Stop waiting for experience

Michael Der  0:02  
You're listening to Artrepreneurs, a podcast that inspires photographers and visual artists to live their best creative lives. My name is Michael Der and I am a full time photographer with nearly 10 years of experience in the freelancing world. And I'm sitting down with an amazing community of visual artists to talk about process, business, and the lessons that have helped them grow. So let's get to it. Artrepreneurs starts right now.

All right, welcome back to Artrepreneurs, everybody. Appreciate you guys spending a few minutes with us today. Now, I am going to do my best to make this episode short and sweet and hopefully get you guys going on your day. Now, today's topic is about how we perceive experience and the role that plays in our ability to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. And as the amazing Artrepreneurs that you all are or hopefully aim to be one day, much of your career arc will involve taking chances at things that you don't have a lot of experience in. Maybe you want to start a YouTube channel or a podcast, even maybe you want to pivot your photography from Sports to weddings, or you want to teach or write a book or start an online business. Maybe it's simpler than that. And you just want to reach out to your dream client, but you don't feel you have the experience yet to justify that request. Whatever your ambitions are, sometimes it's hard to have the confidence to start, which is very natural, because all of these things are first time endeavors. And like most things that you try for the first time, it might come with some bumps and bruises. And while some jumped fearlessly into every project or challenge laid in front of them, many of us are actually a little bit more cautious, we're a little more calculated, we want to be prepared before we do anything. And so this is my love letter to you guys, the creators who tend to lean towards testing the waters first before jumping in, here's my message, stop waiting for experience. And I say this for a couple of reasons. One, experience is never qualified, experienced can be bad, experienced just as easily as it can be good experience. So without qualifying it, to me the significance of experience is over glorified. And there's this common sentiment that gets thrown around like, if only I had the experience, then my business would grow, or that person is better, because he or she has been doing it longer than I have. There are plenty of people who have spent a dozen plus years in school yet are never successful students. Just because you play a lot of golf doesn't mean you're inherently good at it. If experience truly equated to success, then everyone who has worked for somebody else would have gotten multiple promotions, multiple raises just based on the merit that they have plenty of experience. And the reality is I know dozens of people in my profession that have a lot of experience, but very little traction, they don't grow their business, they don't increase their revenue, they don't expand on the services they provide. And so in these cases, experience has not equated to growth. Conversely, I know and I'm sure you know, plenty of professionals out there who are very young and green in this industry, and yet are thriving past the other professionals. How is that even possible? They don't have the experience that others do. And so I have to ask our clients and customers unanimously looking for experience first and foremost, are they actually looking for people to solve their problems. So I want to pull a quote from our friend Brandon Magnus, who was our featured guest in Episode Seven that I think really drives home a great point, he quotes I never shot an MMA fight before I worked at UFC. And I never shot a hockey game before working for the San Jose Sharks. Besides capturing peak action, I think it's important to find the quiet and emotional moments while telling a story. That's what people really want to see. So thank you for that Brandon, that is quite eloquently put, folks, we need to stop using our lack of experience as some sort of excuse for not taking the necessary steps to our goals. Secondly, if you continue to wait for experience to magically arrive before you start something, you will invariably never get the experience. experience comes from action. It comes from testing. It comes from trial and error. You know what it doesn't come from? It doesn't come from studying, researching or planning. I'm sorry. And listen, I am a huge advocate of improving your knowledge. I mean, of course I am. I put this podcast out there so that you may hopefully pick up something from the lessons my guests and I have learned along the way. But without application, what you watch on YouTube or listen to on this podcast really doesn't amount to much. You know, as the saying goes, business books aren't real business. If you want to pursue something, start first and then learn as you go. Please, I implore you, this podcast is about living your best creative life and to be creative. You have to create if you want that title, that's the reality you have to create. Otherwise, you're just imaginative. There's this irrational mindset that we have to have everything squared away before we start, and I get it. I deal with this all the time. In each one of us, we know that there might be 1000 different steps in any given endeavor. And somewhere sitting on our shoulder is this little devil saying that we need to know all these steps before we begin, which is unequivocally false. All you really need is to attack step one. You don't need to worry about steps two through 1000. If you're concerned with 999 questions that you don't have the answer to, then of course you'll never start. It's too overwhelming. It's too much of an obstacle. We just need to focus on step one. Now I'm not saying you don't work on things before you publish it to the world. If you're writing a book, you should go through revisions and multiple drafts. I'm not advocating careless art are directionless projects. But if you do want to publish a book, you need to start writing. If you want to improve your portfolio, you need to start shooting and with that being said, Be unapologetic about your art and accept the bumps and bruises that come along with the process. Yes, your first 10,000 pictures might absolutely suck. Your first client pitch might be cringe worthy. My first time being in front of a mic was terrible compared to now and I still don't know if I'm any good, folks. It's okay. Being artistic and creative for a living means it's going to come with its fair share of vulnerability and failure. But if something means something to you, if you've wanted to start a new venture for a long time, there really is no reason why you shouldn't start now. So reach out to that client. Even if your portfolio isn't ready. Write that first chapter. Even if you don't have a chapter two lined up start the process without judgement of its artistic or intellectual merit. It all starts with step one, and I encourage you to take it

Hey, everybody, this is Michael Der thank you so much for making it all the way to the end of the episode. I hope you'll follow tag and engage with us on our Instagram account at Artrepreneurspod. We've also launched our website Artrepreneurspod.com. It is the central hub where you can sign up for our newsletter, read our blog posts, send us voicemails, and even access discounts from our amazing affiliates. It's also the perfect spot to shout out Artrepreneurs with what would be an immensely appreciated five star rating and review. And if you're feeling extra generous, you can even make a small donation that's really going to help accelerate the growth of this podcast. But no matter what you do, folks, I just want to say thank you so much for supporting this program. There are a lot of great photography podcasts out there and I am just grateful to have gained your trust even from take care of everyone. See you next week.

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