If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I genuflect to the church of Tim Ferriss, the author of “The 4-Hour Work Week”. His book and methods have been a constant inspiration. This talk in particular, given in 2009 at the San Francisco WordCamp, has a lot of great takeaways.

The talk centers around developing and maintaining a blog (which was helpful to me with this blog relaunch) but he also covers many topics such as efficient ways to use Twitter, researching topics to share, having fun is not wasting time and even out-sourcing his love life(!). In addition he discusses covering blog topics that are “evergreen” and timeless, and not to chase the news and current trends, which is a stance I continue to agree with and try to maintain. Check out his blog if you get a chance, a really rich community of smart people striving for improved lifestyle design.

Lots of great info in this video and a perfect primer if you are starting a blog, want to reignite your current site or just develop a community to share ideas and info with your followers.

To be successful you always have to keep an eye out for the next big wave. Plus be able to ride it. There are basically two ways to run your creative career.

There are those that ride the waves. When the waves tend to be not as big, they look to other beaches. They move there.

Often they find that this new beach, or rather this new market, is just starting to get popular. Waves are getting bigger and bigger each day. This is a good place to be.

Then there are those who never leave the same beach, who stay with their same services, their same marketplace. When the waves die down, they stand there. Up to their knees in still waters. They look backward and think about the big waves from the past. They worry and stress about the future, they anticipate waves will be smaller from now on. They think, well that is just how it goes.

They don’t even notice the others who have moved to new beaches, enjoying new emerging markets, who are fluid and mobile with their skills, career and talents. Still they continue to stay at the same beach.

Your career has to shift and move, you have to move to new markets, keep an eye on what is next and work to anticipate it. If your current scenario is not working, move to a new beach. It may be similar to your old beach, just bigger waves. Keep looking off into the distance, keep looking for upcoming options.

I like to surf. I like to look for big waves. Career big waves.

I have practically done this my whole career. But my focus is on bigger waves on other beaches I have yet to explore. And I usually can catch them.

Am I the best surfer? Not really. So what’s my secret?

Always be looking.

And have great binoculars.

I often talk on the blog about promotion and marketing, spreading the word. Creative artists and business people may not be wired to move rapidly forward while sharing the story of their craft, but you do owe it to your audience. You have a duty to make sure everyone knows what you do and how you do it. Once you start to think of your empire as a traveling show as opposed to hanging a sign for a stationary for-hire service, you start to expand your thinking as well. You begin to see the future charged with possibilities. Extending your reach in all kinds of new and exciting ways.

How you move is up to you. You could network, virtual and in-person, speak at local and national events, write an advice column, post videos of what you do on the web, start a fan group, organize a street team, there are almost limitless possibilities of not only where you can take your brand but also how you can get there.

Momentum is the primary ingredient. As is steering. A company moving is a company that is flexible enough to steer into new areas. The core talent and services are still there, but the road traveled presents new niches and paths of opportunities. Things you find exploring you would never discover if you were stationary.

How has your business moved this week? Did you extend your reach, present to a new group, break in to a new demographic, develop a new product or service that was a bit out of your normal scope?

Are you sitting around anxiously waiting for the phone to ring or are you hitting the road and bringing the show to a new audience on a weekly basis? There are so many avenues of communication these days, especially with the web, that there is little excuse not to explore new ways to reach large audiences.

So how far are you moving this week?

Check out one of my favorite TED Talks. I saw Elizabeth speak live in Portland at The Merrill Auditorium and she’s a great creative inspiration for me.

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

The author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert has thought long and hard about some large topics. Her next fascination: genius, and how we ruin it.

Her website is here and you can also view this video on TED

The video runs about 20 minutes, but stay with it, it’s a great talk for any creative artist to hear.

Check out my site Media Artist Secrets – Creative Career Inspiration at http://www.franklinmcmahon.com/

As for news, not much happens over the weekend, so things that are posted online tend to be pretty fluffy. I find most critical things I may want to know happen on Mondays and Tuesdays. E-mail is also not critical typically. I recently read an article where a CEO never checked e-mails on the weekend. He reasoned that if he did, he would start answering them. And if he started answering them, clients and associates would be notified that they can and would reach him on the weekends and get a response. As for social networks, the more you interact the more reaction you get. So if you don’t post and comment, you typically don’t get much for responses, which trims things way down.

The one item I would suggest is to have everything ready for Monday, ready on Friday. Unless you have your task lists and items completely covered and scheduled, your mind will keep running about work all weekend, which defeats the whole purpose. Ever leave for vacation on a Friday? You work so hard all that day to have everything buttoned up that when you set off your mind is free and relaxed and ready to have some fun. Imagine having that feeling every weekend? 
What has happened to me is that I approach Monday and the work week with much more renewed energy and excitement.  I am recharged and ready to roll. As opposed to working though the weekends and having a never ending cycle, which can cause burnout. This may not work for everyone, but I am guessing that it could. Give it a tumble, if you think you can’t not work weekends because of client commitments, start to rethink the efficiency of your actual work week. Try going tech free for a stretch and see how refreshing and recharged it can make you.

Do you go tech free now? Can you do it?

On this episode of Media Artist Secrets TV we discuss the 4 Creative Career Steps. You can look at the original blog post this is based on right here.

The 4 steps are Hours, Talent, Ideas and Who.

You can also watch the show in HD on YouTube or in HD on Facebook (podcast version coming soon)

This show is all about the business of being creative, advancing your creative career and ramping up your empire. Each episode will feature creative career development advice and inspiration, cool guests, new thoughts and ideas. Join the conversation by leaving a comment, let me know what you think.

Thanks for checking it out.

http://www.FranklinMcMahon.com /  http://www.fmstudio.com
http://www.Facebook.com/FranklinMcMahon
http://www.Twitter.com/FranklinMcMahon

Which of the 4 steps are you at right now? What step do you want to be on?

Anthony Robbins: Consistent Focus, Repetition and Immediate Actions
Tony always says that “repetition is the mother of skill”, which means the more and more you do something, the better you get at it. Doing is the key, the more you actually put something into practice, the better and better you become. He will be the first person to tell you that all the self development in the world will do nothing until you actually start putting the methods to use. Focus is important as well, whatever you focus on consistently, starts to come to fruition. A lot of people spread their focus too wide or it’s constantly changing. He also talks about immediate actions. Once you set a plan in place, you must take a step or two immediately towards the goal. No delay. You cannot plan to work on it next week, the first steps must happen right away to create momentum.

Stephen Covey: Find Your Voice and Inspire Others To Find Theirs
He wrote the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, and the quote above is actually the 8th Habit, from the book of the same name. Find what you truly love to do, find what your career path should be. This takes lots of soul-searching and exploring, and it often takes making a move, but it must be done. The next step is to inspire others, help them find out what they want to do. Help can be in many forms. The more you help others with their dreams, the more you will see your own dreams come to fruition. He also talks about sharpening the saw, keeping your skills top notch as well as focusing on what matter most to you, not urgent items pushed on you by others.

Tim Ferriss: Get Rid of the Clutter, Get Help and Focus on the Important
Tim says in his book the 4-Hour Work Week that when you work 9 to 5 for years (or decades) and then branch off on your own, you still retain all the same methods, even if they don’t work. You still get up and work at 9am (even though nighttime may be your most productive) and you still work within the 8 hour (and more) grid. Conform your new business to you, not to dated office methods. Use virtual assistants and delegate your workflow of mundane items. Stop taking in info from the web all day, go on an info-fast, most of that info is quickly dated and not relevant to your empire. Most importantly, don’t work 8 hours just doing busy work if you don’t have work, scale back and focus on what matters.

David Allen: Get Things Done by Collecting All Your Info, Sorting, Reviewing and Doing
David Allen created GTD (Getting Things Done) and it’s a great system that actually can be explained fairly briefly. Find a system, electronic or paper, to collect all your thoughts, ideas, tasks, goals and projects. All of them must be captured/collected or else your mind will keep thinking about them. Next is to process them, stuff that can be done in 2 minutes, just do them, things that need to be scheduled for a certain time or location, track them. Work through these 5 steps: Collect, Process, Organize, Review and Do. Put items into these 6 areas of focus: Current Actions, Current Projects, Areas of Responsibility, Yearly Goals, 5 Year Vision and Life Goals.

Saying the above items are the tip of the iceberg is an understatement. Google them all, read what they have to say, get their books and products. Check out their blogs. Even if you just start with one, most anything by any of these four will be highly enlightening and will definitely help you ramp up your career to where you want it to be.

Google: Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Tim Ferriss and David Allen

Websites: Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Tim Ferriss and David Allen

Of course these are my interpretations of my favorites, do you have any favorite methods? Or favorite authors?

Franklin McMahon Show #2 – Creative Career And Being Shameless..this episode is about being OK with being shameless, not being humble and ramping up your creative career by being confident.

Are you shameless? Leave a comment!

You can also watch the show in HD on YouTube or on Facebook (podcast version coming soon)

This show is all about the business of being creative, advancing your creative career and ramping up your empire.

Each episode will feature creative career development advice and inspiration, cool guests, new thoughts and ideas. Join the conversation by leaving a comment, let me know what you think.

I will also be looking for guests to interview in the coming weeks, if you are interested, please leave a comment with your links. The show will be a work in progress, but I plan on making it informative and fun.

Thanks for checking it out.

http://www.FranklinMcMahon.com
http://www.fmstudio.com

http://www.Facebook.com/FranklinMcMahon
http://www.Twitter.com/FranklinMcMahon

Since things seem to work in cycles, how can we prevent our current networks from being old news a few years from now? Actually I am not sure we can. But I am sure that they will not fade too quickly either. Twitter is a great tool for networking and real-time conversations, Facebook utilizes rich media like video, audio and photos to provide more of a showcase for whatever you want to promote, while LinkedIn continues to be more of a professional atmosphere, focused on connecting business people through discussions and linking.

Current social networks have also learned a lot looking at the history of MySpace. They don’t want to make some of the mistakes that have happened to that site, such as interface and user experience.

I think the thing to do is to create a brand that transcends any current network, one that can be immediately applied to whatever the latest social network is. It’s funny, everyone was so passionate about MySpace, but now, it’s old news. Some of the current networks may face similar fates. It’s all about communication. When a better communication option comes up, people will typically move to it.

I always tell people to be aware and on the lookout of what the next big thing will be, as opposed to jumping in later when everyone else does. If you wait that long, you will be in lots of very crowded markets and communities. The “Next Facebook” is probably being developed right now, so keep an eye out for it.

Lately the cool thing to say is “I deleted my MySpace account, I am done”.

Not so fast.

Since most things do happen in cycles, I see a phoenix-like rebirth of MySpace down the line. It is a huge network that is not going to sit by and watch these new networks grab all the glory. I have no idea how or when it will happen, but it does make sense that it will.

It may be funny to think that you will be on MySpace again daily in the future (even if you are not Dane Cook) but keep in mind, 60 million people are on it this month. That is a big network that I don’t see suddenly vanishing.

Live in the social media moment, but do keep an eye on past tools you have used, they may make a comeback. And look for the next big thing, getting in early could be a huge benefit.

Finally since I don’t get on MySpace too much, I just wanted to give a shout out to my MySpace peeps. Friends, I salute you. I may be seeing you sooner than I think.

Are you still using MySpace? Do you prefer it to say Twitter or Facebook?

Have you moved on from MySpace? Will it indeed make a comeback?

I’ve been talking to people about this a lot lately, it’s worth discussing here. I always recommend that if you have a lack of talent in a particular area, you should get help, either someone to help you or hire someone to do it for you. I’ll give you an example. You have a product or service you want to sell, you have worked hard to make it really compelling, because it is your specialty. Of course you need to have a website and make sure you come up in search results. But doing SEO and web design is not exactly your talent. You are not a designer. So rather than get someone who knows what they are doing, you design the website yourself. It’s OK, design is not good, it does not function too well, but hey at least it’s something up there.

You’ve just displayed your lack of talent in an area and displayed it for the world to see. You are using this to try to promote your real passion and real talent. You then try to figure out why the results are not what you expected.

Say you have great ideas, you want to star in your own show, it could be a video show on the web, a podcast, a weekly presentation. You have the talent, drive and ideas to really light up a program. But producing costs money, so you handle the production yourself. You get an old camcorder, so-so microphone, attempt to edit, etc. You are not too good at it, but it’s good enough. Once again you are promoting and displaying what you are not good at for the world to see, in an effort to get people interested in what you are really good at or passionate about.

You do this project after project. You rinse. You repeat.

Now I am all about learning, don’t get me wrong. Getting into new areas and developing new talents is great. This is not what this is about. It is about having a genuine talent and then completely surrounding it with a subpar presentation. The problem is most of the audience will stop at the presentation. If something is not well produced, not pleasing graphically, hard to get into or seems more amateur, people will immediately judge it as less then important. And this is the kiss of death as you launch anything. It could produce a path of project after project not going anywhere. You’ll get hearty thumbs up from your friends, but the real audience that matters may quickly turn away.

You are trying unbelievably hard at something you are not good at and getting little to no results.

What also happens is when you struggle with the presentation, you’ll get a bigger sense of accomplishment when you are done, because it will be quite an achievement for you. Because it is so tough and took so long. This however will not thrill the masses. Ironically what you have spent hours and sleepless nights over will seem amateurish to a savvy audience, they will think you whipped it up in a few minutes. Why? Because it is not what you are good at.

The solution is remarkably easy though, so have faith! Get others involved who have the talents you lack. It’s no secret to surround yourself with others who are more talented then you to make anything a success. A lot of people do the opposite though, surround themselves with people less talented. Volunteers with free time. Think of your career like a boat. A ton of people without skills you direct will make the boat heavy and likely to sink. A large crew of talented boaters will make your project, I mean your boat, go faster and run efficiently.

Vanity stops us from getting people on board more talented than us because we feel threatened. We want to be the top dog. Huge mistake.

Really start to think about getting some great people to help you produce. Whatever you are doing, get a person who is an excellent delivery person. You have the talent and skills and message, but get great people to help you bring it to fruition, bring it to the masses.

And also get creative on how you collaborate with these people. It is not all about money, although I always recommend hiring people to help you grow your empire because it just helps it grow faster. It can be about someone volunteering or working out a trade or anything really, just getting that talented person on your team.

Look at your current projects. Look at the part you are least good at, the part you always struggle with and are least happy with. Or the part you have never started, because you lacked the talent. The part just sitting there for months and years. How can you get someone to work on that part while you focus on the areas you really excel at?

How can you grow your empire faster by working with others who have the skills you lack?