Adam Street's Blog
The spiritual and practical path to freedom to do your art

Enjoy the wine and not the label

You ever watch the show, Schitt’s Creek?  

It’s brilliant.  Like Seinfeld brilliant.  It’s a little zany, but it’s so good.  Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Dan Levy’s character David Rose.  He was explaining his sexual preferences to Stevie in season one. 

“I do drink red wine. But I also drink white wine. And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé. And a couple summers back I tried a merlot, that used to be a chardonnay. I like the wine, and not the label.” 

I legit LOL’d! 

When I watched the documentary  after the final season of Schitt’s Creek I learned that simple exchange did tremendous things for the LGBTQ community. 

Alexander Peartree from https://www.winemag.com said it best:

“As a gay man, I find it can be draining to constantly see myself reflected on screen in characters who are struggling as a result of their own sexuality…  It was so simple and nuanced, yet profound, uplifting and incredibly refreshing. The fact they did all with a wine-focused metaphor only broadens the scope to a wider audience.”

I think there’s a lot you can take from David’s wine analogy with your personal development.  Some people don’t get the info they need because they’re hung up on labels.

“That’s too spiritual”.

“He’s too religious”.

“I don’t like books, I only like video…”

Get the info that can propel you forward, and don’t worry about the label.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam Street

What to do if you don’t feel ‘good enough’

I was at an event today and met a lady who was interested in drawing caricatures for a living.  I love helping people or pointing them in the right direction so I gave her my contact info.  Back in the days I hesitated doing this but after a while I realized I was safe.  

Why?  Because almost NO ONE did what they said they were going to do.   Most the artists I came across either knew better than I did—so they weren’t coachable.  They wanted immediate success or they found another shiny object to go after.

And some just wanted a “hook up”.  I met a kid who was 19 and after one meeting he just straight up asked for a job.  Nothing wrong with that but he didn’t have the skills.  I told him I’d point him to where he could work on his chops and suddenly meeting me was about as fun as shopping for a vasectomy.

A lot of people get scared of the work.  They want success like my buddy in high school wanted his women, fast and easy.  

But us unreasonable peeps in the Artist Paradigm know better.   We do our work because we enjoy it.  It’s our voice.  It’s a piece of who we are.  I love that Megan Macedo closes most of her emails with, “keep doing your work.”  Again, it shows that we need to run TO the work, not FROM it.

And the more work that you do the better you get at it.  So become SO skilled and SO good at what you do that no one can deny you.   And by ‘no one’ I mean YOU.  Doing the work is the first step in showing YOU that YOU can do it.  

So when your head trash speaks up and tells you that you’re not good enough or that you can’t do this.  You can answer back with confidence that…

“I got this.’

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

Sales letter tips from a 6 year old 

In 1482 Leonardo da Vinci wrote a letter to get a job.  

Da Vinchi said things in his letter like:

I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy.

Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry.

I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them.

This is some PT Barnum shiz-nit right here!  Most people call this a “resume”.  I call this a sales letter.  Any kind of letter that persuades someone to do something is a sales letter. Some people stress over them but even my daughter wrote one when she was 6 or 7.  

She asked The Tooth Fairy for money in exchange for her tooth.  That’s a sales letter baby, because the Tooth Fairy can say yes or no or give my daughter less than the $105 she’s asking for.  There is one more simple thing that my daughter could have added to her letter.  Let’s take a look at da Vinchi’s example.

“I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy.”

Unlike my daughter da Vinci added what his bridges would do for them.   This is important because it helps people visualize the end result.  A dentist can write an ad or email copy about fixing cavities but that’s boring.  Better to talk about how you’ll feel afterwards with no pain or how you can eat apples again…

Yes, I know Pfizer isn’t launching a new cholesterol med with a few sentences of type like this.  Their sales letter might be 30 pages long but the rules are the same…  You need to answer these three questions:

Who you are, what do you have, and why should they care?

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

PS  Here’s a link to the whole letter:  https://gizmodo.com/leonardo-da-vincis-hand-written-resume-will-make-you-fe-1684441362

Get more creative by being lazy

All three of my kids are lazy.  

Like, won’t even bend over to pick up a sock lazy.  My son, The Peanut, will kick the sock until it’s close enough to the hamper.  Then he’ll pick it up with his toe so he doesn’t have to bend over.

What kind of healthy 9 year old doesn’t have the energy to pick up a sock?  We laugh at this stuff at my house but you could learn a lot from The Peanut.  

You need to be like him.  You need to learn to be lazy.  

And I’m not talking about binge-watching Stranger Things and eating bon bons either. Check out this passage from Richard Koch’s book, The 80/20 Principle.

“There are only four types of officer.  First, there are the lazy, stupid ones.  Leave them alone, they do no harm…  Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones.  They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered.  Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones.  These people are a menace and must be fired at once.  They create irrelevant work for everybody.  Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones.  The are suites for the highest office.”

General Von Manstein on the Geman Officer Corps

I learned me and my kids are intelligent and lazy.  My kids had to get it from somewhere, right?  

After college I thought I needed to work hard.  Do, do do.  Go, go, go, go, go.  Sleep is for wussies.  Look at my goals, look at what I wanna do!  Blah, blah, blah.  

Eventually I came back to my natural state of being intelligent and lazy.  Why?  Because this is where the GOOD creation happens.  When your energy isn’t split juggling, the good ideas come to you and you figure out how to do things smarter with less effort.  

Don’t wanna be lazy with me?  It’s more common than you think.

What is Uber other than a lazier way to get a taxi?  You can call a cab company, get stuck on hold, and endlessly wait for it to show up.  Or you can use a smartphone app and know everything within about 60 seconds.  

Sounds lazy to me.

When Apple released the iPod they marketed 1,000 songs in your pocket. You no longer had to look for CDs or exchange MP3’s in your digital music player.  Having 1,000 songs in your pocket allowed you to upload  all your songs ONCE and never touch them again. 

Sound lazy to me…

Lazy=simplifying.  What could you do away with from your practice, process, or way of doing your service that would make your life AND your client’s life better?

Go for a walk.  Think about it.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam

P.S.  My wife is a hard-working intelligent one.  WE, drive her crazy.  She’s learning though.  😉

Open. That. Letter.

Last year my wife received a FedEx letter when she wasn’t home. 

It was a fat one too, it probably weighed a couple of pounds.  She doesn’t do much business from home so it’s odd for her to receive letters like this.  I was curious.  

I looked at the sender and saw it was from a law office.  We don’t normally open each other’s mail but that was about to change TODAY!  You hear stories about couples in seemingly good relationships and one day the partner seeks a divorce as quick and easy as Taco Tuesday.  

Was I going to be one of those statistics?  Nope.

The paperwork in my hands was for a corporation she started.  I had no idea.  When my wife got home I told her I was freaking out and opened her letter and we laughed.  My wife has always been into rescuing pets and she decided to incorporate her own animal rescue.  I thought this was totally cool and I was happy for her.  I did tell her to give me the heads up the next time she requests paperwork from a lawyer’s office though…

What’s the point of me telling you this?  No point really, but I’ll leave you with Kody Bateman’s words.  “The stories in your mind become the stories of your life.”  If you don’t like your thoughts, clean em up.  No thought lives in your mind rent free.

https://www.adamstreet.net

Adam