Steven Thompson

Steven Thompson: Content Creation in Uncertain Times (#275)

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Our Guest Today: Steven Thompson

Steven Thompson is a writer, podcaster, and educator who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son. By day he works as an Education Director for a Non-Profit that specializes in work with students with Special Needs. He loves music, sports, and reading – You can find his debut novel Aquafunkpus and The Macrocosm of Mayhem as well as his other creative work here

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Transcript

Steven Thompson Content Creation in Uncertain Times.m4a – powered by Happy Scribe

Feisworld podcast helps independent creators live their creative and financial freedom. I’m your host, Fei Wu, and I’ll be taking you through a series of interviews with creators from around the world who are living life on their own terms. Each episode is packed with tactics, nuggets you can implement origin stories to make listening productive and enjoyable. We’re not only focused on the more aspirational stories, but relatable ones as well. We also have none interview based miniseries releasing throughout the year to help Deep dove into topics such as freelancing, marketing, even indie filmmaking that will benefit creators like you.

Show notes, links and ways to connect with the guests are available on Feisworld.com. Now onto the show.

Hey, guys, it’s Faye from Feisworld Media and Fazlur Lifestream, I love this series of conversations with my friends and my mentors. And today I want to welcome Stephen Thompson to Face World. Yes.

Even a I’m so great. It’s great to be here. I’m really excited to have this conversation with you.

Me too. Absolutely. Steven and I met through Al Temba and Seth Jones, Al Tumba. And we’ve been working together. We’ve been managing a Creative Entrepreneurs Mastermind group since twenty seventeen, believe it or not. And when I see that you are first of all, I find you humorous and you always brightened my day. Right now I also see you as an accountability partner for my own book. Needless to say, a big milestone for you right now is that you just released your first book is not it’s not nonfiction.

It’s fiction. And I haven’t really interviewed a lot of fiction writers, novel writers here on the show. So I’m really, really thrilled that you are here. And I’ve been saying the the the title of your book for a long time, and I just love the title Fun Campus and the Microcosm of Mayhem. So tell us a bit about this new release, this new book.

Yeah. So this new book is really I started working on this book, this very book, a national novel writing month back in two thousand and sixteen. And for me, in my creative journey, I am very prolific in terms of generating creative work and putting stuff out there with my podcast, with my blog. But I’ve been taking writing classes since really since I moved here to L.A. like 20 years. And I write a lot of screenplays. I’ve written a lot of books, but I hadn’t published anything.

And I finally said, Stephen, you’re just doing this stuff almost like, hey, I can write a book in a month, but then you don’t do anything with it. So last year I said, you know what, this is done. I’m going to publish my book. My book is going to go into the world. And that was really kind of what I said to myself. And so I just said, hey, this year, twenty thousand and twenty, I’m going to publish my book.

I set out in January and then I just edited it, worked it through a creative community, got accountability. Then in December, I published it on the Kindle platform. So really following a lot of the teens, I know both of us gone through Seth Godin Zoom All Timba and I was in one of his other workshops called Writing in the Community. And the specific thing was to publish a book on the Kindle platform by the end of the year.

And that was the goal. And I was really excited to be able to hit it, hit it that this year. So really excited to do that.

I love the energy that you bring in with this conversation. I wanted to say that one of the reasons why I love your work is because it’s the same energy that you bring to every community. I don’t even have to be there physically. And I just know that and I love the fact that you are always speaking the truth and how you how you actually and always be feeling. And I just love that level of transparency. And for people were just hopping on.

Now, no matter where you’re watching this, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, thank you so much for tuning in. Please leave your question. If we don’t get to your questions during the live session, I’ll be sure to work with Steven and kind of really look after the comments and maybe we’ll follow up with either our own replies or recorded separate videos for that. I do love monitoring my livestream on YouTube because there’s a little live chat section, so there are links in the description.

Hop on over to YouTube. I will make sure to keep an eye there. But I also want to say that today we want to discuss a very important topic, which is how to create or content creation in general in uncertain times, not only this very moment, but also put yourself back in twenty, twenty or whatever the future may bring. So speaking of which, you know, Stephen, I feel like right now it is you know, it’s a challenging time, but it’s also a very special day.

And before I invite you to read a live from your book, which I’m so excited about, could you say a few things maybe about what you shared with me before we hit record about today being Martin Luther King Day? And what how do you reflect on some of his teachings and related to our conversation today?

Yeah, you know, one of the things I think about in terms of today being MLK Day and I listen to a letter from a Birmingham jail today, and one of the things I noticed is there is a quote where he talks about good people remaining silent. And I think for us as creative individuals, as artists, our work put it into the world is a way for us not to be silent. And I think too many people go into the world and they hear something like that.

Many yell my political opinion and create chaos. But I think there’s a role for us as artists to be peacemakers, to be able to put work into the world that. To actually change the culture from a culture of hostility and anger to a culture of listening and then to achieve social justice aims, that we all want to make the world a better place. And I think as an artist, our work can be that. So if in these times we are hesitant to share our work because maybe we’re afraid of we’re being self promoting, maybe we’re being insensitive, I think it’s a yellow light issue.

I do think there are people out there who are taking advantage of these situations and saying, I’m going to go out, make a lot of money and covid or covid as a gift or those types of things. I think that it is not a gift at all. There are three hundred thousand people who have died. There are people who have lost their lives. So but I think what we do have is we as creative people, have the gifts to be able to face these situations with compassion, with care, with understanding.

And our work can do that. And I think that’s how we as creatives can enter into this discussion, in this debate and make change. And that’s what I hope to do. And I think that’s what our community does of creative entrepreneurs with all of our work. And that’s one of the things I really appreciate about our community at large, in our group at large, is that the people we’re surrounded with are not self promoters. They are really trying to work in some very difficult issues on the ground that people need help with.

And I think that is something that is missing. A lot of people want to win the opinion debate, but really there’s the people debate and there’s the compassion debate and there’s things that people are going through each and every day. And I think that is where we as artists can enter and enter into that space wherever it is, because there’s somebody around you who may be hurting. And we’re blessed and blessed right now and you’re blessed right now. So I think we’re called to help those who are suffering and help them navigate through it.

So that’s what I think I’m trying to do.

Beautifully said. Thank you for that. And I love what you commented on during our group session a week ago of should we kind of silence ourselves? Should we just wait? Should we put up a screen and say we’re not creating not putting words out there? And instead you said, hey, let’s just put a little bit of a sweetness, kindness out into the world. And that was very reassuring. And you just made me pause for a second to realize why do we doubt ourselves of doing the goodness, doing the work that we’re doing?

So is that what you think other podcasters, authors and designers, painters should be doing right now?

I definitely believe that. And I think sometimes we doubt ourselves because of criticism, know sometimes we are not going to ever create the perfect world work where somebody is not going to criticize us. But there are moments where we have been criticized and that may that puts those seeds of doubt. When you don’t have a supportive community around you, when there are going to be people are going to criticize you. But you have to say to yourself, I have to say to myself, you know what?

I’m going to put my work out there. I know I’m being sensitive. I am not intentionally trying to hurt somebody. If somebody is upset or disagrees with what I put out there, I know that I’m doing it with a good heart and a good intention. And I think that is how you have to overcome that doubt. And I think what I said in our group is that the people who really care are probably not the ones who are going to be we’re going to hurt people.

And that doubt is like they said, it’s a story that we’re telling and we need to tell a different one. We need to tell a story that is faithful and that is loving about our work and about the people that we seek to serve and help. And I think that is one of the powerful things that we can do as creatives to combat that doubt, because it’s it doesn’t go away as much as we try to eliminate the doubt, eliminate the stories we have to settle into practices that will enable us to overcome those things and then put our work out.

And then at the end of the day, I just tell myself, if my work doesn’t go out, it’s not because of anybody but me. The doubt is coming from me. There are people in the world who actually have physical threats to their lives and their work. I’m not one of them. I can sit down at my desk every morning and write my work. So basically the opposition to my work is me. And once I say that and own that, then I know that, hey, I can put my work out there and that’s that’s the truth.

And you get literal with these sorts of things. And then you produce your work from that standpoint because you you tell yourself, is this a reason or this is an excuse. And I see that and I see that, hey, you don’t have any opposition produce your work and then you tell yourself a new story, then you kind of make it better for you as a creative person.

I also love one of the stories you shared. We invite you to do the same here while we’re going live, which is to read a section of your book. And the funny thing for people who are. New to publishing is Amazon does offer an author coffee, but it takes forever to ship. So Stephen is literally going to read from Scrivner or where your work was originally originated from even. And this, by the way, reminded me of when I was on a live show.

I was 15 years old. I got invited to China National Radio Station and I got to be interviewed in conversations with this really famous DJ, the time he was twenty five or so, all the girls in my high school just went crazy and he made me sing one of the songs I was singing during an English competition. I was so embarrassed and I couldn’t back down or back out of it and I’m really glad I did, even though my voice is really shaky.

I remember that. But tell us about before you start reading your stories and tell us about that moment or you and Seth Godin’s group and everybody was reading their work and you had to do your own. How did you feel it? What was that experience like?

It was interesting because I think there were that day there were like 15 people reading and I believe like 13 of them were reading very serious work. There’s people talking about cancer. There’s people talking about obviously there was a lot of marketers in there talking about selling their products. And here I am reading a sentence about zombies and time travel and multiverses. And I just kind of laughed a little bit. And it helped me not to take myself so seriously because that’s what you can get in this movie.

I don’t want to make a mistake or I don’t want to say something wrong. I don’t want to offend anybody. I just kind of laughed. And it kind of made me feel good that because there is sometimes we want to bend to the group that we’re around. There’s actually there’s like it’s called the ask conformity test, where people actually will if the group says a lot of things wrong, you will want to say the wrong thing just because the group.

So there is group pressure, but then it’s good to be myself because at the end of the day, I’m not going to write a memoir. Not yet. And I’m not writing a marketing book. But then there’s this pressure. I got to write a book all I got to be a coach. No, I like writing science fiction. Here I am here. Steve, nobody made a rule to write only marketing books or nobody made a rule to only write memoirs.

I’m going to write this book and I think that’s what I felt great about. I’m going to be me. And that’s that’s really cool. That was the really cool, cool part of doing that reading.

You felt good afterward. I did. I did. I hope you feel good after the it’s just the two of us, but I love to so spoil me and read any section you like from the book so people can get a taste of it.

All right. So I’m just going to go straight into the book. No set up because then I’ll start ranting and raving or anything like that. I’m going to go right into the book. This takes place with the main character of the book, Genesis, and his love interest at the time when he’s in eighth grade. After lunch, Genesis would be in history class and he would have a chance to admire Sherry from afar. The nerves never seem to go away.

What is it even possible to live a free life? Genesis recently read a book that said that nervous energy flowing through our bodies and our reaction to that energy would be to generate a story. Often the story that was generated involved licentious behavior. Now the journey the libertine was not a trip for the righteous to take. So Genesis sat and stared at Sherry’s desk from him in eighth grade social studies. She had not arrived yet, but Sherry was the desire of all middle school boys.

Yet she rebuffed many Asuda. The law behind the rejections were so colorful, or maybe more than actual truth. Some said she had a boyfriend in high school who was going to be a future NFL quarterback. He drove a red Mustang and played Aerosmith. Others said that her dad was a law man who traveled the West rounding up bail jumpers. And if anyone dared to approach his daughter, they would be greeted by the end of a shotgun. See the tension already?

Now, dad had a gun. Why would he allow a high school boy to date his middle school daughter? Or maybe it wasn’t really far fetched. Maybe he thought the older boy represented all that. A true man should be someone who drank old style, drove a fast car and threw a football. The reality was somewhere in between. Sherry lived in a trailer with her uncle Rufus. Her mom was a traveling belly dancer. And dad, well, dad was either a drug dealer or a bounty hunter.

Rufus was a drunk who cobble together enough money for rent, collecting cans and playing harmonica at Rusty’s Barbecue Shack on Blues Mondays. Mom would send home enough money to keep Sherry nice clothes, and Dad would float in from time to time with Tales of the Road and a few more dollars, usually around the end of the month when Rufus was running short. At that moment, she was outside at her locker. Sheri opened the door of her locker and got her jacket and backpack.

She put on her jacket, slung her backpack and headed out. All the other kids who lived in the trailers took the bus as well. The trailer park was a nice trailer park. It didn’t have the stigma that trailer parks today have, but the double wides were occupied by working class family. Now, this was her fifth school in five years, and she is to settle down, she desired to be like the other girls, the girls who had sleepovers painting their nails in pajamas and talked on the phone.

She even wanted to be a cheerleader or a volleyball player. Yet her father always had a new assignment. She needed to play her role in the assignment as well. Her father was up for promotion at work, and if she helped him with this last job, then her future in the family business was sealed as well. You see, when you’re the daughter of a demon, a demon of temptation, you’re always moving. These days, the competition was fierce and you need to distinguish yourself.

Demons had to rack up streaks of men they could tempt with power or tempt them to lose all the power and respect they had. A his dad had been climbing the ladder and if he finished this assignment, they could settle down in one town and keep up the subtle temptations of corporate types, individuals who cheated their businesses for years before they got caught. This would give her time to settle down and join the volleyball team and surely.

Please tell me you’re doing an audio version of your book, you’re doing an audio book at some point, yes, at some point I want to do an audio book.

I know it’s a lot of work and takes production, recording and production time, but people may be wondering how you’re able to read your book with so much passion, compassion. It’s actually really heart as I learned. I remember speaking with Krista Tippett, who’s national international jazz slash broadcaster, and she said it was so incredibly challenging for her to read her own book. Did you find it challenging in that moment?

It’s challenging in the sense of like putting my work out there and reading it in terms of like reading it actually like saying the words no, honestly, I mean, I’ve had a lot of training. I was on the debate team in college. I did a lot of public speaking. So I’ve had a lot of training in speaking publicly. So that part isn’t the hardest part. Now, the actual wanting to put my words out there, even as I read, I’m criticizing myself, I’m finding mistakes.

I’m talking about my inflection and those sorts of things that what’s that is the hardest part of it is the self critique of yourself as you read it and finding maybe, oh, man, I should have done this or I should have executed that. That becomes more of the harder thing when you’re reading out loud.

So you just revealed a couple of things about you, which I didn’t really mention in the beginning, is the fact that you you are your father, your husband, you’re an educator on top of creating your podcast, you have a YouTube channel as well. And you’re right. So tell us how these things kind of play into each other, maybe in concert, sort of speak to you. Where do you see your inspirations?

So I seek my inspiration really from a lot of different sources. I really like I enjoy history, I enjoy theology and I enjoy older things so like and older things that are really well researched. So if I’m reading books, I usually do an ode to the past. So I’ll read African-American authors like Langston Hughes, like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison. I look for things that lasted over time and that really is an inspiration to me. I’m heavily influenced by a lot of theology and I’m heavily influenced by pop culture, by music.

You’ll see those themes running consistently through my work. And then I just try to always I’ve always been a person who like to smash things up and kind of put divergent thoughts together. When I was in grad school studying theology, I would do papers about rap music and put scriptures to the rap music because I would sincerely listen to like Tupac Shakur and rappers are talking about their spiritual life. So I would sit there and say, this is this individual wrestling with their own spirituality.

It’s not necessarily a church. He’s not a minister. But I do think that people do wrestle with their individual spiritual lives and that comes out in their art. Now, some people initially see those things and dismiss it all. That’s evil. But I’d be like, no, let’s let’s look at it. Let’s lean into it. So I sort of like to lean into that. I like to lean into the gray areas. I don’t nothing is black and white.

There’s always exceptions. And I like to live in the exceptions. And I like to play around with the exceptions, because I think we’re always growing and evolving. We’re not in some sort of set position for the rest of our lives. So those are the types of things that influenced me. You know, I really experience influences me. I think that’s one of the things that I look at, like Seth Godin’s work is that he has multiple books that are bestsellers.

So I can look at people who’ve done it and like, OK, they’ve got experience. So I love where I work now. The nonprofit I work for, it’s been around for 40 years. So the founder did this for 40 years. If you can do something for 40 years, that means that you know what you’re doing. And I think that is what when I think about experience, I think experience matters. We like shiny and new, but experience experience shows that it’s sustainable because I think a lot of times we see we take talkers, we see you tubers.

We realize that this industry is young. So as creatives, we’re thinking about a long career. Right? We if we want to have a long, sustainable career, you can’t just be a flash in the pan. You’ll burn yourself out or if you’re just good enough to retire and then back away all your money. So if you want to build a long term, sustainable career, you need to begin to take steps in your creativity to ensure that you can create long term.

And I think that for me is kind of what I’m doing. And I think a lot of times and creative lives and we see it in our groups where people will try to make a podcast and then they don’t get famous and then they quit. But then you realize like literally like the people who are famous in podcasting, they’re famous for reasons. And it’s not because of their personality. It’s the people working behind them. It’s the numbers. It’s there’s so many things that go into it that for us to step onto the stage and just immediately create a million dollar podcast, that’s really unrealistic.

And I think you can have high expectations, but not unrealistic expectations. And by a you can have high expectations within the world that you live in. And I think that’s what helps me to be a very prolific content creator, because I have very realistic expectations of myself. Now, I don’t have I don’t lower my expectations of myself because that’s another influence. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, John Wooden, those people who promote excellence, that they want to be the best versions of themselves.

And I think I learned that from my father. He would work very, very hard. And that’s what was modeled to me. My two older brothers would work very, very hard. My uncles and aunts, they modeled working very hard. Now, I grew up in the Midwest and the Midwest is blue collar, working very hard. So that was kind of what was embedded in me. So when I learned those values of working very hard combined with my creativity, then you go for personal excellence and it’s not personal excellence that somebody bestows upon you by sales or by great reviews.

It’s just trying to be the best version of you every single day. And every time you step out into a show or a blog post, you’re trying to do the best one for you. And that’s sort of what drives me. And those were my influences. That’s why I think when I watch like a Michael Jordan and you watch Kobe Bryant, you hear about what they did in the background about how they practiced really hard. Now, they showed up with the same intensity on the basketball court that they had in practice.

And those are the types of people that I’m drawn to I who I have excellence of their character and. Trying to be a great person. That, to me is inspiring.

And when I post this question and you and I kind of operate a lot on the kind of similar same wavelength here and before, in case I forget, please let’s make sure we talk about multiverse. I will table that for a little bit later. But who you said is something I hear from other people all the time, especially people who are new getting started. I posted a question in this group called the Subtle Asian YouTube Group. And it’s a wonderful community.

And when I said it, could you share one thing or a few things that you find most challenging about creating content on YouTube? So specifically video content creation. And I definitely see a theme of self sort of imposter syndrome, self doubt. What if people don’t like it? What if you don’t have any feedback? I got to say, remember, this is my personal experience. I definitely want to hear your take on this. And how people actually overcome it is when I launch my first episode and I was still working full time in advertising marketing agency is it’s a I feel like it’s a very polarized place because you are number one, open office setting.

Everybody is like very, very friendly. And what we do is very flashy, a lot of money involved. So I felt like I was putting myself out there and I really cared for a second. What if people don’t like the first episode? And it was my guess was wonderful, but I really sounded very shaky, very self doubting, whatever the word me may be. But I’m really glad it’s out there. And I continue to feel that way for a number of months.

And I remember there’s something I internalized and changed over time. At one point at this point, I put our livestream out there. I’m really glad people are watching now where later. But honestly, genuinely, I kind of don’t care. I don’t really go back to look at the numbers. I will reply to comments or that, but I’m not deciding whether I go live with you or with anybody else based on how many people are watching and whether opinions are this is just something that becomes almost intuitive.

But honestly, like if this sounds so foreign to you, I did. This is not how I felt seven years ago. Seven years is a long time. And for me that there’s a gradual change of I just need to put my work out there. Otherwise I feel sick, like I feel uncomfortable if I don’t. What’s your take on that?

Oh, I absolutely agree. One hundred percent. I think a lot of times we would hear that that little voice of doubt inside of our heads and inside of our minds is actually resistance. I’m beginning to see that it’s an internal alarm clock because when I feel uncomfortable, like right now I’m doing I’m challenging myself to publish on my blog every day. And in the middle of the day, I’ll feel uncomfortable. And I’m seeing it more as my internal clock is saying, you need to post today, you need to post today, you need to post today.

You need to post today. So I think once we put we get into the habit of putting our work out there that I think our body and our internal thoughts begin to support us. It’s supported. It says you made this commitment, Steve. Now you honor that commitment. I think then we can run the risk of retreating back into the idea of, you all know, what are people going to say? And there is this idea of things are going to be perfect, which to me, it sort of says it all the time.

And this is what for me, for my book, he said it in the workshop. He said, look, the temptation is to try to sell the book. He said, you’re in a book writing workshop. You’re not in a marketing workshop. You said write the second book, then write the third book, and then you build a habit of building. You build a habit, and then you can say, I am a writer. And I think that’s what the mindset that I’m in and we’re all in as creators.

I don’t go back and listen to my podcast either. I have three years worth of podcast, almost four. I don’t go back and listen to them because I want to make the next one better. And and then also I’m aware of I want to take feedback from the marketplace. So if a person tells me to fix something, I’m more than willing to hear it and listen to it, because sometimes my own inner inner self will get too critical.

So I want to hear feedback, because I think when your work goes into the world as being experienced by other people and I want to let people experience it, it’s sort of my work, like the the song by staying free free, set them free. If you love somebody, set them free. I set my book out into the world. We set our work out in the world and people are going to experience it a whole lot of different ways.

And I think every creative artist will see that because there are people there’s no consensus. Sometimes people think there’s consensus. But when you see like Star Wars, some people love Star Wars, some people hate Star Wars. There’s a smaller amount of people that hate it, but there’s a smaller than there are who like it. But the point of it is that people interact with your work differently. And if you’re battling to find consensus and if you’re battling to write something that will not get criticized, you’re fighting a losing battle.

The. Critics are out there and they shouldn’t stop you now, if you’re going to instigate, then you have to have the expectation that people are going to be mad at you. So there are people out there who will go out there and intentionally troll people, say mean things, and then they get upset when people criticize them. But if you’re going to go into that pool to instigate, then you need to expect that people are going to respond.

If I punch you in the face, you’re going to respond negatively. And if I don’t have that expectation, there’s something wrong with me. So we try so so that’s why we have to have these sorts of expectations as creators of how we want to show up in the world and be generous and help people. And that’s sort of my ontology. Here’s my gifts. They’re very imperfect. I’m just trying to become a better writer every time I put something out.

I know that this book is flawed and imperfect, even as I read it, it was flawed and imperfect. But I’m on to the second book. I’m on to the third book, and that’s what I’m going to do. And then over time, you know, people can criticize it and argue about it. But that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. That’s the way that I look at it. And I see that as being an observer.

Like, I go out to the bookstore and I see, you know, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. I was walking down the street the other day and there was a copy of Frankenstein just laying on the street. And I picked it up and I bought it home. Nobody’s giving Mary Shelley notes on Frankenstein. Nobody’s giving Mary Shelley notes on the book cover that somebody chose because Mary Shelley’s been dead for hundreds of years. But the part about it is that you can put something on in the world that will last longer than you.

I think that to me is is incredible. I saw a trailer for the movie Van Gogh, and Van Gogh said, what if I am the artist for people not born yet? And I started to internalize that. I started to think, what what if my work, even if it never gets any sort of traction, what if this were people who are not born yet? That’s awesome. Like if I put something out there that’s out there and maybe it resonates with nobody, but maybe years from now somebody picks it up and it resonates with them, I work is done.

And that’s what is incredible. And just to be able to say I created this and it’s out in the world and that you can say you created your work and you put it out in the world and more of us can do that. There’s so many of us who can do that, and that’s all it is. We just need to be connecting with that. I created this. It’s a generous act. It’s a gift. And there it is.

And let me make more gifts. So that’s kind of how my view is, is evolving over the years of that attitude of wrestling around with the internal angst that comes and trying to just at the end of the day, the purpose of it is to create our work, because you can get into a part where you like the community. Right. There is something about going into a workshop, going into the community and experiencing all of that. But then there’s like, well, what’s the purpose?

What am I here for? Am I here to make friends or am I here to produce my work? That’s the priority. So let’s say priorities. What are our priorities? My priority is to write my book and get clear about our priorities. They want you to clear about your priorities. Then you make deadlines. Then you keep those deadlines and then you keep those commitments. And I think for me, when it gets down to that level, the commitment level, and we’ve got to be willing to say, I made a commitment, am I breaking my commitment or I’m keeping my commitment and we can say all the things we need more sleep or we need more rest and we need these things.

I say walk cautiously through this, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to say to yourself, am I keeping my commitment or not? That’s a yes or no question. And I have to ask myself those yes or no questions. And that’s what I was facing. There was a point where I was committed to publishing this book on December twenty second and I was point where I wasn’t going to do it. And I went into a community and I was saying that I wanted to wait and they kind of encouraged me to go through the process.

I went through the process. It’s funny, when I got to the got through the book and got into the editing part of it, another part clicked in and I was able to push through and do it. But when I found myself saying I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t really have a good reason. Then I said, well, what did you say you wanted to do? I said, I wanted to publish by this day, keep your commitment.

And that’s what professionals do, like think about our mortgages. We can’t go to our landlord if we have the means to say, I just want to pay the rent. The 17th, 18th, I got the money. There’s no reason not to. I just don’t want to because I don’t feel good. Your landlord’s not going to respond to that positively. So professionals show up in the world that way. I don’t need a million people reading my book to decide.

I want to be a professional. I want to be professional day one. And I’m not making my living from my creative work. But I am going to be a. Professional in my creative work, I carry myself as a professional in my creative work just because getting paid, does it make you a professional? It’s how you carry yourself. It’s how you show up as the people you surround yourself with, the effort that you put in. I’m going to be a professional.

I’m not going to wait for somebody to give me that title of professional paid writer and professional writer. Now, I’m a professional, creative person. Now I happen to go work as an educator. I going to get paid as an educator. That’s the difference for me.

And something that really tactical that you gave me just I think a week ago when you checked in with me via text message and say, hey, where were you at with your book? And I said, you know, I’ve been writing of about five thousand words right now, but I, I find that at the beginning of the year, where it gets really busy, you have to prioritize my consulting clients. And you then said to me, you started to observe the way you are with your work, how where you waste your time.

I think the example you gave me was your screen time that your your phone basically sends you this report to say you’ve been on your own Facebook mindlessly for forty five minutes. You told me what if you can carve out moments in your life, number one, by getting to know yourself first where you’re spending and maybe wasting your time. So then because of that I look back on a bad behavior I had is I have I’m one of those people who sleep with my phone or somewhere near me.

And I notice the first thing I wake up in the morning, which I don’t really wake up to an alarm clock, is that I check my phone and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m there for like sometimes forty five minutes, one hour preview as I’m doing myself a favor and I realize I’m not doing myself a favor. I’m not I don’t even remember what I saw and having those kind of really clear clutter my mind with these things, I can’t really reply from my bed anyway, so I should just get up.

So for the past week, ten days since our since our text, I decided to first thing I get out of bed the first thing in the morning. Forty five minutes I’ll write and I’ll write somewhere of another writing session later in the day, sometimes before I go to sleep. But it just realize like those micro changes in our lives could could really trigger really big changes, especially if you look back to a week, a month, a year.

It changes everything.

Yeah, I think what it comes down to is like I remember reading Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg and he talks a lot about doing small things. And I know what we tend to do is we tend to have our creative work and we make our creative work, compete with our jobs, like line up our priorities. And what I found, like, I’m not obviously I can’t steal time from my job, but when I look at my screen time map, I’m like, oh God, I was on Facebook for forty five minutes, but what about if I spend forty five minutes writing every day, like what do I get from Facebook for forty five minutes.

Irritation, anger, mad. Now I’m in a meditation session. Now I’m talking like a spiritual advisor trying to get myself back together. OK, what if I just simply right now for that same amount of time. Well I can share, I could get my there’s so much more benefits to doing that. So that’s the comparison you have to make with your creative life. It’s working within constraints. And for my creative life, I have to work within constraints and then I have to get accountability and those sorts of things.

It’s funny as a manager and as a leader, one of the things I never do as I’m all about collaboration and I’m all about not micromanaging people, but I micromanage myself. That’s who you have to micromanage. So I have very intense systems set up and I love it. I’m a systems geek, so if anybody from my job would watch this, they would tell me that they would think the exact opposite. But I micromanage myself. I just don’t want to micromanage other people.

So I do have I have a lot of systems set up. Now, the thing about my systems that I set up, I’m very flexible within those systems is if you get rigid within your systems, then once you miss it, then you fall completely apart. So like I do 15 minutes a day writing, but I don’t say I don’t lock. I don’t hold myself to it’s got to be at six o’clock every day because then I know I’m fighting other battles.

But like what you said, it is one of those things. This is a path I’m going to create to get what I need to get done, done, and that’s sort of what is good. And I think it ramps up a lot of internal intensity in you. But I think for me, I’m a person who just enjoys working. You know, it’s kind of counterintuitive that I have all this creative work going on, but I’m also doing a master’s degree at the same time.

And I’m also like I wrote one novel during the group. And then and now I did a national novel writing month that I think healthy create these. I’m busy, but I’m healthy, busy because I think it supports myself. So I can’t just sit there and do nothing. So I’m sitting there doing nothing. My brain is just racing, so I have to be creative and I enjoy being creative. So why not do it? Because I just don’t want to sit and read Facebook and do scroll all day.

But there’s something about it. I don’t know. With our phones I’m into. I know we all read like steal like an artist by passing Cleon having a digital and analog desk. So I finally do have an analog desk and I do a lot of analog where I just write in my journal every day where I try to keep my phone on the other side of the room where I use downtime. I mean, part of me feels like embarrassed because I’m like, Steve, this is nineteen ninety four, OK?

There was no Facebook in nineteen ninety four. There was no phone in nineteen eighty four. Ninety four. And you managed to do quite well. So now you’re like oh I got to get rid of my phone, I got to do all these sorts of things. But it really is kind of like wow, our brains in some way have been hijacked. So I got to take my, my, my agency back because I do I notice again, like me, I’ve I’ve always I’m trying to do this comparison because I always love reading the newspaper.

And I even as I got in trouble once in high school because I’d buy the newspaper every day and read it in class and I wasn’t paying attention. And the teacher called my father and told me about it, told him about it. But I still go by it. And I used to love hearing about people who had read all the newspapers every day. So like me, I have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, The New York Times.

I start my morning reading through all of those, but then you get agitated and I think, is there something different about the phone than in print? And I think there there is. So I have to be very intentional how I begin my day, you know, and what I consume and how I consume it and when I consume it. So I don’t get rattled off into some sort of like I’m really upset and I’m really mad. I got to approach things in a healthy way.

So that’s what I do. I micromanage myself and my habits. And I put a lot of I have a lot of spiritual routines, spiritual practices, meditation, spiritual readings, spiritual community, those sorts of things. Help me to be able to be creative in a positive community is really what I think is important. I think for me, I’ve always been a creative person, but I wasn’t flourishing as a creative person until I got into positive creative community.

So when I met you, my podcast was Start and Stop, and I was doing it basically for my job, for my performance review. But then once I got into a community of other podcasters, even though we’re podcasting about completely different things, there’s something about being around people who are doing the same thing that helps you. So if I’m like in a room of people who have no interest about being podcasters, it’s kind of like, well, that’s nice.

You do that on the side. But when you’re in a group of people, we’re not alike. We all are doing different things. I think that energy feeds off of us because we are like, you know, if somebody was in our group and they were consistently not doing anything, you just get to the point of like, do what are you doing? Just do the work. And when I’m like that, I don’t feel like I’m being nice.

But then there’s some point of like, are you here to do the work? We’re all kind of we’re doing creative work. Can you do it, too? And so that’s what’s the power of having a community, is that we get down to the brass tacks, which is get your work done and get it out there. And that is the power of a community. And that’s what I think I needed, is more people who are doing things like me and then just get your work out there and then it’s not nobody’s like, oh, you know what?

You really want to do that? Do you really want to podcast about this? It’s sort of like, here’s what I’m podcasting about. Oh, that’s great. Go do it. And that’s the kind of support that you need. And you need those types of people, those people. It’s not somebody telling me that I’m a great person. It’s sort of validating my idea, like trusting me that I know enough, that I know what I’m doing.

And then go do your podcast, go do a book. That’s really what I think is what’s needed around creators.

You cover so many points. And then because you mentioned the old podcasters original, originally known as the old podcasters, Alt Podcasters is now a creative entrepreneurs community, is a private group. And I just listed in the link below in the in the comments, wherever you are. And the reason is the reason why we shifted from twenty seventeen is being exclusively podcasters to creative entrepreneurs today is because some of us became. The filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, many of them are writing books, I’m like the last person who have not posts or published a book just yet, but also people creating videos on YouTube were all over the place.

So that is such a great point, Steven, that you don’t have to convince your family, your friends, your spouse or someone close to you by proximity that this is something you really want to do and you should do. But a community, people who are already doing that. I also want to just quickly mention the fact that you talked about the analog desk, which I didn’t even know what it was until you brought it up. So I started like I mean, it doesn’t matter.

It’s not about a love of details. But here’s what I noticed the other day, a couple of days ago as I was writing my book, I go kind of your energy kind of ebb and flow, obviously. But I went from what I know exactly what I’m doing to all of a sudden because of digital, whether it’s an Scrivner or it’s for me, I kind of shifted to Google doc just because I’m so comfortable there. I got lost in my own writing.

My stories opinion started to change. I wanted to keep writing, but all of a sudden the train of thought to kind of get lost. So I literally just went to my printer. I was hoping for some fancy large paper. But instead what I did was I just grabbed the paper. A couple of colored markers went to my bedroom where there was like a sad little desk with little of what our flower on it. And I got a little lamp and I just sit down and start writing.

And one thing I know, Stephen, you wrote a novel where you wrote a fiction for me. This is a book about like a beginner’s guide to making a living on YouTube. Obviously, it’s about phases of one’s career on YouTube. It’s about from zero dollars to five hundred dollars to two thousand dollars and two more dollars later on. And I one thing that really helped me and Steve, I want to kind of get your thoughts on this was instead of writing part of me is like, I want to write this book for me.

That’s great, because I got excited and then phase two was, OK, how will this help a certain community of people who are these people? So for me, it was about new was certainly not about channels and million subscribers like this is how you make seven figures in six months. I don’t believe in that. I want to write a book for people who can make around one hundred thousand fifty thousand dollars, one hundred thousand dollars based on whatever the US standard person family salary is a full time living.

So once I got clarity on that and then I thought to myself, what are the phases, you know, getting started, getting paid, getting paid more, we’re making a living. So all of a sudden, literally, I just in my little and my little analog desk, I just had this flow. I came back restructure the table of content and I felt like I feel better now. Like, I don’t know, like, do you have any suggestions, recommendations for what I do, what I did there and what I do next.

I think what it comes down to there is like there is the creator in you and then there becomes like the decision maker in you. So sometimes what I found in the middle of my writing, sometimes you get into this position where you are writing and you maybe have things that are really good, but they conflict with each other. So at that point, it becomes decision making. OK, I’m going to go with this scene and this scene is what I’m going to move forward with.

So, like in your writing, you’re going to have you know, you want to write to influence a lot of, like Asian entrepreneurs. So there might be a point in your writing where you’re going to have to say, I go with this or I go with that. Then you’re going to make a decision. Now, sometimes I’d recommend and this is becomes gets into the editing process when you put you put all your ideas out there in your rough draft, then you might if you have the ability to do a three types of edit, you’ve got your creative edit, you’ve got your development, your editing, you’ve got your line editing, you’ve got your copy editing.

Your developmental editing is when somebody is helping you make decisions and you’re going to chop things. And this sort of like what it seems like for you is a developmental editing question that you would do, get all your ideas out there. And then at the end, in the developmental part of it, you’re going to chop things. So one of the things in my book that I just wrote is I wrote all of these scenes where I did these sort of interviews with the characters.

I made it like a reality show where, like, I would pop into the book as a real person and I would talk with the characters and I blogged about them. I put them in my creative community. Everybody loved it. But at the end I was like, I don’t know how to put these in the book because it will confuse the readers. So I had to chop it up to get rid of all of that. And I’m still I still have to I’m still trying to figure out how to use it.

But that’s the decision making parts of it. That’s when you’ve got to become you’ve got to take off the creative hat and you’ve got to put on the leader hat. So when you put on the leader hat and as a solo producer or an independent creative, I have to do that. I’m doing the development, editing myself, and I’m making those decisions. So that’s when you become that’s cool. You become the CEO of your own creativity and then you have to decide who am I going to let in and what am I going to say?

And I think that really is I would be very you have to be very, very, very, very, very intentional. You’ve got to know you before you start allowing people into your work, because that’s a decision that it’s almost like I don’t want to say it’s a marriage, but it’s almost like there has to be a level of trust with whoever you let give feedback that they’re giving you the right feedback. And so I don’t, unfortunately, have the ability to go out and hire people to be developmental editors.

But I do have the ability to get a lot of feedback. So I put my work out there a lot and then I get I hear people are very generous and they will say things. So that’s what I think is good. If you put your work out there, you see how it fits, you know what your work is, you know the heart of your work. So if you put your work out there and you’re you’ve made the decision, I’m going to write about influence in Asian entrepreneurs and somebody comes back and says, no, you should do millennials who live in Boston.

You’re going to be like, no, thank you for the feedback. I appreciate you taking the time. But the core of my work is about Asian entrepreneurs. And that’s that’s because sometimes people get feedback all the time and they mean well. But sometimes you’ve got to give feedback and trust the person that they’ve made the decision. So if you just made the decision to be a podcast, you made the decision to write a memoir. About Asian entrepreneurs, if somebody comes to, you know, if they don’t write that right about you’re growing up in America or coming to America when your father had cancer.

Well, no, that’s not the book I’m writing. I may write that book later, but this is the book I’m writing right now. And that kind of reveals to me that this person is really not interested in my work. They want to try to change my work. And though I really love them as a person, they’re not for my work. I’m going to go. They’re not for this project because in a subtle way, they’re not trusting you.

And I think that’s what it reveals. They’re not being mean, but they’re not honoring you. And you want on a creative journey, you want people who honor your work. There’s a difference. And it’s hard for people to understand. Honoring your work means it doesn’t mean that you’re going to just tell you you’re awesome all the time. It means you’re going to engage with the work and a level of specificity that will help you grow then. And those are the people you want to present at the same time.

You don’t want somebody saying that your possible fit. You’re also fit. You’re also fit. You’re awesome to see you’re awesome. And then you publish a book that. So you’ve got to know you’ve got to be able to distinguish the difference between the feedback you get and your being a CEO. At that point, you just got to go with the decision. And that’s what that’s sort of the shift that you got to you. That’s why I think the agency comes at the end of the day, I’m the CEO of my creative work.

We all are the CEO of our creative work, and we have to get comfortable with being that. And I think that was a new a new realm to get into, because when I was hiring an editor, I was more thinking I got to get picked by an editor. I said, no, Steve, you are the editors boss, OK? And you’re going to decide how you interact with this person. You are not putting your work out there.

So this person will kick you. This person is coming to you. You are interviewing them, you are hiring them and you have expectations of them. So that’s the way I think you should you should look at those things and work through them that way, get a lot of feedback, see who you can trust, giving you feedback and stay true to your vision like you have your vision for your work. Don’t alter that, because if you alter your vision, you’re writing a different book.

And I would just say, hey, this is the book I want to do. All right. That other book when I’m done with this. Yeah. And that’s really what I think. We’ve got to stick to our vision and get people around. You support that vision. You know, it’s if you were say to me, write a book about how to rob a bank, I’m not going to be on that train with you. And I probably suggest that you don’t do it.

But if you’re writing a book about influencing Asian entrepreneurs, I’m like, yeah, I know that that’s important to fade. I’m going to support her on that journey. And that’s what I think we can be. I may not know a lot about Asian entrepreneurs and their journey, but I can help you and support you and read and give you techniques from where I can and support you in that journey. And that’s what I believe we need to be doing in our creative community.

It’s interesting, CESCO and actually mentioned in I think I’m not sure of as a blog post or possibly as part of an interview with Tim Ferriss or someone, he said he actually send a lot of manuscripts to editors and ended up they came back and had to erase all of them because with the editing he has become basically not him. And as a result, you and I probably are not going to be able to. By the way, all the lovey comments are coming in on YouTube.

Huge fan of Steve in Iraq. Thank you. Myrna and Stephen definitely will reply to that. But but Seth Godin actually said that he refuses to let some of the editing come in as a result of it. I also recently listened to Seinfeld’s interview with Jerry Seinfeld’s interview with Tim Varas. I was really blown away that he said he how he looks at his own creative endeavor as especially early on still independent stand up comedian. They’re all pretty much independent.

But the reason why he was very careful about who he signed with and whether you want to have this huge production or himself, he said, I don’t want to sink with the ship. I don’t want a certain special to go on for 90 minutes, because that’s what Netflix wants, because that’s what I’m required to do. It should be as long as short as it needs to be with us, said, I actually do want to come back. Maybe it’s a bit of a surprise to you, Stephen, that the reason and where I see my feedback from my book on this particular one, it was originally about entrepreneurship.

Then I really shifted to a beginner’s guide to making a full time living on YouTube. Or another potential title I have in mind is, are you there yet? Because as annoying little kids, are we there yet? We’re constantly thinking about creators like, are we there yet? But what is there? You know, how do we define there? And what are some of the critical milestones along the way? That was the book I wanted to to write.

There’s part of me really want to write a memoir, write something specifically for Asian immigrants and as. The result I put my question out there to this lovely community, a private community, people I trust different opinions came back and I really started to think for a second to say, wait a minute, who I am, what I do. How much of that is really related to being Asian or Asian entrepreneur? And to be honest, like all of a sudden I realize that’s actually a different book.

All that’s kind of specific challenges that we go through in being Asian or Asian immigrant living in America. So, Stephen, guess what else I did is I posted a question in the subtle Asian YouTube community. I said, what are some of the things that you find challenging? And I expected a lot of them to come back and say making money is important. And I got a shorter timeline. My parents were my families don’t support me. Guess what?

Not a single person brought it up. Not a single person mention of their own ethnicity as something that’s stopping them. Sure. That that becomes a particular challenge. So what I what I’m going to do instead is I have a bonus chapter of what I have learned about being someone who being someone who is a person of color in a popular creator community such as YouTube. And how does how does that impact us? How do we look to specific challenges?

So that’s no longer kind of an overarching like an umbrella theme. That’s kind of how I navigated my path.

Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s great because I think, like you have shared about your immigrant experience and I think one of the things as an American, I think for me, like I always think about race in terms of black and white, and then I’m an African-American and I’ve felt the sting of racism. But then when I open up to the wider world around me and I have Latino friends who tell me the sting of racism and how it’s hurt them.

And then I hear, like you talk about how the sting of racism has hurt you in your experience as an Asian person. And I begin to see what it’s a bigger world out there. So and I think that there are experiences that all of us have. There are battles that we have to overcome that are unique to all of us. And I think in your journey, there were things that you had to overcome that weren’t easy. You know, that I think it’s really good to have that Boenish chapter to stick in there because it gives us a different perspective of the world.

And I like to have a different perspective of the world. And that’s what I think is true. Diversity is to move out of, like, stereotype and move into, you know, hey, this is what I think. There are nasty stereotypes around Asian and people in America that we’ve been taught and that we buy into and see somebody like you who break those consistently. I remember you sharing that used to play hockey. I was like, what boy who played hockey?

And it’s sort of like, wow, you know, so there is so much that is so rich, you know? And when we have discussions about China and your mom’s work, and it’s always fascinating to me to be able to actually hear the actual experience from someone on the ground and who’s working in the community and who’s affected by it, and not just what we hear on the news and hears an actual person who’s living the immigrant experience, who’s right in front of me every day.

And I think that’s important because who am I responding to? At the end of the day, I’m responding to my friend. I’m not responding to a sound bite. I think when you respond to sound bites, we can damage relationships unintentionally. And I think that’s one of the things I think about your work that will be great to have in the world so people can see that it’s just not all stereotype. And I think mass media and I think you remember you putting that into your post that you didn’t want to write about the typical stereotypes.

But I think and would like Seth Godin has said the market when you write for the large market mass market, they want that. Right. They want the stereotypes because that locks in the most amount of people. One of the stories Seth shared, he said like he wrote his book, he wrote a book, and then he wrote another book. And he said it was a book about evolutionary biology, that he spent years, not years. He spent an entire year writing this book.

And then at the end of it, they only sold seventeen thousand copies. He says Simon and Schuster fired him and they he could not find another publisher for Simon Schuster. And the point of it didn’t realize and the point of it was the point of it was, is that they wanted you have to sell a lot of copies. It just comes down to economics. He got a large advance. There’s a certain amount of books that you have to sell.

There’s a certain amount of people who are you are supporting with your book sales. So it’s nothing sinister. It’s just you have to know when you step into a mass market, you’re supporting a lot of other people. And when you’re independent, you get to tell the stories that you want to tell. And I think for you, you get the opportunity to tell the story you want to tell because your book is supporting. You and your community, you’re not writing for a marketing publisher who has a mortgage, who’s relying on a guy who has five clients, who he has to get published or he’s out of a job and then his family can eat.

So I understand I’m not mad at that person, but that’s just the world it is when you’re in a mass marketing world, like I live in L.A. and I see it all the time. It’s just I want to be an independent creator. You need to know what you’re getting into. If I wanted to put my work out there for mass market to be on in Barnes and Noble, so if I want my work on NBC or in the movie theaters, there’s a certain game you have to play.

There’s a certain track that you have to go on. And I don’t want to go on that track. Now, if it happens again, it would be awesome. But I can’t commit myself to that path. I’m on an independent publisher path and I get to choose and make decisions. And if one day somebody comes to me and says, I want to put your work in this place, I come to it from a position of power, not from a position of begging to be accepted.

And I think that’s the power of your book. You’re writing your book the way you want to, and whoever accepts it, accepts it and whoever doesn’t doesn’t. But, you know, you’re getting it in front of the people who need it the most. I think those are the people you want to those at the end of the day, you want to help the people you can help the most. And I think that’s what, you know, you can do.

You’re going to do with your book. You’re going to have there are people out there who need it. There is an Asian immigrant girl out there somewhere who needs to hear your book. And maybe along the way you inspire other people. But I think that’s what it’s so wonderful. I mean, I’m I can’t believe it’s been an hour since we started this show. And there are ten people watching simultaneously right now on YouTube. It makes me so happy.

And I just want to say, whoever you are, you may be a fitness instructor, you may be a writer, you’re an educator. You wake and you work in it. You stay home. Most of the time. It doesn’t really matter. I think this conversation is so relevant to all of you. And again, I welcome you to join us in our creative entrepreneurs community. And please, you’re watching this after the fact. Leave comments in wherever, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, because I’m definitely going to put Steve and I to work and make sure we respond to your comments in really the this conversation align so much with the book I’m writing because the book I’m writing for creators is not about your extreme six month or even like overnight success.

It’s about having a longer term plan. Let’s start with five years. I think the moment people read the subtitle, whatever were in the intro, a lot of people to put down the book to say I got no five years to wait for, I can do it. But guess what? Five years goes by so fast. In retrospect, for me to start the podcast in twenty fourteen wasn’t something that I thought I would be doing for this long.

I probably lost my lost interest. Or am I have enough excuses to say this hasn’t generated me enough money, but I want to in twenty twenty on my YouTube channel especially I want to focus on so many different lessons and videos learn along the way of how these, all these things kind of play in concert. All the new leads, all the the viewers and people engage with me now are from years building up my tiny, tiny little still tiny little platform.

So it is just so, so wonderful that we all get to share this no matter where we come from, what our skin color is. We’re really in this together. So, Stephen, one thing I feel like I need to do justice is you are, in my opinion, a prolific educator. Before we close, could you please let people know who you are and what you do at your full time job, who you serve as an educator?

Sure, I work for a nonprofit called the Institute for the Redesign of Learning, and I specifically work as the education director and I work specifically with students with special needs. So in my role, I make I oversee a staff of 14 to 15 really dedicated educators. I work with a brilliant team of other educators, therapists, and we really serve a population that is has special needs but also are in crisis. They come to us when all of the resources have been exhausted at their public schools.

A lot of the students experience extreme amount of trauma, extreme amount of hard times, and we help them get back on track, helping them learn competencies to help them be successful. And we’re giving them the opportunity to be successful in ways they haven’t been successful. So it is definitely not an easy job. And I give a lot of credit to the people I work with. They’re amazing. They really care about people in a very difficult time. So that’s what I do want, a daily basis.

I work with other educators. I try to help them do their job the best that they can. I also navigate a lot of the politics of coronavirus government institutions, bureaucracy, trying to make a way forward for our students in this difficult time. So that’s what I do database’s. Some people would call me. I’m an unconventional title. I could be called a principal or a vice principal because we are really a collaborative team on our administrative leadership team.

Our educational director is a full time therapist. We also have two other therapists on our team. So we have a solid traditional school where you have your principal, your vice principal. I work in conjunction with therapists, so we do a lot of home care for students. All the students have special needs. So we’re all the every student there, autism, other health impairment, intellectual disabilities. So that is who I work with on a daily basis.

And I enjoy it. It is hard is some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. But it is at the end of the day, you feel very liberated and really feel like you’re doing something positive. So that’s what I do each each day during during the week, Monday through.

Amazing. I still don’t even let go of this conversation is in so many different engagements and still time people are watching and we have all these comments coming in. And I want to just take a moment to thank everybody who’s here, Kelvin. Ron Horner. I got to really meet on Zoom the other day. Amazing. And let’s see, Logan’s Run. Forty five, Mirna Kid Tang and Brenda Brenda Robinson, thank you so much for your comments by Stephen says that Brenda says really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you. The basics that Steve shared are applicable across many areas of life, and that’s precisely what I want these conversations to be, even though our theme, underlying theme is about creative, what it’s like to be a creator. But I truly believe that anybody who are watching this right now, you are an artist. Whether people label you that or otherwise, we are giving you the freedom and calling you an artist. And thank you so much for being here, because especially in recent days, weeks, and there’s so many uncertainties that we’re living with and the news are really hard to watch.

And I just want to first first of all, thank you, Steven, for really brightening my day, as you always do, and for people who are here with us and to kind of share this very special moment. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. This episode of the First World podcast is brought to you by Fey’s World LLC, our marketing service agency created for independent creators and businesses. We offer website development, video production, marketing, mentorship to people who want to tell better stories, level up and create a profitable brand phasor podcast team.

Our chief editor and producer, Herman Silvio’s associate producer, Adam Lefort, social media and content manager, Rosta Leon transcript editor Allena Almodovar. And lastly, myself, the creator and host of Face World. Thank you so much for listening.

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