There are always those around us who end up having a huge impact on us. We may not realize it as it’s happening, but in retrospect, we can always see who offered a timely word that ended up helping us on our journeys. In this episode of Creativity Excitement Emotion, David shares what he learned from his mentor and how he applied it. Sponsors: Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook: Get a free copy of the “Definitive Guide to Productivity for Artists and Entrepreneurs.” Highlights: 00:17 – The people who make the greatest difference are those who you are in direct communication with 01:08 – Mess things up 02:10 – #1: Analog vs. digital 05:26 – #2: Beware of who you take advice from 09:02 – #3: Community enterprise 11:57 – Reflecting on David’s community years 12:33 – Win-win-win Transcript: Three concepts I learned from my mentor. Here is someone that I've seen as one of my main mentors over the years. You can have relationships with close people, mentors at a distance, coaches, even the books you read… All of it can end up contributing to you significantly. But inevitably the people who end up making the biggest difference are those that you are in direct communication with. This is someone who has been… I've been by their side, creating projects with them, and they've been by my side, supporting my projects. There are three key things I learned from them that ended up steering the direction of where we're going versus where things went with Music Entrepreneur HQ in the past. Music Entrepreneur HQ was a grand experiment. We had so much fun with it. We tried a whole bunch of stuff. We made lots of mistakes and learned from them. I think a lot of people are afraid of doing that. If they went out and started making projects, started messing things up… Go make a mess. The thing that often gets repeated, whether in network marketing or leadership circles, is “Go make a mess.” That's what people who accomplish things are doing. They're not trying to figure everything out before they start. Never. Commit first, get into action, and then figure out the rest as you go. This is how it works. Commit first, get into action, and then figure out the rest as you go.Click To Tweet This is how courses are developed, right? At least the good ones, because it gives you way more leverage. You can share your course content with your audience before it's ever done. And you can test your stuff and see what people resonate with and see what works. Anyway, the number one concept that I learned from a mentor that has made a difference is “Analog versus digital.” I reinterpreted it into my ecosystem to make sense for me. But his whole contention was that I was doing so much digital marketing stuff. I learned a lot, and that's what a good entrepreneur would do, is they would go and learn. They would go and figure out how marketing works because marketing is your direct connection to revenue. If you don't have good marketing, you can't create revenue in your business. Marketing is your direct connection to revenue.Click To Tweet I don't think my intentions or even my priorities were misplaced. I think that they were in the right place. But I spent so much time creating content, sharing on social media, and sending emails. I was disappointed with some of the results we were getting. Something that he brought to me repeatedly. He would say, “But you know, I tend to think way more analog with that. I'm thinking like, if I look at events, how many people will come out? That's way more of a confirmation of how your project is going, versus passive content that people can just like, comment, or share, or just not even look at or respond to,” And he’s so right, because we publish a lot of stuff that doesn't necessarily do anything, and it's easy to get discouraged with that. When it comes to publishing, I believe you’ve got to keep going no matter what. But when you've done that for years and years, ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9Y1etW3wyU

Spending can easily get out of control, even if it is spending on seemingly helpful, worthwhile tools and resources. Sometimes it’s necessary to cut back. In this episode of Creativity Excitement Emotion, David shares how cutting your subscription bloat can free up energy. Download the PDF Transcript Sponsors: Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook: Get a free copy of the “Definitive Guide to Productivity for Artists and Entrepreneurs.” Highlights: 00:17 – Cutting costs is often a necessary aspect of business 00:38 – When pride gets in the way 01:12 – Successful entrepreneurs are willing to cut expenses if necessary 01:38 – A time to reevaluate 02:07 – Giving up pride 02:47 – Cutting costs will free up energy 03:34 – A helpful app 04:02 – Get good at managing your finances Transcript: Entrepreneurs sometimes must cut costs. If this weren't true… Just look at the big businesses out there that sometimes lay off employees in droves. Sometimes for a business to survive, it's got to cut away at the fat to be able to survive. But sometimes it is so easy to fall into a sense of pride, like, “I know what I'm doing, things are okay. I don't need to cut costs. I just need to be more consistent and make more money.” And, I mean, how many times have I or someone else or people in general thought that way that they could just go and make more money and solve all their problems? It's partly right. But many have had that experience where they weren't able to generate that amount and found themselves treading water because their income stayed about the same. Their expenses also stayed about the same or just went up. But if you think about the fact that successful people are those who are willing to do what others are not willing to do, that means successful entrepreneurs are willing to cut expenses, even if temporarily, if need be. Now I've heard people do insane things just to be able to meet payroll at times. I think in those cases it pretty much paid off, but I don't know how much I could recommend being reckless in that sense. But I do think there's a time and place to evaluate your finances. Look at all the subscriptions that have stacked up. Do you need those right now? Are those contributing to you? Are they helping you make more money or are they just eating away at cash reserves? As someone who's had to file for a consumer proposal, I can tell you that it is possible for those to keep eating away at your cash reserves to put you into debt. Subscriptions may seem harmless, but they can add up and even put you into debt.Click To Tweet So, we must give up pride. And I say that as if it's always an easy thing to do and it can be hard at times. It’s like, “Oh, I know what to do. I've got the Midas touch, man. I've got the golden finger. Everything's going to work out.” Well, sometimes it doesn't. And we can have a bias towards our success and that's a good thing, but sometimes we can go from success to success to success and suddenly encounter failure and go, “Well, that was the anomaly.” But the reality is that it's usually a mix of failures and successes on the way to your eventual success. And I think this is what I recognized about cutting expenses. What it does is it frees up energy. And this is something I noticed this last time I went and cut a few costs that were idle and not doing anything for me. When you trim away the fat, you don't have to think about it anymore. Cutting expenses frees up energy.Click To Tweet Then you can free up yourself and free up your mind to concentrate on ways that you can improve your financial outlook and improve your income. And what matters is your takeaway or your profit, right? So, if you haven't done some purging recently and things don't appear to be going well, it might be time to explore purging to look at what you can do to cut away some expenses that aren't serving you. And while I'm not sponsored by them or anything, maybe I should be. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZSPazZ1uU