Craftsman Creative

[00:00:00] Hello. Hello. Welcome back to this week's episode of the Craftsman Creative Podcast. I'm your host, Daren Smith, founder of Craftsman Creative. I'm so, so glad to be with you today. So this week we're talking about mindset in the community. There was a message from a friend who said, you know, I'd really love to hone in a little bit more on the mindset piece.

So can you chat about that this week? So this week in the Society of Independent Creators, I got five different posts. I do one a. And I have been doing them like every week as a new topic. So that way it's, you're going deeper than just one post a day. So this week was on mindset and oh, it was fun. All right, so I've got three ideas for you today and let's just dive in.

So first one, Is actually like an excerpt from my book. So if you wanna read more about this one, you can, in my book, the Crafts and Creative how five Figure Creators Can Build Six Figure Businesses, I'll put a link in the show notes. If you haven't [00:01:00] read that book yet, I highly recommend it. Um, this first idea is called The Three Personas Your Business Needs.

Now, I was reminded last week about how important it's to have all three personas show up in your business between a conversation with a creator who feels like they're doing everything. Who else has felt this way? , I know I have. And a podcast episode that I did on Craft. It's an, it's a timely way to start out this episode on mindset.

So one of the biggest and most important shifts that you need to make is to realize that your small c craft is only 20% of your job. Yes, it's essential and what your business does, but it's not the only thing that you do as a business owner. So your big C Craft. Is being a creative entrepreneur, that means that you can't just be the artist a hundred percent of the time.

You need to step into the other two personas regularly to create your vision and big goals, build out your systems and grow the business. [00:02:00] So here's a quick review of the three personas, and again, you can go back to my book and read this chapter and dive in a little bit. So the first persona is called the artist.

The artist is the one who's handling that small sea craft. They write the books or they write the songs. They film and edit the videos. They do the coaching or the consulting. They provide the service and create the products. They're doing the work. Now, without the artist, you wouldn't have any products or services to sell.

Or you would sell them and fail to deliver anything . So most creatives settle into this artist persona 80% or more of the time. I know plenty that only ever operate as an artist a hundred percent of the time. They leave no time to step into the other two personas. So because of this, their business grows to a certain point.

And then it plateaus. They're stuck not knowing what else to do besides create more art, make more products, offer more services, but there's a limit to how much you can do either because of the nature [00:03:00] of what you do. Like comedians can only perform so many shows a week. There's only so many nights. In a week, and generally speaking, they're only doing maybe like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Thursday, Friday, Saturday, maybe a Monday show here or there.

They're not generally performing every night of the week. There's also a limit to how many hours in the day there are, so you can only take on so many projects because you can only work for eight or 10 or 12 hours a day. Right? Depending on. How much you want to, uh, stress yourself and overwork yourself.

So there's a limitation if we only ever work as an artist. So that means we need to introduce one of these other two. Well, honestly, both of these other two personas. So the next one is the manager. , the manager is the systems builder. They're the ones checking in every week, planning out what goals, get your time and attention each day.

They schedule your calendar, work on your email system, optimize your content, your lead generation, your product. They handle the spreadsheets and the [00:04:00] optimization and all those things. If you never let the manager step into your business, you will have a bunch of half started systems that aren't generating any meaningful output and you won't grow.

So if you have an email list that you never. , you haven't let the manager lead. If you keep creating more products, but they aren't selling, that's the same problem. So the manager is essential to the growth of the business. You've gotta have them show up at least every week, if not throughout each day.

When you shift from artist mode to manager mode to follow up on emails, do your accounting, optimize your systems? The manager is essential. Now the third persona is called the entrepreneur without an entre. The manager and artist can build a perfectly optimized system that never grows beyond optimization.

So the entrepreneur is the big vision, big goal. Big partnerships. Big ambition person. They think about the future destination of where they're trying to get to. The manager creates the optimal set of directions [00:05:00] to get there. And the artist is the one behind the wheel driving a car. So we're mixing our metaphors a little bit here, but that's okay if you've, if you know where you are and where you want to get to, the entrepreneur is the one who decided the destination.

The manager creates the optimal set of directions. The artist is the one driving the car. Okay? So you need the entrepreneur to show up regularly so you can make sure you're going somewhere. You're not just driving or running in circles. The entrepreneur gives you that vision, the destination. He gives that or she gives that to the manager to figure out, and the manager hands it off to the artist to do the work.

The entrepreneur is the one signing up for events, investing in education and coaching and learning. The one, taking people out to lunch, pitching the business to new clients and partners, and in helping maximize the potential of the impact the business can. . So if you feel at all stuck in your business, one of the first things you can do is assess how much time are you giving to each of these three personas?

And guess [00:06:00] what? If you're a one person business, like 99% of you are, you are all three of these personas, it has to be you. There's no one else to come in and manage different things or take some of that stuff off your plate. So you have, you literally have to shift from one persona to. You have to get out of artist mode and into manager and entrepreneur mode.

You have to do it regularly. You have to practice it. You gotta get really good at it, and by doing so, you'll create breakthroughs in your business that you've never been able to create before. All right. The second idea I have for you today. Is to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. So I split this one up into two parts because I felt like they each deserved a little bit extra attention.

But the simplest definition of success that I've ever heard is success is doing more of what works and less of what doesn't. That's it. If you want success, that's how you get there. Do [00:07:00] more of what works, less of what doesn't. So the first part is do more of what works. One of the defining, in my opinion, characteristics of my success is that I stayed with it for so long.

I worked as a producer for 12 years before producing my first feature film. That was the goal the entire time. I wanted to make movies as a producer, and it took me 12 years to do it. I've been working on my own since 2018, but I didn't have my first $30,000 month until September, 2022, so that was four years and eight months.

A big part of success is mindset, and one of the beliefs that you need to live by is that you'll keep going until it works. Here's my belief. There are answers to every problem. People have found success in every single industry. The way to create that success for yourself is to just keep doing more of what works.

So how do you do that? You can get better at your craft. You can connect with people who have already succeeded and learn from [00:08:00] them. You can attack the problem from a different angle. You can experiment and you can track your results. . The reason to do all these things is because doing more of what works inevitably leads to success.

In my experience, if you keep going and are resilient and resourceful, you will get there. So this is a huge mindset thing because you have to have that belief ingrained in you or else you'll give up too soon. There's, there's these great graphics that exist where it's this, you know, bell or not bell curve, but this hockey stick curve that occurs at the right side of an axis on a graph and.

Just before it starts the uptick, there's a little pointer that says you are here and your, your belief is this is pointless , and you're just so close to having it work. So a lot of times it's just sticking with it for a little bit longer until it actually has time to work. Okay. So the other half of that is that you have to do more of what works and less of what doesn.[00:09:00]

Do more of what works and less of what doesn't. This is the secret to success if I've ever found one, but if you only ever try to do more of what works without eliminating the stuff that doesn't, you'll quickly get overwhelmed and you'll run outta time. , honestly, I've seen people burn out because they keep trying to do more and more and more and more, and none of it's working.

So here's a recent example. After a recent, um, after feeling overwhelmed with social media, recently I started a digital detox at the beginning of February, 2023. I realized that all of my best clients last year came through initially hearing me on a podcast. So that led to them joining my email list, getting my email sequences in my newsletters for months.

and then they reached out to work together. . So if that's how customers happen, then I should be optimizing that to allow more customers and clients to happen, right? So to do more of what works, I'm doubling down on long form content like this [00:10:00] podcast, and I'm doing one or two workshops a month going forward, and I'm gonna do that throughout this year.

And I'm rethinking how I'm gonna use social media going forward. It will likely just be repurposing some of the long form stuff. Create a little bit of value in, you know, five seconds, 20 seconds a minute, and then point them to the long form piece that it came from. So social media content, I think, has to be valuable.

They call it zero click content, meaning all the value is contained in the piece there on social media. They don't have to click away, but for those that are right time, right person, right offer, right piece of content, they can click through and go down that rabbit hole. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about that.

but here's the thing. If I hadn't eliminated the one to two hours per day that I was spending on social media, I wouldn't have time to do more of this long form content. So I had to eliminate. In order to add, you have to exhale in order to inhale, right? [00:11:00] If something isn't serving you, if you aren't getting the results that you want from it, then.

Test not doing it, or try eliminating it all together and see what happens. There may be things you can choose to outsource or delegate, or you'll find a better option that gets the results you want in a more direct way. So that's idea number two. Do more of what works and less of what doesn't, and guess what Your manager has to show up during that process to kind of test and analyze the data and to make sure that you're doing more of what works and less of what doesn't.

Okay. All right. Here's the third idea for you today. You are already standing on a mountain of value. I love this phrase. I've heard it from many, many creators, and I'm using it myself. So what I see time and time again, both in my own life and in the careers of those I work with, is a constant focus on the next mountain with complete disregard for the mountain.

We've already. . So if you've ever gone hiking in a mountain [00:12:00] range, there's mountain ranges. 20 minutes from my house. I've done this hike a few times now. It's called the Y Mountain. There's a big Y on the mountain for Brigham Young University. But if you hike up to the Y and then you keep going, you end up wrapping around the backside of the mountain and you can see the entire Wasatch Mountain range from the top and from the backside.

So that's the visual I want you to think about. You've gone up this mountain and then all of a sudden you see a mountain range you didn't even know existed or that you thought existed, and that's what you're really after is, oh, there's a bigger, taller mountain than my bet that has an even better viewpoint, so I need to get there.

That's what I want you to picture throughout this idea. So we have this constant focus on the next mountain with complete disregard for the mountain we've already climbed. So the journey you have already gone through is filled with experience and lessen mistakes, distractions, pitfalls, dangers, incredible vistas and more.[00:13:00]

Yet we don't take enough opportunity to look back and either reflect or appreciate how far we've. So just yesterday I sat down to lunch and a friend told me how impressive he thinks Crafton and Creative is and how he can't figure out how I've managed to do all of this stuff while also being a film producer.

My initial response was, Well, it's no different from the incredible things you do. You're a director, producer, executive producer. You do distribution. You write like you are impressive as well. And I immediately turned it back on him. I was like, ah, it's not that impressive. Um, but I had to check myself and I had to apply this principle , which is why I'm talking about it and writing about it today.

I said, you know what? Thank you. That means a lot for you to say that. I really appreciate it. So we went. Then we went back to eating our pizzas. Yesterday morning before that lunch, I was putting together the signup page for another Craftsman Creative Workshop on podcasting and . I realized that I've accomplished a lot on that mountain, quote unquote mountain as well.

[00:14:00] I've had huge creators like Justin Welsh, avid Call, Justin Moore, Josh Spector, and Moore on my own podcast. . I've partnered with Joe Polizzi, a well-known marketing expert, and the corner of the term content marketing to create the 10 K Creator Show last fall, which has already passed like 25,000 downloads for the first season.

So, I helped build an entire podcast in a day leading up to the 10 K Challenge in January. I've been on dozens of podcasts, and I've used those opportunities to grow my business and my personal brand, but I don't consider myself a podcaster . I just consider myself the founder of Craftsman Creative. So I've never looked back on that quote unquote mountain that I've sum summited.

To take stock and like really appreciate how much I've done. So for someone just getting started, that's a massive mountain I've climbed yet because I was looking at the next mountain or range of mountains that I haven't yet submitted. I never celebrated how far I'd come and I was never [00:15:00] turning that those lessons into content.

So if you look back on your journey so far, Each one of the lessons, mistakes, distractions, pitfalls, dangers, and incredible vistas that you've experienced is a story you can share. You can turn it into a piece of content, you can turn it into a product. Honestly, you could even turn it into an entire business.

So you've just gotta take a second to look at how far you've come. You're already standing on a mountain of. That's it for today. Try to keep it a little bit shorter. I don't know if I succeeded. I think we're going on 16 minutes, but that's okay. These are, if I can give 'em under 20, maybe that's, that's a good amount of time.

Shorter than an episode of television. That's not too bad, right? . All right. I got one thing for you to do. If you enjoy this podcast, then what you need to do next is head over and take my free scorecard. If you go to craftsman creative dot score app dot. , there's a free scorecard you can take, and here's why you [00:16:00] wanna do that in three minutes and about 20 or 30 questions, I think that has, you're gonna have so much more clarity on where you are.

So I talk about this analogy a lot, this visual of like, in order to get to a destination, imagine you've got a map, you need a few things. You need to know where you are going. So that's the destination. You need to know where you are. in order to plot a set of directions or a path that's gonna get you there.

So a piece that's constantly missing from the lives of creators is a real good clarity on where they are. They generally know where they want to get to, but they have no idea how to get there. And part of that is because they don't know where they're starting from. So that's what this scorecard will give you.

It will give you an a real clear picture of where you are in your business right now. You'll get an overall score, but you'll also get scores in five or six different areas of your business. Things like content creation, your awareness, your email system, your [00:17:00] product ecosystem. How good are you at selling, how fulfilling is your business and your life that your business is giving you.

I want you to take that and then there will be some follow up emails and some other information that I'll send your way just to say thank you for taking the scorecard and to help you with this specific thing that you need the most help with. Because generally you'll have one or two that stick out as like really good, and you'll have one or two that you maybe neglected because you haven't ever thought about doing email or thought about sales or thought about your product ecosystem before.

So head over there, craftsman creative dot score app dot. Take the free scorecard. I'll send you some more info and you'll be able to start making progress toward that goal, cuz now you have all the pieces, you know where you are, where you're going, and then I'll help you get there using basically Craftsman Creative as a guide, as a resource, as a, as a Sherpa.

How about that? I probably need to make shirts. It could be a Sherpa shirt. All [00:18:00] right, thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.