CREATORS 2.0 HOW TO FIND YOUR PURPOSE, BUILD SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND CHANGE THE WORLD BY SEAN HOWARD
Published by Sean Howard Holdings www.seanhoward.ca PDF Edition, February 2015 Copyright © 2015 Sean Howard / All Rights Reserved
To Eli for his love and support, even when I was driving the ship into the rocks. To Jacquelyn for not hesitating to give this book a date to be born, sight unseen. To Mandy, Jon, Juliana, Annette, Douglas and Cara for helping me refine the ideas and supporting me every step of the way. To Ellie for adding poetry and structure to my thoughts and ramblings.
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1 Y O UR P UR P O S E ...8 2 A S O L I D F O UN DAT I O N . ..40 3 T H E S L O W BUI L D...7 0 4 A T O O L K I T F O R S US TAI N ABL E E N GAGE M E N T ...9 5 5 K I N DN E S S M AT T E R S ...115 AF T E R W O R D...125 N OT E S .. .128
This book is written for creators, both realized and aspiring. They are the artists, the craftspeople, the writers, the photographers and anyone drawn to create something in this world. Simon Sinek has a famous TED Talk1 where he explains how great companies start with Why before they tackle the How or the What. It is the same for every entrepreneur or creator. Knowing our purpose and calling, or what some might call our vocation, gives us focus and puts us in service to something larger. It also provides a clear and compelling compass for everything we do. When we lack a good understanding of our purpose, we are left scrambling after illusory things like money, fame and external expectations. I have over twenty years of experience with digital marketing, and in 2011, had the great pleasure of cofounding The Connected Brand, a niche branding agency that helps for-benefit organizations build brands
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that resonate and connect with their communities. In 2013, I set out to build a practice around my photography and my art. I learned firsthand how challenging it can be to produce art, let alone to market and sell it. I had thirty-two followers and no connections to anyone interested in my art. I did not have a tribe. So at the end of 2014, I set to the task of applying what I knew about marketing and branding to my art. I realized pretty quickly that this wasn’t about my art, it was about me. I wasn’t interested in gimmicks or hard sells. I wanted to build something stronger and bigger that aligned with my values and ethics. My exploration of the arts, or photography in my case, was the most life-changing and integral thing I had ever attempted. I desired a community of like-minded people who would support each other and the future me and my work. This is not a get-rich-quick book. There are no secrets, no schemes, no thinly-veiled marketing scams. As much as I would love to say there is a magic pill to build an audience and sell our work, I can categorically say that there is no growth-hacking tool that will catapult anyone from thirty-two followers (where I started) to tens of thousands of avid supporters. The only sustainable solution is the slow road of being in service to your audience and creating value for them each and every day of your life. This book provides actionable steps to align you with your calling on this planet and connect you with others who yearn for something
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similar in their lives. I want to help you find your tribe, flock, community or whatever you want to call them. Each of us owes it to ourselves and the world to continually reconnect with our purpose and calling. The world will thank us, and our hearts will fill us with more energy and drive than we ever thought possible. In Chapter 1, I present an approach for finding our purpose. Our purpose is the foundation upon which everything else is built because it is the Why of what we do in the world. In Chapter 2, I present my Purposeful Creator Framework that combines our purpose with our core promise and explains how this translates into how we behave. We look at the slow build in Chapter 3 and the investment necessary to create content that is of service to our tribe. I share some of the tools that I have found helpful in building sustainable communities in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 is a reminder to come from a place of kindness (to ourselves and our audience) and to be on the lookout for Resistance.
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CHAPTER ONE: YOUR PURPOSE FIRST THINGS FIRST If you are a creator who has risked everything and now find yourself desperately seeking revenue to keep food on your family’s table, put this book down and go get How to Feed a Starving Artist by David duChemin. His book showed me that I had it all wrong. My relationship with money was horribly amiss. I was in a state of impending financial doom. I had debt in the tens of thousands and my partner’s income wasn’t even covering our living expenses. Every month saw us further in debt. Collectors were calling and I was furiously trying to sell anything and everything. My journey to become an artist had become a mad jumble of wedding gigs, corporate headshots and the like. But for every sale I made, I spent more money on gear. I was fighting a losing battle, and every day saw me in a more desperate emotional place.
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It got to the point where it was starting to affect my relationship with my partner of 15 years. Thank the heavens above that this is exactly when David launched his book. I read David’s book all at once, sitting on the front porch as the sun came up, my coffee cold and forgotten beside me. No need for caffeine: every cell in my body vibrated as I sped through his book. David hit a point in his life when he had to file for bankruptcy. Luckily I was not quite to that stage, but I was in a deep bind and digging myself deeper with every day that passed. Within three weeks of reading David’s words, I had secured a line of credit against our house. We had paid off all of our credit cards and committed to spending less than we earned. We now pay off credit cards in full every month. It isn’t easy, and I am forever learning to change how I think about money. I have read David’s book three times, and each time, I take away something I missed in a previous review. If I hadn’t stopped and gotten my financial picture under control, I 10
would have risked my relationship, my art and even my well-being. I would not have the ability to focus and devote the time needed to begin feeding myself and giving back to my community. I can’t stress this enough. You can’t build a powerful and sustainable practice that aligns with your soul and calling if you are scrambling to feed yourself and your family. You must take action first to right the sinking ship.
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FINDING PURPOSE Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. – Aristotle Knowing our purpose is a pursuit that unites artists, philosophers, entrepreneurs and creators of all types. I would go so far as to say that the search for purpose is the single truth that unites all of us. But it can be one of the most daunting tasks as it requires us to explore the areas within us that are both unfulfilled and deeply afraid. Contemplating our greater purpose can leave us with a disquieting sense of dread and impotence. It is far easier to overlook and rationalize these fears and yearnings in the vain pursuit of riches, fame and happiness. Probably no aspect of life has been more intensely studied by those who have come before us. There is an endless supply of books, online courses and blogs that promise to help you find your purpose. The best authors will tell you a personal story about how they found their purpose or explore the insights from a great writer or philosopher. The worst will avoid the topic completely and just try to sell you something.
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I found that even the authors who provided great insights often struggled to put forward a concrete model that I could use to find my purpose. So I set out on a journey to interview the most passionate and purposeful people I could find. I wanted to understand how they saw the world. Did they face the same challenges as I did? How did they overcome obstacles? I explored some pretty complex and some overly hedonistic models for finding purpose. I discovered that our purpose lives inside our heart and soul, and it cries out every day that we choose to avoid it. I also learned that there is no simple and foolproof method to determine our calling in the world. Everyone I spoke to had a different approach. Some used free writing, meditation and walking. Others turned to retreats, guided experiences or even mind-altering substances. The methods varied, but I began to wonder if there was a model that might unite all of these journeys. A way of laying out the rules of engagement for finding our purpose. So I started over. What if I thought of finding purpose as a wicked problem? A problem with so many interdependencies that it can’t be solved with a one-size-fits-all solution. I went back through my reading and interviews with a new focus. I wasn’t looking for methods. I was looking to model the search for purpose in a way that could provide actionable insight for myself and others. 14
I waded through other people’s contemplations on purpose. I explored definitions, philosophies, meditations and guided programs. I experimented with a number of frameworks until I boiled it down into an actionable model, or what I call the two rules that govern the finding of purpose: You can only find your purpose through action. Your purpose is found where your talents align with the world’s great need. Frederick Buechner, and Aristotle before him, understood this second rule. They knew that our purpose was realized when our talents were put in service to something meaningful and larger in the world.
[Vocation] is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s great hunger meet. – Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC I opened this chapter with a very similar quote. Aristotle refers to “talent” and Buechner refers to “deep gladness.” I believe that they are speaking about the same thing. Buechner refers to talent as a deep 15
gladness for a reason. I suspect it is because of how misunderstood the word talent had already become in his day. Talent is a predisposition for a task to bring us pleasure. Talent is not something you are born good at, nor is it bestowed only on the prodigies of the world. Talent simply identifies those activities that align with our deep gladness. When the grueling effort required to master a skill fuels us for some unexplained reason, that is talent. Hours spent in front of our computer, our worktable or our instrument melt away into a state of flow3 when we find that activity that ignites some part of us. That is talent realized. I struggled with this, because from a very young age I expected everything I touched to turn into gold. I thought talent was skill. When it wasn’t easy to be good at something, I assumed I had no talent for it. So I never learned to draw or paint or sing. I avoided all the arts and actually taught myself to avoid difficult things in life. Living this way is ridiculous and not very fulfilling. No matter what any expert or dictionary tells us, talent has nothing to do with being good at something. To think this way is to stay locked in a paradigm that separates us from our true purpose and calling. We stop short of pursuing what matters because we are no good at it – yet! Talent is the force that draws us to sit down again and create yet 16
another piece, regardless of the outcome. Talent is what motivates us to devote the time required to achieve skill and mastery. If we want to find our talent, we have to show up and do the work. We have to struggle drawing that first straight line. We have to stare at the blank page on the screen and start typing. And we have to show up every day. It can be for thirty minutes or it can be for two hours. But it has to be more than a one-off. Talent is only the first part of the equation that Aristotle and Buechner gave us. Living a fulfilled and purposeful life is about being of service to something larger. It is about aligning our unique talents with a real problem in the world. Pat Thompson has been exploring vocation and civic renewal as a Metcalf Foundation Innovation Fellow, visiting scholar at Massey College and senior advisor at the Atkinson Foundation. She spoke about purpose and vocation on Attention Surplus, a podcast I co-hosted.4 It’s not just about feeling happy or content that I’m doing something I like to do. If you follow Buechner’s train of thought, you come to realize that our work at the end of the day is really not about [us]. . . The world’s deep hunger is usually attached to a particular problem that is calling out for a solution. It’s only in that engagement with these problems and solutions that we feel deeply glad at the end of the day to be working.
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As a creator, responding to a deep hunger in the world can seem daunting on so many fronts. We may write fantasy novels, draw mandalas, take photos, create epic graffiti, write poetry or any other inspiring endeavor. Many of us have heard that nagging voice in our head whispering, “What good does this accomplish in the world?” Couple this with the myth of the starving artist and we find ourselves having to choose between lifeless work that pays or not providing for our family and loved ones. My partner has struggled with this for most of his life. He is in love with older audio formats like the radio play, and he writes in the fantasy and humor genre. The problem is that he also holds himself accountable for directly saving all of the world’s natural environments. The disconnect between the expectations he has set for himself and the work he produces has kept him from pursuing his calling and true purpose for many years. He refused to sit down and produce because his talents seemed insignificant and futile when it came to the problems of the world. He never asked himself how his talents could connect to the issues that mattered to him. It just seemed too daunting. This is why the first part of the model I presented above is so important: “We can only find our purpose through action.” Sitting and just thinking about all of this won’t result in anything real. We each have to find our own way to put aside all the self-doubt and the external expectations and begin to explore our potential talents. Only 18
then can we start to grow and explore how we can connect these talents with a “great hunger� in the world. But where to start? Should we paint? Buy a camera? Play an instrument? Take a sculpting class?
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