One of the things that I made my goal for 2016 was that I was going to let go of things that have been holding me back as an artist or a somebody who teaches others how to market their art or art business moving forward.
Since launching this podcast I have only not only gone to prove to myself what obstacles I can overcome but I have prove to myself that not only can I do it but I’m having a really good time once I have hopped that 10 foot fence that I didn’t think that I could ever get over.
I’m a pretty petite person I’m stand about 5 foot tall maybe 105 pounds and often in my life have gotten underestimated simply based on my size, doing things or for being part of something automatically discounted because of my stature. But in my brain my brain I felt like I was 10 feet tall so I never felt the obstacles from within me …. Let me give you an example, when I was younger and in elementary school I wanted to try out for softball, I love softball and I want to play softball but then guess who was always getting picked last to be on the team…? You got it, me!
Everyone thought oh boy here we go it’s Sonya everyone, move in… because they thought that I wasn’t going to hit the ball more than 10 feet …. Not only did I hit the ball that went into the outfield I was pretty darn quick when running to first and then to second base. But those are the things that make me tenacious and determined.
This is the same type of mentality that I had when I started my art business, I painted for myself I need to proved to myself that when I was creating made me happy and it brought joy to me. I hadn’t even really thought much about selling my art at the very beginning because the projects that I was working on was something that I needed to do for me and I was the only one that really mattered as far as proving anything to anyone.
Pretty much everything in my life has been a goal and a passion and overcoming obstacles. Now as I had mentioned I’m not the tallest or the strongest by way of physical stature so trying to climb a 10 foot wall may appear hard and as much as I would try and I would practice if there were still challenges. But I was determined on to find a way that I could achieve these obstacles by using common sense and by using the areas of strength that were available to me. Believing in myself and mentally preparing myself to overcome fears and obstacles was a huge game changer.
Now, I know a lot of artists find a lot of obstacles off the bat automatically, it’s pretty much a given, they’re worried that their work is not going to be good enough they worried that people say terrible things about their work they worry about not being taken seriously as well as the obstacle of letting go of something that they’ve created and that they are passionate about and that their heart and soul is into it and now you’re considering parting with the piece because you want to make a career out of your art business.
It’s working on these fears that will empower you.
Another example is when I started doing these podcasts I knew it was audio and I knew that I would have to have my voice out there recorded for listening. And as much as I have done public speaking that never seem to bother me because I didn’t have to “listen to myself” over and over. When it comes to video I can truly say that I hate watching myself being videotaped, I don’t like the fact that I rolled my eyes a lot, I don’t like the fact that I get animated and I start looking as though I belong in a cartoon, because when I get a little nervous I tend to rattle on a little bit. I have been interviewed and have been videotaped and most of the time I don’t even watch them more than halfway through because it’s something in me that I get a terriblly paralyzed with fear.
For me personally I gave myself a challenge, I’ve reflected upon myself at the end of 2015 to what can I do differently in 2016 that will truly take me out of my comfort zone. And these two things were it. # 1 actually doing this podcast and be recorded vs being videotaped and having to be documented this way. It’s the technology of it, not my content…. Now I will tell you that I know my stuff, I know this business and I’m fearless… you give me a project to do artistically in my style with my tools in my environment and surroundings, and I will rock it and if you tell me that I can’t do something I will tell you how I have I’m going to do it and then I will show you how I’ve completed it.
When I left Adobe Systems in 2002 I was painting part time and my team and group got disbanded and I had some choices to make. I thought my part-time art business was doing well and I look at my numbers and looked at my schedule and I thought if I could do this on a full-time basis I will be comfortable financially and happy.
When I was packing up my office, there was a woman who stopped in my office she worked in another group, she said to me “oh what are you going to do now”, my response was “I’m going to make my art business a reality that’s what I’m going to do”. She looked at me with this pathetic sad look on her face it’s and then she said “well that’s a that’s a nice dream but that’s not really a reality”. I was floored! I actually remember sort of gasping and being taken back at her comment and disbelief of someone who didn’t really even know me, didn’t know my tenacity, didn’t know my strengths, my determination and telling me that this choice that I making for myself and for my family was basically a bunch of crap.
I will admit that at the beginning when I heard that it really ticked me off I felt annoyed, I’m not going to say I was angry, but I was truly annoyed, it just was another hand of cards that were dealt to me of someone who almost was challenging me in some sort of way, not understanding how tenacious I am and determined. You tell me I can’t do something I will show you 50,000 reasons why not only am I doing it but I will succeed at it.
Was it scary? Of course it was. Was I excited? Extremely excited! I had learned enough in my years of being in business and incorporate, in my sales career at Mitsubishi, in my knowing how to work with others in the group, all of the facets were there I just needed mold this and make it my own.
When I started doing our marketing workshops I get asked “how do you get to be so confident selling your work”, my standard answer to that was always “go sell cars for a year and then you can do or sell anything”.
Well of course not every artist is going to go and sell cars, that was just my way of saying get a little bit of selling techniques and face-to-face communications and one on one strategy with your client and when you can build a relationship and maintain that then it’s smooth sailing from there. It all takes practice.
Now, In asking a lot of artists what is the obstacle that is holding them back and believe it or not they say that there’s so much competition out there that they worry that their work will not be seen or that other people will steal their ideas are their artwork.
I find each individual artists work like a thumbprint it’s their own work, you may encounter somebody who was flattered and find your working inspiring and want to flatter you by creating something similar to what you do, maybe they themselves or hindered with imagination and they don’t have an imagination of their own so therefore they’re using other people’s work to get their ideas flowing. And perhaps that is their obstacle…
Everyone has fears, this is where working through the fear process one step at a time is really important. I recently launched a video last week where I found myself asking for the sale ON VIDEO. I was asking people in my network and in my community to go on to iTunes and give me a great rating if they enjoyed my podcast. iTunes gathers up activity from new podcasts that are being launched and will place you in an elite section called “new and noteworthy”. This was another goal that I had that I wanted to work to achieve since launching my podcast, now I know that I’ve done everything I could do to get the podcast out there now it was up to me to ask people to take time to listen, go and iTunes and give me a review and as much as I was really uncomfortable in front of the lens and had to ask my listeners to take a few minutes out of their busy day to give me a five star review and write a little nice something. I overcame the the obstacle and I am also showing and proving to people by true video evidence that I am overcoming an obstacle that is really uncomfortable to me. But I will admit after I was finished I felt great! (Surprisingly enough!)
Now that goes without saying I may not of liked everything that I saw myself doing the video my hands are waving around the cameras jittering a little bit I make funny faces I roll my eyes, I get quite animated but I guess it all just boils down to, that is me. That is who I am and that is my personality and my energy level. What I need to really focus on was my message to everyone, and much to my surprise people were receptive, they said nice things, those of the people that knew me that know me know that this is a really hard thing for me to do gave me a big thumbs up and congratulated me for getting over it because this is something that has paralyze me with fear for years.
So what I want to give you is permission to take the leap, step outside your comfort zone. Even if this is something like if you’re just bought a whole bunch of art supplies on a new medium that you’re trying to delve into but those are supplies have been sitting on your studio workbench for two weeks or six months or six years, break them out, try something new, explore, try something different. Give yourself the permission and overcome it!
I’m an artist to, I referred to this as the gears of fear, grease the skids a little bit, take a deep breath and jump into the deep end for just a few minutes. The ladder is there, the steps are there to get out. Nothing is permanent.
Just stepping outside of your comfort zone is huge, as I said before baby steps.
I don’t want to unload too much on you today, so try this out, I’m going to be coming up with a gears for fear challenge in the next couple of weeks and I want to be able to help you get through this. I work on these things along side of everyone so I will overcome fears myself.
MUSIC: The perfect song to listen to get started on this journey is Van Halen “JUMP” I get up, and nothin’ gets me down You got it tough, I’ve seen the toughest around…
I want to thank you so much for tuning in and reading/listening, make this a priority today!
Visit my website to sign up and be on the forefront of important information and free downloads that I have prepared for you. http://rockstarmentor.com
To learn more about me, my art and colorful product line, visit Sonya Paz through my art website, SonyaPaz.com
I am also pleased to announce that we have a new sponsor! “The Brush Guys” they can be located at thebrushguys.com they offer the best in all things brushes for all mediums and amazing specials on art supplies. Save 5% on your online order, use promocode: ROCKSTAR
A special thanks to John Lee Dumas with EOFire.com for all of the support for all of my podcasting logistics and education and for the great audio bumper!
Last, but certainly not least… HUGE thanks to Andrew Paz of AMP Audio Lab for his amazing vocal skills on my intro and outro along with editing these Rockstar Mentor podcasts – you ROCK!!!
