Early on, when I got focused on earning more and being more I started doing personal development.  

I read a couple of books but my studies went Chernobyl once I got into Wayne Dyer’s work.  I was deep into spirituality, the law of attraction, and philosophy.  

And like many people learning new things I knew EXACTLY what my wife’s problems were.  Which I was SO happy to share with her.  

She was NOT impressed.  At all.  

And neither were the sales of my businesses. 

No problem, I just need to open up a can of whoop-ass and get my sales and marketing chops going.  I studied my weight in books, courses, and audios!  I had a USP, a purple cow, and plenty of ambition.  Everything a young entrepreneur needs!

But something was wrong.  My life and career still wasn’t clicking.   It was like a plane sitting stationary on the runway at an airport.  Full of passengers, all gassed up, and ready to go but just…sitting there. 

Ah!  Now I know what the problem is!  I need to recreate myself.  All the cool Internet kids are doing that now!  

That didn’t work either.  

There’s nothing wrong with recreating yourself but I did it in a way that took me away from my gifts and my genius.  It’s like when Michael Jordan went to play baseball for a year.  Kudos to him for trying something different but he’s a genius at basketball, not the other way around.  

I decided to do something different.  Instead of feasting on sales and marketing I decided to go on a business diet.  I wanted to look at other ‘artists’ who went far in their field who DIDN’T focus on sales, marketing, or making money.  

My first study was Oprah.  I knew from listing to many of her interviews that she never made decisions early on based on money.  It was actually the opposite.  Her decisions were based on her integrity, her vision, and her purpose.  

I learned when it came to the big decisions, Oprah looked inside herself not outside.  

Then I studied Steve Harvey.  He was much like Oprah, for his success he constantly went within. Next was Kevin Hart and his podcast, where he interviews successful comedians.  There was a theme that always seemed to come up.  Yes the entertainers pushed and persevered but the big leaps came when they went within.  

Kevin Hart interviewed Judd Apatow.  He spoke about content and working with Paul Feig from Freaks and Geeks before he himself became a household name in the biz.  

Apatow said, “That’s when I realized the gold is going deep into yourself”.    “My friends who tell their truth, are breaking thru in some way.”  And that’s what he did.  

So wait, are you telling me what’s holding me back is not “them”?  

It’s not my less than perfect marketing skills? 

Or needing to read the top 10 business books on the bestseller list?

Nope.

And this reminded me of a quote Jack Canfield said that he heard from a Buddhist teacher.  I thought I got it before but now I REALLY get it.  

He said, “Let me give you the secret.  If you were to meditate for twenty years, this is where you’d finally get to:  Just be yourself.  But be all of you.”

So now, my focus is to go within.  Your spiritual self and your business self work together like peanut and jelly.

Bert and Ernie.

Penn and Teller.

Now when I talk about career success it just can’t be about getting better at your art.  It can’t just be about marketing and sales.  I have to bring up the spiritual mumbo jumbo that drives some people crazy.  Some people may not like me and that’s ok.

What’s important is that I am me.  All of me.  

And if you want to break thru and to be the best version of yourself you need to be you, too.  

All of you.

Adam  

I love comics.

Something about them as a form of expression and as a medium to tell a story has intrigued me for as long as I can remember.  And why shouldn’t they?  

If only real life could be so cool!  

How cool would it be if you were bitten by a radioactive spider…and lived.  And be able to scale buildings with your bare hands and shoot spider wedding all over your neighbor’s yard as a Halloween prank.  

I started working in comics in the late 90s and it lasted about a year and a half.  I got frustrated with the money I was making so I stopped freelancing and got a ‘real job’. I made good money  but the job itself was toxic.  

It was like drinking bleach and wondering why you feel like crap afterwards.  Working there felt like being in a room full of teargas but only the managers had gas masks on.  

So I got another job and it eventually sucked just as much.

I couldn’t go back to comics, after all, the pay sucked for an entry level stiff like me.  

On the other hand working these jobs felt like blood money.  I may as well sell crack to elementary school kids or export illegal diamonds from Africa.  

Ken Honda has the best philosophy on this.  He calls it Happy Money and Unhappy Money.  Happy Money is when you make money doing what you enjoy and you’re grateful and appreciative for it.  

Unhappy Money is when you grudgingly make or spend your money.  Like unhappily paying off debt or paying alimony to an ex-spouse you can’t stand.  

The energy behind your money matters.  A lot.  Read his book Happy Money.  It’s an international bestseller for a reason.  

Ken Honda’s book book wasn’t around back then but I wanted to earn HAPPY money again.  Comics was my closest path but I was still afraid of the market.  

There wasn’t enough opportunity.

The pay rates are low.

I had a small network.

I could think of excuse after limiting excuse.  Logic told me I should be a realist.  

I should do graphic design or make websites or do some other type of art that was hot at that time.  I started slowly suffocating my dream and then I came across the blog post that changed my life.

An artist that appeared on my radar back then was Frank Cho.  He did a lot of good-girl art, and since that is my jam he became one of my new favorites.  I used to read his blog every week to see new art but this post was different.

Cho asked for people to stop asking him for commissions because he was booked for the next 14 months and could not accept any new work.  

What!!???  

This guy is booked for more than a year in advance!!!?  

This…

Blew.  

My.

Mind.

I didn’t  even know that was possible for a comic book artist.  My old paradigm that said comic book artists can’t make money exploded like the helicopter in Mission Impossible.  

All of a sudden my limiting beliefs were replaced by ‘what if’ thinking.

What if I could be booked a year in advance?  

What if I kept improving my art? 

What if I grew my audience?

Those kind of thoughts were were music to my ears and they were WAY more helpful!

I eventually got back into comics but Cho taught me anything was possible.  Even in comics.

Adam

I grew up poor but I prefer to say broke.  

The reason why is because my progressively Christian mom never made us feel that way.  I heard Wayne Dyer say more or less the same thing about his childhood, but he said they just “lived where they were at”.  That felt right for me.

Dave Chapelle put it in an even better (and funnier) way.  He said his family made enough to live in a better part of town so he got to see what his friends had that he couldn’t afford.  I could totally relate to that!   Author Lynne Twist gave me my favorite term though.

In her book the Soul of Money, Lynne was visiting with the Senegalese people.  Statistically these people were poor and were struggling for resources.  But when she met them she realized they were not “poor” in the traditional sense.  She said they, “burned with the fire of possibility.”  And to me, that’s what my mom had.

Even though we were broke my soft spoken church-lady mom burned with the fire of possibility and she etched that into me.  Not to mention, not having enough fit me about as well as my ten year old son’s underwear.  I knew, my adult life was going to be different.  

What was my first path to riches?  I was gonna be a pop star!

When I graduated from high school I enrolled in music school.  Because, ‘I knew what I wanted my music to sound like’ so I thought music school was going to be a breeze.  

I couldn’t be more wrong.  

My logic was about as sound as, ‘cause I love eating food that means I’d be a great chef’.  My university eventually cancelled the degree I was studying so I used it as my chance to get out of music.  

And a bunch of companies declining my demo tapes didn’t hurt either…

Then I thought big corporations held the key.  If I get a degree I can work my way up.  Why not have one of those big corporate glass offices?  Maybe even get a fancy laptop and a company car.    I tried that too.

I eventually learned about office politics and my favorite…  Being a team player.  Or lack there of (something I was accused of at my last big corporate job).   It seemed corporate America was about as congruent with me and having AA meetings at the bar in Applebees.  

Next it was Network (or Multi-Level) Marketing.  I discovered the work of Eric Worre and he rocked my entrepreneurial universe like Thanos from the Avengers movies.  

I eventually quit network marketing but I KNEW entrepreneurism was the gateway to the life I wanted.  I studied the market, wealth, and business.  I kept my nose buried in books like Hermione looking for Horcruxes in the library.  

Did I have enough?  Nope.  I kept looking.

I doubled down on studying direct marketing and copywriting.  After all, I just need to learn how to write  better ads and better sales letters.  I’ll be Scrooge McDuck in no time…

I had ups but I STILL kept looking over my shoulder like poverty could pounce me at any minute like Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.  

I doubled down on spirituality and getting clear on the Law of Attraction.  And yet, I still felt a little damned.  

Then I read a quote by William Paul Young.  He said, “I allowed myself to fall into trust.  And that’s when we learned that the opposite of more is enough.”

I felt like Bugs Bunny just slapped me with a glove with an anvil in it.  

This quote made me realize not trusting, not being present, and always fearing not enough kept giving me more of not enough.  I was what Gabby Bernstein calls a Manic Manifester.

She said, “manic manifesting happens when someone has all the spiritual tools and jargon but forgets the most important part of attraction: to tune in to the Universe. You can say affirmations, pray, and meditate every day and still not attract because your energy is out of alignment.”

There I was.  Busted.  

So if my problem was being out of alignment too often the fix was just to flip it around and be in alignment MORE.  

This solution took nearly all of my adult life to learn but hey, better late than never.

Adam 

When I was kid I believed in all sorts of stuff.  

Santa Claus.  

The Easter Bunny.  

Democrats and Republicans actually accomplished things together…

Kids believe the darnedest things!  One belief that stuck with me for a while was an old cliche,  “love conquers all”.  As I grew up I learned that that was ridiculous!  There’s no way that one is true!  

Or is it?

When I first read Oprah Winfrey’s book, The Path Made Clear.  She talked about starting her girl’s school, people doubting her, and the obstacles she was facing at that time.  Oprah said, “You cannot defeat someone who knows who they are truly are.”

This kinda turned me off.  That’s easy for Oprah, the celebrity billionaire to say.  That’d be like Stephen Curry saying anyone can win a NBA 3 point shooting contest if you just put your mind into it.

Or how you can run an ultra-marathon race with positive thinking.  It’s just not gonna happen.  

I reread Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant.  Great book by the way… I think it should be required reading for human beings—especially if you’re a creative! 

Anyhoow, the book is about how Kamal was depressed and suicidal and cleaned up his life with loving himself.  It seemed  impossible.  It’s too simple to work for me.

Until, I tried it.  

And like Kamal said in his book, within a few days I noticed things started to change.  I felt better but synchronicity started bringing happiness to my doorstep like singing animals in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. 

So, back to Oprah’s quote.  “You cannot defeat someone who knows who they are truly are.”  

I thought, Oprah didn’t say ‘herself’, she said “someone”.  What if Oprah was talking about someone who TRULY loves themselves?  I mean, the spiritual movement has talked about unconditional love for millennia.  

But what if you TRULY loved your drawing even if it wasn’t perfect?  

What if you TRULY loved your life even if it’s not going how you thought it should? 

What if you TRULY loved YOURSELF even if you didn’t have wash board abs or the lover you wanted?

I have two degrees from a university and buutt-loads of business and practical experience!  But I gotta tell you, little 8 year old Adam knew better than me in so many ways…

And so does Oprah…

And so Kamal…

He said, “Fighting fear doesn’t work.  It just drags us in closer.  One has to focus on what is real.  On the truth.  When in darkness, don’t fight it.  You can’t win.  Just find the nearest switch, turn on the light.”

That light for me was understanding I didn’t love myself consistently.  I still struggle with this sometimes but i’m getting better.  

And I got news for you.  When you love yourself and you have a positive vision for you want, you my friend, are unstoppable.

Adam