otherwise.” –Tessa Arias “I came to realize that as the influencer, you're your own best marketer, you're your own best advocate, you know your audience best, you know your content best, and people want to hear from you anyway.” –Tessa Arias “When you feel like you're at a plateau, do something surprising to yourself and for your audience.” –Tessa Arias   Resources Mentioned:   Later: Post scheduler for Instagram Tailwind: Pinterest and Instagram scheduler Tessa's Blog: Handletheheat.com  Find Tessa: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today's episode — click here to send a Tweet directly to Tessa and Sachit or find Tessa on Instagram.  Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.  

Today's episode is a bit different! I'm excited to announce the launch of the CreatorsMBA; a 3-week online program that helps creators (podcasters, authors, YouTubers, newsletter writers, Instagram's, and more) with the mindsets, tools and skills they need to get paid and grow their business sustainably. Today's episode is an excerpt from the program on how to get and keep sponsors (full video with slides included here). When it comes to sponsorships and partnerships, podcasters and creators are leaving money on the table. The rise of the Creators' Economy and the recent changes by Apple's around privacy has created a massive gap in the market. Brands are actively looking for podcasters, influencers, and creators to collaborate and there's a multi-billion dollar ad market that's ripe for disruption. This post will teach how to take advantage of this change, based on our experience helping creators generate millions in sponsorship revenue. The best part, they've done this while keeping creative control and without feeling like they're selling out. In this excerpt from our full course module, we cover the following topics: How to find the right partner for your audience Understanding ROI and what brands are looking for How to help brands improve their ROI to increase your earnings How many partnerships do you actually need? (you'll be surprised) Why you should say NO to brands that don't align with your audience Whether you're running a blog, a podcast, a newsletter or an IG/YouTube page, this excerpt will help you sign partnerships with top brands. Enjoy!

“No matter how clueless you might feel, someone else out there is willing to help you and can teach you something. One of the best decisions I've made, being able to let go and say, Hey, I don't know how to do this. Let me ask someone who does know how to do this.” — Thanh Pham Thanh Pham (@asianefficiency), the Founder of Asian Efficiency, is our guest today. In 2008, he dropped out of college and started as an entry-level marketing associate at a life coaching business in Los Angeles, CA. Through sheer hard work, working long days and his commitment for excellence, they promoted him to be the VP of marketing. This is where he realized he had to work smarter and be more productive with the limited time he had. Today he sits with me to share his journey and success. Tune in to learn: The mindset switch creators have to make to intertwine personal stories with their brand How to onboard and match multiple personalities on the team when their talents' variety The core principles of establishing happiness in your workflow How a 4 day work week led to an improvement in employee NPS How to build a team of cross-functional generalists How to implement a systematic approach to hire people and upgrade their skill set to be efficiently productive Why you should never be discouraged to ask for help to grow your business Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get in touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Books and resources mentioned in the podcast: “Scaling up”  by Verne Harnish “Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat”  by Michael Masterson “WHO” by Geoff Smart “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose”  by Tony Hsieh How to Get Started with An Executive Assistant w/ Tim Francis (TPS190) Show Notes 01:59 - About the switch in the mindset that creators have to make 05:05 - On telling personal stories through your brand, and the drawbacks 06:30 - The core principles of the brand as a pillar of success and stability/consistency 09:20 - What a variety of characters can bring to the quality of work and relations 13:01 - How being interested and indirectly present in different industries can be an eye opening experience for you 17:50 - Why you should apply challenges and other insights to your way of work 20:37 - How to find the winning intersection of skills and characters 24:08 - Charting the growth of business step by step with Thanh, from operational/business to team perspective 28:47 - Diving into the tips & tricks on hiring an EA 31:14 - The detail/explicit process behind the decision making guidelines on your path to efficiency 35:18 - How to identify and implement the specific principles of your own happiness 40:01 - The scheme in organizing your personal life 42:46 - About Thanh's journey through hiring and delegating, including his strategic approach 49:08 - What does the systematic process of building a team look like for Thanh? An original perspective on a mix of skills. 55:43 - The Individual Development Programme as a way to growth by upgrading your skill set 58:13 - What is the DNA meeting? 60:54 - How you can learn from mistakes, from Thanh's point of view 65:54 - The insider story on recruiting and building the relation with the COO of Asian Efficiency 72:13 - Why is it important for Thanh to create a bigger number of SOPs every month? 74:17 - What are the tradeoffs of growing a business? 79:41 - How he benefits from the parties hosted by him 84:36 - The social psychology behind paying the bill 88:00 - On the challenges of understanding the female mind from a male perspective 90:04 - Why feeling clueless should not discourage you ever? Tweetable Quotes “I teach people how to be productive at work and in life. And so I'm always looking for people who have a passion for productivity and have a passion for teaching or how.”- Thanh Pham “In the beginning phases, it's all about scaling yourself. Meaning you're the one who knows everything. So the more time you can free up for yourself. The more you can grow. Right?”- Thanh Pham “I'm happy to lose face if we can preserve the relationship where the contact or the other person feels good about themselves. And so that to me is always very important.” - Thanh Pham “When I think about strategy for my personal life, what I would try to maximize for is essential to happiness. I'm trying to maximize unique experiences, memory, and ultimately happiness.” - Thanh Pham “I really want to communicate to everyone that hiring is a skill like anything else that you can get better at.” - Thanh Pham “Ask yourself at least once a year if you go through every single person in your company, you ask yourself, would I rehire this person again?” - Thanh Pham “The quality of our happiness comes from the relationships we have with people and the better relationships we have, the happier we are.” - Thanh Pham “I want to build more deeper, meaningful relationships with people and actually get to know them as people, not who they are, what they do for work, but actually know their stories, what they believe in what they stand for, what their hopes and aspirations are, you know, who they were when they were little kids, that kind of stuff.” - Thanh Pham “I'm just learning as we're going and people know that it's all done in good fun, and that we're all learning from each other. And to me, that's the most important thing about being open-minded enough to learn about different perspectives that I would never think.” - Thanh Pham About Our Guest Thanh Pham (@asianefficiency) is the Founder of Asian Efficiency. In 2008, he dropped out of college and started as an entry-level marketing associate at a life coaching business in Los Angeles, CA. Through sheer hard work, working long days and his commitment for excellence, they promoted him to be the VP of marketing. Facing failures on the way to the top he realized he had to work smarter and be more productive with the limited time he had. Today, he has the No.1 podcast on productivity, called “The Productivity Show” where he shares his vast knowledge and expertise on productivity, time management, and efficiency to achieve your goals in record time. He also holds the top spot with his blog on Productivity & Time Management. Having established the foundational set of principles, Thanh has mastered the optimal efficiency, and in 2011 founded Asian Efficiency, the No.1 personal efficiency platform in the world. Thanh is regarded as a thought leader in the field of productivity. Forbes, The Guardian, Fast Company and Inc.com have all written about him. Thanh is passionate about assisting people in completing their to-do lists by lunchtime, allowing them to maximize their productivity. He believes that getting things done should not require sacrificing one's health or personal life. As a thought leader who gives lectures on productivity, efficiency, and time management all around the world you can contact him on his website or his Instagram account.

"I think there's a difference between being scared that it's going to leave, than being respectful that it's going to be over. when you respect it, you have time and space in your heart to actually enjoy the experience. When you're scared of it, that's the only feeling that you have." — Will Matthews Will Matthews is a former professional football player who played for the Detroit Lions in the NFL turned entrepreneur, and a musician. In this soulful conversation, Will shares his story of playing in the NFL, starting from early childhood and then transitioning to music and business. Here's some of what we cover: How “What do you want to be when you grow up?” can define or inspire you at an early age Will takes us behind the curtains of the NFL with personal stories, including playing with the 0.1% of the 0.1% He talks about the wisdom he gained on and off the football field Why you should follow your passion and life goals without compromising your values He takes us deeper into his music world and opens up with a melody Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get it touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Show Notes 01:03 - Why Will chose the football career 03:15 - How he decided to pursue sport over medicine 06:32 - The life lessons that arise from pain and defeat, and the art of overcoming it 13:03 - About the psychological journey through the overwhelming opportunities in life 13:27 - How Will dealt with his first impression of the business aspect of NFL 20:50 - The feeling he had while playing in the stadium for the first time in the team 22:26 - How the implications of the precious time spent with his sons reflect across all events in his everyday life 27:52 - Will's personal insights behind being a professional NFL player 32:15 - What are his favorite fun memories on and off-field 34:33 - On his acquired wisdom as a part of a sports team 38:20 - Why he made the transition from football to music 42:21 - How he found a way to channel his passion for music 44:34 - Will's view on finding your path w/o diminishing your own values 48:38 - On changing the goal post on what failure and success look like through changing the perspective of what life really is 50:41 - About sharing the same universal feeling of connection whether famous or not, and the human aspect in every approach 54:33 - The marketing strategy behind the media personas 56:25 - What are Will's future plans Tweetable Quotes “I had a lot of energy, football helped me get it out and I made friends. And then when I got a little older, I found out that girls like football players too, so well, that's that then? Huh?” - Will Matthews “People don't have a history with pain and overcoming pain. So I feel the difference between people who have” - Will Matthews “Life needs texture, and we can do good or bad, whether I win the deal or lose the deal” - Will Matthews “If you want to change the machine, the thing that you're passionate about, you're called to, I would say you need to get inside of it from inside. You can be the person to make the decisions, to help change things for other people.” - Will Matthews “I think you have time in your heart to actually enjoy the experience when you're scared of it.” - Will Matthews “I think everybody aspires to be the anomaly. And I think that there are a few of them.” - Will Matthews “My guitar was a way that I channeled all of that energy outside of football that needed to be put somewhere that creative energy.” - Will Matthews “When you can do what you want to do, don't let a dream die because you don't have time, let everything live, go after it and be great” - Will Matthews “All I want to do is take something that's good and make it great.” - Will Matthews About Our Guest A self-professed "challenge junky" Will Matthews has an appetite for winning. That's why whether it's commercial real estate, consulting, speaking, or advocacy Will brings his A-game and gets the job done. A strategic business leader and entrepreneur who believes in creating win-win solutions for businesses and the communities they support. He cares about mental health, racial equity, and economic responsibility, driven to live at the cross-section of profit and purpose. In another life, Will played football for the Texas Longhorns (@TexasLonghorns) and spent his pro career with the Detroit Lions (@Lions). When he is not charting into the unknown, he focuses on physical health, giving back, writing music, and being a family man. Will has teamed up with his friends at Notley Tide to put a series of events together aimed at helping business leaders, influencers, and decision-makers gain a deeper understanding of equity in the workplace. He is also proud to be the 2020 NAMIWalks Honorary Chair. NAMI advocates for mental health for all.

“Any idea is a hypothetical solution to a problem. It is basically spending time to figure out if your solution to the problem is the right problem to solve first of all”— Hiten Shah Our guest today is Hiten Shah (@hnshah), co-Founder and CEO at Nira. Hiten has started multiple software companies since 2003 including Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Nira. Here are some of the topics we discuss: Two approaches to entrepreneurship — the difference between pirates vs. explorers Hiten talks about his own approach and helps you understand which one you should choose Finding the courage to be disliked in order to progress His personal development journey and how it's reflected in his professional life Product development and Hiten's approach to solutions and problems Why you should base your product on people's stories over what they say they want Just a quick note: this episode was recorded last year (2020). Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here, and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get it touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Show Notes 01:14 - Building a business as a Pirate vs. Explorer 03:29 - How innovation can happen 06:01 - The building of business with Hiten's explorer tendencies and the pioneering outcomes 11:41 - The importance of self-awareness, being genuine to yourself as a framework 16:47 - How you can value yourself more while respecting your personal goals 21:53 - Why is better to have a conversation, or when is better to ask a friend than to ask Google 23:28 - The Ups and Downs of building a business 28:26 - How to get rid of stress by finding the answer within yourself 34:46 - Your way to finding a path to be non-judgmental 35:44 - The implications of self-awareness on pirates vs. explorers 37:17 - What Hiten wants other founders to know to progress professionally and personally 43:12 - The style of content on Hiten's blog and research work, and his intentions behind it 48:35 - Tips for self-care while on the emotional startup rollercoaster 52:50 - How does the process of developing a framework for a product look like for Hiten 56:55 - The role of stories in defining the audience and their problems, and how to reach a solution 64:00 - Should you use intuition or stories or data on the product development journey? 66:52 - The principle of “measure twice, cut once” as a way of dealing with confirmation bias 69:58 - The power of talking on a podcast vs 1:1 conversation for learning and advice for current and potential funders 76:51 - On getting the right answer when facing with a conflicting advice 77:24 - How by being an example he can be of the biggest help 81:20 - The future envisioned by Hiten Tweetable Quotes "You can tell when someone is self-aware because they are able to clearly articulate why they are doing something, and how they are doing." — Hiten Shah “A pirate wants to see what's out there in order to copy it. An explorer wants to see what's out there in order to go against it and do the opposite.” — Hiten Shah “In reality, our collective experiences don't exist, there is only individualistic experience, which means we are all dreaming.” — Hiten Shah “The impact you can have on yourself and self-improvement on your mental health to understand what triggers you and why, and digging into it, is tremendous in order to look at actions as an observer, instead of a participant.” — Hiten Shah “The more prescriptive you are about the things you're doing, the more you keep it as close to business as possible and not personal.” — Hiten Shah “The children were taught to live with certainty, and that is not the world we live in anymore.” — Hiten Shah “Great product developers are good at intuitively knowing the problem, not intuitively knowing the solution.” — Hiten Shah “You save your creativity for the solution. Don't push your creativity on the problems.” — Hiten Shah About Our Guest Hiten Shah (@hnshah) is the Co-Founder and CEO at Nira. He has started multiple software companies since 2003 including Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Nira. He also has a blog Hitenism in which he shares all the news and personal knowledge for anyone interested in SaaS businesses. Hiten builds data-driven solutions to help online businesses make better business decisions at KissMetrics. Hiten Shah serves as a Venture Advisor at 15Five, Inc., SpacePencil Inc., and Lean Startup Machine Inc. He serves as Advisor of Bitium Inc. Additionally, he Co-Founded Crazy Egg & Quick Sprout, an analytics tool that visualizes the user experience on a website. He serves as a Consultant of 500 Startups. Hiten Shah served as Advisor of CatchFree, Inc., iSocket, Inc., and Drumbi Inc. he advises startups about metrics, product & marketing. He started on the Internet by founding an Internet marketing consultancy, ACS. Hiten Shah serves as a Member of the Advisory Board of Recurly, Inc. He serves as a Member of the Advisory Board at DailyFeats, Inc. He serves as a Member of the Advisory Board at Classy, Inc.

“Unfortunately, humans today are operating on an open-loop system, where every action you take is without feedback"— Josh Clemente A mechanical engineer and CrossFit-L2 trainer Josh Clemente (@joshuasforrest) is the founder and president of the breakthrough company for health, wellness, and fitness, Levels. Josh shapes the future by helping you gain insight on your metabolic health through personalized data. The life journey he takes us on starts with his work at SpaceX, and tells of inspiring stories, challenges and success. Here are some of the topics we discuss: Why curiosity and courage will lead you to success. Josh talks about his life journey from FBI to Space X What ignited the spark in him to take the wellness journey He opens about his personal struggles and solutions He talks about his work at Levels, how it all started and kept getting better Why everyday decisions have an impact on your health Josh talks about the holistic wellness approach with the help of bio-wearables How insights from data can be used for a greater good Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get it touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Show Notes 0:30 - The time when Josh was building assault machines for the FBI 3:00 - Story of how Josh got a job at SpaceX 7:13 - What are the lessons learned from FBI and Space X that Josh applied to his personal and professional life? 9:32 - How Josh is applying Elon Muck's first principles to build Levels? 13:07 - Why is there a stigma around using technology in the health industry? 15:58 - A high stakes work with tight deadlines redirecting him to holistic wellness, and a new look at life 21:12 - Hurdles and problems Josh faced in moving from Space X to Levels 24:56 - The secret behind a great team. How do people connect to deliver impressive results and scalable solutions? 27:42 - How Josh got comfortable working with people better and smarter than him and why he thinks it is necessary to work with people who are smarter than you? 29:19 - What mistakes you can learn from Josh and people working on Levels 32:00 - The power of never giving up and settling for being practical rather than passionate 36:18 - Original conversations on the straightforward road to success with Sam, his co-founder at Levels 38:07 - The process of building a network in health and wellness 41:02 - The process behind building a product like Levels and how to actually use data to take some actions. 43:09 - Example of a surprising product decision that led to changing actions for the users 46:27 - Learnings and insights by studying data on metabolism. 51:49 - Prevention as a purpose of medicine by being in control of your health based on data and the future implications of it. 55:04 - What is the line regarding the amount of data people should have to make an informed decision and not create panic in their heads 57:22 - The future of bio-wearables in all walks of life 61:04 - How are homeschooling and building teams correlated? 61:06 - The funny story behind his nickname GQ Tweetable Quotes “We want LeBron James in a game wearing the Level's logo because that demonstrates this is not a technology that you need to be embarrassed of.  It's a tech that you're wearing to be the best you can be and to completely take control of your lifestyle.” - Josh Clemente “When was the last time you used your own health information to make a decision? The answer is inevitably never” - Josh Clemente “I just thought I need better information. I have no objective data that is guiding my decisions every day. And that's just crazy. I mean, who knows if I'm getting healthier or less healthy every single day.” - Josh Clemente “As I got deeper and deeper into the data, it was just crazy how straight forward the connections were between glucose dysfunction, insulin dysfunction, and like all of the chronic illnesses that the US and in all developing countries are rampantly, sort of causing mortality.” - Josh Clemente “Having a large dataset is not useful, but having really targeted insights built on huge amounts of data is” - Josh Clemente “If you want to do something and  you don't understand why something is done, the way that it is, start from the basic principles, don't get caught up in any of the fluff and distraction of what someone else has done” - Josh Clemente About Our Guest A mechanical engineer and CrossFit-L2 trainer Josh Clemente (@joshuasforrest) is the founder and president of the breakthrough company for health, wellness, and fitness, Levels. Josh shapes the future by helping you gain insight on your metabolic health through personalized data. The life journey he takes us on starts with his work at SpaceX, and tells of inspiring stories, challenges and success. In 2019, Josh founded Levels, continuing his personal quest in the professional health sphere. In 2010, he left SpaceX after almost 6 years in the role of Lead Life Support Systems Engineer. Defining the future of nutrition technology and metabolic fitness, and focusing on health as the road to happiness, Josh truly shows us what it means to follow our passion.

“ I think it is incredibly important to always remember that art can not save us. Art will not save us. Art is not the means... art is not the vehicle that changes the material lived conditions of people's lives." — Deana Haggag In today's episode, we're speaking with Deana Haggag (@dhaggag), Program Officer at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She's also the former President & CEO of United States Artists where she helped develop Artist Relief, a $25 million emergency initiative to support artists facing dire financial circumstances due to COVID-19. We're also joined by Shreya Patel, model turned writer, actress, and filmmaker who is my co-founder on the lovespreads.org project (this podcast was originally recorded for that, and is being published on Conscious Creators). Here are some of the topics we discuss: Why art is impactful, but can not save us Deana talks about our own responsibility to take accountability for our actions She takes us on her life journey from her childhood We dive into the aspects that built her into the person she is today She talks about the her work supporting artists at United States Artists; including the $25 Million Artist Relief Fund How money alone doesn't make people happy, but poverty will kill them How Covid-19 impacted the way artists create and distribute their art Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get it touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Sachit Show Notes 0:24 - How we should think about justice for indigenous groups 3:51 - How art has an impact and influences everyday culture 6:13 - The responsibility of an artist and role of art 10:05 - Why art is powerful, but can't save us 13:29 - Deana's life journey and what led her to United States Artists 15:55 - How her childhood set her life values today 22:22 - Why we need to be mindful of micro-aggressions and their impact on communities 23:45 - How she frames her professional career for her immigrant parents 26:32 - What drew her to art 28:32 - Her work as CEO of United States Artists 31:28 - How United States Artist is changing the lives of artists 36:24 - How Covid-19 impacted the way artists create and distribute their art 40:42 - How she helps spread love in the world 43:26 - How you can support artists and what the future looks like for United States Artist Tweetable Quotes "And it's just really, the magnitude of this moment hits me every day. Years from now, we'll be looking back at these heroes who are just fighting with their lives to change our country. And so I think my particular context is about time. That we have opened the doors on these very critical conversations as an entire nation” - Deana Haggag “I guess I feel like what artists do for me is they, they make language, they tell stories. They document what it was like to be alive at any particular moment. So much of what we know about other civilizations and other times, and other people is like via the mechanism that is art-making right.” - Deana Haggag “And right now a lot of families and a lot of institutions and a lot of politicians need a new language and a new story and a new way to frame the world. And I think artists can frame for us the things we never thought possible. The things we actually could not see by the mechanism of how they make things in the world.” - Deana Haggag “Art can't solve the world's problems, but art can hold it.” - Deana Haggag About Our Guests Deana Haggag is a Program Officer in Arts and Culture at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation in May 2021, she was the President & CEO of United States Artists, a national arts funding organization based in Chicago, IL. During her tenure, USA saw unprecedented growth, expanding its Fellowship award program, launching the Berresford Prize, and developing coalition efforts to advance support for individual artists most notably including Artist Relief, a $25 million emergency initiative to support artists facing dire financial circumstances due to COVID-19, and Disability Futures, an initiative aimed at increasing the visibility of disabled creative practitioners across disciplines and geography and elevating their voices individually and collectively. Before joining USA in February 2017, she was the Executive Director of The Contemporary, a nomadic and non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, MD, for four years. In addition to her leadership roles, Deana lectures extensively, consults on various art initiatives, contributes to cultural publications, and has taught at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and Towson University. She is on the Boards of The Underground Museum and Pillars Fund, as well as the Artistic Director's Council of Prospect.5 and Advisory Council of Recess. She received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA from Rutgers University in Art History and Philosophy. Additionally, she completed the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program in 2020, Stanford Impact Program for Arts Leaders in 2018, and was a Salzburg Global Fellow for Young Cultural Innovators in 2015. Among other honors, she was most recently named a 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree. She is a disabled first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim woman of Afro-Arab descent. She currently lives on Munsee Lenape land, known today as Brooklyn, New York. Shreya Patel is a model turned writer, actress, and filmmaker. She's a graduate of the Second City Conservatory and can be seen in hit shows such as Mrs. America and Grand Army. Her directorial debut, the documentary Girl Up, brings light to domestic violence and human trafficking in Toronto and has been partnered with Toronto International Film Festival to showcase at Civic Action Summit. During this pandemic, she has gathered 66 countries made a documentary called Unity - #LOVESPREADS Faster Than Virus showcasing the plight of the human spirit. Following Unity, Shreya directed a music video called Freedom Dance which hit over 12 million views on YouTube. The music video features a global cast showcasing what their inner freedom looks like during the lockdown. Rolling Stones India has reported about it too. Currently, she is working on a web series called Layla is Relevant.

"I was like, well, Buffet closes deals in like three weeks. And people like selling to him because he's nice and straightforward and he doesn't mess up their business. And so we just copied Buffett and started doing the exact same thing. And now we're up to about 30 wholly-owned businesses." — Andrew Wilkinson In today's episode, we're speaking with Andrew Wilkinson (@awilkinson), co-founder of Tiny. Here are some of the main topics we discuss: how Andrew reverse engineered Berkshire Hathaway to build Tiny how he started out making $60,000 from his basement how he runs a company with $1B+ in enterprise value with 5 decisions a day how to make an acquisition profitable using simple frameworks why Joe Rogan got ripped off by Spotify his inspiration behind starting the Tiny Foundation Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and improve your business and life. Like this show? Support us by following the show, leaving a review here and helping us spread the word by sharing the pod with one (or three) friends: https://refer.fm/creators Do you want to learn how to make a living as a creator? Check out the CreatorsMBA where we show you how to get paid to create online: http://www.creatorsmba.com Follow our host, Sachit Gupta, and get it touch if you have any questions or ideas related to the show: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. Please enjoy today's episode and thank you for listening! Sachit Show Notes 03:06 The evolution of an inspiring technology entrepreneur and the inspiration behind it 12:56 The art of delegating & being a good manager 15:33 The secret behind successful entrepreneurship and the factors it depends on Or Fish where the fish are 21:28 Identifying opportunities, drawing a great team, and the structure and methods of buying and maintaining a successful business 24:38 The incremental value and making the most from best practice 26:35 The importance of ethics vs. skills, and the M & A approach Andrew's way 34:33 The idea behind Mailman and how his hobbies always transform into growing businesses 38:30 Following you natural inclination without compromising your freedom, and with maintaining your balance 42:59 The autonomy as a pillar of his ventures, and incorporated as a way of work for the team 49:47 Recommendations from a successful entrepreneur to podcasters 56:08 An insight on the types of personalities: the innovator, the founder, the scaler, and the operations person 58:13 Tools & Tactics on personal productivity 60:56 The philanthropic aspects of Andrew's entrepreneurship 68:53 The happiness effect according to Andrew Tweetable Quotes "I was like, well, Buffet closes deals in like three weeks. And people like selling to him because he's nice and straightforward and he doesn't mess up their business. And so we just copied Buffett and started doing the exact same thing. And now we're up to about 30 wholly-owned businesses." — Andrew Wilkinson "One of the interesting things about being a CEO for us is that we basically do not intervene in any way unless asked to so, unless the CEO wants to go spend a ton of money or they want our feedback on something, we don't talk to them." — Andrew Wilkinson "If you bring in somebody (CEO) that the team rejects, it's a complete failure, it doesn't matter if they're incredibly smart and they have a great strategy." — Andrew Wilkinson About Our Guest Andrew Wilkinson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada and developed an early interest in computers and technology at a young age. In 2001 he took over a tech news site called MacTeens.com. While managing this site, Wilkinson started to gain significant traffic to his site by covering tech news and reviewing tech products. After graduating high school, his tenure in college was short-lived and he decided to drop out after a few months. He started to become a freelance designer and this led to him starting MetaLab. In 2006, Wilkinson started a design agency called MetaLab. In a short period of time, MetaLab became a market leader for Silicon Valley companies that were looking for marketing and web design services. Some of the notable companies that were MetaLab clients included startups like Slack, Coinbase, Pinterest and Shopify as well as Fortune 500 companies like Apple, Google, Walmart, and Facebook. Today, MetaLab has launched over 205 products for clients and 3 of those products became billion-dollar businesses. Unsure of what to do with the proceeds, Wilkinson started reading about investing and quickly learned about Warren Buffett. This led to Wilkinson transitioning from a business operator role to investing full-time. After delegating his operating business to CEOs, Wilkinson founded Tiny with his long-time business partner, Chris Sparling. Tiny began buying profitable internet businesses and quickly started growing their portfolio due to their unique value propositions. Tiny would purchase businesses from founders in a swift, seamless manner by providing full or partial cash outs for founders in addition to getting deals done in less than 30 days. Additionally, Tiny would promise to not make any significant culture changes and hold the companies long-term. This led to significant growth in Tiny's portfolio and now there are over 25 businesses under the Tiny umbrella. Notable companies in Tiny's portfolio include Dribbble, MetaLab, PixelUnion, Creative Market and more. In June 2020, Wilkinson announced the launch of the Tiny Foundation. Wilkinson has noted interest in charitable areas such as science, journalism and child protection services.

“If you have someone who’s 50+ who’s been doing this longer than the person saying the [pipeline] excuse, but they still are not in a leadership role, then you have to understand that it’s not the pipeline, it’s the pipe. It’s the problem itself, it’s the institution itself.” – Arlan Hamilton   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Arlan Hamilton built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a fund that is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now raised more than $10 million and invested in more than 130 startup companies led by underestimated founders. In 2018 Arlan co-founded Backstage Studio which launched four accelerator programs for underestimated founders in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and London. Arlan was featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine in October 2018 as the first Black woman non-celebrity to do so, and her new book "It's About Damn Time" was released on Penguin Random House's business imprint Currency in May 2020. On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with Backstage Capital founder and author of It’s About Damn Time, Arlan Hamilton. Arlan shares her investing philosophy, lessons she’s learned from mentors, and more. She and Sachit discuss barriers to underrepresented—or, as Arlan prefers to say, underestimated—founders finding funding, as well as her background in the music industry. Plus, find out how Arlan defines what she’s looking for as an investor and hear an anecdote from SXSW.   Episode Highlights:  Quarantine during this pandemic has taken a certain amount of discipline. Backstage Capital had to change their vernacular to no longer say “underrepresented” but instead say “underestimated.” Arlan believes that anyone who says the lack of diversity in venture capital is simply a “pipeline problem” is lying to themselves or lying to you. There are many roles you can take in elevating underestimated groups; if you aren’t a founder, you can be an employee. Once at SXSW, Arlan was asked to be on a panel of judges for a diversity demo, and was the only Black woman represented. Arlan makes a distinction between privilege and entitlement; privilege is not bad, but entitlement is, because it is an active choice to behave in an entitled way. One of the highest priorities for Backstage Capital was making an inclusive and welcoming application process for their accelerator. Applicants have told Arlan there was dignity in the application process, from being made to understand the odds from the start and even getting communications when they are not selected. Her process has been to put up no barriers to the application process, unlike a cookie-cutter investor who puts up false barriers for who you need to know to get your company seen in the first place. Arlan has been curious her entire life and has always loved to ask questions and learn from people different from her and in different industries from her. Arlan’s background in being a tour manager in music has prepared her for her current job because she’s become a master at juggling dozens of different personalities, work styles, needs, and emotions at once. Arlan isn’t sure what her talent is aside from recognizing talent, and perhaps in connecting people. As an example, Arlan recently personally donated to a group at Howard University of queer students studying dentistry. The group not only appealed to her intersectional identity, but was so specific and knew exactly what it was and what they sought to accomplish. She understands that someone took a chance on her when she was starting out, so she wants to do that for other people. One thing Arlan has learned from a mentor is how to react more slowly by observing and strategizing. Next, Arlan wants to work towards supporting as many others as she can, both through Backstage Capital and simply through motivation. Arlan hopes to influence policy using Backstage Capital as a case study.   3 Key Takeaways: The lack of diversity isn’t a pipeline problem, it’s a systemic issue within our institutions. It isn’t enough to say you’ll seek out underrepresented groups for something if you aren’t looking at how to make every aspect of your business inclusive and welcoming to those groups. Understanding who you are is the most important first step to success.   Tweetable Quotes: “If you have someone who’s 50+ who’s been doing this longer than the person saying the [pipeline] excuse, but they still are not in a leadership role, then you have to understand that it’s not the pipeline, it’s the pipe. It’s the problem itself, it’s the institution itself.” –Arlan Hamilton “We kind of get real uncreative when it’s too complex. I’m here to tell you I’ve done some real complex work and I’m still standing, so it doesn’t have to be too hard.” –Arlan Hamilton “You’re about to listen to me talk about the differences & the disparities—you might feel attacked… I think what you may not understand is that I am not attacking you & most people aren’t. They’re simply stating what is true to them & what is a reality to them.” –Arlan Hamilton “If I can describe what I’m looking for, it’s not interesting enough. I want someone who blows me away and changes my expectation.” –Arlan Hamilton “I like people who are very understanding of who they are. They don’t have to be super confident, you can build that over time. But just finding out who you are is the biggest gift you can give yourself.” –Arlan Hamilton   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — get in touch with Arlan through her website! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Backstage Capital It’s About Damn Time by Arlan Hamilton and Rachel L. Nelson Arlan’s Website Arlan’s Facebook Arlan’s Instagram Arlan’s Twitter Arlan’s Linkedin Uncharted Power  

“It doesn’t really matter how big your audience is if you don’t really have anything to say. Having something to say is way more important than having a giant audience.” –Rolf Potts   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Rolf Potts is the author of four books, including the bestseller "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel." On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with travel author Rolf Potts. The conversation takes a bit of a different form from previous episodes, discussing their individual views on creative work and podcasting. Rolf shares his philosophy about pursuing the most soulful way of working, the inherent authenticity of TikTok, and more. They also talk about how they prepare for podcast interviews, the current media landscape as compared to Old Hollywood, and the differences between radio and podcasting.   Episode Highlights:  Once you’ve gotten successful at something, you want to branch out and expand, not just continue to do the exact same thing. The distinction between the business side and the creative side have become far less siloed with things like podcasting. At what point do social media algorithms start to change your art itself? There’s a difference between having 5 years of experience and having 1 year of experience that you’ve repeated 5 times. When preparing for an interview, Sachit asks guests what they’re usually asked about so he can talk about something else, and asks them what they’re rarely asked about but wish they were. The entire idea of Rolf’s podcast is to talk to experts about something other than their expertise. Rolf’s sees his podcast as being personality-driven rather than topic-driven. You have to learn to think about your business expertise in a creative way. Rolf’s book Vagabonding is a somewhat philosophical book because he built his own travel philosophy out of desire to travel rather than travel experience that was handed to him in his upbringing. Rolf has always been driven to find the most soulful way of doing things and to treat everything he does as an education. There’s a difference between success that’s just an endless pursuit like Pac-Man and success that actually enhances your life and that you allow yourself to appreciate and enjoy. Our lizard brains love brief excitements and dopamine hits that come from clickbait culture, but that is not in any way connected to soulfulness. Authenticity and being true to your vision is what makes you successful. TikTok is a platform that has encouraged authenticity down to its algorithm making discoverability and the probability of going viral more equal across the board instead of favoring accounts with existing large followings. In Old Hollywood, consolidation was on the side of the production studios, and now in social media the consolidation is on the side of distribution with Google and Amazon Web Services. Social networks are reality prisons. People often now believe that admitting that you were wrong about one thing means you are always wrong about everything, but in reality, scientists modify their conclusions based on changing data all the time. Podcasting is distinct from radio because in the past, not anyone could have a radio show, but now production is available to anyone. The response to COVID-19 goes against all American sensibilities. Because we can’t see the virus, we can’t see the “attack,” people behave as if there’s nothing to react to. Podcasting represents human conversation in a way that other social networks don’t.   3 Key Takeaways: Expanding beyond your niche is a way to improve your work in your initial specialty. Pursue soulfulness rather than success. Production tools are now accessible to everyone, so figure out what you want to say and be authentic when you use them.   Tweetable Quotes: “It doesn’t really matter how big your audience is if you don’t really have anything to say. Having something to say is way more important than having a giant audience.” –Rolf Potts “I’ve been on the business side because I believed my creative side wasn’t good enough for a long time… I ended up being on the business and marketing side for creators because I felt like I couldn’t be like that. So that intersection of creative and business has always driven what I’ve done.” –Sachit Gupta “More and more, creative people are going to be expected to manage their own business, their own marketing, their own promotion. And I think just as equally, business people are going to find that their world is enhanced by being creative.” –Rolf Potts “Something is attacking our country, yet we’re having the same old conversations. We’re trying to stick a dagger in somebody else’s argument when both of us should be listening to what’s happening.” –Rolf Potts   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — send Rolf a message through his website! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Rolf Potts’ Website Rolf Potts’ Instagram

“I don’t think that we’re born individualists or we’re born a member of a community, but I think all these spaces are real. They all exist for all of us.” –Yancey Strickler   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur. He is the cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter, author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World (Viking), and the creator of Bentoism. Yancey has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People. He’s spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, Web Summit, MIT, and events around the globe. He co-founded the artist resource The Creative Independent and the record label eMusic Selects. Yancey grew up in Clover Hollow, Virginia, and began his career as a music critic in New York City. On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with Kickstarter co-founder and author Yancey Strickler. They discuss how Yancey’s background as a music critic and creator influenced his work on Kickstarter, how he and his co-founders infused Kickstarter with very intentional values, why he loves sci-fi, and more. Yancey also shares information about his decision making framework, Bentoism, and how he found and developed the idea.    Episode Highlights:  Yancey grew up on a farm in rural Virginia with no neighbors for miles around.   Up until now, if you want to raise VC, you have to be in NYC or San Francisco just for the necessary relationship building. Yancey thinks with the recent increased interest in less urban areas, there may be a development of “flyover tech” or rural/red state tech, particularly with the increase in working remotely. He moved to New York on a whim, with 2 days’ notice, and got a job writing the news blurbs for radio stations. Yancey eventually became a music critic for The Village Voice and eventually Pitchfork. During this time, a friend approached him with the idea for crowdfunding and the idea for Kickstarter began. He and his co-founder struggled for several years as non-technical people trying to build a tech company. Yancey didn’t quit his job at a record label until Kickstarter had been live for several months, because he found it difficult to take the risk to abandon his job stability having come from a family with little money. It’s hard to know where you want to go as an organization, but it’s even harder to consistently make choices that push you closer to where you want to go.     Yancey found himself thinking about his future and where he wants to go, and realized he could divide it into Now Me, Future Me, Now Us, and Future Us. He called this “Beyond Near-Term Orientation,” or BENTO, like the Japanese Bento box and the “hara hachi bu” dieting principle. Now, Yancey asks himself a few questions in each of these quadrants in order to guide his decision-making. Yancey does a weekly Bento check-in and uses it to schedule his week in a balanced, intentional way. During lockdown, he has used Bento check-ins to shift his mindset from a self-focus to a group focus, thinking about the new responsibility of homeschooling his 4 year old as an additive experience instead of something that takes him away from his work. We all have passive awareness and active awareness, and the Bento framework helps you cultivate more active awareness.     The collectivism of the East is likely why lockdown and COVID-19 response has been more effective in those countries, and their long-termism will similarly likely lead to more effective response to climate change. Yancey predicts multiple false endings to this crisis. They never announced Kickstarter funding because it would have been discussed exclusively in the technology press, and that attention would only create competition in the space. Kickstarter was built for creatives, not for tech investors. Yancey started The Creative Independent, which is an online magazine that features a different creative professional daily. Yancey found a study that applied the idea of the Golden Ratio to business growth, which posited that the ideal size for a company is 50 people, and beyond that, you have to hire people to facilitate the administration of the company and the work slows down. After 10 years working full-time on Kickstarter as co-founder and then CEO, overseeing a massive period of growth and reorganization into a public benefit corporation, Yancey left to work on his Bentoism book. Yancey decided to write a book because as soon as he left Kickstarter he realized he was free to have thoughts that he didn’t have to filter through the company. Yancey tried out many hypothetical careers or things to do, like teaching, writing a book, etc., and would spend the day imagining himself in that role and paying attention to his physical responses to that imagined reality. Covering rock music influenced his work at Kickstarter by giving him an understanding of what’s “cool.” Yancey loves sci-fi because it always reflects back and teaches him something about the present.     Being a conscious creator to Yancey means having intentionality, working through your vague idea and finding its meaningful expression.     3 Key Takeaways: We all need to balance our focus on ourselves, others, the present, and the future to lead a fulfilling life. Having a framework and value system to make decisions helps you to always make progress in a consistent direction. These ideas will help you to be a better and more conscious creator by giving your work an intentionality.   Tweetable Quotes: “There’s so many assumptions built into the language of our cultural products that presume a shared belief system that is way more excluding than people might realize.” –Yancey Strickler “I don’t think that we’re born individualists or we’re born a member of a community, but I think all these spaces are real. They all exist for all of us.” –Yancey Strickler “With climate change, what we’re going to see is that the Chinese and the Eastern perspective of long-termism and collectivism is going to be far more adept at creating scalable solutions to climate change than the West.” –Yancey Strickler “In every world, I think it’s can you create value for people? Can you reach out to people with gives instead of with asks? Those are things that go a long way. Traits that go a long way are communication and critical thinking.” –Yancey Strickler “What I love about sci-fi is that sci-fi is always about the present. It’s just creating a different reality to reveal the truth of the present. And I learn a lot from that, and it engages my mind.” –Yancey Strickler   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — send Yancey a message through his website! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Yancey Strickler’s website Yancey Strickler’s Instagram Yancey Strickler’s Twitter http://bentoism.org/ The Creative Independent This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler Not for Bread Alone by Konosuke Matsushita Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher Spheres of Justice by Michael Walzer Value in Ethics and Economics by Elizabeth Anderson Dune by Frank Herbert The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

“The ignorance of an entrepreneur is a beautiful thing.” –Phillip Stutts   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Phillip Stutts is fighting a rare, incurable disease. Diagnosed in 2012 with the esophageal disease, Achalasia, he spent five years ignoring it. Frankly, he put his head in the sand, taking medications that did more harm than good, and waiting for the inevitable. Then he woke up and said no more. His mission today is to find a cure and pursue a life of constant growth and giving. And he’s making progress. Phillip is also the best-selling author of Fire Them Now: The 7 Lies Digital Marketers Sell, and one of the masterminds behind the curtain of political marketing. With more than 20 years of political and marketing experience, Stutts has worked with multiple Fortune 200 companies, has over two decades of experience working on campaigns with billions of dollars in political ad spend, and contributed to 1,273 election victories, including hundreds of U.S. House campaigns, dozens of U.S. Senate campaigns, and even three U.S. Presidential victories. He is the founder and executive chairman of Go BIG Media (a political media firm) and the founder and CEO of Win BIG Media (a corporate marketing agency). Together, these companies have won more than 42 national awards for marketing and creative content. In addition to being represented by Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerSpeakers and a keynote speaker for one of the country’s largest privately held speakers bureaus, Keppler Speakers, Phillip has made more than 260 national media appearances including CBS, ESPN, FOX NEWS, FOX BUSINESS, MSNBC, and CNN. He has also appeared on some of the world’s most popular podcasts including Gary Vaynerchuk’s The DailyVee, The James Altucher Show, The Adam Carolla Show, The Dr. Drew Podcast, Jay Abraham’s The Ultimate Entrepreneur, Big Questions with Cal Fussman, and The Dr. Gundry Podcast. He has been lauded as a “marketing genius” by FOX BUSINESS, “the political guru” by ESPN, and “The Michael Jordan of Political Marketing…” by Mike Dillard.   On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with marketer Phillip Stutts. They discuss how he came to realize he was living an unconscious life, the steps he took to be more present, and the ways it has improved his quality of life since. Learn about how Phillip’s rare disease, Achalasia, has impacted him, and the psychedelic therapies he has used to come to terms with difficult things in his life. Also discover how you can use the current pandemic to your business’ advantage.   Episode Highlights:  Over the past few years, Phillip has undergone psychedelic, plant-based therapies to learn about himself. During a 5 hour MDMA therapy session, Phillip realized he was displaying narcissistic behaviors that he had developed over the last 35 years of his life and began the process of unlearning it. He felt incapable of experiencing deep feelings and wasn’t sure he had ever experienced love, and eventually realized he had been using alcohol to mask his feelings. His businesses weren’t growing as quickly as he wanted and knew they were capable of, and realized his companies had no culture; he was merely telling people to do things and manipulating his friends and family. Phillip had a habit of not acknowledging his feelings and instead channeling them into bad behavior towards other people, like yelling at customer service workers. He has been mentored by Keith Cunningham, and he couldn’t recommend him more highly. Phillip stays grounded and celebrates how far he and his companies have come by looking back at where they were a year ago instead of looking at how far they want to go. His attitude before was assuming that everyone around him was trying to screw him over, in both his business and his personal life; now his intention is to grow personally in order to help others. In 2012, Phillip was diagnosed with the incurable condition Achalasia, which means his esophagus muscles stop working. Phillip avoided researching the disease for years, until he was told he would eventually need a feeding tube and that sent him on the search for an alternative. He found a doctor, Steven Gundry, who could help him with a specific diet to keep his gut healthy and prolong the life of his esophagus. With no money behind research of this disease, Phillip published an article about his condition and worked with a physician at Johns Hopkins to assemble a research team and petition the FDA for a compassionate use case of stem cells as treatment. One of Keith Cunningham’s techniques that Phillip uses regularly is “Thinking Time,” in which you write down a question that is bothering you and then with no technology, just pen and paper, you write for 45 minutes. Several of Phillip’s clients are gone as a result of COVID-19, like a timeshare company, but others realized they could position for success like an organic foods company. Digital advertising on Facebook and Google are now dirt cheap and not competitive. In marketing, it has nothing to do with what you want to talk about with your business and everything to do with what the customer wants from your business. The influencer marketing space is less expensive than it has ever been. 50% of all purchasing decisions right now are coming down to trust in a third-party validator. Phillip wrote an article on Medium that ended up on their front page about how to grow your business during the pandemic. What living a conscious life means to Phillip is being authentic, present, and vulnerable.   3 Key Takeaways: If you ignore and bury your emotions, they are going to find other, destructive ways of coming out. Seemingly terrible things like incurable diseases can become one of the best things to happen to you if you let it. Living consciously is not only important but it’s something free that you can start to do right now.   Tweetable Quotes: “I understand that I’m going to have a much higher quality of life if I’m okay being in an uncertain position.” –Phillip Stutts “If I’m to look back at where we were a year ago, I’d go oh my god, that is insane. But if I’m just to think right now in my head where I need to be, then I’m going to get depressed over that. And so I constantly say where was I a year ago?” –Phillip Stutts “The ignorance of an entrepreneur is a beautiful thing.” –Phillip Stutts “The disease is the best thing that ever happened to me, because it got me to realize there was a finite time in my life and I need to live it with purpose and to serve others.” –Phillip Stutts “Being present means understanding how other people feel, listening to them, and being in their world, and being in their presence. And I think if you’re doing those three things, you’re living a conscious life.” –Phillip Stutts   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — find Phillip on Instagram or Twitter, or send him an email! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Phillip Stutts’ Website Win Big Media Business Website Phillip Stutts’ Instagram Phillip Stutts’ Facebook Phillip Stutts’ Twitter Phillip Stutts’ Linkedin Email Phillip Keith Cunningham’s Website “Find Yourself” by Brad Paisley Dr. Steven Gundry

“Time just gets you better at whatever you’re doing, and if you’re good at struggling, 30 years will make you an expert.” –Jesse Elder   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Jesse Elder is a mentor and coach, entrepreneur, MMA instructor, motivational speaker, and author. He is the creator of the popular Mind Vitamin video series and the podcast Jesse, where he shares his teachings on self-mastery, self-acceptance, and inspired action. Jesse grew up the oldest of 5 children and was home schooled his entire life, never having attended a formal educational institution and giving him an action-oriented perspective focused on results over theory. He believes it is possible for every person to feel fulfilled and be happier, healthier, wealthier, and wiser. On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, Jesse Elder, podcast host and creator of the Mind Vitamin video series, speaks with host Sachit Gupta about living intentionally. Learn about Jesse’s theories of time piercing, the four core elements of life, the power of appreciation, and more. Jesse shares stories from being homeschooled while growing up, joining a fight club, and the profound transformation he experienced when his MMA fighting landed him in the hospital with serious injuries.   Episode Highlights:  Jesse has switched his mindset from asking what is true to what is useful. He no longer ascribes to the philosophy that you have to be struggling and in pain to achieve growth or success. Jesse joined a fight club and ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung and many other injuries. What would your life be like if you were less fixated on the hustle? If you just allowed yourself to feel fulfilled by the byproducts of living? Jesse assesses everything by qualification; how qualified is this Instagram influencer/mentor/teacher based on how they live their lives to tell me what they’re telling me? Jesse believes that appreciation is more potent than gratitude; gratitude tends to be reactive. Linear time seems to be constructed of past, present, and future, but the only thing that is verifiably true and real is the present. The past and future only exist when you think about it, and when you think about it, that happens in the present. Science is currently trying to prove spirituality. For Jesse, intuition is a deep rooted knowing that transcends logic. Jesse has a theory of time piercing, which is the strategic use of memory and imagination. The base frequency for humans is joy. Social media can be an entirely legitimate way to measure influence and reach, but if you can’t separate yourself emotionally from that work, it becomes harmful. Knowledge is information that has been organized for some sort of use. To Jesse, wisdom is the embodied experiential application of knowledge. Wisdom is the byproduct of living experientially, not the outcome. There are four elements or quadrants to life, the byproduct of which is wisdom: Direct, leading-edge experiences, radical authentic self-care, the zero point, and production. What if the Bible is like an old journal entry from God and he’s evolved since then? Jesse’s marketing strategy is to be as authentic as possible to hopefully help the people who come to him, rather than crafting elaborate marketing language to lure people in. Journaling is like exercising; it takes repetition and practice and strategies. Before you go to sleep, write down what you appreciate, what you accomplished that day, and how you want to feel when you wake up the next morning. Instead of asking “how do I…” ask “What if I…,” and you’ll be accessing your future self’s memories.   3 Key Takeaways: Perhaps the way to be most productive is to allow yourself the experiences of living, without trying to manage or control them. Science is naturally focused on the past, because it has to observe information that already exists. When we slow down our thoughts by writing, we give them a chance to grow into feelings.   Tweetable Quotes: “I can’t imagine that there’s an organism in the natural world that—if you could peek inside the mind of an oak tree, you’re not gonna find the oak tree’s daily routine so that it can achieve its goal of feeding the humans with oxygen.” –Jesse Elder “Most of us have a lot more memory than we have imagination.” –Jesse Elder “What if your body is just a browser tab? And then what if your consciousness has like 70 monitors set up and each one of them has 138,000 browsers open because consciousness isn’t limited the way that we are?” –Jesse Elder “What if when we start imagining something, what if it’s a memory of our future self? Because what if thought vibrates at such a high frequency that it escapes the bounds of linear time?” –Jesse Elder “Time just gets you better at whatever you’re doing, and if you’re good at struggling, 30 years will make you an expert.” –Jesse Elder   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — email Jesse or find him on Instagram! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website: www.Creators.show  Jesse Elder’s website: https://jesseelder.com/ Jesse’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timepiercer/ Jesse’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jesseelderlive/ Jesse’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPvb16WC6acotgF3oeo2Whw Jesse’s Primelight Meditation Course

“A lot of human fulfillment comes from belonging and purpose and connection, and things that can’t be quantified or bought with money.” –Vlad Magdalin   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Vlad Magdalin is the founder and CEO of Webflow, a company that is working on empowering designers and entrepreneurs to design, build, and launch websites and applications without having to learn how to code. In a past life, he studied to become a 3D animator with dreams of working at Pixar, but happened to fall in love with the power of programming for the web midway through art school. Most days, you can find him on Twitter yelling into the cloud about how NoCode is going to change the world.   At home, he’s outnumbered by two unstoppable daughters and an amazing wife, who constantly remind him that there's so much more to life than growing the business bottom line.   In today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, Vlad Magdalin, co-founder and CEO of Webflow, speaks with host Sachit Gupta about his experience slowly building Webflow over more than a decade. Listen to find out what was driving Vlad to stay dedicated to his idea while overcoming obstacle after obstacle. Learn how Vlad’s experience as an immigrant has impacted his worldview, how he has evolved through the long journey of launching Webflow, and more.   Episode Highlights:    Vlad immigrated to the US from Russia with his family when he was 9 years old. Vlad began learning simple graphic design techniques while helping his dad with a Russian Yellowpages business that began for the Russian immigrant community in Sacramento. He learned self-reliance during his teenage years, helping his parents with odd jobs. Vlad was never interested in the tedious, science and math driven aspects of computer science, but loved the creativity and possibilities of what you could create. Vlad had the idea for Webflow when he was in college, bought the domain with his father’s help, and began furiously coding. Webflow fell to the wayside when he got married, but after a while working at Intuit, Vlad picked the project back up. While at Intuit, Vlad developed an application called Brainstorm that was used internally within the company, and an executive at the company wanted him to develop it and work on it full-time as his job. Vlad tried a third time to develop and launch Webflow, but then his wife got pregnant. Very suddenly and unexpectedly, Vlad received an envelope approving his trademark for Webflow, five years after his application had been rejected, presumably because the previous trademark holder had let it expire. Creating more complex applications that don’t require code to build won’t work others out of a job, it will just free them up to be able to work on more interesting problems. The user experience is more interesting and complex than the architecture of application programming, and it is that complex problem that will probably always require human work. Vlad doesn’t recommend taking the risks he took because just because it worked out for him, it doesn’t work out for most of the people who try what he tried. It wasn’t until the first month where Webflow’s income equalled its expenses that Vlad felt they were here to stay. They pursued profitability earlier than most VC startups because they had such a hard time getting funding. Vlad hopes to always focus on the people and the team at Webflow rather than giving into purely capitalistic impulses. Just because someone finds value through using Webflow does not mean that anyone else who might have built an application is losing out on anything.   3 Key Takeaways: Having autonomy and support at his job with Intuit helped propel Vlad towards making Webflow successful. Making technology more accessible does not put anyone out of a job, but actually creates more opportunity for more people. The human impact of your work and the team you work with is the most important thing.   Tweetable Quotes: “Seeing something that can be better and realizing that it’s possible, just having that unlock in your mind, just makes it so obvious that it should be a thing.” –Vlad Magdalin   “Knowing how I’m doing this work and charting a path in my head for how I would create a more visual, a more natural abstraction for that same work, it just made me believe that it had to become real.” –Vlad Magdalin   “There was an assumption that empowering more people to create software visually will work programmers out of a job. That’s not true at all. It’s the same assumption that was made when spreadsheets were becoming a thing.” –Vlad Magdalin   “I was starting to see that every milestone feels less and less certain.” –Vlad Magdalin   “To attract the best people, to make sure that they do their best work, you have to give them autonomy, you have to give them a chance to master their crafts, and there has to be a shared sense of purpose about why that work is important.” –Vlad Magdalin   “A lot of human fulfillment comes from belonging and purpose and connection, and things that can’t be quantified or bought with money.” –Vlad Magdalin   Resources Mentioned: Webflow Vlad Magdalin Twitter Bret Victor’s Worrydream Vlad on the Twenty Minute VC with Harry Stebbings Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — send Jane a message on Instagram! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.

“The clearest example of transformation is growth and growth happens every day. Every day we’re moving directionally correct with incremental progress. We’re moving in a particular direction. And that feels like a good day.“ -Jerry Colonna   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Jerry Colonna is an author and the CEO, and co-founder, of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm whose coaches and facilitators are committed to the notion that better humans make better leaders. For nearly 20 years, he has used the knowledge gained as an investor, an executive, and a board member for more than 100 organizations to help entrepreneurs and others to lead with humanity, resilience, and equanimity. Previous to his career as a coach he was a partner with JPMorgan Partners (JPMP), the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase. He joined JPMP from Flatiron Partners, which he launched 1996 with partner, Fred Wilson. Flatiron became one of the most successful, early-stage investment programs in the New York City area. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. During this episode of Conscious Creators, host Sachit Gupta speaks with Jerry Colonna, author, and the CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io. Jerry discusses how people are reacting to the Covid-19 pandemic and how they can navigate the new and heightened feelings that may arise. Additionally, Jerry shares his thoughts on sorting through your emotions, how to separate your self-worth from extrinsic events and motivations, and what personal inward reflection and transformation can look like.    Episode Highlights:  Jerry is the author of Reboot, which is one of Sachit’s favorite books that he has read/listened to multiple times. How are you feeling and thinking about the Covid-19 pandemic? Jerry thinks we, as humans, tend to be distant from a conscious understanding of what is actually happening on a global basis. Jerry talks about the impulse to ignore and the denial that can accompany difficult situations, like we are in now. How can people navigate when those feelings come up? How can people deal with their heightened emotions? Jerry believes that people need to get to a place where they recognize that, even though we are in the middle of a pandemic, they are okay. Take a step back to see if you are really safe. Once you start discovering stories of your childhood, what do you do with them? You start to put it into categories and sort it out, then put it back in such a way that you know what it is. Jerry gives the example of a child who believes they need to achieve good grades. They end up in a place of safety, but their intrinsic sense of self has never been tested or strengthened, and the sense of self-worth is tied to extrinsic events. Once someone gets an awareness of that, how do they bring about transformation or change? Tools, such as meditation, can be very helpful. We need to be able to release ourselves from those notions on a regular basis. As people start to experience transformation and change, how do you help them navigate their relationships? Jerry does not like the idea that people identify themselves by their relationships, and believe people should look inward to see how relationships influence their sense of self. What does the transformation to increased sense of self look like? It’s a process and it’s a movement, every day there is incremental progress. Can you expand on “striving for lemon drops” from your book? Jerry explains that lemon drops is a metaphor for visiting the safety of his grandparents’ home. The business we experience is similar to striving for lemon drops, because it is the striving for some type of safety. What do you say if someone’s response is to create even more business? Jerry shares his own experience with increasing his business as his initial response to the pandemic lockdown. How do you know where the intention is coming from? You can tell by asking yourself questions, such as, “What was I feeling when I started this project?” Can you share the story about when you went to join JP Morgan? How can you tell if you do something for the validation or to answer your calling? Jerry wasn’t in-touch enough with his internal self to know if he was making the right decision, but quickly realized he had made the wrong decision. What else would you share with people as tools or guides as they are navigating what’s going on? Jerry speaks on how Dr. Fauci is persistent in leading the fight against Covid-19. As someone reads Reboot, what is the endgame or how do you measure the success? True personal transformation is measured by your view of yourself. The process is to be able to check yourself, and at the end of the day say “this was not a bad day,” more often than not.   3 Key Takeaways: Get to a place where you can recognize that you are safe, and you are ok, even in uncertain times. The process towards looking inward and expanding your self of self is slow and incremental. Instead of becoming fixated on things, relax into what is happening and accept that you have little control.   Tweetable Quotes: “Never in my life have I used [humanity] without hyperbole, and today when we speak about the pandemic and the economic impact as well as the emotional, existential, physiological, physical impact, we are truly talking about humanity.” -Jerry Colonna “Right now our systems are so hijacked that everything feels like a threat, which means that most of what we are perceiving as threatening is false, thus leading to all this anxiety.”- Jerry Colonna “One of the things that meditation helps us do is to learn to stand back from our minds and to watch our minds at work.” -Jerry Colonna “It’s probably more helpful to start inward and say to oneself ‘well who am I independent of these relationships and how do these relationships influence my belief system about myself?’” -Jerry Colonna “The clearest example of transformation is growth and growth happens every day. Every day we’re moving directionally correct with incremental progress. We’re moving in a particular direction. And that feels like a good day.“ -Jerry Colonna “True personal transformation isn’t measured by how I view you, it’s how you view you.” -Jerry Colonna   Resources Mentioned: Reboot (Book) Jerry Colonna Instagram Jerry Colonna Facebook Jerry Colonna Twitter Reboot Medium Creators Show   Actions: Subscribe to the new show on Apple Podcast or your favorite Podcast App and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and review. Thank our guest and let them know your thoughts on today’s episode. Reach out to Jerry through his Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Head over to Creators Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect with Busy Influencers”, partner deals, and additional bonuses.  

“You’re placing an ad on my platform in my voice, and I know my audience the best.” –Jane Ko   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Jane Ko is the blogger behind A Taste of Koko, Austin's top food and travel blog featuring the hottest restaurants and weekend getaways. A Taste of Koko has been featured in O Magazine, InStyle Magazine, OWN TV Network, and The New York Times.  A Taste of Koko launched Shop Koko, her very own line of foodie tees that help support local non-profits in Austin and her first book, Koko's Guide To Austin."   On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with food and travel blogger and social media influencer Jane Ko. They discuss the Austin food scene, how influencers are being impacted by the pandemic, and the insider perspective on brand deals. They also talk about how Jane’s childhood in a tiny Texas town impacted her career, self-publishing a book, and more.   Episode Highlights:  Jane introduces herself as a blogger rather than influencer because she started her blog before that term existed. The “free stuff” you get as an influencer isn’t actually free because it requires hours of work to leverage for content. Jane works 80-100 hours per week, from restaurant tastings to brand deals. It took Jane about 3 years before she started getting paid through brand deals, but it may take someone less time now because the market has changed. The main thing Jane has learned about brand deals is how much money brands have to spend. Her biggest frustration is brands not listening when Jane brings her own ideas and expertise to the table. Jane has an agent, but she still does her own first round vetting of clients who reach out directly to her. Jane was supposed to work with GoDaddy, which has hosted her website for 10 years, on featuring Austin businesses during SXSW, but the event was canceled due to the pandemic. Instead, Jane presented an idea to GoDaddy around the domain hireacreative.co, which she had been paying for but not using and saw this as an opportunity to finally  launch it to support the freelancers like her who had just lost all their income. Measuring KPIs for influencer marketing is almost impossible; the only metric you can track is impressions. Everything Jane does for local businesses is done for free and is only for the sake of supporting her community. Jane grew up in a small town in Texas and never believed she was going to amount to anything. Jane works hard to make the process as easy as possible for brands because that makes it easier for her. She always communicates her idea for the content fully so she doesn’t end up in the position of having to redo anything. Travel blogging is the most time consuming work; it isn’t a vacation. Jane spends time sourcing outfits for posts while traveling, planning an itinerary of locations and shots and posts. Jane self-published her first book last year in 5 weeks, but she had been doing research and planning for years. Jane was surprised at how easy it is to do brand deals and how hard it is to sell a product. Her goal for her book was to sell just one copy but she sold over 3,000 copies in 5 months. Jane believes her book had good product-market fit. It’s a common misconception that authors make money on book deals; almost no books make profit. Because Jane self-published, she’s able to brand books for companies who want to buy in bulk and give them as gifts. The first quarter of the year is always the slowest for influencers. Jane launched hireacreative.co and Hundred for Hospitality to support local businesses and freelancers in Austin in response to COVID-19. Hundred for Hospitality provides 100 meals a day for free for any service industry person who has been laid off by a restaurant in Austin due to COVID-19, while being able to pay the restaurant for those meals. Jane’s income is down 80% right now.   3 Key Takeaways: There is no secret to getting brand deals other than working hard for a long period of time and waiting for the right opportunity to emerge. Communication is key in brand deals to make the process as easy as possible for both parties. Nothing can replace the impact of building relationships over time.   Tweetable Quotes: “So for brands, they’re thinking, we’re getting 2 in 1. We need exposure & we need content, which is something that we were going to pay an ad agency easily $50-100k to shoot photos, & we can get that in one blogger? So it’s a great deal for them.” –Jane Ko “You’re placing an ad on my platform in my voice, and I know my audience the best.” –Jane Ko “We don’t own this platform. We’re allowed to produce content on these platforms & we’re lucky enough to then be paid. So if this ends & disappears my mindset has always been well, now I can go retire & live a normal lifestyle & not work 100 hrs/wk creating content.” –Jane Ko “I think I’m very conscious and very aware of where my brand is and where I stand in my city that I live in and what I can do for the community… I think it’s being very aware of your brand and what good you can do.” –Jane Ko   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — send Jane a message on Instagram! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Jane Ko’s Website Jane Ko’s Instagram Jane Ko’s Facebook Jane Ko’s Twitter Hundred For Hospitality  Hire a Creative 

“Everything in art, everything that we have achieved in the world, comes from our basic desire to tell a story.” – Farbod Ardebili   Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience.   Farbod Ardebili was born and raised in Iran/Tehran, where he wrote and directed numerous stage-plays and started an Underground "illegal" Metal Band, which was the first to release a Persian language Metal album on the worldwide platforms of the time. In 2013, he wrote and directed his first short Film "Ellipsis," and thanks to its international success, he became able to move to the United States. In the last five years, he's been busy making, moving and forming friendships, and his recent Films and new projects have been supported, recognized, and awarded by organizations such as Sundance Film Institute, Festival Du Nouveau Cinema, Oaxaca FilmFest, and more.   On today’s episode of the Conscious Creator podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with filmmaker Farbod Ardebili. They discuss his background and the limits on creative work in Farbod’s native Iran, what brought him to the US and the unexpected culture shock he experienced, his filmmaking, and more. Find out why it was important to Farbod to have a female protagonist in the movie he filmed back home, why he believes art matters, and what it means to be a conscious creator.   Episode Highlights:  Growing up in Tehran, Iran where he wasn’t allowed to create the art he wanted to make taught him that sometimes limitations lead to the most creativity. The image that western media portrays of Iran only represents a very small percentage of Iranians and isn’t anything like that. For Farbod, he actually had reverse culture shock coming to the US, realizing that people here aren’t as open minded and welcoming as we seem in movies. It isn’t the financial means that Farbod sees as the biggest difference between Iran and the US, because he grew up wealthy and actually downgraded by coming to the US, but it’s the freedom. He grew up making films and being creative in other ways, including winning a painting contest when he was a child. Farbod started a band, initially playing softer rock so that they would have an easier time getting government approval, but eventually throwing caution to the wind and playing heavy metal like they wanted. After a while, they started to have issues and had to put the band on hold. To continue making music, Farbod couldn’t focus on the risk he was taking. He got his Bachelor’s degree in Theatre, then transitioned into film. There are a lot of differences in practical terms between music and film, but at their core they have a lot of similarities too; both media have tempo, rhythm, theme, and arcs. Farbod’s process from when he has an idea for a film to actually making it starts with an image and then you need the courage and will to follow it and make it happen. He couldn’t get government permission to make movies because they found out about his metal band, so he decided to make a movie without permission in the middle of the desert where nobody would bother coming after him. He came to the US as a film student about 5 years ago. Farbod wanted to make a movie about his experience but if he wasn’t able to make it as authentic as possible, in Iran, with Persian actors, it wasn’t worth doing and he couldn’t go back to Iran to risk jail. To make it work, Farbod directed the movie from the US while his friends filmed it separately in Iran. The film is about a woman singing in a metal band, which is a big deal because in Iran, women are not allowed ot sing solo in public in any genre. He chose to have a female protagonist because he wanted to highlight the ways that women have it worse than men in Iran. Sachit sees Farbod’s work as giving voice to the voiceless. Farbod doesn’t know what it means to make art, but he knows everything humans do comes from our desire to tell a story. Most stories in the world contain a sense of justice. To be a conscious creator, you have to have an awareness and consciousness about justice and what is right in order to tell those stories. We make art and tell stories in order to find the goodness in ourselves, but the worst parts of ourselves too.   3 Key Takeaways: Iran isn’t anything like the way the media portrays it to be. You can’t focus on limitations when you’re making art, or it can stifle you; at the same time, limitations can create the conditions for the most exciting creativity. Everything humans do comes back to a need for storytelling in order to make sense of the vastness of the world around us.   Tweetable Quotes: “The one thing that I can tell you that you really should appreciate much more is the freedom you have—freedom to speak, freedom of expression. You can tell, you can say, you can show what you want to say. That’s the biggest reward.” –Farbod Ardebili “When I was doing it, I wasn’t thinking I’m risking my life, I’m so fucking brave. I knew it was risky, but I wasn’t focusing on that.” –Farbod Ardebili “I had a professor there, he always used to tell me ‘Farbod, you are so lucky.’ I was like why am I so lucky? ‘You are so lucky because you have such a fucked up life.’ His point was it makes you more creative.” –Farbod Ardebili “Everything in art, everything that we have achieved in the world, comes from our basic desire to tell a story.” –Farbod Ardebili “When you tell a story you have to be the good person, in some sense. You have to be conscious to be able to make a judgment that people can connect to.” –Farbod Ardebili   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — find Farbod on Instagram and say hello! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Farbod Ardebili’s website Farbod Ardebili’s Instagram Farbod Ardebili’s YouTube  

“A lot of the awful things happening out there aren’t our fault, and we can be compassionate with ourselves around that, and still make decisions and learn from our mistakes.” –Mike Brown Welcome to the Conscious Creators Show; where through intimate and insightful interviews with authors, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs and other podcasters, you'll learn tools and tactics to 10x your creativity and strategies to grow and monetize your audience. Mike Brown is an entrepreneur, investor and guerrilla philosopher. Prior to founding, operating and exiting an 8-figure oil and gas company, Mike flew F/A-18 Super Hornets for the Navy and brings the fighter pilot spirit to entrepreneurship. When he isn’t dreaming up his next business or telling Navy stories, you can usually find him riding mountain bikes in the foothills of Golden, CO. Julian Gluck grew up in LaGrange, Georgia and became a bomber pilot after graduating from the United States Air Force Academy. He was selected as the 2018 Air Force Times Airman of the Year for his community and combat service. Julian is active in international non-profit leadership, public speaking, and was recently honored on the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Law & Policy. He is on Instagram at @JulianRGluck and LinkedIn. On today’s episode of the Conscious Creators podcast, host Sachit Gupta speaks with his friends Mike Brown and Julian Gluck about the current COVID-19 global pandemic. Learn about strategies and lessons they learned in the Navy and Air Force to help you manage the current situation, from dealing with grief and trauma to taking action in moments of crisis.    Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — find Mike on Facebook and Julian on Instagram! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses Episode Highlights:  Mike became involved with an organization called Haymakers for Hope that does amateur boxing fight nights to raise money to fight cancer. Julian was raised to value giving back to his community and be involved with philanthropy. As an investor, Mike believes that humans are essentially bad at evaluating risk because they tend to have an opinion and then look for data to back up their opinion, rather than looking at objective data sets and using that data to form their opinion. There are no downsides to enacting procedures to save lives when the alternative is the pandemic situation we’re now in due to lack of preparedness. Being able to social distance is a privilege. We can’t predict how we’re doing overall as a country because we don’t have enough data, but anecdotal evidence suggests we are at risk of ending up exactly where Italy was with hospitals having to choose who receives care. Decision-making models can be useful to guide you, but you should try to avoid being a slave to them. A useful framework is the OODA Loop: observe, orient, decide, and act. Once you come up with a plan, don’t become attached to the plan. Even after we get past this health crisis, there will be a continuing economic crisis. As a pilot, you follow an emergency protocol to maintain aircraft control, analyze the situation, take proper action, and land as soon as conditions permit. This involves the mantra of Aviate, Navigate, and Communicate. Panicking will always make the situation worse, especially when you have the luxury of time to evaluate data, make an informed decision, and execute the plan. Meditation is a cornerstone of how Mike has constructed his life. It’s a misconception that meditation is about the absence of thought; instead, you can reliably predict that you will have thoughts while meditating, but you learn to observe and honor your thoughts and emotions without being trapped by them and reacting impulsively to them. In response to this crisis, people who are finding the silver lining of humanity experiencing a reset or finding the ability to engage in self-improvement right now, need to balance that optimism with compassion for those of us who are experiencing unthinkable loss and struggle. How do you balance feeling like you could have done more in a situation with having compassion for yourself? Self-compassion will be crucial for each of us to get through this crisis. We are all going to be dealing with grief as COVID-19 unfolds, and the military and our society are notoriously bad at addressing and handling grief.  People tend to engage in comparative trauma instead of allowing themselves to feel what they feel and honor the grief that they feel. Mike recommends practicing “radical gratitude,” which begins with being present.   3 Key Takeaways: It is best to make decisions and take action based on data, not reactionary emotion. Compassion for yourself and others during times of crisis is absolutely essential. We as a society are bad at dealing with death and grief.   Tweetable Quotes: “I loved being a part of the boxing classes and all of the unarmed combat courses. I think there’s so many lessons that you can apply from within the ring or in a wrestling match that you can take to the outside world.” –Julian Gluck   “It’s really bizarre to me that so many people seem to say, well, let me sit back and see what the government tells me to do here. We all have functioning intellect. We can look at the situation and go, wait a minute, what’s best for my family?” –Mike Brown   “Your net worth is not your self-worth.” –Mike Brown   “A lot of the awful things happening out there aren’t our fault, and we can be compassionate with ourselves around that, and still make decisions and learn from our mistakes.” –Mike Brown   “The important part is to focus on root causes that have instructional fixes for how we can ameliorate or prevent that in the future with a better solution.” –Julian Gluck   Actions:  Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast app and let us know what you think by leaving a rating and a review. Thank our guest and let them know what you thought of today’s episode — find Mike on Facebook and Julian on Instagram! Head on over to Creators.Show to get new episodes, exclusive guides like our guide on “How to Connect With Busy Influencers”, partner deals and additional bonuses.   Resources Mentioned: Conscious Creators Podcast website Mike Brown’s Website Mike Brown’s Facebook Julian Gluck’s Website Julian Gluck’s Instagram Forbes profile of Julian Haymakers for Hope OODA Loop Waking Up with Sam Harris meditation app The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi The Operational Mindset Foundation