A recap of episode 64 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan where they talk more about why experiences are better than having things, why you should invest in yourself, and why communication is the most important skill you can learn.
Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan were both on extremely successful career paths. Matt was working for a seven-figure chiropractic business and Charine was offered a lucrative management position at her company. On the outside, everything looked great. But internally, they both felt they were living a life of complacency.
The tipping point came when they took a sabbatical to wine regions around the world. That’s when something struck Charine. She believed they could build a business around wine and travel. So they built up enough run way to quit their jobs and started their journey as the Exotic Wine Travelers.
In this episode, learn why experiences are better than having things, why you should invest in yourself, and why communication is the most important skill you can learn.
Here are three things you can learn from Matt and Charine:
One of the things people learn over time is accumulating possessions is not as fulfilling as having great experiences. While many of us start off wanting to buy fancy things to keep up with the Joneses, few of us realize that buying stuff is a never ending cycle. It is experiences that truly light us up. “When we started to step away and travel, when we started to focus on experiences, we realized stuff is all on the periphery. It’s nice, but it’s a want, not a need. Life is all about defining what you need, number one, and then what you want.”
While many of us begin to internalize that idea, we can still get stuck in the trap because we want to fit in. “It’s funny because both of us pride ourselves, we really value experience over possession all along, for the past couple of years that we’re together. But, as much as we know that intellectually, and we can relate to that thinking, we still fell into the trap of possession or consumerism. And looking at things broadly, I don’t think it’s just consumerism. It’s just that human beings, we are wired to belong. And when we’re in a group, community, or society, you want to fit in, and… all of us will be influenced by our environment and people around us.”
Charine believes you can truly discover this for yourself once you have the power to possess things. “It’s only after you have the power to possess things or when you have the power to achieve all those things, and that’s when you start asking yourself whether you really want it or not. We are lucky we got to step out of the environment that we’re in and we get a clear choice of whether we really enjoy those experiences or not.”
Charine and Matt both believe the best investment you can make is in yourself. While most people believe investing in high value stocks is the best way to become wealthy, they believe investing in yourself is far more valuable. “When you invest in yourself, it will always pay itself back and a lot of the times, it can be the best investment that you can make.”
What they found is that most people are afraid of growth. People are afraid of both the success and failure of personal growth, so they choose to do nothing instead. “It’s not that people don’t want to invest money in growing. Most people don’t want to grow. Growing is scary, it’s hard, and it’s difficult, and that’s the reason most people don’t want to do it.”
While they understand people’s aversion to growth, it’s still baffling that people choose to invest in everything but themselves. “It baffles me when people pick all sorts of investments to do, yet they don’t invest in themselves because you are the safest investment. Is there any risk at all? There’s no risk. There’s only growth.”
That’s why they are on this journey of traveling and tasting wines. They see it as an investment in personal growth.
People often wonder what skills set them apart from everyone else. Matt believes the most valuable skill you can learn is communication. “When you can communicate and articulate your ideas, you move into the top 1% of humanity. When you can actually get up and speak in front of a large group of people, you move into another top 1%. If you can speak and inspire somebody to move, you move into another top 1%. So I think that’s a skill that everybody should learn to do.”
While most creatives try to improve skills within their craft, top performing artists are ones that know how to communicate with their audience. That’s why Matt recommends improving your communication skills. “I would recommend that skill (communication) to anybody because if you can communicate and articulate your ideas, that’s when you can really get things done.”
Read more shownotes from episode 64 with Dr. Matthew Horkey and Charine Tan
A recap of episode 63 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Nicolas Cole where he talks more about why you should learn from everything you do, why you should help others, and why marketing is not your enemy.
Nicolas Cole looks like someone out of a fitness magazine, but it hasn't always been that way. When he was growing up, he was sick almost every day. By the time he was 17 years old, he weighed less than 100 pounds. He missed school a lot and didn't have many friends. So he turned to World of Warcraft.
World of Warcraft became his escape from life. He played so much that he was one of the top players in the entire game. That is until he was faced with a tough decision. He could either continue to pursue his video game career on his own or receive his parents' help and go to college. He chose college.
It was at this point that Nicolas took the principles from gaming and applied them to fitness. He went from less than 100 pounds to 170 pounds by gamifying his workout routines. He also wrote about his fitness routines and his journey on Quora and became one of its top writers.
In this episode find out why you should learn from everything you do, why you should help others, and why marketing is not your enemy.
Here are three things you can learn from Nicolas:
One of the biggest lessons Nicolas learned was applying knowledge he learned from one industry and applying it to another. That's exactly what happened when he started to pursue fitness. He took the lessons from World of Warcraft and used them to become fit.
Nicolas believes this is what separates the most creative people from everyone else. "If you look at the most creative people out there, they are the people who are most open to that question. They're okay looking at every single thing, every single industry, different, the same, all over the board, and asking the question, 'What can I learn from this?'"
It's also the difference between people who are innovative and those who aren't. "True innovation is really at that intersection between almost conflicting, but somewhat parallel industries. And it's really the intersection between art and marketing."
He believes artists can benefit the most from this concept. "Even if you're an artist, it's not just about your art in your industry because your art in your industry might seem the same as it's always been done, and you'll never stand out. But if you bring it to a different space, you could be the most innovative person on the planet."
One of the things Nicolas learned was you don't have to be special to stand out. Many people have this misguided idea that those who succeed are special, but they aren't.
Nicolas points to himself as an example. "That's the whole story you want to share with people is I wasn't special. I was the farthest thing from special. And I can't tell you how many people told me that I was crazy."
Nicolas gained about eighty pounds of muscle over a few years, not because he was special, but because he was persistent and someone helped show him the way.
Nicolas believes this guidance was crucial to his journey and thinks people who get help should also pay it forward. "When you have someone do that for you, it's really important, I think, to then, you go back and you do it for the next person. And whether it's a one on one situation or whether it's just 'I'm going to take everything I learned, and I'm going to put it out, I'm going to make it accessible, and I'm going to try and reach the largest audience possible', either way, it's important for that kid to know that's it's not about being special. It's not about 'I was gifted and you're not.' It's just you make the decision that you're going to make this happen, and here, 'I've learned these lessons the hard way, I'm going to pass them on to you so you don't have to learn them the hard way. And then just follow the path that I took and you'll hit the same results.'"
Nicolas believes whether you do it yourself or get help you should give back. "It's one of those things too that, if you do have to do it yourself, it kind of gives you a different skin, but at the same time, I think it's also important to go back and help the next kid."
Artists are notorious for their resistance to marketing. Nicolas believes it isn't about being pushy. It's about getting yourself out there and fighting to be seen in this noisy world. "I think that when you're an artist... when you're creating something that is your own, from scratch, it's a very different sort of place energetically than when you're extroverted, and you're trying to get people to pay attention to it. And so I think a lot of people will see those as conflict. They see those two sides as almost working against each other. And that's why a lot of artists are not big on wanting to learn marketing or understanding how it works, but when you really step into it, and this is something I learned first hand, is that marketing is an art in itself. It is an art to get people to listen to what you have to say, especially in 2016 when there are so many social media channels, and so many ways to communicate with people. It's a very noisy world. So, getting heard through all of that, is an art."
This lesson is something he had to learn first hand. And the way that he did it, like he does everything else, is by re-framing it. "Again it goes back to the re-frame. You could be the artist that is insanely creative, but you see marketing as a burden. And you fight it and you're the victim and nobody understands, and you're super creative, and I shouldn't have to market this. Okay, that is a road, and you're fully allowed to take that road if you like, but if you re-frame it, and you realize you now have more control than ever to expand your art, and now your art isn't just what people listen to or read or see, but it's also how they get there and how they see it. And the process of after they've consumed your art,,How do they stay in touch with you? What about you learn about yourself outside of your art?... There's so much more that you can do for yourself as an artist when you see the whole thing as art. You see it all as working pieces. And you realize that when you just put a couple of pieces in play that will allow you to make money, okay, there's nothing wrong with that. But taking ownership and having the confidence to step into that challenge and realize that it's all an art. The end product is art and how people got there in the first place is art."