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I home school myself many hours per month listening to tele-seminars, watching and participating in webinars and watching videos at ted.com and 99%.com. These presenters have helped me become better SECP. I’ve been putting a lot of effort lately into promoting, my expertise in self-employment, sales, pricing, financial management and deal-making. All centered around the creative person seeing themselves as professionals, not surviving artists but thriving artists managing their opportunities better then they have before.

My reason for this post: my family and I attended a Memorial Day BBQ on Sunday, good company, good food and several rounds of Guitar Hero. Also in attendance was an artisan and his family. This fellow is one of a handful of persons who does what he does: expert restoration of wood, stone, concrete and most anything you can think of when it comes to 100 year old homes. We spent a lot of time talking about his inability to generate the income and lifestyle he prefers over the one he has. He listened to me speak on the topics listed above and later wrote me: “I went to bed early with a headache (migraine) undoubtedly because I recognize the truth in your message and don’t feel I have the solution just yet. Years of self-neglect, self-denial, self-deprecating humor to compensate for the initiative to improve this part of myself…. You are the right counselor to meet at this point in my career development. An artist with the right skills to share, to end my cycle of continued poverty. You have pointed to the solution, but I’m gonna need a road map to lead me out of the woods.”

Further on he writes: “I’ve thought for the longest time that the “starving artist” was a natural way of life, just the nature of things that comes with this choice of career. That unless some arbitrary and lucky occurrence of the art critic “building a bandwagon” for other art critics to jump on would be necessary to become a Jackson Pollock or phenomenon within your own lifetime. This might  still be true to some degree. But I think I can be a better advocate for my skills than I have been, and perhaps arrive at a better place than the upside down turtle waiting for a savior.
Thanks Again Brother, I think my lucky occurrence was talking (and listening) with you on Sunday. Maybe there’s a new book building in this “Dinner with Andre.”

I didn’t realize how hard I’d struck the nerve. This is what I’ve been training for of course, to help others with my message. Another great gift came out of this encounter, we need help and advice in restoring/repairing several areas of our 100 year old homes in Pasadena and this artisan made us an offer: Your time would be valuable to me, and I’m not sure how I can compensate you. Maybe I have something you need, perhaps a barter arrangement?

How about that? By putting myself out there, the universe supplied the answer. I will always give to get.

To  your self-employment success.