Show Your Work! is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery―let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive.
Remember, with each episode, we will provide a helpful Deep-Dive infographic where we break down the entire book on to 1 page! Reach out to anthony@invictusmultifamily.com to get access to all the sophisticated investor notes!
Here are our top 10 takeaways:
- Process Not Product
- Learn Publicly
- Teach What You Know
- Storytelling
- Storytelling Pt 2
- Make Stuff You Love
- Every Day
- Share Your Influences
- Sell Out
- Creation Time
Tweetable Quotes:
“We talk a lot about copywriting and like just how important the words are that we use and how we put them together to create an emotion, to create motion and make people want to take action.” – Anthony Vicino
“Don’t have that scarcity mindset about whatever it is, your business is, whatever it is you’re creating, share it with the world.” – Dan Krueger
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** Transcripts
Share Your Work
[00:00:00] Anthony: Hello, and welcome to invest simple. This is the podcast where we take the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can take action today. Most Anthony Vino joined ASLE, uh, Dan, the bookworm
[00:00:23] Dan: crew. Hello, I am here. I am a bookworm.
[00:00:26] Anthony: You have squirmed your way into the seat. You are in the studio.
Uh, how are you doing today? I’m good.
[00:00:32] Dan: Good. I’m busy. Yes. We’re in the middle of a lot of things. A lot of things that we can’t discuss because they’re private placements, but oh yeah. We’re in the
[00:00:42] Anthony: middle of a lot of, ’em some things we can’t talk about. Some things we can’t talk about. Yeah. But like one thing in particular that we can talk about last week, what’s that close something
[00:00:48] Dan: last week
[00:00:50] Anthony: we close.
What did we close last
[00:00:51] Dan: week? What year? Yes, that is a non-SEC thing that we can discuss freely. .
[00:00:55] Anthony: Yeah, that’s a really awesome project actually. Did we do a deep dive into that yet? Did we, do I feel like we talked [00:01:00] about it on a previous podcast, maybe we’ve not done a
[00:01:02] Dan: deep dive. No, not deep dive. We need to though
[00:01:04] Anthony: that that project is pretty, pretty awesome.
Um, for the listeners at home, we’ll, we’ll maybe do some deep dives. We’ve been doing a lot of transactions recently. We did, uh, two closings last month, closing this month, we got another couple coming up next month and that couple in September. Yeah, very, very busy times over here for us. And, and through it all.
We are carving out a little bit of space for you, our dear listeners, so that we can save you some time, uh, this, if you’re not familiar with this podcast episode and the shtick and what we’re doing here, um, you always hear about how the average CEO reads 52 books in a year. right. That’s that’s the average CEO.
If you wanna be extraordinary, like these guys, mm. You gotta read at least 200. Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump ‘
[00:01:45] Dan: em up. We say these guys for those, not on YouTube who don’t see our, our thumbs flying
[00:01:49] Anthony: back and forth. Yeah. Referencing to us. That’s us. Yeah. Read 200 books a year.
[00:01:53] Dan: So we’re like twice.
We’re like. Four
[00:01:56] Anthony: times four times is good. Yeah. Minus that’s actually eight times. [00:02:00] Oh yeah. This is average CEO, everybody. However, I, I recognize that reading is very time consuming and if you’re listening to this, you’re probably a pretty busy person, um, pretty awesome busy person. And you only have so much time in the day to read books.
And so there’s, there’s gonna be so many books out there in the universe that you want to get to, that you just never will get an opportunity to. So what we do on this segment is we take a book that we really love. That was impactful for us. We’re gonna break it down as quickly as possible into. Chunks, uh, 10 takeaways so that you can get the gist of the book without actually having to read it.
And that’s gonna save you hours. And as a, as a side bonus, something else that we create just for you don’t don’t tell anybody. is we create the sophisticated investor notes. These are just little infographics. Take the 10 takeaways from Dan and myself, put them into a beautiful little spark notes type of, uh, sheet that you can just have at your, your disposal so that, you know, you can brush up on it before you go into the cocktail party and you can roll, roll smart when you’re, when you’re chat with people.
So today the book that we’re gonna [00:03:00] deep dive into, oh, by the way, if you want those notes, just email me, Anthony Invictus, multifamily. Do. so today, what book are we gonna talk about? Show your
[00:03:08] Dan: work by Austin. Is it Cleon Cleon Leon Cleon Austin. Cleon Austin
[00:03:14] Anthony: Cleon Cleon yep. Show your work. This is an interesting book for you.
I feel like this is an interesting book for you. Exactly. This is not such an interesting book for
[00:03:22] Dan: me, but for you. It is exactly. And that was, you know, kind of what I was gonna kick this off with was that this is a book that, you know, from my perception. Fairly packaged for the creatives and the artists out there at a first glance.
This is something that would appeal to basically anywhere in the creative space. What are your, uh, traditional artist drawing, painting, making music, poet, writer, whatever, like this appears to be who that is written for. But I was, um, pleasantly surprised that most, everything was applicable to basically any industry, you know, regardless of whether you’re an artist or not, this.
I think these days more never, this book is, uh, very [00:04:00] applicable.
[00:04:00] Anthony: I agree. The, the subtitle of the book is 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered. I’m reading this upside down, it’s on the table right in front of me. Nice work. So that’s pretty impressive. Um, so it’s all about like being creative and, and then also how you actually share that with the world.
And I, and Austin’s an author and he’s also a drawer. Um, and I. For a lot of those types of creatives, this book is gonna really resonate because those people tend to create a lot, but then don’t share it with people. They have a, they struggle to get discovered. And then they’re the starving artist. And one of the really interesting things is so in a past life, you know, I wrote science fiction and fantasy, and I was, I was pretty successful at it.
Not because what I discovered was not because I was a good. Um, I was an adequate adequate writer, but really what it came down to was I was a really good marketer. I was really good at putting my work out there in front of people and getting it seen. And there’s plenty of authors and that are far, far, far better than me, but they just really sucked at the marketing.
They didn’t understand how to put it out there into the world. [00:05:00] And so they’re the starving artist and this book is, um, Partly like how to be creative in a public in a public way. Mm-hmm and share it. And if you’re listening to this and you’re like a CPA or a lawyer, you’re like, I’m not creative. I don’t know what this has to do with me at all.
Like stick around because I think it does. I think everybody in this modern era, um, has something to gain from tapping into their creativity and then learning how to create in public so that people see it, which then. Brings them into your sphere.
[00:05:27] Dan: Yeah, for me, this, this was really about how to connect with your audience.
So whether you’re, uh, an artist or a, uh, an operator of syndications like us or a dentist, like you’re gonna need to market and connect with somebody on the receiving end of this message. And that’s, for me, that’s what I took out of this book. Um, we’ll go into all the specific takeaways, but largely this is why it’s applicable to pretty much everybody is this.
This is how to effectively market, uh, to an audience which every. Business needs to do unless you’re in some weird business that doesn’t have customers, um, maybe this [00:06:00] isn’t applicable. But I don’t know what’s business. That is, I’ll be honest. , it’s probably not going well for you,
[00:06:05] Anthony: but, well, one of the, one of the interesting things about being creative is you go through this period where you’re creating the thing and that that’s very, very scary and hard to do in public.
Like, definitely don’t want people looking over your shoulder as you’re creating mm-hmm . Um, but that actually is the thing that helps you connect and build audience and like engagement. Yeah. And as we go through some of these, we’ll draw some parallels to how we’ve built Invictus in terms of marketing or how we’ve built this podcast, for instance, and.
So much of from day one, this podcast has been just showing our work and building in. So, do you wanna kick us off with the, the first
[00:06:36] Dan: takeaway? Let’s do it. Uh, so I titled this one. Um, I think process, not product. I wanna say I just took the titles of chapters, something like that. That’s thieving. Yes. I won’t stand for it.
Hey. I mean, I can’t, I’m sitting so I can’t read better than Austin, so I’m gonna keep his words. Uh, but this one is really about kind of what I was just talking about there, connecting with your audience, which is why I’m throwing it in first year. It is number one on my list. So I so far I’m sticking [00:07:00] to my order that I wrote these down.
uh, I think process not product. Um, so obviously we already kind of alluded this, this book is all about, um, how to connect with your audience as a creator of sorts. And, um, one thing that I think a lot of artists tend to do, I’ve seen this, I grew up in a family of artists. I’ve been around a lot of people who are creatives.
They like to really kind of hold their, their work, uh, close to the chest until it. Ready right until it’s perfect refined and everything is all the kinks are worked out, which I, I’m not really a creative, but I would assume that’s probably a really, uh, tough place to get to where you’re you’re you’re done.
You’re officially done. It’s probably a tough, a tough way to call. Um, but there was a quote in there that I pulled out here by, uh, Brene brown that says in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen. And that applies that you need to be vulner. And so that you need to be able to open up with the world about what it is that you’re doing.
If it, even if it’s not done or perfect, you’ve gotta kind of document what’s going on behind the scenes for people to really get [00:08:00] to know you. If you just show up with a final product, that’s great. But you know, people really, uh, respond to the work that goes into a thing, the struggle that’s where I think people can really connect with you.
And so putting yourself out there and, and documenting your process, whether this be notes, pictures, Podcast episodes like we do about the stuff we’re working on. Um, anything like this that allows you to connect with your audience before your product or whatever it is that you’re producing is actually ready for distribution or sale or whatever it is.
Um, I think is really important part. And I took this out as a takeaway because this is incredibly hard for me. I’m the type, just like an artist who wants to just hold everything, close the chest until it’s absolutely perfect. And then I’ll share it with the world, but that doesn’t really. Yeah,
[00:08:46] Anthony: it doesn’t work specifically when you go to try and then put it in front of people, if feel like who the hell are you?
Like, what, where, where are you coming from? It might be the best product in the world, but people, if they don’t, if they don’t know who you are, if they don’t have anything to connect with, then it’s gonna be very, very hard. And that first hurdle is getting somebody [00:09:00] to. Look at your product and actually pick it up.
And so you can make it so much easier on yourself by involving people in the process of the creation. An interesting story actually kicked off my very first novel time heist, which was not at the time, the book that I had set out to write. I was writing a different book. Um, it was a fantasy series called gods and children.
And at the same time I was writing this weekly blog article or like I had this blog called weekly short stories, except for it wasn’t weekly. As in like every week, they were weak as not very strong. Um, there’s a plan where I’m, I’m a wordsmith. That’s cute. And so every, every day, every week I would, I would publish a new short story and it was a muscle that I was developing and putting it out into public, but it was also helpful because then I got to see how people.
Mm. And one story over Christmas that people really, really reacted to that they really enjoyed was a story called time, time snatch, which, uh, people, people gave me a lot of crap about the name. They did not like the name, but the story they really liked and people were like, you should, you should [00:10:00] flush this out.
And I want more. And I was like, okay, I can do that. And that’s what led to Tom Heon mind breached in soul state, which ended up being like my best selling trilogy ever. Mm-hmm and I, I tabled everything else. Cause I was like, this is what people. and that’s like, one of the real benefits of like building in public is sometimes you think you’re building the thing that people want and it’s not.
And then if you’re listening and you’re astute and receiving the message that your audience is giving you, you can pivot and be like, oh, I can create exactly the thing they want. And then of course they’re gonna buy it because they wanted it. They
[00:10:28] Dan: asked for it. Yeah, a lot of comedians do this, actually they’ll go.
And they, uh, and Chris rock actually does this in particular. He’ll actually take his notebook for those of you on YouTube, you can see have a yellow, uh, legal pad here. He writes all of his material out on these books. A lot of the guys do that. Um, and he goes into a Grimmy little club that’s very small and he just goes through everything.
He doesn’t even have to memorize it cuz he has his, his notebook with him and he figures out. What, uh, connects with people, what needs some work and, and what just sucks. And then he goes and makes the Netflix special. Mm-hmm he takes that. He [00:11:00] tests it out. He shows it to the world. He’s vulnerable, not the whole world, just little club.
Uh, but then he, he figures out what works and what doesn’t, what resonates with people. And, you know, it’s, it’s useful data. Mm-hmm,
[00:11:09] Anthony: a hundred percent. All right. My takeaway, here we go. I have my, I have my, for guys in gal that don’t know I have, uh, there’s this great app out there called read wise dot. And it allows you to track all the notes that you’ve ever taken on your eBooks or PDFs or Twitter, anything like that, and just collates it onto one place.
And I find it really helpful. Nice. Now I have like a singular place. I can look at my notes. So if you see me on my phone, I’m not, I’m not texting. Um, but I am texting. Okay. So here we go. The, this one is the best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.
And I think that’s really interesting is. you generally, when you’re building a community or an audience it’s people who are like passionate and interested in the same thing that you. Right. Like, and if you can figure out what it is that you’re passionate and learning about and then [00:12:00] learn in public and just be like one or two steps ahead of the audience in terms of just sharing your experience.
Hey, this week I learned this thing, I think this is really cool and unpacking it for people. This is a really great way to get started when you’re not yet an expert at a thing mm-hmm and this is one of the questions I get all the time from coaching clients. Well, I just started, how do I start creating content around this topic where I’m not really an expert yet?
I’m like, well, then don’t pretend as though you’re an expert, just pretend or don’t pretend, but share your perspective as a student and what you’re learning. And that, that really resonates with people because there’s something like really infectious about being a student of a topic and being really passionate and interested.
I was listening to somebody the other day, just like talking passionately about. And if anybody knows me, I hate food. I hate talking about it. I hate cooking. Like, is it so not interesting to me, but because this person was so passionate about it, I was like, all right, I can get behind this. It’s pretty rad.
[00:12:55] Dan: Yeah, no, I, I agree. I think that’s, um, a it’s it, it resonates with [00:13:00] people documenting like that, but also it’s incredibly useful, especially if you’re somebody who’s interested in a topic and you happen upon someone’s YouTube channel that started. Uh, this documentation journey of education a year ago, and you could fly through their year in a weekend.
I mean, that’s an incredibly valuable resource. I mean, obviously it takes a while to accrue all that, but, um, yes, it’ll resonate. It makes you more relatable for the audience, but it’s becomes incredibly valuable when you actually get to the end of your, your journey too. So mm-hmm, . uh, next up for me, uh, teach what, you know, um, this kind of ties in, uh, nicely to the one that you just gave there.
So I’m gonna go with this next. Um, I think a lot of people out there have kind of a, um, a scarcity mindset. Mindset around whatever it is that they do. And they think that their thing that makes them successful is like their secret sauce and they shouldn’t, um, share it with the world. Um, but I took a page outta Gary Vaynerchuk’s, uh, book a long time ago.
I can’t remember which one was in. Maybe it [00:14:00] was jab, jab, jab, right hook or something. Maybe it was, I forgot which book it was, but the concept of just giving away all the things that you know, for free and putting that out in the market is, uh, something I took away years. And this is kind of reaffirming that, that teaching people is gonna be a really great way to connect with them and also, uh, bolster how much, you know, because there’s no better way to really refine your, or, or, or increase your expertise on something than trying to teach somebody else.
That thing you you’ll find out really quickly that what you thought you were an expert in. Actually, you’ve got a couple weak spots in, and if you can effectively teach a concept to somebody else that really proves that, okay, you you’ve got it down. Don’t have that scarcity mindset about whatever it is, your business is, whatever it is you’re creating, share it with the world.
Uh, there was an example in the book about a, a barbecue joint. I wanna say it was, I forgot where it was Texas, Tennessee summer. There was some sort of B barbecue joint referenced in the book. And, um, the author talks [00:15:00] about how this, uh, this secret barbecue recipe, um, by this, uh, barbecue guy was, was just being shared.
To the world. I think he had, you know, a film crew on site and he was probably filming it for food network or something. And, um, you know, he, he talked about how this, uh, giving away the secret sauce, this, this secret recipe, wasn’t really a big deal because a, it shows everybody how complicated it is to make this really killer barbecue.
And people are gonna be more. Apt to spend money on it than ever, because they’re like, that is a lot. I don’t wanna have to do all those things. So I don’t care if that’s your secret recipe, I’m not even gonna try. I’m gonna pay you 15 bucks for your barbecue. Um, so that, that’s something that I had early on in my life.
I, when I was in the coaching space, I had this kind of scarcity mindset about trying to get away all the, uh, rationale and, and philosophy behind what I was doing. And I took a page outta Gary’s book and it worked wonderfully and it’s served us ever since we’ve been education [00:16:00] focused from the get code Invictus.
So
[00:16:02] Anthony: yeah, the, the phrase that I like to think about is, uh, share your secrets, sell the implementation. Hmm. And it’s exactly what we do here. It’s the same with the barbecue sauce. So if you share the secret, but then you sell the implementation, that’s him selling his bottles of secret sauce. Right. And you’re like, you see the recipe and you’re like, that’s really cool.
I’m not gonna do that. Mm-hmm um, maybe bonds me to you in understanding, like what went into this product, cuz people love that, but I’m not gonna do that myself. Maybe some people will, but that’s gonna be a very small. And it’s the same process that we go through here where it’s just share everything that we know about passive investing about real estate multifamily, so that you can use that information to do what you will with it.
Um, and if you want to, if you want us to implement it for you, we can definitely do that. You can come invest with us at Invictus, you know, but at the end of the day, it’s, uh, it’s more about realizing most people. Aren’t going to take your secrets and run with it. Yeah. That’s just, that’s just the reality.
So if you’re, if you’re operating from that scarcity mindset, that if I share this, my customers won’t need me. [00:17:00] put that outta your
[00:17:01] Dan: mind. Yeah. It’s not really a thing.
[00:17:04] Anthony: All right. My number two, let’s see here. If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself in your work, you need to become a better storyteller.
You need to know what a good story is and how to tell one. This is really interesting to me because I obviously have been fascinated with story for a long time as like a science fiction writer. You gotta, you gotta understand how to tell a story and. What I, what I find remarkable is how in so many different places of my life and different businesses or different communications, like the ability to tell a good persuasive, engaging story is often the difference between having massive success and just having a thing fall flat on its face.
And I Reed and I, we talk a lot about copywriting and like just how important the words are that we use and how we put them together to create an emotion, to create motion and make people want to take action. It is one of the most powerful skills that you could have. And [00:18:00] I, a couple years ago, I think maybe it was 2021.
I did a like here’s 21 lessons for young hustlers and one of the, one of the lessons in there. And I, I feel like people glossed over it was learn to tell a really good story. If you can learn how to tell a really good story, you are gonna be so much further ahead than your competitors or than your friends.
Like, think about the person at the party. Who’s always got like killer stories and how jealous you are of like, man, I wish I could tell stories like that. And then when it’s your turn to tell the story, you’re like, I guess you had to just be there. Yeah. like, you don’t get the reaction that you’re expecting like that, that sucks.
Yeah. I’m not a good storyteller, but it’s something to work on. It’s a skill and it’s, it’s such a cool skill to.
[00:18:41] Dan: I agree a hundred percent. I’m not even gonna comment on that because my next takeaway is tell good stories. so I’m just gonna double down on that. Get it out of the way. Cause it’s basically the same thing.
Um, but I think I, I pulled this one out because I think, you know, obviously you are an author, so you, uh, discovered your, your. Storytelling ability probably much [00:19:00] earlier than I did. Um, I just started to crack this open for myself. Um, largely due to, uh, Renee Rodriguez, shout out to Renee. Did his event amplify, um, was that two years ago already?
It was two years ago. Geez. Time flies. So that was kind of my first foray into this, this space of, of, of telling stories. I did some writing when I was a little kid in like grade school and kind of got away from it. For the rest of my life have been very analytical and quantitative and data driven and have focused, almost put no focus into curating stories and using them.
I’m a hundred percent focused on data. And when I was doing Renee’s event, uh, which was amplified by the way, uh, it really talked a lot about the ability to tell a story in order to connect with your audience. And so I’ve seen this work for myself real time. I’ve incorporated this into my, uh, business and it’s it.
It’s worked wonders. Um, You know, Anthony had, had been doing a lot of speaking lately. And just recently you went to an event, you gave [00:20:00] a speech there. Someone came up to you afterwards and said, Hey, this at this event, uh, your speech was the best. Anthony. The last event I was at Dan’s was the best. And I’ll bet it’s because we used stories to connect with the audience.
Once you get people emotionally involved, it, um, It gets ’em paying attention, right? Mm-hmm no matter what it is that you’re saying, like people are gonna zone out at a conference until you, you tap into some kind of emotional connection with ’em and then all of a sudden they are a hundred percent engaged and they remember so, whatever your, your message is, uh, a story that lets you connect with people is gonna be a hundred times more powerful, um, than just giving them some sort of compelling data.
And the thing
[00:20:36] Anthony: with stories is that it’s how the human has developed. It’s evolved over time to process information. It’s how, you know, information was passed down from generation to generation. It’s how we, we look at the world. And if you look at the things that people are the most engaged in they’re story based things, right?
Like Netflix or video games, like there’s really deep story going on. And I, [00:21:00] I think everybody should be, I think school did us a real big disservice. When we talk about creative writing and writing in general and like, oh, you have to write this essay. And it’s like, man, no, we should have been working on is how to tell stories.
Mm-hmm like there really should have been, um, like a storytelling 1 0 1, a 2 0 1, a 3 0 1 class. Yeah, because that alone is going to help you communicate what’s inside of you to the
[00:21:22] Dan: world. Yeah. Yeah. There was a really great example in the book that I thought helped kind of drive it home, which was, uh, just looking at forged arts, like fake.
um, the reason that someone would pay, I don’t know how much the Mona lease would go for these days. Um, probably 50 million. I don’t know what you’d pay for the Mona Lisa, but it’s worth millions of dollars. Right? You can make an exact replica and there’s some incredibly good Ford charts out there where they’ve got it down to the brush strokes.
Like you would never be able to tell the difference, but the reason that one has a monetary value and the other does not is because of the. [00:22:00] Of whose paintbrush touched this, how long ago? And like all that stuff is, that’s why people are paying the money for it. It’s for the story, not for the paint on the canvas.
Mm-hmm I thought that example helped kind of drive it
[00:22:11] Anthony: home too. And, and, and to connect this further to like what we do in real estate, the reason a lot of people come to invest with us at Invictus is because of, of our, of our story. And hearing Dan’s story coming from finance or my story coming from like a background of creative or entrepreneurship, or just a story of, we work in our backyard and we’re vertically integrated and like connecting these pieces for people.
So it’s not just, oh, we invest in real estate. Like there’s, there’s a deeper story there. Yeah, exactly. All right. My number three is, make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of. Is that simple I think it’s like going back to the teach, what, you know, that you kind of mentioned, but I’m a big fan of just like figure out what you’re passionate about and go deep into your passions.
And, [00:23:00] and you’re going to, if you talk about that, if you share that with the world, then you’re gonna find people who are also passionate about that for us. What’s interesting is we talk a lot about real estate multifamily and passive investing. Now our average passive investor. Passionate about real estate.
So we have to find other angles to talk about what we do and share the story in a way where it’s not just about the real estate. It’s about the impact. It’s about the community. It’s about the, you know, the being in the, the neighborhoods that we, we live in and, and investing in them that those are stories that connect with investors more than just real estate and saying, oh, we want to be a positive influence in our communities.
We. Um, leave this place better than we, we found it, that stuff resonates more so than just oh, 15% IRR with a 7% cash on cash return. We’re gonna go in there. We’re gonna have Jack up rent and, um, great returns, right? Like cool. But any, any other number of operators out there can tell that story, but only we can [00:24:00] tell our story and that’s what people come for.
And so even something as like that feels as non-creative as real estate, there’s still opportunity to tell a. .
[00:24:09] Dan: Yeah, I think usually it’s gonna be like the, why mm-hmm, like there’s money to be made. That’s great. But like, there’s gotta be a little something more to really get people excited. Like, why are you going into this business?
Like what. What makes you passionate about it? That, that story, I think that’s part of our story that I think attracts people is why the heck are you guys doing it?
[00:24:29] Anthony: Yeah. And going back to something, it was mentioned just a little bit ago is like, and this one, it says, make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love.
And you’ll attract people who love that same stuff. And maybe you don’t attract people who love that same stuff, but they’ll be attracted to your passion for that thing. In the same way that I was attracted to that person who was talking about food, I was like, this is really engaging and cool. Like I have no interest in food, but I was attracted to that individual at that moment to listen.
Mm-hmm . And so, you know, sharing your passion, if anything, is, is, uh, part of the secret to showing your work. Yeah. [00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Dan: My next one is, uh, share something small every day. Um, this kind of goes back to the think process. Now product piece, where it’s, you know, all about kind of like, uh, letting people pee behind the curtain or peek under the hood or whatever analogy you want to use, um, doing that is necessary to engage with the audience, but you don’t wanna share.
And I’m still in this from the author. You don’t wanna share your lunch or your latte, right? um, a lot of people do. Great do it, whatever, but you wanna make sure that what you’re putting out there into the world is actually something that’s either gonna be entertaining or valuable or educational, or it’s gotta give some sort of value to your audience.
So make sure the way you’re sharing is meaningful. Uh, but, but try to do it every day or at least on some sort of consistent cadence. Um, not just because you’re gonna be connected with your audience, but, uh, also, because this is something that you could turn into something more at a later. The author talks a lot about, uh, I believe it was, uh, um, uh, flow and stock where kind of like the, the, the smaller pieces of [00:26:00] content that you might be sharing, um, on a more frequent timeline might be, uh, your, your flow, right?
That’s just the stuff you’re kind of putting out there into the world, but your stock is like your, your book that you end up with, or your finished. Or, um, like your you’re kind of your big thing, right? That you wanna kind of release the world. All those little things that you’re releasing up up until a later date might be turning into something bigger.
So, uh, the author said something along the lines of like a, a tweet might become an article, which might become a chapter in a book, which you know, is obviously your kind of your stock, your, your end result, that you’re kind of working towards. So, uh, it’s a great. Stay engaged with your audience, but you could also be curating some sort of bigger content piece for a later date from your daily shares.
[00:26:45] Anthony: Mm-hmm I think it’s important to, to develop that muscle of sharing, because that is, it is a muscle that you have to, uh, develop into also, uh, it’s a weak one for me too. It’s like a thick skinning right too. Not just the muscle that you flex when it’s like, I need to create and [00:27:00] share, but also the, the thick skin that you have to develop as a artist to put things out there and also be okay with people, not liking it.
Haters, hater, haters are gonna hate, but one of the coolest things I I’ve reflected on in recent years is looking back at all the content that we’ve created here at Invictus. And. You know, whether it’s through the book or the podcast, or just in every day, social media content, there’s just like a really robust library of stuff that we’ve talked about and we’ve created over the years.
And it’s really cool just to go back and get inspiration and just also have a, um, a data point for where you were at different points in your life, and then be able to take these things and, and recreate something new out of it. So it’s, you’ll never complain about having too much. Content to work with.
Yeah. So it starts by just daily, just a little bit, every single day. Some of
[00:27:48] Dan: it’s kind of good too. Not all. Well, every
[00:27:50] Anthony: now and then, like, I would say like 1%, but Hey, if you’re putting out a lot of stuff, that 1% adds up, so, okay. This one’s really cool because, um, it’s something that I think [00:28:00] we do inherently, uh, without too much thought.
And as soon as I say this, she’ll go, oh yeah, I get. so it says your influences are all worth sharing because they clue people into who you are and what you do sometimes even more than your own work. And we, we talk a lot about people that we, we draw influence from. Oh, our listeners have noticed. Yeah.
You’re like, you guys don’t have any original thoughts. You guys are just recycling a combination of Alex Remo Naval. Um, who’s the third, the scene comes up. Oh, the
[00:28:31] Dan: scene. Yeah. Kind
[00:28:32] Anthony: of depends on the season. We’re end, but I do think there’s a lot to be said about like sharing who your influences are. I think it’s a really cool thing to make people realize that you’re not just, um, A singular figure out there by yourself, but there’s actually like a wall of, uh, people behind you.
Like for me, one really big one is like Marcus. I like to quote him. I like to reference his work a lot. And so then when you’re like, oh, I’m interested in what you’re creating. It also serves as this avenue for spreading the words of [00:29:00] these other people who you obviously love. Like we love these guys Naval and Alex, and we’d love you to also love them too.
And if you do, that’s awesome. It’d be really cool to, to be able to share them with you. So I think that’s a really interesting. probably not a lot of people think about when it comes to being creative in public.
[00:29:17] Dan: Yeah, no, I think you’re right. I think we, without thinking about it, we, we do this. It’s not intentional.
We just like to, I guess, give credit to the people. We get a lot of our ideas from, uh, a lot of people might omit the name and just kind of take the quote or take the, the, the thought or the philosophy and kind of present it as their own. Uh, I think we’re probably a little more cognizant of like, Hey, I got this idea from so and so, uh, but it’s kind of a, a good way to immediately connect with people too, because anytime I’m out there, kind of talking about, uh, some of these key people that we take, a lot of the, at least we respect quite a bit with respect to how they, uh, view the world.
Whenever someone else kind of says, oh yeah, I, I read a lot by this [00:30:00] guy or I follow this guy that, that immediately kind of clues me in that. Okay. We’re kind of on the same page, about a lot of things, probably at least from a high level philosophically, there’s a decent amount of alignment. So even if I just met you, if I know that we both really dig this guy’s stuff, then it there’s gonna be a lot for us to talk about.
Uh, my last one is sell out. Um, so this one is, I guess, this one’s really more for the artists. Um, but I, I took this out because I think it is important. Um, uh, there’s a lot of examples that we’re listen here, which I’m gonna kind of go through, but the, the concept of, of, of being okay with monetizing your work is something that, especially in the, the artist space, I think is.
Generally frowned upon. I think the starving artist idea is romanticized and there’s a lot of people that will kind of poo poo you for, uh, trying to, um, monetize your, your thing. I think Andy Warhol got a lot of flack for this back in the day when he [00:31:00] started to kind of turn his art into something that was produced on an assembly line, where he is just kind of showing up at the last moment and signing it.
Um, he took a lot of flack for that. Uh, and I think a lot of artists too, but at the end of the day, um, You’ve gotta make some money to put food on the table. Right. Uh, and Walt Disney had a quote that was in the, the artist put into the book here, which I, I pulled out cuz I like kind of summed up the, the logic and the philosophy behind why it’s okay to sell your, your art as if it should even be questioned.
And he said that we don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies. I think that really in my mind, put a nice spin on it that it’s not kind of a greedy thing to sell your art or to, to sell whatever it is that you produce. Um, you’ve gotta do that, enable for you to produce more because the market wants it.
There’s demand for it. If the people want it, you’re gonna need some capital to go out there and produce more of it. So you’re gonna have to monetize your stuff. So you need to, you [00:32:00] need to separate yourself from thinking that monetizing. Whatever your product is that you’re producing your art, your service, whatever.
It’s not a bad thing. Right. Um, if you’re ripping people off, that’s one thing. But if you’re, you know, just getting compensated for the value you’re providing, that is perfectly fine. Michael Angelo, uh, painted the cistine chapel for money, right. It’s a great work art that doesn’t discount. How, how, how much that, that piece is beloved.
Um, he did it on commission, so it’s not a bad thing. And I think it, uh, Uh, as long as you share what you, you get from your patrons, um, make sure you show some respect for receiving monetary compensation for your work. Um, and as long as it doesn’t disrupt, you know, your, your productivity, then it’s a good thing,
[00:32:48] Anthony: Edgar.
I mean, what’s the point. If you wanna make something and not sell it, that’s. , but if that’s gonna be your livelihood, like you’re gonna really struggle. That’s how you’re gonna make your money and you’re not willing to sell it then that, [00:33:00] okay. I mean, I, I, I’ve never really had a problem with this personally.
I know people who have, for sure. They think it like cheapens the art somehow and mm-hmm, I just, I, here here’s the thing is, um, I think it was Ernest Hemingway when he was asked, like, how do you, how do you write so much? Or how do you get so much done? Um, where do you get the inspiration from all that? And he goes, , I don’t have a muse.
I have a mortgage. Hmm. It’s reality of the situation. We have to live a life. It’s a motivating factor. Yeah. It’s, it’s a strong one when you have to create, because that’s your livelihood and then you create, and, um, all the best artists that I know are very okay with selling, like. I think, I think it’s the wannabees, the ones who are afraid to be judged because people won’t buy their art who use this as a, as a smoke screen to say, oh, selling my art is it would cheapen it.
So, because they’re afraid if they try to sell it, it won’t sell. And that will then be confirmation that their art’s not very good. Let’s code for there’s no buyers. Exactly. It is all a defense [00:34:00] mechanism. Yeah. And at the end of the day, like one of the things is if you want to develop as an artist, if you want to live and be creative and that’s your avenue, like you got.
You’re gonna have to put it out there and be okay with people saying this sucks. Mm-hmm this is the reality of it. So, all right, my last one then we’re getting outta here is you have to be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done. And this is a really important one. At the end of the day, to write a book, you gotta put your butt in the chair to draw a picture.
You have to draw the thing. If you want to create videos or a podcast or. you have to make time to do the thing. The thing is the, the work is time consuming. And so you have to guard that time ruthlessly and be cognizant that if you let others, they will steal it from you. They will take it. They won’t care.
And so this is probably more of an issue as you get like a little bit. more of an audience and people want more things from you, but even in the beginning, um, before you’ve really justified the creation of your art. Like when I was writing books, before I ever [00:35:00] sold a book, it was very, it took three years to write my first novel.
Um, and during that period of time, uh, there was a lot of, uh, I had a, I had a relation sh ship that imploded. Yes, they do that. Sometimes they do. Um, cuz I got a little bit obsessive and it’s hard to justify, like why are you pouring so much into this thing when you haven’t started making money yet? But like, if you wanna get the thing done and you gotta guard that time, not saying blow up your relationships, but just realize that the thing’s not gonna create itself.
So that is show your work by Austin Cleon. We gave 10 takeaways, which is funny because this book is called 10 ways to share, uh, your creativity and get discovered. So really we just went, I don’t even think I don’t. We had a couple repeats. So I don’t think we, we talked about all 10 things that Austin talked about.
Hope. Hopefully not. So I think
[00:35:46] Dan: we just distilled a few of the points and left a couple out. Yeah. A couple of them are, so you get an
[00:35:51] Anthony: complete, they’re terrible points. You don’t need that. You don’t need those points. Um, but hopefully you guys enjoy this. If you did, if you want those investor notes, just, uh, shoot me an email, send you a link to the [00:36:00] Dropbox.
And as always guys, we appreciate you taking a little bit of time to join us. We’ll see you in the next episode. And until. Be cool.
