Ep #92: The Art and Skill of 10X-ing Any Investment

Take a coin from your purse and invest it in your mind, it will come pouring out of your mind and overflow your purse, Benjamin Franklin.

In the next two episodes of the Art School podcast I’ll be sharing parts of a recent workshop I offered as part of the summer workshop series for the Art School. The title of this workshop was The Art and Skill of 10x-ing any Investment. I believe in teaching my clients that they can 10x their investment in the Art School. But I also want this to be a meta skill that they can use to apply to any area of their life. And here’s something I want to make sure I preface this episode with. I want you to go in considering that this is not just an idea, but this is absolutely a skill.

I want you to just pause right there and consider that. How would that change your perspective about any investment if you understood that it wasn’t just a possibility, an idea, but it was absolutely a skill that was available to you to learn, to practice, to apply and to integrate and master, that you could 10x any investment? Many of you listening are no stranger to investing in your minds, your self-development, your career, your creativity.

But what I want you to do here with these episodes, because I want to inspire and empower you to think at a whole new level about what’s possible for you and that you really can own the skill, master the skill of 10x-ing any investment you make in your dreams, yourself, your life.

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You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Art School podcast. There is magic in Michigan right now and all over actually in the Art School community and land. I am very grateful for any magical news that flows in. I’m also very grateful to go through challenges and tough times with this community with all of you, with my clients as well because it is for sure part of our human experience. And I’m also going to celebrate the heck out of when some really amazing things happen.

So let me tell you one thing that happened the other day on my way to actually my way to nowhere, I was out for a run. And on the second half of my 10 mile run I thought I need something good to think about these next five miles because it’s hot and I’m tired. And it’s a half mile for me to turn and go home but if I’m going to commit to this whole 10 miler today, I’ve got to have some good energy flowing. So I decided just to ruminate in a positive way about some of my visions and some of my goals.

And a practice that I love is inviting in things so big that I cannot possibly imagine how I, little old me is going to accomplish them. But I love thinking about what I’ll be doing in the process of creating them, who I will be becoming, who I will be collaborating with, what I will get to do and learn and experience. And then also thinking about what unexpected magic and surprises might rush in.

So I was totally into my imagination on this run, living it up, not listening to anything other than the soundtrack I had playing in my own mind. And I had my phone buzzed, which I thought I had turned off all of my notifications. So I looked down to then turn off my notifications and I saw a picture of Liz Gilbert pop up on my messages.

I’m like, well, I wonder what this is about. So I opened it, turns out it is from one of my clients who was inspired by the podcast where I did the interviews, the two part podcast interview with Dr. Tererai Trent. She was inspired to buy Dr. Trent’s book, The Awakened Woman, the book in which I was very honored to also share my story. And so she had purchased the book and this then probably caused an algorithm to have a particular story pop up on her IG feed.

And it was a story of where Liz Gilbert was holding up a copy of Dr. Trent’s book, the Awakened Woman and saying that she had chosen it for her book club. And so she was sharing with her million followers that this was the book for her book club, that she loves the book and encouraging everyone to read it.

So I literally stopped in my tracks and took that in and for sure had some great energy to run very – I ran fast, the next three miles were fast miles. So that was one awesome and magical synchronicity and also so cool that it was shared with me from one of these amazing clients. Other magical news, amazing news of clients making magic, creating magic, it’s that combination of elbow grease and spiritual elbow grease.

As I mentioned in the intro, today’s topic is the art and skill of 10x-ing any investment, and I’ll be sharing parts of a private workshop that I prepared and put on for my Art School clients and my Mastermind clients. And I love this topic, money work is sacred work. And so I will continue to dive deep into this work with everyone in the Art School and the Mastermind.

And part of what we do is that I offer to everyone the opportunity to take me up on this challenge of first, recouping their investment in the Art School and then 10x-ing their investment in the Art School. So this looks differently for different people. And I talk about this more in the workshop which you’ll be listening into. Yes, getting a return on your investment can be much more expansive than the financial aspect.

And I also challenge students, if they have money goals to make that back and then to go beyond that and 10x that back, and for some of them to go beyond the 10x-ing and make that back. And I have them make a plan for it but then I also have them approach it the Art School way, because we have the vision, we make our plan for it, we take action, we work that. And then we also engage in it a little bit – well, quite a bit differently because of the creative process. And we allow for other opportunities to come in as well.

As I recently told the members of the Mastermind that kicked off last week, we are here to fall in love with what we are doing and to become amazing and extraordinary in our particular area, and what we create to rise our work and who we are becoming to the next level. And to become so engrossed in this process, and so in love with life, and so in love with who we are becoming, and what we are creating, and the lives we are living. The collaboration we’re doing along the way. That we are not chasing the dreams down, that the dreams chase us down.

And already this started happening before we were even a week into the Mastermind, I think I mentioned on last week’s podcast episode how one amazing client then won two grants, and by the way there was a few other things she knocked off that she declares goals at the beginning of summer. And then just come to find out this week that not only were they two grants but it was for a sum greater than $60,000. And she wrote the grant applications in a day, so that was thrilling and we were for sure celebrating that. And it’s just the beginning.

And then another client decided that she had seen challenges about people doing 100 paintings in 100 days. And she was like, “That sounds fun, but what sounds like even more fun would be to do 100 paintings in 10 days and then offer them at a $100 apiece, which is a very generous discount from what her work usually sells for. And she was just that, “I love to paint, I’m going to do this. I’m going to make my art available for this limited time for anyone that wants it. They can fill their home, their spaces with original work, and this just feels like a great thing to do.”

So she started and then it just caught on like wildfire, and I believe she’s right now six days in and has already surpassed the 100 painting mark and already had people submit orders. So she is going to honor all of those orders that came in past a 100, I believe she was up to 105 or 110 the last time I talked to her. So that’s over $10,000 in six days, far shorter than her goal even of 10 days. And she said one of the best things have been the messages that she’s been receiving about how meaningful her work is to people and how excited they are to have her work in their homes.

So the love of art is alive and well, and artists proving you can be creative, not only in the arts, but be creative and creating financial abundance is alive and well.

And then I also had another client who just celebrated another huge success, she is – I won’t go into details here, it’s not mine to share, maybe some time in the future when I have her permission, I’ll have her come on and share her – it gave me goose bumps again. What she created and what she did with this work, it’s very moving to me. And Z, you know who you are, if you’re listening, I am so excited for you and I know again, this is just you opening up and getting started.

So I wanted to share the energy of some of the magic of what’s happening because I know when things work for people, when coaching works for people it’s because they work the coaching. And I know what has to happen on the inside for people to do the work that makes the coaching work is they need two elements. They need to trust themselves and they need to trust the process. And that is one of the powers of a program and a community like the Art School.

Not only are we training you in the process of trusting yourself and creating exactly the results you want to create and creating a process that honors you, honors your values, we are also training you in the process of trusting the process, of knowing what your process is.

And part of that magical element of this community is that you get to witness other people’s process and other people doing the work, of trusting themselves, trusting the process, discovering and building their process, setting goals, achieving them, becoming even more of who they really are in the process. And not diminishing themselves, not exhausting themselves, not creating a dream that comes at the expense of the true dream. Because a dream that comes at too great a cost of that which is most dear to you is not the dream.

It’s the dream if we are guided there, navigated by our values as well, the dream honors the values, it honors love, a process, it absolutely requires work. And it’s again about creating, conditioning yourself to have that way of being, an extraordinary way of being, mindset, body, spirit that makes those dream results inevitable. And part of that for me is that I want to teach this as a very pragmatic, it sounds audacious, and it is audacious.

And then I think I always want to normalize it as being a pragmatic and acquirable skill, 10x-ing any investment you make. Because to me if you’re going to be truly creative it requires so much discipline and so much freedom, and freedom requires, again, so much discipline. And having been able to have a disciplined mind creates even more freedom. And so it is this life affirming cycle that perpetuates itself. And it is so fulfilling and it also creates beautiful, amazing results.

And it is something, you can do it on your own, it is just why do it when in a community it’s so powerful to see other people doing it? Other people are getting results when they trust the process helps you then subconsciously absorb a greater trust in that process too, and it’s a lot more fun.

So I am going to without further ado let you jump right into the workshop. I jumped in ahead here, in the beginning I had shared what the genesis of this tool, generating this practice, this tool, the skill was for me. And my own experience with honing my own craft around 10x-ing any investment and situations from which it was born.

So part of that which I cut out, just so I could jump you more and right get into the meat of it is that it came out of a time when I had invested a lot of money. What for me at that time was the most money outside of law school that I had ever invested in myself, in my own development, in my professional development, in my career.

And it was a program that was a year long and it was, I think – no, it was $12,000 for the year and then I think with the travel and other things it required, probably came to 20,000, which may or may not sound like a lot of money to all of you. But at that time 12,000 was all I had in my personal savings and business account. I had young children; I wasn’t subsidizing my creative career and my coaching career with any outside help. I was responsible for family bills, things like that.

I share all of this just so you know that that was a vomit inducing amount of money for me. That was a scary investment for me to make. And it wasn’t a story of I made the investment and then my career took off, it wasn’t that at all. I went through the whole year and I spent a lot of money and I didn’t make my money back that year. And I won’t share too much more, but it was that situation that really was so important for me, because I had to dig deep and make a decision to switch from being a consumer to a creator.

And I really had to find my power and assert my power and declare it to myself before I had done it, that I would become a person who 10x’s any investment she makes. That never would I say I had wasted money on myself, or that I had wasted resources on myself, that I would become someone for whom none of life, none of life’s experiences, nothing I chose for myself would ever be wasted.

Because to a true artist all of life is material and I would be eyes open, heart open, mind open, always learning, always ready, always ready to put in the work, to fail, to get back up again, to grow, to be courageous, and to be creative. But it truly was from a very painful situation which to me felt like a very big scary epic fail. And I was in a very ashamed place with it at the time. And from that place really it was like a phoenix rising from the ashes for me.

Eventually, it wasn’t immediate but it was also in that moment where I declared I am someone who 10x’s any investment she makes. At that moment I had not yet, but I decided in that moment that that past was nothing, that everything about me was what I was capable, my potential, what I knew to be true about me deep down was what I would use to define and create my life. And I have since refined that approach several years later and taught it to so many people.

And I think it’s that momentum that just continues to compound and reveal itself in ways like this last week where I’m like, whose life am I living? This is utterly amazing and I am so grateful and so grateful to be in a community with people who want this work, are doing the work and making it work and really making magical things happen in their own life, they’re really working it.

And yet even just today, I taught two workshops today and while I was in my office I could hear the doorbell ring. And I came down between workshops to grab a bite of lunch and then I saw this enormous bouquet of stunning, stunning flowers on the counter with a note. And the note read, “I will see it when I believe it, love Caroline.” And Caroline, thank you so much for that. Caroline is a listener. Caroline was a client of mine. And Caroline, I cannot wait to see, to hear about what you have seen from all of the work you have done.

So again it was just one more example of the goodness in my life. It’s so much more than the financial abundance I have created. And I’m also grateful for that too. Just so much of the goodness in my life that has come from that shift of deciding nothing is wasted on me; none of life is wasted on me, especially the places where I choose to invest in myself, where it’s not a bet on myself. But if I’m going to bet on anything, I am going to bet on me. And you too listening, I hope you make that same choice, it is absolutely available to you.

So here now is the workshop.

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I absolutely believe money work is sacred work and for all people, and especially I feel very strongly about it for creatives, and visionaries, artists, women. So to take that to all – to the artist all of life is material. The painful parts, the parts you thought where you messed up. And I just needed to draw a line in the sand. I decided before those wheels touched down on that flight back from Paris, I would have decided on purpose what I was going to make that year, and that money I invested me in.

And that I needed to, as hard as it was, pull, it’s like this horse that had gotten away from me, I needed to pull that horse back and be like, “Here’s where we’re going.” I needed to be in control of that again, because again, circumstances we can’t control. But what we can control is our mind. So many people, like Marcus Aurelius, I was just reading some of – from his meditations again this morning. I’m like, there again; he says it again, as do so many people. “We can’t control our circumstances but we can control our mind.”

So I decided before those wheels touched down, I would decide who I was going to be on purpose and that what I was going to create from that whole experience. And here’s the thing, this is why we are all creative, whether you identify as an artist or not. We all have this desire as humans this need, our souls have a need for meaning.

And we are magical meaning makers. With our ability to make meaning we can make miracles. And that is not a power we should ever abdicate. Always take back your power to make meaning, take back your power to make miracles. That is the triumph of the human experience. And so that’s what I have decided before I touched down, okay, not only will this have been worth it, all of it, even the parts where I thought there were, you know, I didn’t have time on the flight back.

But I started to write about what I thought should have happened, what I thought I should have done, what I thought should have been a part of the program that wasn’t. And then thought, well, what am I going to do with this? If it’s of all, you know, if nothing’s – if I want to be a person where nothing is wasted on me, if I decide to make meaning from it.

And if I’m a true artist and then all of this is material then this is all my material. These are my creative constraints. Here you had some things that went this way that I was calling a problem, and here I had some things that I thought were amazing. And once I was willing to open myself up into the ‘disappointing’ aspects or ‘failed’ aspects then I could see it all as material and think what am I going to make from this?

And start to make plans for what I could make from it and also keep myself open to what remains to be seen down the road that I can’t even see right now that will come from this experience, that comes from the experience of being someone who says yes to life, and who decided. And I went back to the ultimate decision that I made that like, because I hit submit at 11:55pm. When the deadline was 12 midnight, and what was my thought then?

My thought then was I believe in me. If I’m going to invest in anything – I spent so much money going to law school, investing in an education, I’m going to bet on me. It was less than a car. And I’m like, “I am willing to invest in me, at least the equivalent of a used car.” I believe in me and my life and the sacredness of it. And what can happen, again, when you are willing to don the mantle and accept the responsibility of being an artist, a true creative, a meaning maker.

And the thing that went from an idea to I really started to click as, no, it’s an important shift here to go from an idea to this is absolutely something you own, not as a possibility, but you just ingrain it, become somebody who is a true artist. Who uses all of the material for life and becomes somebody who 10x’s whatever she decides to.

So here is 10 points that I want to go through. I tried to condense it to 10. But here’s the 11^th point that I’ll give you first. Focus on which thing is most important for you to get your return on investment on, because this does require energy and focus. And so for instance right now I make a decision that I am still reaping the benefits of my law school education. For a while I really did think when people said, “Oh gosh, wasn’t that a waste, do you regret that?” I didn’t think so but part of me must have because it kind of burned to hear that.

So I did that excavating and then really now I feel like I use my law degree all the time. And I feel like not only do I use it, but I feel like it serves me all the time, that entire experience was absolutely necessary. I absolutely had to spend that much money and that time there and go through that experience. And so people can say that now and it really is complete, this is a long story, we’re taking a long time to explain to you how much I have gotten a return, how much like valuable that time was and why I don’t regret it one bit.

But I’m also not practicing law right now, so I’m not focusing on creating income by practicing law. So this is the 11^th point of the 10. Choose what you’re going to focus on, because getting a return on investment, as you’ll see as we go through, a common theme is you have to do the work. You can’t just be passive.

You have to really shift from being a consumer to a creator and acknowledge that being a creator does take a certain amount, and sometimes a large amount of energy, and time, and focus, and attention, and your attention is precious. So decide which investments are worthy of your precious attention.

So then I’m going to go through these 10 and then if you have questions for coaching, jot them down on the way, write them up in the chat. And I will save time for those.

So the first point and I kind of touched on this already is understand the difference between consumption and creation. And I think that’s pretty straightforward, is it just information you take in and you’re entertained by? It’s something I say in the podcast every week, and sometimes that might be where you are. And so that brings me to this point number two.

First is, understanding that difference between consumption and creation, again, consumption is you’re taking it in, you’re reading, you’re taking a class, you pay for things. A lot of times people are like, “Well, I paid for this class and therefore equals transformation, therefore equals change in my life.” And I do think that if you are learning you are adding and subtracting neural networks in your brain. So there is some change that is happening to you, neurologically, biologically even by learning things. And then there is the change that then you have to practice, you have to engage in.

So the creative part is then where you take that knowledge and then you start to ask questions of it. You think about it more deeply. You start to think do I agree with this right now, or do I disagree? How could I apply this in my life? What would this knowledge applied in my life look like? How would my life look differently with this knowledge applied in my life? That starts to create new neural pathways in your brain. And then you see those pathways and you’re like, “I see that if I applied this knowledge in my life that might lead to a different result than what I’ve been getting in the past.”

And though to be a creator then I have to act in alignment and walk down that highway, that new neural highway that I’ve been paving. So creativity, being a creator, also the differences you are assuming 100% responsibility for your results and your creation. You can learn, you can sit and absorb brilliance from a masterclass right online now. There are – I love that platform, there are amazing teachers on that platform. You can YouTube anything. Information is more available than ever. And we’ve had books available for how long.

But it’s like reading a book, reading an Italian cookbook does not cook the meal for you. Reading a book about how to become as fit as an Olympic athlete does not do the job. You have to take it and apply it in your life, the same with any art too. So that was number one, understand the difference between consumption and creation. And this applies to the financial investment, by the way.

For sure, educate yourself; absorb different mindsets about creating abundance and a prosperity mindset and wealth in your life. And then you also have to go out and apply those concepts.

And then two is honestly, objectively, just look at where you currently are in the continuum. And it might vary for different things. You might just be alright with being a consumer in this area of let’s say you just love design, and it is your, you know, that’s your go to ‘guilty pleasure’ is to absorb design things. But you have no desire to go out and be a designer or to be an architect; it just feeds your soul. And then from that consumer to creator then decide where are the places where you want to be a creator; you want to be a powerhouse in this area.

And so you sign up for things, you’re interested in things; you talk about wanting to do things. Even invest in some education, but are you really 100% embodying and integrating all of the materials and practices? And in points later on I’ll go into a little bit more detail about how you can tell if you are. So the second point, decide where you currently are, just honestly and objectively. No judgment, because that’s just going to help you in the places where you’re like, “I’m good with being a consumer,” on this part of the spectrum.

And then if you see that you’re a five in another area when you’re like, “Okay, I see how it’s going to change my results dramatically to decide to move my self-concept from being a consumer to a creator. Because then I’m going to start asking some very important questions. How does a creator act differently than a consumer?” And that is a core question to ask yourself all along the way, how does a creator act here?

Because I could tell from my own, going back to the Paris trip and the Mastermind, I could see when I went back, the places where I was being too much of a consumer and the places where I was unwilling to be a creator. And why that was creating the limited results for me. But then once I saw that, I saw that I could change it. Have you heard? I love the saying, “If you have a problem, but you have the ability to solve the problem, you don’t have a problem, you have a choice.”

So that’s a good question to always take into account if you’re wondering where you are on that continuum, are you willing to make the choice to be a creator? Because it is a choice that comes with tradeoffs, but if it’s a tradeoff you’re happy to make, you’re happy to give your attention or your resources, to experience this in life and to tap into your potential and create something, then that’s a great investment, that’s a great guiding principle for is this something I want to invest in. Is this worth my time, and attention, and resources?

Okay, so then number three, again, deciding, if you see where you are on the continuum and you are like, “Oh, I see I’ve been more of a consumer here, not full on creator.” If you want to be a creator then I thought this deserved its own point, decide to make that shift. Commit to the shift. And again, this means 100% responsibility for your results. This doesn’t mean you stop engaging with your environment or asking for help.

Or say, for instance, with coaching, you keep asking for coaching and you keep being willing to be coached and saying what you’re, you know, “Here’s where I disagree.” You’re an active participant but you would never abdicate your results to a coach. And I think this is a defining difference too, knowing where you are on that continuum. Because for sure, let’s say I wanted to be an awesome 10k runner, I would love to work with certain coaches. I would love to work with the best coaches to teach me how to be the best 10k runner I can be.

Or with art, if I wanted to learn to spend the next year really dramatically improving my portraiture, my realistic portraiture, I know exactly who I would hire as a mentor. And then I know though the kind of work that’s required of me to become the best painter, realistic portraiture painter I can be, if I’m signing on to work with her. I know she could absolutely – and I’ve taken lessons from someone who’s arguably the best and I was for a short period of time and I learned so much. But that’s a scenario where it’s obviously clear.

I cannot just say, “I have hired this amazing woman, now I’m guaranteed to be amazing at portraiture.” No, she’ll just be really great breaking down what it takes in terms of the technical skill and the practice, and the nuances of it. And so to bring that to any area though, you can’t just read the book and then decide okay, it’s done. You really have to know what’s theirs and what is yours and then take 100% responsibility for what is yours.

And that is a mistake that I have made, but then since learned from, so it was a very valuable mistake to make. And I didn’t realize I was doing that even with that year long program and the trip, is I was abdicating too much to just this is going to change me. And I still wasn’t digging deep into the places that were hardest for me.

But it did, it was progress though. And once I could own the parts where I was disappointed, and then once I owned that I am responsible for those disappointments, which was hard to look at, then I started to see here is why this is a really valuable experience. So it’s continued to have a payoff for the years after that. Alright, so shift from consumer to creator if that’s what you want to do. If you’ve decided this is a worthy investment of your attention and resources.

And then four is, understand your own current investment mindset, so this is somewhat similar to deciding where you are on that spectrum from consumer to creator. But let’s say you’ve decided you are, you’re all in with being a creator, just look at past patterns again objectively to be like, am I risk averse, or how much am I really willing to put in? Am I in this for the long haul or do I want to create some huge change in a short period of time? Because usually that involves more risk and more work.

So understanding too, the understanding that comes from a non-objective loving place can help you see. I can see in the past where maybe I have been conservative with investing in myself. That was the case for me, especially investing in myself in areas where other people were like, “What are you doing with your life and your money?” Everyone was like, doesn’t bat an eyelash if you want to take on $100,000 of debt for graduate schools. But a few thousand dollars, several thousand dollars to start your own business.

Or I know times when I wanted to get a business loan, especially earlier on for my art or for my coaching, that’s a no go. It would be like, “Coaching, art, who are you? No thanks. Come back again in a few years when you’re more established.” And like, “Wait, how am I supposed to be more established without capital?” That’s when you have to come back to your belief and the importance, investing in yourself and having your back 100%.

Because I really started to decide my own investment mindset was still very skewed by society, because I thought, well, the example of graduate school, I have plenty of other law school colleagues too who aren’t practicing law. I know plenty of people who went to very fancy schools and they didn’t 10x that investment.

Or I would hear stories about people getting million dollar loans to open a retail chain store in a strip mall. And there’s no shame or scarcity in that, but yet to invest a few thousand dollars in yourself and your dream. You start to see where society’s opinions and judgments about money play in. And then also it has allowed me to see the places where I had been conservative, not because I wanted to be conservative on betting on myself, but just because it was frankly like coming from a place of conforming and people pleasing and being scared.

And then I will also share with you though later what has really helped with the fear aspect. And I don’t think that the, you know, my point is not to make the fear go away at all. But my decision was to be courageous and then also wise, have a conversation with fear. And then also it required a becoming for me of, no, this is who I am going to be. This is who I’m going to be and this is what I’m going to do. And that required me finding places within myself where I was willing to assert myself and my ability, my power to create value.

And I think this is probably one of the scariest things for people, is the willingness to go there and assert, like say, “I am this powerful. I am going to do this. I am going to 10x any investment I make.” I know that was very scary for me to assert that and say that, and it still comes up but I think that’s another beautiful place to lean into the sharp places. Because I found every time there that’s where the gold is. That’s where the major growth is for me, spiritually in terms of my mental and emotional resilience, in terms of my compassion for myself, my creativity, and also financially.

So understand your own current investment mindset and understand that that is a thing, your investment mindset and your view of it towards yourself. And look and see how it varies across the board. Where are places where you spend money or you have spent money, or you have opinions about others spending money? And you’re like, “Yeah. No, I have no problem with that, of course, of course.” I have no problem having a $40,000, $30,000 car.

But oh my God, $1,000 for a girl’s trip with my best friend away for the weekend, I could not do that. Or for this, you know, or for taking a painting class or hiring a coach, working with a therapist, whatever it is for you. Opening your own studio space, look for places where you think you have a consistent investment mindset, but you discover you actually are pretty fickle with it. And then concepts, so that was number four.

Number five, be a student, so here it comes back to being the creative student. Study other’s mindsets, study other’s investment mindsets that you want to adopt and integrate in your own. And it doesn’t mean you need to do it entirely. You don’t need to take anybody’s approach and be like I condone entirely who they are as a person by taking this piece of wisdom from their life.

But you can study people who have really excelled at getting returns on investments or really excelled at creating certain things that you want to create in areas of your life. And you can learn from them. And it doesn’t mean that you again are setting them up as a hero, or an idol, or adopting everything they do wholeheartedly. But it’s just being smart about it, and again, being creative about it to choose what you’re going to do differently.

And so the same like taking any program or working with any coach, or any teacher to have an open mind, an open heart, and willing to take all things in and then trying things. And then also thinking of it as a template for a recipe, but at the end of the day you’re going to make it your own. And you’re going to mix and you’re going to match and it’s going to create your own brand of how you make meaning in the world, how you make miracles, and magic, and money in the world. You’re going to have to take what’s worked for other people and make it your own.

And this brings me to number six, which is you study their mindsets; you mix it with your own. And then number six, you have to practice it, you have to try. You have to put it into place in the world. And here’s the thing that trips people up, you’re going to have to fail. That is one of the costs, that’s just an investment cost, failing, it’s just the price of doing business. And once you can really own that and make peace with that, that shifts so much.

Again, no material is wasted on you; to the artist everything is material. And so every time you feel that that’s experience you gain, that is your real life organic MBA, you’re not sitting and hypothesizing in a classroom, but you’re on the ground and you’re doing it. And then you take that, take what works, take what doesn’t work and then apply. So part of this number six too is adapt it to your own, is have an objective process of evaluation for this. Because when you are failing there is going to be emotion in it. And I’m going to talk about why that’s necessary in a little bit.

But count on the fact that there will be emotion in it and then also count on the fact that you’ve got your own back and you also have, while you are holding the space for yourself emotionally, you also have an objective evaluation process. So keeping it very simple, three parts, what worked, what didn’t work, what would I do differently next time?

And that was something I did too on that flight home, was because I was feeling very emotional obviously. I thought, okay, holding a space for all of that and then at the same time I can also hear the truth of it’s not entirely true that the whole thing was a bust. And you know it’s only a waste if that’s story you decide to tell. Why would you tell a sucky story like that, that’s so unoriginal, it’s so depressing? Tell a story people want to read and look at the whole truth. And so then you’re, okay, to look at the whole truth there is this objective piece too, some things did work.

So as you go through any experience or process, have built into this objective evaluation, what worked, what didn’t work and what you would do differently next time. And it can be really helpful to have an outside perspective helping you hold this space while you do this. Because even if you do the evaluation first yourself and then share it with someone, 100% of the time they are going to see something that you’re not seeing, because you still have the emotion. And also, and as you’re reading through your evaluation you are going to see things that you didn’t see.

And you are also, this is such a valuable point, you are going to be doing the creative investor’s part of integrating what you’re learning, that process of going, here’s what I learned. And then going back over what you learned by trying to share it with someone else and articulate it, it gets into your body and in your mind in a different way than if you are just doing it in a personal vacuum. So having a great objective other to hold a space for you like this or having a group is powerful for this.

Also if you hold a space for someone else this can be a great asset to you in your own practice because you’ll see the places where their emotion is clouding their own investment mindset. And then that will better inform you about how to improve yours. But I want you to, again, as we’re going I want you to really think about, have I really ever owned the truth that this can be a skill that I apply. That there are people in the world who have minds that make lots of money.

If we’re talking about the financial investment, there are minds in the world that are very creative to taking opportunities and even failures, and making meaning from them. Whether that meaning is art, whether it’s a song, whether it’s a play, whether it’s a book, whether it’s a next chapter in their life where they’re like, “I am not repeating that business. This next chapter I’m writing differently. Nothing is wasted on me.”

Take charge of your narrative, which is my number seven. Control your narrative around what kind of creator, investor, meaning maker you are. There are other people in the world that do this and you can too. It’s going back to that number three, that decision to make the shift to being that person.

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So this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in, not be a consumer, but be a creator. Really work with me, coach with me, take this information, apply it to your life. Make it transformational. So although these episodes are free, it costs you nothing to listen, consider this, if I were coaching one-to-one right now, or privately that rate would be $2,000 or $2500 an hour. So if you are going to 10x this podcast at least and beyond that would be $25,000. So consider how you might do that with the information on this podcast.

My next challenge for you is to go back through and think about any situation in the past where you invested in yourself and you thought that was a waste. Either you are blaming yourself for having flaked, or quit, or somehow failed, and go back and mine it for the gold that I promise you is there.

And then how are you going to take that piece of gold and then multiply it? Multiply it with your mind, an investment in yourself is never a waste if you choose this path of being a conscious and powerful creator. An investment in yourself, in your mind, and your dreams is never a waste unless you choose to let that be the story that you tell.

Now, here’s the second part of my assignment, you may or may not have considered joining the Art School but let’s pretend for a moment that you do. Enrolment in the Art School is currently, this is August 2020 when I’m recording this, it’s currently $3200 for 12 weeks, but it’s more than 12 weeks. I think this is another hallmark of a consumer versus a creator. A consumer views things as an expense or a creator views things as an investment.

And the way I have designed the Art School and my vision for the Art School is it is absolutely a program, an experience and a brand that is ubiquitously seen and known as being an investment. So that it’s not a $3200 expense but it is an investment in you and your dreams that generate an inevitable result.

And my vision for it, the pathway, the brick road that I am building along with all of these amazing extraordinary creative powerhouses is that we are doing this work and love the process. And you are going to see more and more powerful stories of success coming from this experience that can be traced back to the work that they did in Art School. And that’s not to say that I am taking credit for the work, it is absolutely, I offer the work and then it’s how these creatives take it and then what they build in their lives with it.

So that even $3200 x 10 I think is a very conservative, extremely conservative baseline view of what people can create from that Art School investment. I want people to be not only 10x-ing, but a 100x-ing, and not only 100x-ing, but 1,000x-ing.

And at the end of the day, and at the end of the success, and at the end of the money, what I want them to be saying above all was, “That was one of the best decisions I ever made. That was a turning point for me. That’s when all things changed because that’s when I changed, that’s when I began to change from the inside out. And that for all the success and for all the money, the best part about it was who I got to become, and who I discovered myself to truly be

And I am so grateful that I didn’t wait any longer, that I didn’t waste any years in my future, thinking I might waste some money right now.”

And I think that is what is available to you. When you shift from two things, going from a consumer to a creator, and going from thinking of this as a possibility, or maybe something that some people can do, to owning that it is a skill, and a skill that you can study, learn, apply, practice, adapt to make your own. And then master and create not only what you’ve dreamed of creating but something that exceeds that. As Mary Oliver said, “Always leave room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the The Art School Podcast. If you have enjoyed this podcast, if these episodes have been useful for you, and if you’ve invested them in your life and you’re creating returns, I am so grateful. And if you want to pay that forward the best thing you can do is to share, is to subscribe, and is to go to iTunes and leave a review.

And if the Art School is calling you and you’re ready to take this work deeper, I would love to have you join us for the Art School Fall 2020. That class kicks off the first week in September. It’s going to be a phenomenal 12 weeks, and again, the return on investment lasts so much longer than that, really a lifelong gift.

So if you want to join us yet in 2020, make sure you go to my website, www.leahcb.com, check out the Art School tab. Make sure you are on my newsletter, that way you’ll be the first to know about free classes, free group coaching I offer, as well as any information about the Art School. If you have any other questions, please email us at support@leachcb.com and we will take great care of you.

In closing I wanted to share a quote that I shared in a recent newsletter. A man named Robert G. Allen who is an investor, had said, “How many millionaires to you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts?” Period, pause, I rest my case, because that’s none of them.

And so I want you to think about your own investment mindset and what you want to create. Where are you investing in a savings account? And where are you okay with that? Where is that just fine for you? But to think more broadly about where you are investing your precious resources in this lifetime, your attention, your talent, your energy, your money and what do you want to create? Do those choices line up? Does who you want to be and what you want to create line up with what you are currently investing in?

Here is to all of you becoming practitioners and eventual masters and Jedis of the art and skill of 10x-ing any investment. And I hope you create a beautiful and prosperous week. I look forward to talking to you next time.