The Energy Fix Episode 113 - FINAL.mp3
2025-05-12
Transcript
0:00:13 Tansy Rodgers: Welcome back to the Energy Fix, a podcast dedicated to help you balance your energetic body by diving deep into the sweet world of all things health and spirituality. My name’s Tansy and and I’m an intuitive crystal Reiki energy healer, energetic nutrition and holistic health practitioner, and a crystal jewelry designer. It’s time to talk all things energy.
0:00:38 B: Let’s dive in.
0:00:40 Tansy Rodgers: Welcome back. How was your weekend? This is coming out on a Monday, so I feel that it’s very fitting to ask you, how was your weekend? What did you do? What really lit you up? Did you take time to enjoy the weekend, to enjoy the time to enjoy the space and the energy of just relaxing, diving in or sinking into beautiful weather or things that make you happy? Because this episode, wow. This episode, it is for every one of you out there who’s been grinding, pushing, creating, doing all the things.
0:01:24 Tansy Rodgers: And so if you answered the how was your weekend? And you are saying, I’m tired. I did so much. I had so much going on. I felt like all I did was work. Well then this episode is for you. It is for all of you that are really wondering, is this the right way? Does it have to feel this hard? Because here’s the truth. Alignment isn’t passive, but it also doesn’t require burnout. You don’t have to do more to be more.
0:02:01 Tansy Rodgers: You don’t have to chase and hustle or burn yourself out to get what’s meant for you. You get to follow your inner guidance and build success. That is soul deep. And I’ll tell you, this is something that I have had to learn over the years, that I’ve really had to take multiple steps back and just say, it is okay to not do more. It is okay to really just let myself, my soul, my energy, my body relax, to follow my inner guidance, to hear my inner guidance. And honestly, when I started to adopt that, when I started to follow that more, and believe me, I still have work myself to do, but when I started to follow it more over and over and over, that was where the success started to build.
0:02:57 Tansy Rodgers: Today’s guest, he gets this. Today’s guest is going to talk all about this in this episode. Today I’m sitting down with Cliff beach, an award winning musician, author of Side Hustle and Flow, and a man who’s built a career by turning into the rhythm of intuition rather than following someone else’s formula. We talk all about what it means to hustle smarter, not harder. To listen to your inner compass and to trust the timing of your life even when it doesn’t make sense to the outside world over the years. Cliff had to learn this sometimes the hard way and he’s going to be talking all about this.
0:03:41 Tansy Rodgers: He has been performing live for more than 20 years and his single Confident was featured on Spotify All Funked up and Funk Drive playlist with over 1 million plus streams. He is the host of the Deeper Grooves podcast and deeper grooves on 885 FM beach is the author of side Hustle and Flow like I said earlier, which really chronicles his musical journey while still working a day job. He knows all about this hustle and flow, but doing it at your own rhythm. He has written previously for Beauty, Tap, Pepperdine and Rockstar Life and he is the winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest Grand Prize, three World Songwriting Awards, five Global Music Awards, a California Music Video and Film Award, and has been nominated for various others awards.
0:04:43 Tansy Rodgers: He is all over the place. His music has recently been featured on the cw, hbo Max, and in a BMW spot. He is really, really stepping forward, listening to his flow, listening to his intuition, allowing it to guide him. And that’s what I want to talk about today. I want to talk with him all about how to do this in a sustainable way, how to do this in real life, how he moved forward and made this shift and this change.
0:05:20 Tansy Rodgers: If you’re in a space of realignment or you’re just tired of the noise and want to come home to your own way of creating, this episode is going to feel like a breath of fresh air. Now before we dive in, you know what I like doing around here. I like giving you updates and make sure that we are on the same page and you know what kind of beautiful things are happening this month and where you can connect with me a little bit deeper. So first, the Spiritual Holistic Expo is coming up this weekend, May 17th and 18th in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I’m gonna be there with my full Beu Crystals jewelry line.
0:05:59 Tansy Rodgers: So make sure you come by, stop by, say hi, soak up the energy and on May 22nd I’m gonna be co hosting another sound and Crystal Energy healing session in Lit.
0:06:11 B: It’s Pennsylvania.
0:06:13 Tansy Rodgers: It’s such a beautiful evening of release and recalibration and grounding. So if this is something that calls to you and you are in the local area, make sure you stop on out and have part of this session. It is so realigning. Then on May 24th I will be back at Reiki by Ricky’s in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for a sampler day where I’m going to be offering Mini crystal healing sessions for the first mini crystal healing sessions and I will have a small jewelry display. So if you are in the area, if you’ve never been to Reiki by Ricky’s, then you want to come on out and just get a taste of what the energy work looks like, what other kind of sampling sessions you can dive into and how you can recalibrate your nervous system.
0:07:08 Tansy Rodgers: And if this podcast has been landing in your heart lately, if this is a podcast that feels like it has been supportive for you and you really are feeling connected to it, loving the vibe, loving the conversations, loving the energy, I would love if you’d subscribe and leave a quick 5 star review or share it out with a friend. This helps this podcast grow. It helps me to continue to do this work and to continue to bring this podcast to you.
0:07:41 Tansy Rodgers: And it also helps support other people that are on the same wavelength. So thank you so much in advance and I appreciate you. Okay, it is time to dive into this soulful, practical and totally aligned conversation with Cliff Beach. Let’s dive in.
0:08:04 B: Welcome to the Energy Fix podcast, Cliff. I am so excited to talk to you all about music and about this incredible shift that you are making in this world. Thank you for being here.
0:08:17 Cliff Beach: Thank you, Tanzi, for having me. I’m excited to talk today.
0:08:19 B: Yeah, well, I want to know what you are connecting to. So is there a word or a phrase that you are really embodying right now and trying to connect closer to?
0:08:34 Cliff Beach: Yeah, I would say giving back is what I’m connecting to at the moment. I’m actually on the, the precipice of embarking on a volunteer opportunity in Kenya that’s coming up. And it’s my first time to Africa working with youth, working on personal development and creativity and leadership and all the things that I’ve worked with Youth for over 20 years in a variety of music capacities and entertainment and personal development, public speaking.
0:09:04 Cliff Beach: And it’s always great. It’s always great to have that season of life where you want to give back, where you feel like you’ve gained a lot of knowledge and you don’t want to hoard it. You want to be able to share that with the world as you do with your listeners and, and people who are writing books or songs, all that stuff, just getting it out there. I think we all want to be able to hopefully die empty for all those dreams and aspirations they’ve, they’ve gotten out there. Because a lot of times, if it lives only in your head and lives in your head rent free, Then only you know about it. And the world will never know unless you pull it out of your head in front of your face and. And then amplify it out to the world. So this season of giving is exciting because it’s always nice to get this mutual feeling, obviously of feeling good by giving.
0:09:49 Cliff Beach: But whenever I do these situations, I always tell people like, it has nothing to do with me. And it’s nice to pull me out of my me centric bubble because you’re giving to people who cannot give to you and we’ll never be able to help you in that way. And that’s good. That’s good to be able to give, expecting nothing in return and knowing that there is nothing to be returning except for the good feelings of obviously doing it. So I think there’s a good part of people doing that. If more people did it, then I think the world would be a better place, essentially.
0:10:21 B: Cliff, I love that so much. I have chills. It makes me feel emotional in what you just said. And so I feel like so many of us have certain times in our life where we feel like we need to give back, that we need to extend that helping hand for whatever reason is motivating that person. Why now for you? What is it about right now that makes it really important?
0:10:49 Cliff Beach: You know, I was watching, I love to watch old TV shows and I was watching one earlier today, a version of our episode of Murder She Wrote, and the guy basically says, no one owns tomorrow. Like it’s just like a throwaway line. Just like, I’ve seen the episode many times, never heard it. And I was like, this guy just says, we have today. No one owns tomorrow. So that’s the thing, the reason why the season is now, because no one owns tomorrow.
0:11:17 Cliff Beach: And it’s that way. Today is the day. Today’s the day I have. I want to give back now. Because the thing is that people need it now. And giving always comes in a way where it’s inopportune when someone needs your help. It’s always going to be when you’re busy. That’s the way it works. And so you have to be able to stop. I was doing something earlier last week where I was talking to a group of girls that are going to be dancing to one of my songs in this university in Utah.
0:11:45 Cliff Beach: Who. I met this person years ago on cruise ships when I did music there. And so basically they sent me this list of follow up questions and they were like, well, if you’re busy, it’s okay. You don’t have to answer. And I answered all the questions fully and I told them, I was like, I’m never too busy to answer these types of questions because I don’t want to become that person where it’s like, and I was busy. But the thing is, like, I don’t want to be that busy. Like when someone’s like, oh, I’m calling you, I’m sorry to interrupt you. You’re busy. Like, no, no, I’m not too busy for a friend to listen or to be there for someone, because that’s not the kind of busy I want. Because ultimately then what happens is you get to the top of that mountain or top of the ladder and you know, it’s like watching a movie. Like, you can watch it alone, but when you want to laugh with people, you want to look around and see the faces of people that you love. And if you have alienated everybody essentially by always being too busy for answering that question or lending a hand, when you can, then, then you can do it. You’ll get to the top, but it’ll just be a lonely place at the top.
0:12:45 Cliff Beach: And so I think that’s why no one owns tomorrow. So do it today, because if you don’t, you’ll find excuse not to do it. But ultimately, the person who needs your help today, they need it today. And tomorrow not the same.
0:12:59 B: And as you were talking about being busy and having this time, or not taking the time to help somebody else out, I started to think about how really it’s okay to be busy.
0:13:10 Tansy Rodgers: It’s okay to have a lot of.
0:13:11 B: Things going on and, and to be excited about that. But really, isn’t it all about perspective? Like if you’re busy and able to still take the time to connect to others from a heart perspective, from a soul perspective, and just really be engaging, that is a total, totally different feel of busy and having a lot on your plate than those who kind of isolate themselves in their office space. Space and don’t really take the time for interaction.
0:13:39 Cliff Beach: Yeah. And ultimately, I think when people want to be busy or they aspire to self actualize or whatever it is, what happens is that the top of the pyramid is true autonomy. And so what that means is that you want to be able to dictate your schedule. So you’re only busy if you want to be busy. You can pause anything and press play on something else at any moment. Just like watching TV on demand. You’re watching a movie and you get interrupted. You can pause it, you can come back to it, but that’s True autonomy when you’re able to say, I dictate what I do. So I’m never too busy. And when you look at great thought leaders throughout history, you’ll always see a me, someone to be mentored or a student or a kid. Someone comes and they’re like, no, it’s okay. I’m never too busy for that.
0:14:30 Cliff Beach: Because otherwise, who are you serving? Like, the whole point of being out there is to serve, whether it’s your customers or your community or whatever it is. And if you’re too busy for them to listen and to hear them, I tell people all the time, whenever I’m doing things that have to do with customer service. I was like, sometimes you end up in a situation where it’s like going to a doctor. And they’re just like, take this.
0:14:51 Cliff Beach: You’re like, well, I’ve told you nothing. You’ve asked me nothing. We said nothing. How do you know what’s wrong with me to now tell me what I should do? But you’ve heard nothing about me. And so that happens. So you don’t want to be so busy that you can’t listen and gather feedback and hear. Then you can prescribe, then you can serve. But you have to know the situation first, and you have to assume you don’t know anything at the beginning.
0:15:15 Cliff Beach: And so you don’t want to be so busy. Because sometimes you know the boss like, well, I’m too busy to take that call or this and that. And someone you know that’s at the bottom of the total pole, mailroom guy, whatever, they may have great ideas, and you need to have the time to be able to listen to them. And if you truly are that boss or that leader or truly at the level you want to be, then that level should have a high amount of autonomy.
0:15:36 Cliff Beach: Because I said that all the time. Like, people are like, well, I couldn’t make your show because of this. I’m like, if you had VIP Beyonce tickets, you would have been there. You know, so there’s always something you’ll show up for. If a big man was alive and he’s coming with that check, you would have been there. You would have opened the door. You would have not blocked that call. So that is you and your autonomy and you pretending to be busy, but no one is that busy, because we always stop when we want to.
0:16:04 B: You’re speaking to my soul. I love this.
0:16:07 Cliff Beach: I love this.
0:16:09 B: All right, well, let’s talk a little bit about you. I mean, you’ve been performing for over 20 years. You’ve won major songwriting awards, you’ve got a book and a podcast under your belt. But I’m curious, what does success actually feel like to you now compared to what you thought that it was when you first started on your journey?
0:16:32 Cliff Beach: Oh, that’s a very great question. It’s multifaceted. So I will tell people if they read my books, I have some influence. I moved out to Los Angeles sight unseen after going to music school in Boston, sight unseen from D.C. and so I think that people should make those leaps. I think you should make a leap and hope the net appears. And when you’re young, I think it’s easier to do that. But even now I’m going to Kenya and there’s some open ended questions. We’ll figure it out there.
0:16:57 Cliff Beach: But I think there’s a part of that, you know, we’re always scared, we’re always afraid. And true courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. People think that you’re fearless, but that’s not true. People have fear, they just don’t let them stop them or hinder them from getting it done. But I think what’s changed for me in the last 20 years, success for music was originally like, I want to become the best singer. And then you realize there’s all these aspects of music, you know, whether it’s writing or producing or band leading or taking that from radio to television to podcasts. Like there’s so many multi hyphenates that are in there that you don’t realize only your own record label doing your own publishing, licensing music for tv, film, commercials. Like all those things are kind of in this basket of goods or arsenal. Or if you say yes and tap into it, you can do so. I think success is expanding your universe and your talent and your brand and, and saying yes to things that are scary because it stretches you. But then you gain a new skill that you wouldn’t have done. Because 20 years ago I just wanted to be a singer. I didn’t even think about the other 25 things I’ve done after that.
0:18:04 Cliff Beach: In the Same way in 2013, I was like, okay, I’m gonna start releasing music under my own name after having a band. And I said, I want to make 10 albums in 10 years. And I didn’t know how to make one, let alone 10, but. But I wanted to go big because I knew if I say I want to make 10 and I make five, still better to have five than one, better have one than none. And so I think that’s kind of a way to Push yourself or trick yourself to be like, okay, let me go really big and try to get halfway there, and you’ll get further than you ever thought you could with that. But, yeah, I think now thinking about, I still would love to, as a musician, win a Grammy. There’s some people who have won, some people who didn’t.
0:18:41 Cliff Beach: It doesn’t really change your life that much. So I think I. I used to think, wow, that’s so life changing. There’s also a fear of, like, you actually get the thing, and then you realize it wasn’t actually what I thought at all. Like, you get it. Like, I had a friend who won an Emmy, amazing guy, and he was like, I lost my best friend. We both were nominated. One, one, one loss. Never talked to me again. Had nothing to do with him. So that happened. But more importantly, it’s like with therapy and you talk with kids, you applaud effort.
0:19:07 Cliff Beach: You don’t apply accolades, right? So all these things I won, I lost way more than I won. But beyond that, whether I didn’t win anything, I won by doing the thing. Who I became was the true win. Because now when I work with kids so many times I was working with these kids at this camp and. And they were like, well, we were on the leaderboard, but we dropped. I was like, these wins are immaterial. It’s about carrying it forward.
0:19:31 Cliff Beach: You need to win at life. That battle is going to keep raging on every day. Every day you wake up with an opportunity to do something different, something unique. And I love Marie Kondo. Sparking joy, touching it. Does this bring joy to my life? That’s the first thing I think. Thank God for the day. What. What can I do to bring joy to. Other than joy to my life? Because that’s what you need. You need more joy and happiness and. And people are like, well, I’m not that joyful. I’m not that happy. Then autonomy. It’s up to you to do that.
0:20:02 Cliff Beach: There’s no savior coming. Put the S on your chest, fly out there, get it done. Because that’s the only way it happens. It. Life never gets any easier. You just have to continually waking up and saying, what can I do today? And. And so I think, yeah, I love to win all the awards. I love to win more. I love to win bigger ones. I love the access to the give. But ultimately, I’m still, you know, I’ve had a million streams and I’ve had five streams, and I love all the songs I’ve done. Not because I’m Narcissistic in that way, but because I learned something, every project, every song, every opportunity moved me a little bit further. And I think sometimes it can be discouraging because sometimes you’re putting a lot out there and you’re not getting the feedback that anything is happening.
0:20:45 Cliff Beach: But then you realize, you know, five years from now, these seeds that you planted five years before are now springing up. So many times we give up early, we give up before it was happening. And I think the disconnect that I’ve learned as a city, a city boy, is that, you know, people who farm, people that garden, they are connected with the earth. And that connection allows us to remember what our ancestors knew, that all good things take time.
0:21:14 Cliff Beach: If I plant a seed today, it would be ridiculous to think tomorrow I’m going to now be picking that fruit. That was never a natural process. And even if I was scientifically able to alter that to make that happen, it will never taste right, it will never be correct, because it’s unnatural. And so I think that’s something that we have to get back to, that it’s like it. All good things take time. Plant all the seeds, they’re not going to all spring up at the same time. They’re not going to all get to the same ripeness and level at the same time. Some won’t bear fruit at all. But the point is that the more you put out there, the higher probability of them growing and doing something. But I know for sure the probability of doing nothing, you re. You get nothing.
0:22:00 Cliff Beach: There’s nothing coming from that. So something trumps nothing every day.
0:22:06 B: There’s so much to comment on there. Oh, one thing that you said, I loved you said who you became was the true win. It was about winning at life. And so it’s so much about changing this perspective of what we think is success, what we think is hitting our goals, which is one thing that I find so fascinating about your book side Hustle and Flow, is that you speak truth in the journey of chasing your dreams, but also while keeping your feet on the ground.
0:22:38 B: Which I know in my own life, in my own journey, it’s about keeping myself grounded to be able to really stay in the perspective of what success actually is. And like you’ve. From. From the point that we hit record today, you’ve really been talking about what true, true success is, is about giving your heart, giving your time, giving your energy, connecting, chasing your dreams, being in your soul voice, speaking, singing your soul song like that is amazing. I love it so much.
0:23:15 Cliff Beach: Yeah. Yeah. All those things are right. And I think I said, like we talked about the gardening, but think of construction. It’s like you always build the foundation, the solid foundation. Then you build your four walls. So there’s always a process of what you’re building. So to be able to give and to help, you look at a story like the parable of the Good Samaritan, he’s only able to help because he has money.
0:23:36 Cliff Beach: Like, because he’s built the autonomy and the wealth to give back. So when I came from a place of not having as much, that was not a giving season for me. I had to build myself up, build my finances that, build up my network and resources to be where I am now. And that’s a process. But I had to always have the goal of where I am today is not where I plan to be for the future. How many steps is that? Who has made these steps before?
0:24:02 Cliff Beach: What can I learn? Because obviously I can’t make all the mistakes. So the more mistakes I can learn from the losses of others and their wins and whatever, then the further ahead I can be. But, yeah, I think it’s all about just being realistic. I think also for musicians, for me, it was hard because a lot of times, coming from music school, people were like, well, if you don’t do it full time, then you’re not a musician. I was like, well, who says that? First of all, there’s always this, like, we.
0:24:28 Cliff Beach: There’s always a we that we don’t see that somehow is saying all these things that’s making life exponentially harder. Life is already hard, naturally, getting out of bed, already hard. Gravity is already pushing you down. It exists. So I don’t need extra. I don’t need this extra, invisible we saying what we can or can’t do. Just let us be who we are. And. And the beauty of life is that you can wake up any day and be whatever that is you want to be. A writer, get a pen and a paper. Nothing’s keeping you from that. You want to be a singer? Get out there, start singing.
0:25:00 Cliff Beach: It doesn’t matter if people love it or hate it. It’s about you loving it and you using that to your advantage. And. And we’ve seen that societies that live the longest have elements of this. In Japan, they live over a hundred more than any place in the world. Really tiny island and Okinawa. And they. They have this philosophy called ikigai. And everybody lives with these four walls, the pillars that they built in their life. What am I good at? What am I here? For, like, what’s my reason for living? Like, what does society need from me? What can I make money from? They ask these questions, and the thing is that there is no plan to retire.
0:25:39 Cliff Beach: Retirement isn’t necessary when you’re doing the thing that’s fulfilling. When something is fulfilling, you do that for a lifetime. Music is a lifetime practice. Yoga is a lifetime practice. The reason why we use the word practice is it’s not about perfection. It’s about continuing the journey. Every day we get in front of that instrument and we dedicate ourselves to it and we fully immerse and we integrate that into our life.
0:26:06 Cliff Beach: And I think that’s the. The balance that we’re. We’re looking for. And I think people that resonate the most with us are people that are integrated. People are that congruent. If I’m at work, if I’m at volunteer, if I’m at music, if I just see you at a coffee shop, I am always the same. I will treat everyone the same. There is no hierarchy of, this person has these awards, this person has this. I’m going to treat them different. It doesn’t matter.
0:26:34 Cliff Beach: Everyone is the same. We’re all equal as souls. But I think the friction then comes beyond that, where we are not all equal in the marketplace. So that’s where the inequity happens, because some of us are going to be faster, some of us are going to be prettier, some of us are going to be stronger, some of it’s going to be more talented. The thing is that the people that are most successful, they aren’t the.
0:26:55 Cliff Beach: They aren’t the outliers. You know, they aren’t the savants. You can actually just be middle of the road. But the thing that you need is what I call hustle. It’s the grip, it’s the continuing to get out there. I have a friend that went to school with me. He had way more talent in music than I did. He won a national competition at 18, beat us all. And a year after school, he. He ended up doing that and didn’t really pursue music as much after that. He just called me the other day and I told people. I was like, we went to school at the same time. He was at the top, I was at the bottom.
0:27:28 Cliff Beach: Now I’m like, way ahead because Tortoise and the hare, he stopped and I kept going and it took me longer, and he still probably naturally had more talent than I had, but I just kept going. That Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V. Who I love, he was like, I don’t have to be the smartest, but you won’t out hustle me. That’s what I always wanted. The difference was like, everyone has great ideas, but unless you’re ready to execute and make the sacrifice to get that done and bring it to fruition, that’s the difference.
0:27:56 Cliff Beach: That’s why you see something on tv, you’re like, I thought of that, yeah, but thinking about in the idea isn’t enough. That person actually brought it to market and they did the R D and the testing and stuff like that. So that’s the real difference. I think it’s, you know, ultimately it’s like passive income. It’s like passive education. The person who’s studying and up late and working on their thing while everybody else is asleep, that’s the person that gets ahead.
0:28:19 Cliff Beach: That’s the tortoise in life. The person that kept toiling when they didn’t see it, when they kept getting no. That’s the true hustle. That’s what you have to get to any book that you see. Harry Potter, many people said no. People passed on the Beatles. People passed on Zephyr. People pass on Lots of Bounds. People pass on lots of books. Chicken Soup for the Soul sold like almost a billion copies. 150 publishers said no. It’s like, there’s always a lot of no to get to that one. Yes, you keep refining your pitch in that process, but I think that’s the hard part is that how many stopped at 10, how many stopped at 50?
0:28:54 Cliff Beach: You know, you don’t know that. Yes, it’s out there, but you gotta knock on every door. And that’s why sometimes people will say, like, well, I tried everything. And it’s hard when you’re in it, but like, not in it. I can tell you this about me. One is that you didn’t try everything. That’s humanly impossible. So you’re giving yourself, like an impossibility. Like, I did everything. Two, if you did do everything, if that was true, but it wasn’t effective, then you got to go back, you got to make tweaks, you gotta adjust.
0:29:21 Cliff Beach: You know, it’s like, well, I. I did everything to lose weight. But you didn’t lose weight, though. So you still have something else to do. Either something needs to be tweaked or there’s something else to do. But either way, if you see other people and they found a way to do it, then there has to be a way. There’s always a way. And if you want it bad enough, you’ll do it. And I think that’s. I think that’s what people realize. I think ultimately people realize that most people, they want it, but they don’t want it bad enough.
0:29:46 Cliff Beach: They don’t want it bad enough. As hard as they want to breathe when the water is coming up, to struggle for that air, that’s how much you need whatever the thing is you do. Because they will tell you. That’s why people like, oh, I want to do music, I want to do that. It’s like you don’t. If you did, you’d be doing it because there’s nothing keeping you from it. It’s just like wanting to do it and doing it. They’re not the same.
0:30:06 B: Yeah, well. And hustle and grit is so critical in moving forward and really going for your dreams and your goals. And I want to come to that in a moment because I have something that I think that your definition of hustle is slightly different than the hustle that is in the mainstream media vocabulary. So we’re going to get to that in a moment. But I’m really curious, you know, as we’re talking about your book here, you know, you do music and then you write the book and podcast, and changing the different ways of being a creative always seems to create different lessons.
0:30:44 B: So as you changed into becoming an author and writing this book, what kind of lessons did you learn through the writing process?
0:30:56 Cliff Beach: Well, there’s a lot of very key, valuable lessons. I think the funniest lesson, I think is the best one. So I started writing the book in 2014, and I gave up on it because after a couple of interviews, I was like, I’m an imposter. I’m not a writer. I’m a musician. I don’t know anything. I don’t want to. I want to do it. But I was like, no one’s going to believe this.
0:31:15 B: The dream killer of most creatives. Imposter syndrome, right?
0:31:21 Cliff Beach: Yeah, exactly. And so, so the freeing thing is 2020 happens. Pandemic happens. I have no shows. I have nothing to do. So I’m doing shows online and they’re okay. But I was like, you know, they’re giving a lot of free classes. They just wanted people to do something. And I was like, let me take a writing class. I want to see if I can actually pick this idea back up. So I did, and I took this Scribe Media course by Tucker Max, who wrote the New York Times best selling book, I Hope they Serve Beer in Hell. They made a terrible movie of it. But the book was good, but it wasn’t about his book being good or not. It was that he was teaching people how to either get ghost writers or write.
0:31:58 Cliff Beach: And the very first lesson, which was the best of all the lessons I ever heard, was, people will not write this book because they believe they have nothing new to say. And he was like, I’m here to tell you you don’t. And that’s freeing. Nobody has anything new to say. It’s all been said to death, but it hasn’t been said by you. And that’s why you need to say it. Because we all have an X factor. We all have a filter. No one has your exact.
0:32:23 Cliff Beach: All the experiences and stuff. You had your snowflake. So let it just come from you. Be relatable to your audience. Then I have to sell a million copies. Helps five people. It helps you. You’re a person. It matters. And so I like that, because that freed me from the imposter syndrome, because there can’t be an imposter telling my own story. No one can tell you how to do you better than you. Just do you.
0:32:45 Cliff Beach: Don’t try to do you. Just do you. And so that was the beauty of it. That was the first lesson of just, like, say it anyway, you know, because that’s what kept me. That’s what kept me six years from even working on it. And I had great interviews and people who wanted to talk to me. And no one, no one externally said I was an imposter. It was. You know, the call was coming inside the house. I said it about myself. I.
0:33:06 Cliff Beach: I shot my own self in the foot and limped. And I could have had that book out, you know, five years before. And I think everything happens in its own timing. That’s why I say, like, if you didn’t start yesterday, that’s the best time. Start today, but don’t wait until tomorrow. So it doesn’t matter. You know, you can pick up a paintbrush at 80 and Grandma Moses and become very well known. And it’s not even about that, but it’s just about, you know, she wanted to do that in her 20s, and she didn’t, because we were like, you need to get married and you need to work on the farm. And they were like, if she had done it at 20, she would have been the most successful female painter of all time, if not best painter of all time. So.
0:33:39 Cliff Beach: But she still did it. So I think there’s always whenever do it. Even if the last couple years of your life still do it, the world still needs it from you. But ultimately, yeah, that. I think that was the best lesson of freeing myself from that. Then they taught me how to work on what’s called a vomit draft. And that’s just. I just blurted all out. Just get it all out. You write forward. So one of the biggest lessons of how you write is you do not write and reflect and edit. You just write all the way to the end.
0:34:13 Cliff Beach: Because what happens is that you will gate yourself. You will naturally be like, I can do this better, absolutely. But not today. Keep writing to the end. Because if you do that, then you’ll be like, oh, let me make a tweak. Let me do that. You’re not going to continue writing because you’re going to be too busy editing. You write all the way through, then you go back and make changes because you have to get the full idea out. That’s why it’s a vomit draft. We’re getting it all out. We’re purging the whole system.
0:34:37 Cliff Beach: And with that, they also had a place called a parking lot. So when you outline, you got to outline. That’s the most amazing thing to get your thoughts organized before you start. But the parking lot is great because ultimately, creative people, not everybody, but both, they have more than one idea inside them. And so they will conflict and compete. And so not only will writing and editing stop you, you’ll also get stopped by conflicting ideas. And what happens is, like, you might have three books in you, so you got a parking lot, these two, to get the first one out.
0:35:07 Cliff Beach: Like, I’m giving this one the time, and now I’m going to write forward. And I hear you. Parking lot, That’ll be book two. That’ll be book three. That’ll be a different concept because now I worked on two or three books after that, and they do come out. But you, you, you get, it gets too complex and too convoluted. In the same way with music, I learned, like, a lot of times people are like, well, I gotta find the right word. I gotta find this. I’m like, this probably for most people won’t be your only thing.
0:35:34 Cliff Beach: So you don’t have to try to get all your ideas into one thing. It doesn’t be your opus or your manifesto. It doesn’t have to be all in one, you know, like, it’s okay if we just get some nuggets of wisdom and truth and, and, and some are great and some are okay. Like, it, It’s. It’s okay. It just. You don’t have to shoot for the stars and the moon every time, because that’s an impossible thing. And sometimes that’s how people work. And I’m not saying they’ll do that. But, you know, typically authors, it’s their fourth or fifth book before they really get known and stuff. And you learn through the process, and you figure out how to make it easier, how you want to tell your story. I think ultimately, also the thing I learned is when you switch from different genres and different platforms, they aren’t as different as you think.
0:36:18 Cliff Beach: So ideally, if you look at Robert McKee, he has this book story. He explains how a book is turned into a movie and how they’re different and how that could be a TV show. So every medium lends itself to a certain audience and lends itself to a certain way of telling the story. So if I give it in a movie that’s like three hours, that’s different than turning into a television show that could have multiple seasons. So the arc of how I tell the story, if it’s longer, I have more time to parcel it out. Whereas, kind of like the hero’s journey in a book or a story, in the same way, like, a book is never the movie, and the movie’s never the book because there are adaptations. But in a book, you’re the director. You’re making it up in your mind, and your mind’s always going to be better. That’s why when you see it after reading the book, you’re like, oh, I wish there was different. Well, of course, because you’re the director.
0:37:07 Cliff Beach: That’s what that director’s mind was saying. And you’re also seeing it versus your mind creating the pictures. So they’re all a little bit different. But not everybody will tap all the styles. But you learn that there’s a lot of lateral moves that you can make in there. Because ultimately, whether I’m doing a song or a book or a podcast or interview or the radio show or TV or whatever, they’re all stories. They’re all just stories and ways of getting that. And. And the thing is, you learn from your audience.
0:37:35 Cliff Beach: Like, I did an audiobook, and there are people who listen, and then I have physical book or digital book and people who read it doesn’t mean that they can’t do both. But some people have a communication style. They have a learning style. And so you want to be able to touch on all these mediums. That’s why when you see a book, that becomes a play, that becomes a movie, like, different people may resonate with different things. There may be people I’m only a movie people. I love the theater people. I love to read, I love to listen.
0:38:05 Cliff Beach: And so then you’re allowing people to get to you and get that story in the medium that they want, you know, and so ultimately, when you’re telling a story, you want to get your ideas out there, but you don’t want what you want to say, get in the way of where your audience needs to hear and get in the way of the method that the audience needs to receive it in. Because I could be telling you something great.
0:38:28 Cliff Beach: But if you’re not an auditory listener or a visual listener and you’re a reader, then transcribing this and allowing you to read it, you will learn differently than that. Doesn’t mean that one’s better than. It just means, you know, we have natural preferences. So if you’re able to get into multiple medium, I think then people will be able to see your. Your story. I can tell you that. I just came back from Phoenix about two months ago. I saw a Frida Kahlo ballet.
0:38:52 Cliff Beach: So they took all their artwork, made it ballet. Never thought of it this way. And I was like, that’s an interesting way to tell her story through the colors and culture and music and dance. And she never thought of it that way. You know, she thought of it in her art. But it was nice to see other people, how they adapted. I never would have thought of it doing that way. And it was very well done. And so, again, it allowed people who like that medium, or people who may not have been interested in, but then seeing that medium became interested, it gives them more opportunities. You want to give your audience the most opportunity to connect with you in the way that they want to connect. The thing that you cannot do is get your audience to switch, to connect to something they wouldn’t connect with. Like, if they’re not an audio, then they’ll never be audio. So if you want to get to that audience, then switching to a different medium could be beneficial for you.
0:39:45 Tansy Rodgers: Let’s be real. Sometimes we know what we want, but we just can’t seem to move toward it.
0:39:54 B: Guilty.
0:39:54 Tansy Rodgers: Myself, I totally understand. Or maybe we’re in a season where everything feels murky or heavy or like something is just off. Hello. 2025, right? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It’s like, you know, right now, this is your nudge. If you’re shaking it your head and saying, yeah, that’s me, this is your nudge. My energy, healing and intuitive sessions are designed to clear that stuckness. Whether we work together in person or from a distance, these sessions support your nervous system.
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0:41:01 Tansy Rodgers: The link is in the show note for you to connect in and grab your spot.
0:41:06 B: And I think too, I mean, everything that you just said here too, I think that it’s really important to remember that it’s about expressing yourself and also making that expression variable. Because really, people, people need to hear things in the form that they need to hear them. Right? But. But also in forms that are going to be inspiring for them. So what if your voice and your perspective is exactly what that person needs to hear?
0:41:34 B: What is it? What if not? And you may be saying or expressing it in a way that somebody else right beside you, your colleague is saying, but that may not translate to the person that resonates with you and your voice and your talent and your representation. And so I love what you’re saying here because it’s really about just going for it, saying it anyway, doing it in the way that it feels like it translates well for you and just allowing it to land the way that it lands and not worry about that imposter syndrome and what everybody else is doing all around, you know, it’s about you. And honestly, I’ll say that when I have connected into people who live by that perspective, that, that calling, those are the ones that are more magnetic anyway.
0:42:29 Cliff Beach: Yeah, yeah. And we see that all the time. We see like, you know, one person tells a joke, nothing lasts. Next person says the exact same thing, it totally lasts. It’s like, oh, that’s what they were saying. We totally get. Because everyone has different emphasis and stuff. I’ve also learned like for myself, you know, you have people who are more on the thinking brain logic, people who are more feeling heart. So you could have someone give you an amazing speech. All head.
0:42:52 Cliff Beach: And people who are head get it, but the heart, people don’t get it. And then you have another person come and they give the most heart empathetic. It’s not even perfect words, but people felt something, it felt so impactful. And so it’s. The thing is like, people talk about like you have a masculine energy or feminine injury. We. We all occupy all these things. It’s not like one or the other. It’s like you want to be able to tap into both because you can, I think a speech with all head or speech with all her.
0:43:21 Cliff Beach: It will be unbalanced. You’re going to have a mix because you, you know, like having humor having, but then also seriousness. Like, I’ve heard this with music. I’ve watched the Blood Zeppelin documentary and it’s like they have all this hard rock, but then they have like this very sentimental parts and how they spread them out there. Also what I’ve learned with music is this theory of perspective. So in music you can have like two notes that are so close, they just rub together and it’s like, oh, but if I take the same two notes, I spread them apart.
0:43:50 Cliff Beach: The perspective in the distance makes them totally workable when they weren’t workable so close together. So sometimes I think, you know, when you have too much of one or too much the other and you start to get that rubber. But then as you spread it out, as you have more perspective, as you balance. That’s why I tell people you should always go back to messages, stories, books at different parts of your life.
0:44:10 Cliff Beach: You. You see them different, you hear them different. It resonates different. You know, especially large books. You’ll take like Tim Ferriss’s Tool for Titan. He’s like, look at the. The table of contents and see what resonates with you. It may be a chapter that really resonates. I want to read about Richard Branson and being a maverick. And that resonated in my younger adventurous days. And then 30 years later I read it. I’m like, oh, actually I want to learn more from like IBM and building a stable business and how you kind of become a slow boil, not like hot all at once.
0:44:42 Cliff Beach: So it’s like, you know, different stages of your life where you are different things will resonate with you. So I think that’s the beauty of some people where they were like, hey, you don’t have to read my whole book. If only one chapter means something to you, just read that, come back to it later. Because it’s. I tell people like, I’m doing a kind of reflection book based on the series and we do.
0:45:04 Cliff Beach: It repeats a lot. People like, well, you can’t repeat it. I was like, yes, you can. Because in a year it’s like, it’s not a one and done. It’s not like I just did that. It’s like if you’re taking vitamins. You’re always taking them. It’s not like, well, I took it once. I’m good. It’s not a vaccine. So I was like, there’s times where I could come back to the same chapter and have a different experience, or I can come back to that table of contents and something poke out at me at a different place that did it before.
0:45:28 Cliff Beach: And so that’s why I think there are books you read all the way through, but there are some that you can reference and tap into later. I could read my book now for people who see it from the creative artist lens, then people who read it later, from the business lens, then people read it. It’s just, I want to have more time, to have more autonomy, to be with my kids and volunteer. All those lenses are in the book. But depending on what you’re looking at, the glasses you have on, the goggles you have all the time, you’ll see a difference.
0:45:56 Cliff Beach: So I don’t think it’s. I think the best types of content are the ones that you come back to. Just like I was saying, I saw that TV show. It’s been on for 30 years. I finally heard that line. It didn’t stick out to me. They’ll say, oh, nobody owns tomorrow. I’m gonna use that. So it’s like, that’s what happens, is that. And, you know, we forget a lot. We get so much information thrown at us all the time. It doesn’t all stick.
0:46:18 Cliff Beach: So that’s why I’m like, rinse, repeat it. Something else will stick. Or if the same things keep sticking, that just reaffirms that you’re. That’s the thing that you need to focus on. But it’s never just one and done. I wish it was, but almost everything in life can be gone back to with a different lens and learning something else. It’s like you don’t get all the learning from whatever that content is at once because it’s an onion. There’s like so many layers, and sometimes we only see the superficial, or sometimes they cut right deep to the bone.
0:46:49 Cliff Beach: But, you know, there’s a whole. There’s a whole big, you know, meat around that bone that maybe we didn’t get to. So, you know, it’s like when I take qigong and tai chi, I love the instructors there, and they always say I can digest my life one bite at a time. So one bite of knowledge at a time is good, and each bite is different. It’s, you know, the first bite usually is the best. You know, because you’re tasting it different as it goes on. But I. I still think it’s worth rinse and repeat and coming back to it. So. And if you can get it into different formats, different mediums, then maybe somebody will try it in the book, and then later they’ll try it in the podcast, or later the podcast they’ll try it in and a documentary or whatever. So there’s definitely ways of getting it out there, and I love that. I love the diversity of just thought, but also diversity of people and diversity of the mediums, because sometimes.
0:47:41 Cliff Beach: Sometimes I’m, you know, in the car and the podcast is better. I can’t watch, but I can still listen. I also heard recently an audio story on George Clinton that was nominated for Grammy, and it sounded like I fell asleep to a documentary. I had never heard an audio story done that way, where it was literally like the music with his interview, but then, like, we were getting the sounds of the cars and Detroit. Like, it was really well done. I was like, I would love to tell a story that way.
0:48:07 Cliff Beach: You know, an audio journalism. It’s a whole different genre of audiobooks. So I was excited to see that it’s still evolving and changing.
0:48:16 Tansy Rodgers: Yeah.
0:48:17 Cliff Beach: Oh, well.
0:48:18 B: I want to talk about that hustle and grind culture you’ve talked about, hustling smarter, not harder. And I think this is a really important message for us to tap into. You know, I grew up listening to motivational speakers and popular grinders that speak about motivating and inspiring, but I found that the more that I connected to certain people who really dove into that hustle grind, I actually became more sick, and I hit burnouts, and my cycle kept perpetuating.
0:48:52 B: And so what’s one belief about the grind or the creative success that you’ve had to unlearn in order to stay healthy mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
0:49:07 Cliff Beach: You know how people say something, you’re like, I wish I wrote that song. I wish I could take credit for it. Lisa Nichols and her work for the Secret and her. Her books and stuff. I followed her a long time, and she. She basically had this thing that said, you give. You give from your saucer, not from your cup. Your cup must always be full. And when it overflows, as I’m pouring tea out of the teapot into the cup, when it overflows and onto the saucer and onto the table, that abundance I give from that, but I never deplete my cup, right? Because.
0:49:51 Cliff Beach: Because that’s what happens. The burnout that I gave through my saucer through my cup now from the pod, like, and the pot is empty, you know, like, that’s burnout. And so that’s what I learned. I learned that. No, no, the whole point is you work on yourself, you build yourself, you put your mask on first, you get yourself right, you build up your autonomy and your skill sets and then you’re from a place of giving back to the point.
0:50:19 Cliff Beach: From your abundance, from your overflow, never, and I repeat, never from your own cup. Because what happens if you give from your cup now? You’ve turned from an asset to a liability. Now you are a risk if you don’t put your mask on first and you go to help your kids and you become incapacitated. Now you’re all incapacitated and that’s not what you want. So you have to focus on. And I think that’s where mindfulness and self awareness comes in. Because I have to be aware of where that boundary and limit is.
0:50:50 Cliff Beach: If it’s okay to say no, sometimes it’s okay to quit. Sometimes it’s okay to ghost. Sometimes I don’t live in a world where there’s these absolutes where like, never do this, never do that. Like, well, it’s great and, and assess and, and have awareness. But you have to know, is my cup full or not? Am I giving from my abundance? And where have I given to the point past that? Where is it starting to tap into my cup?
0:51:16 Cliff Beach: And you’re not going to know all the right answers. You just have to ask the question. You put the question out there scientifically and then you run the sequence and you look back at the data and then you’ll know. Or if I’m starting to feel burnout, why is that? Am I starting to tap into my cup? If I am, then I make adjustments. Okay, I need to not only shuffle things from the plate, I need to get things off my plate.
0:51:39 Cliff Beach: And that’s the beauty of what I’ve learned with. I was studying David Allen get things done. He had this whole 4D, the things you do and things you delegate and things you delay and things you delete. And I learned to do it in reverse. And I posted a blog article on my blog recently about it. But essentially I looked to say, what can I just delete? Like, this is not a me thing. It’s not gonna happen.
0:52:04 Cliff Beach: I would love to have it, but you know, I have more ideas than I can get done in a lifetime. And I don’t focus on them. You know, I give them away. I don’t care. I can’t execute everything. And so what can I delete? Like, in a perfect world. Not a perfect world. Not for me. Give it away. Don’t do it. Then what can I defer? Okay, it’s not a this Week Today thing. This is a future thing. I’ll come back to this 90 days, 180 days a year from now, whatever. Doesn’t mean it will never happen. But this is just my waiting for someday doesn’t mean someday never, but because not today.
0:52:38 Cliff Beach: Then what’s on the list of things that I can delegate? You want to try to get 80% of stuff you can give to other people off your plate. Like, when I’m recording for my. All of my recordings, essentially, I work with an engineer that pay great. We’ve been working together for over 12 years. I don’t need to be in the weeds of everything he does. That’s what I pay him for. He knows kind of what I want. We do the setup and test or whatever you.
0:53:03 Cliff Beach: Now we’re just rinsing, repeating whatever we’re working on. So I’m in the process, but I delegated the lion’s share of the technical aspects and certain things that he to him. And I just know he’ll check in with me, and I’m there. You know, he’s doing 80% and I’m there, like 15, 20%. But you want to be able to start pushing that stuff off. Like, if I’m trying to write the book, I pass it to an editor. You know, me trying to edit the book, I might be wanting to write something else. So I need to get something off my plate. And so by delegating, that allows that. Because when you get to know now, the doing part, that’s the most important stuff you should do. And then prioritization there starts with, what’s a me? Only thing. Like, if I’m gonna write an album that’s a me, I have to do that. No one else can write the songs for me. I have to write them.
0:53:52 Cliff Beach: So that’s where I spend my time. But can I send that to delegate to someone to arrange them? Yes. Can I have someone transcribe them and write them? Yes. Can I work with a producer and an engineer and go in and just sing and do my thing or work with the musicians and they kind of do their part? Yes. So that’s kind of the way you want to focus on. It’s like figuring out, at the end of the day, I got to do one thing.
0:54:15 Cliff Beach: And the one thing needs to be a meeting that only I can do. If I can let someone else do it, and they can do it for less than it would cost me to do it, you know, with my opportunity, cost of my time pass, if you’re able to. And not all things you can, but there’s technology and other stuff. It’s like. But I tell people, like, you know, I have a maze. I don’t have time to clean, I don’t want to clean. But also, while she’s doing that two hours a week, I’m out doing something else.
0:54:45 Cliff Beach: And that frees up me. It doesn’t mean I’m working. I could be at the gym, could be taking a walk, I could be meditating. Doesn’t matter. It just. It frees up time because that’s not a me thing to do. Now, some people, they love to do it, and if that brings you joy, do it. If it doesn’t, though, and you’re able to afford to do it, let someone else do it. Because if someone else is cooking your meals or doing that stuff, then you have two, four hours. Now, you found to do this project that you didn’t have before.
0:55:11 Cliff Beach: And that’s kind of the thing. It’s not. But the thing is, like, it’s not do it or don’t do it. It’s talk about it, think about it, decide, execute, and there’s no right or wrong way. Do the things you love, delegate the others. Sometimes there’s always a little bit of grind. Like there’s parts of the work that you don’t want to do that you have to do, and it’s part of it. But as you start to figure out, for me, it’s always around building systems.
0:55:36 Cliff Beach: Everything works for me and can do a lot of things because I built so many systems that can run now I can just start and end, and I don’t have to see all the middle. And that saves a lot of time. But not everybody’s able to do that. But luckily, with work and things I’ve done, that’s really what I focus on now. It’s always building a system. Okay, we want to do this. Who the. How we do it? What’s the easiest way to do it?
0:55:59 Cliff Beach: What software do we need? What technology? What people do we need? That’s. And that’s how I structure all making my apples and projects. Like, okay, this is what the song. This is what they’re telling me. You know, who are the best band members for that? Where’s the best studio for that? How much money in the project do we have? We kind of build it that way, But I think. I think a lot of it. And from music, it’s hard to say, but a lot of the things that help you to organize and to create systems or what I call unsexy.
0:56:31 Cliff Beach: Like, there’s nothing sexy about any of the things I just said. Very nerdy and boring. But it works. It works like a recipe. You know, if I’m looking at a recipe card with no pictures, that’s what this is. It’s like you want to make that bread, and you do this same sequence every time. You’re going to get the same bread every time that, you know, that’s how McDonald’s. Not the best burger, but it’s consistent. You know, that’s what you want to make. Sometimes it’s the McDonald’s Asian of your life.
0:56:54 B: Listen, it may not be sexy, but the reality is when that foundation is built, then it creates the sexiness. Right.
0:57:01 Tansy Rodgers: You know what I mean? Yeah.
0:57:03 B: And honestly, I don’t think that Lisa Nichols is going to care that you took that analogy, because that analogy is pretty amazing. I’ve never heard that analogy, and I love it. Yeah. Pour from your saucer, not your cup, and definitely not the pod. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So. So thinking about everything that you just said, this was obviously a process for you. What did the hustle take on you before you realized that something had to change?
0:57:31 B: Like, where were you that you realized, yeah, it can’t do this anymore?
0:57:37 Cliff Beach: Oh, well. Yeah. So once you figure out, okay, I am trying to give from my saucer, there’s so many opportunities to give, and you kind of have to figure out, like, I can’t give to everywhere. It becomes, like they say, trying to empty the ocean with an eyedropper. It becomes a ambitious task. So you have to kind of allocate your resources accordingly. And so there’s two types of hustle. Essentially, let’s say we’re going to chop a tree down. We have two axes, right? And two people.
0:58:06 Cliff Beach: And I gave them the same act, you know, equivalent. There’s one person whose hustle is preparation. Right. If I have three hours to chop this tree down, I’m going to spend two and a half hours sharpening the axe. And when I get to two and a half in one blow, tree comes down. That’s one hustle. And most people are the other hustle. I’m going to hack this tree to death and tire myself out by not sharpening the act and not preparing. And, yes, eventually the tree will come down, but I will be exhausted and so that’s the hustle. I think the hustle is like, harder and smarter.
0:58:44 Cliff Beach: They work together. If you hustle hard alone, you would just tire yourself out. It will be effective, but not as effective as of preparing, planning, strategizing, learning from people who have done it before ahead of time. It doesn’t mean you have a crystal ball, but asking those questions again leads you down the path of asking more questions to lead you to some type of conclusion and make your changes.
0:59:09 Cliff Beach: So I think for me, hustle isn’t just being the strongest and just, you know, working all hours. It can’t be that, because then you will be tired and burn out. And it is real. So I tell people all the time, like, you don’t have to quit, but you do have to take break. Like, you. You are human, not a robot, not a machine. And so from that, there’s other detriments of the hustle, too. Like I said, you climb that ladder, you get to the top, you hustle for 10 years, and then you’re like, where am I? This is not what I thought. This is not the. This is the wrong building, you know, this is the wrong wall.
0:59:48 Cliff Beach: I don’t. I need to be over there. You need to climb down the ladder and then move it. And that’s what the smarter is like. I can. We can all hustle. Like, sometimes someone can be amazing at something. That does not mean just because you can do it, you should do it. There’s maybe reasons you don’t. Like. I had a couple who played viola, amazingly their accomplice, and then one day she quit. People were like, well, how can you do that? Well, she had, like, a crippling anxiety. It was so stressful for her to play all this music all the time. She just didn’t love to do it. Like, she loved being around it. And here she just didn’t want to play anymore, and that’s okay. So it’s like, you have to listen to your body, listen to yourself.
1:00:28 Cliff Beach: You can’t take on too much. The reason why I like that, what I said, they. You add. You digest your life one bite at a time, because what happens is indigestion. You’ve. You’ve taken on too much, and now you have a stomachache, and now you have constipation. That happened because you took on too much. You know, you’re not gonna bite the whole elephant. One swallow, like, that’s. That’s really difficult.
1:00:53 Cliff Beach: And so I think that’s part of the process of smarter is that. Again, I can’t do it all at once. If I can only do one thing, what’s the most important thing if I’m gonna eat that frog? And that’s the worst part of the day. What is the most important? What’s going to move the, you know, the most today? And then you kind of focus on that. But the beauty of it is that after interviewing over 50 musicians on the craft and their journey, no two are like.
1:01:20 Cliff Beach: No two people will ever have the exact same thing. Even if you had twins in the same household at the same time, same information, same food can be completely different. And so I think that. I think if anything, the only thing I’ve ever learned is ask lots of questions to yourself, reflect the ones to yourself because that will help. You know, am I hustling harder? Am I hustling smarter? Am I hustling hard and smart together?
1:01:50 Cliff Beach: And you have to also realize that something can be serving you effectively, working for five, ten years, and then something has shifted, something has changed and that next 10 years needs something else from you. It’s like, that’s why there’s Netflix and no more Blockbuster. That’s what happened. Something shifted doesn’t mean that Blockbuster could not have shifted to that. But they didn’t. Now that Kodak couldn’t shift to digital, they made a digital camera in 1978.
1:02:21 Cliff Beach: And there people said, we are in film pass. That’s why Napster disrupted the industry and Apple became the leader in digital music because the record companies didn’t want to make that shift. Tower Records didn’t want to make the shift. I tell people all the time with music, it’s not about cassettes, not about records, not about digital. It always changes. People still want to hear it, but you can’t be tied to one methodology of getting it out there because it could be completely different.
1:02:55 Cliff Beach: I was explaining to a friend he just was starting his own wine company, I don’t drink. But I was saying if you produce the wine every year and then you bundled music with it, this is the music experience for that. People will pay for that. Because now you’ve taken the intangible. You made it tangible, you made it cool, you made it exclusive, you made it vip. That’s what people are going to start paying for. You’re going to have people who are going to start saying, hey, why don’t you write a custom song for my mom’s birthday and I’ll pay you X amount. People will pay a higher price point for that because you’re putting the me centricness into the product. And they’re getting something unique to them and their mom.
1:03:35 Cliff Beach: And you can’t just get that off the rack at Ross or wherever. So people will start paying for that. So I think that’s kind of what I’m thinking about with the Hustle Smarter and harder is like, what will people pay for? What do they want? What is unique, interesting to them and, and a higher ticket item because it’s not that people wouldn’t spend it. It’s just that some things like music now people essentially view as free.
1:03:58 Cliff Beach: You know, they view it’s just a subscription and on demand and whatever and that they, you’re not going to be able to compete with that. So to go with that, you have to say, well, if I make it exclusive, you can’t just stream it, you have to do it through this channel. But you’re getting these other things that are cool that you would have gotten anyway, then they’ll do it. And I learned this because Prince, before he passed away, he came to do shows at the Forum in Los Angeles to revitalize that. They were going to close. They used to have the Lakers, but they had moved to Staplet Center. And so he was like, well, everyone that buys a ticket to the show gets a CD.
1:04:32 Cliff Beach: So now the 50,000 tickets or 100,000 or whatever have now instantly sold a hundred thousand CDs which would not have sold if you said buy the ticket and then go get the cd. Well then people would have chose, I’m okay, I got the ticket. So by bundling them together, they create that opportunity. In the same way if you’re out at a bar and you pay 10, 10 bucks to go see a band, if they paid a hundred bucks and they got a seat and, and a couple drinks and food and whatever, people would buy that because they’re, they will now see the value of getting that and lower than getting them separately.
1:05:08 Cliff Beach: And the artists and the venue are all kind of getting to where they want to go because they’re going to spend the money anyway on parking and other stuff. But it’s like, you know, people, they want to know what they’re gonna get. And sometimes you don’t know until you’re out there. So it’s just ways of thinking and rethinking the, the model I’ve been working with so far sounds if you’re familiar with them. But they do these pop up concerts. It was very cool. Just started all over the world with people who were like, let’s do shows in people’s living rooms and alternative venues.
1:05:36 Cliff Beach: And so then it created this very intimate setting. You didn’t know what artists were going to be there until you show up. You don’t know where it’s going to be until that day. And so it gave people like, yeah, I’d pay 30 bucks for the experience of kind of like this mystery that everybody loves. So I think, I think the more we can start thinking about that, thinking about, oh, this, this book is cool. How can I bundle music with that to make it interesting? Every chapter has a song or something.
1:06:00 Cliff Beach: Like, there’s ways to. To. To. To do that. I think with, you know, sneakers. There’s so many great sneaker brands that love hip hop and certain genres of music, rock music. And so if you were like, hey, come get these. Kind of converse with this song, like, that could be cool as an exclusive. So I think just asking those questions leads you down a path of interesting things that you can. Can do. But I think that’s part of the.
1:06:27 Cliff Beach: The hustle and smarter and harder. It’s like you want to. You want to see what’s happening also. Learning from other industries, learning from something completely different. You know, Intamins, when they were creating their empire on baked goods, they took that viewing window of plastic from meat industry. At the time, like the early 1900s, people would get bad meat because they wrapped it in brown paper and you couldn’t see it till you got home. So they’re like, no, I want to see it in plastic.
1:06:52 Cliff Beach: Clear. I wanted to. I want good meat. And so instantly saw that, and they were like, hey, if we. If people could look in and see this cake, because it used to be just a white box, you couldn’t look inside. They could see how good it is. They’ll buy it. And they did. And so that’s why you have to learn from the other industries, because sometimes you can do something that’s novel in your industry that wasn’t there before. And people are like, oh, that’s so genius. You’re like, I did not make this up. I just borrowed it from another place.
1:07:19 Cliff Beach: Musicians borrow from other songs all the time. So there’s. There’s always a little bit of that happening. But I think that’s the way, like, read. Read the trades, read newspapers, read magazines, read articles, podcasts, learn different things that you can adapt. And it could be something like, oh, that was happening in dentistry. I never would have thought of that. But it also works in skincare. Like, there’s synergies of learning wherever you go. If you’re open to using everything as A learning opportunity, then those little nuggets will show up to you.
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1:09:22 B: Yeah. And you know, as you’re talking, all I can think about is really, it’s all about innovation and flow. Think about the bit you talked specifically about some of the businesses that didn’t make it because they weren’t willing to innovate and to flow through the shift and the change. And you know, innovation and learning from different brands really can translate into any area of your life and any goal that you’re trying to achieve, be it a huge creative venture or be it something that’s small in your everyday, like whatever it is.
1:09:58 B: You know, I really think that people are just tired of the status quo and they’re hungry for something deeper and they’re hungry for moving forward in a way that just feels more soulful. I know I’ve used that word a lot today, but I feel like, I feel like that word just keeps coming to the forefront of my brain because that’s what it feels like. Like there needs to be soul in what we’re doing, not just this cookie cutter that I think so many people and the industry have gotten used to producing and putting out there, which then I think went and Just threw everybody into this hustle culture of just push, push, push, grind, grind, grind, burnout, burnout.
1:10:42 B: Because it was like this competing energy that was never going to be sustainable because that’s not what people wanted anymore.
1:10:52 Cliff Beach: Yeah. And I think that’s why now when people start talking about AI, it’s what you’re saying. There’s a group out here called Big Talk. A girl runs it and she’s doing really well. But she was saying, you know, people want big talk. They’re tired of small talk, they’re tired of superficial talk. And in the same way, with things with soul, like, people are like, well, jobs are going to get replaced by AI.
1:11:16 Cliff Beach: And I always say, good, they should. Because what’s happening is that what you’re saying is there’s this disconnect that, like all those things that could be creative and higher thought, AI is not going to replace that. It’s going to replace basic superficial, formulaic, by rote things. And so, yeah, they’re going to be a point where if everyone was constantly improving, then you’ll be doing what AI cannot do. AI cannot create from scratch. It can borrow and create from what already exists.
1:11:49 Cliff Beach: So if you’re only sticking with the previous knowledge and your previous best, then yes, eventually that will be replaced. But if you constantly continue to improve, you become irreplaceable. You become the linchpin of your industry or your job or whatever you decide to do. But I think it’s all in my book and everything, it’s all around mindset one, that you can constantly improve, but also that you’re looking for those opportunities to improve and to not only better yourself for the job or the opportunity, but just because you don’t know what is to come.
1:12:27 Cliff Beach: But you’ll be able to keep pace by constantly doing that. It’s like inflation. It’s like you to do better, you have to outpace the level of inflation. You have to outpace the level of what AI can do. So then you can’t be replaced. Like, AI will continually improve. And so you have to now continue to improve above that. But your mind is the biggest supercomputer. It can already think and find solutions, just like AI.
1:12:51 Cliff Beach: And so I don’t fear technology. It’s like people who are using it to their advantage are gaining the advantage. You know, people who are utilizing it to, to write their books faster and to get their blogs out or to edit and do other stuff, whatever it is. It’s like it can’t get you all the way there, but it’s just like, it’s just like the dictionary and encyclopedia. This stuff exists. And, and I think there are people who are afraid to adopt and people who are afraid of just the unknown.
1:13:21 Cliff Beach: But, you know, you look at like driverless cars, I know that that’s going to continue to be a big thing. You know, people are going to want that for themselves. I tell people all the time cars are already a depreciating asset. And you lose so much time where it’s just sitting in the garage and getting nothing. Like it’s like airplanes. The. The value is them running all the time. So eventually, if they can have everyone do driverless cars, you have less accidents, you have less need for traffic cops and stuff like that. But more importantly, you just have a subscription. So it’s like Spotify anything else. I mean, you just can go locally where you need to go.
1:13:56 Cliff Beach: Because I don’t need a car like 23 hours of the day where it’s just sitting there making me no money. And so I think a lot of people, I think that the tough part about our lives, there’s an acquisitive nature of people and there’s this fallacy that people feel like I have to own it to enjoy it and I have to pay a lot to do. You don’t. I only enjoy the car when I need it, but I don’t need it all the time. I think of the movie Harry Potter or they have that room of requirement. It becomes what you need when you need it. That’s what I need.
1:14:28 Cliff Beach: I don’t need a car every day or all the time. And so paying for that, even to have it to house it and it losing value of not using it because machinery needs to be used or it starts to become obsolete. I think as they work on that project more, you’ll see more people adopting it and then eventually more people having it for their own cars because they want to be able to read and do other stuff while they’re driving. And then eventually they’ll just have subscriptions and there’ll be subscriptions where it links together. We need to integrate all the modes of transportation. So eventually once you can get into a car or a bus or a train or a plane with a subscription, then people would just do that because why would I own it if I’m not going to use it all the time? It’s better for that car to go pick up many people all day than me. So I think people who are figuring out that kind of stuff are going to be way ahead of the curve. Once they, it won’t be adopted all at once. So there’s always that, like, okay, that technology came out too soon and people didn’t adopt it, but eventually it’s going to find the sweet spot. Like a lot of people are like, it’s so much safer just to have the car without a person that I don’t know in there. And also I don’t have to pay that much because we have more people use it. The cost comes down, they don’t have to pay extra fees.
1:15:44 Cliff Beach: Like California has extra fees for the drivers now, stuff like that too. You don’t have to tip them one at a time. It’s called drop off your food. So there’s, there’s definitely like pros and cons to it. So I, I see things like that coming. So then it’s like, well, think about where can something like that live in another industry, you know, and then figure out, how can I use that? Like, what if I had something like an Uber where I could track all my customers and based on where they were, I could recommend stuff like, whoever figures that out, that’d be a genius. It’d be like Minority Report where like things just popping up like, oh, yeah, I was looking for a hamburger. Oh, I get deals like over there.
1:16:19 Cliff Beach: Yeah, I know you like hamburgers. I see you looking for them, like, whatever. So it’s like someone’s going to figure out that kind of stuff. And a little bit’s a little, it’s a little bit, you know, sci fi. Scary in some ways, but in some ways it could be great. I mean, we already have that. Like Amazon’s always learning and recommending you stuff on what you bought or what people like you have bought and the ads and stuff. So it’s, it’s not like it doesn’t exist.
1:16:40 Cliff Beach: It’s just going to get better and smarter. But the thing is, like, once you get to a point where I’m not selling you, I’m just telling you what you actually want to hear and see then now, because that’s the thing. When people come to whatever company I’m at, I’m not selling it to you, I’m showing you. And you can decide if you don’t want it, it’s not for you, you never could have the use of it. I’m not trying to sell to you. Why would I want to sell you something I know you don’t need? Like, why am I giving you a toaster?
1:17:08 Cliff Beach: And you have a toaster. Oh, but do you have a toaster that keeps Your toes warm even after you left to go make your car. Oh, that’s interesting. That’s different. But it’s like that’s where people are going to go. You start to see, okay, this technology is really improving. Instead of fighting to not have the technology and losing my battle, how can I use it in my daily life and work? And also, where else could it be applied? And how can I apply it faster than the next person?
1:17:36 B: Yeah, well, you talked about AI and some of these technologies being able to take over some of the mundane things so that our brain, our supercomputer, can really tap in and do more of that deeper creative work that AI will never be able to do. And so I want to take that concept and shift it a little bit to your energy. You know, energy. I’m sorry, shift it to our. Your music. Music is energy. Music is vibration.
1:18:04 B: Right. And so I’m curious if your music, your writing process, the work that you do in your music, do you feel that that is more connecting into that higher consciousness, that intuition within yourself, and really just accessing that piece of you to help bring forth your creative process? What is your process with that?
1:18:30 Cliff Beach: You know, that’s a great question. I was just talking to a rapper that I’ve been mentoring in Los Angeles, and I was explaining to him, it’s like you never every musician, but a lot of philosophical and spiritual, and I am as well. And so I think you pluck these things from the. The. The universe, from the ether, and you’re pulling them down. And if you don’t utilize that idea, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert, who did Eat Pray, Love, she did another book, and it was basically like, if you don’t use that idea, just the universe will send it to another person, I think. And even Quincy Jones, he was like, you don’t create melody. It just comes from God, comes from the universe.
1:19:07 Cliff Beach: So I think for me, like, if you’re a farmer, you plan about to see it, you get fruit, you go sell them. I think it would be a misnomer if the farmer’s like, I created this, but you didn’t make the seeds. Right. Like, so in the same way, like, a chef can make an amazing meal, but they didn’t create the ingredients, you know, and even if they grew them, like, again, the seeds came from somewhere. So in that way, it’s like, as a chef, I’m taking the ingredients on the universe and putting them in a way that’s palatable to the audience.
1:19:40 Cliff Beach: But I didn’t make them, if that makes sense. Like, I Didn’t, I did not make the input. You know, I didn’t make myself and I didn’t make myself to have these gifts and talents. I, I, I worked on them to make them better and to cultivate them, but I did not plant the seeds within myself. They were just given to me. And so as that gift, you, you have an open up to a channel in the same way, like a, a radio tuner. You know, if I’m in the car, I’m twisting the dial one, one channel gives you nothing but static. And then I click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Comes in clear.
1:20:16 Cliff Beach: But I didn’t, I did not create the signal and I most certainly didn’t create the station. I didn’t create the content. You know, I mean, so it’s like, I think in the beginning when I was talking about volunteering and I was like, it has nothing to do with me. In the same way, all my music, even though it’s attributed to me, it’s not all me. It doesn’t have as much to do with me in that aspect. But I did not all the musicians that brought together the, the serendipity and synergy of that happening. That, that wasn’t me. Like, I mean, I put the call out there and I put the steps and the work in, but a lot of it is the luck and the timing and the providence of the universe.
1:20:56 Cliff Beach: And like I said, even having those gifts, like, there’s lots of times where I sit down to write a song and I’m like, that’s an amazing idea. And it’s like I’m documenting it, you know, But I didn’t, I wouldn’t say I created it from scratch. Like it was given to me. It was like almost like the universe tells it to me and I get to write it down and put it out and, and so when you think of it that way, it’s humbling.
1:21:24 Cliff Beach: But again, you’re that radio doubt. So it’s like unless I become open and attuned to that signal to get the clear message, then, then I’m not going to get, you know, the person who’s attuned to that is going to get it in the same way. There’s a process, got to go through a lot of clicks to get that clarity. Sometimes it’s staticy, sometimes I get a piece of it, but not all of it. Then it’s more clear, then it’s really clear. Then it kind of fades out again because I, I, my proximity to it can change.
1:21:53 Cliff Beach: And the, the way I hear it changes. But I think. I think the. The thing with creatives is that unlike most people, I think we all start out creative. I think that has been proven scientifically. Where you ask a lot of kids, like, are you creative? Do you want to draw? Do you want to paint? At five years old, they’re like, yeah, I want to do it. I can have to do whatever they see, baby. They can start sitting down to.
1:22:17 Cliff Beach: No one’s telling them anything. And then I think through the school process and this kind of crabs in a bucket, we all kind of want to conform. And so later in life, we don’t have that. I meet people there like, I’m just not creative. Like, that’s ridiculous. Everyone’s creative. Now. You might not be a musician. You may not be an artist, but, you know, you might be creative at accounting, you might be creative at showing. You might be creative at being a great mom and how you work with your kids. I knew moms that were like, I’m making my own crayons and stuff. I was like, that’s crazy.
1:22:49 Cliff Beach: Go buy them. But they did it. So it’s like, everyone has their level of creativity. And the thing is, it’s like Picasso was like, it’s not about what I see. It’s about what I make you see. If you see creativity, then you’ll see it. You will find creative solutions to everything if you believe that you can. But if you put that cap, I’m not creative, then you won’t see creative solutions, and you won’t be creative. But we all started that way. It’s just some of us carried it through into adulthood, and some of us, we lost it. But the thing is, it’s not truly lost. It’s just dormant. It can be unlocked at any time, and in there.
1:23:28 Cliff Beach: And I think everybody has creativity in them. And like I said, I think it’s the definition you give, because people are like, well, it’s not performing art, so it’s not creative. But that’s not the only creativity. Everything I’ve seen people who. I think chefs are creative. I think that the culinary arts, fashion, makeup, any of those things, business. There’s so many creative ideas. You know, the person who’s like, I made this.
1:23:57 Cliff Beach: Thanks. You know, that was a crazy idea. Billion dollars. Also, she believed. Oh, yeah. Oprah said, you have. You can get it to everybody, right? Yeah. She couldn’t, but she did. You know, that’s the thing. That’s how everything starts, right, brothers? We can make a plane. How? Oh, but we’re gonna do It Candy. We’re gonna get a man on the moon. How we’re gonna do it though, you know, up pandemic. We need a vaccine. Oh, that. We need 10 years for that. Well, we need it in six months.
1:24:26 Cliff Beach: Okay, we’ll do it. That happens when people believe they can, they can. And so I think, I think the verbiage of what people say, that their words are so powerful that we need more people to say I am creative. And sometimes you need to look in the mirror and say that and you don’t feel it. I am creative. I am creative and I am good at what I do and I can continue to improve. And it sounds like one of those movies or something. Like you have this tape and it’s really positive and, and weird. But, but it, but it, but it’s true.
1:24:58 Cliff Beach: When you’re, when you say it out loud, it becomes real. And our whole society is built on that. It’s built on trust and belief. So many things have been brought to life that we made up that didn’t exist. But by believing that they could, they eventually did we even see that in movies. We see like sci fi technology that becomes real technology policy. Like, oh, that actually did happen. And, and so I think, I think that’s the detriment to society is somehow we lost a part of ourselves. It’s like we’re all creative and nobody should say some of us are creative and some. No, no, we’re all creative. Why, why wouldn’t we be?
1:25:39 Cliff Beach: We are created by a creator or we’re here. But, but everybody has that. And we know scientifically now that all kids have it. That’s why kids can learn language so fast. Oh, I’m a sponge. It’s like, how did our kids learn three languages at three? Well, because they believe they could. Nobody said they couldn’t. And people talk to them. And when you’re learning language and you’re learning walking, what they’re learning is mentorship.
1:26:03 Cliff Beach: I’ve surrounded myself by experts because mommy and daddy have been speaking that language for their whole lives. So they are mentoring me and they’re on their apprentice. And those things that we got rid of. Apprenticeships and mentorships help with creativity. That’s how you learn. We parrot, we mimic, we emulate, and then we create. Then we figure out what our spin on is going to be.
1:26:31 B: And I think too that so many people lose, lose the belief that they are creative souls who because of the imposter syndrome, but also because of societal structure and wanting to fit in and getting lost into that mix. Yeah. You know, as we’re finishing up this podcast, this has been amazing, by the way. I want to end it with a really inspirational story, and I want to ask you about something that you’ve been very open about, and I think that this will be a great way to inspire those listening and really just kind of open up the doors to being able to continue to go forward. So you’ve openly talked about being kicked off American Idol, which could have been a full stop for some people, but you kept going.
1:27:24 B: What gave you that fire to continue on? And how do you now define resilience in your own terms? To keep going? Like, what words of inspiration can you give the listener today?
1:27:41 Cliff Beach: Yeah, I mean, I think getting kicked off American Idol was. Was tough because, I mean, all artists, to be able to do what they do, have to be vulnerable. And the sad thing is that society does not safeguard that. What I mean is that attacking someone, feedback, criticism, whatever it is, in a vulnerable state is tough because they’ve let their full shields down to express this thing. And. And that should just be applauded on its own. You could say, it’s not for me. It’s not my cup of tea, and it’s the way that you said it.
1:28:19 Cliff Beach: But ultimately, no one has a crystal ball. So these people, everyone has bias. Everyone has. So that’s one thing that you have to realize, that they’ve already made up their mind. They already have an opinion of you or whatever it is. It’s just an opinion. Like, we don’t know because you haven’t done anything. So there’s no way to know what could or couldn’t do. And like I said, so many people get passed on, you know, like someone passed on the Beatles and they became huge.
1:28:45 Cliff Beach: And someone, you know, Led Zeppelin, roll filter. Like, their first album was garbage, and they became huge. The fans got it, but the critics didn’t, you know, but they don’t make statues to critics. And so ultimately, I think. And you have bands like Velvet Underground, Velvet Underground, they were like, they didn’t sell a lot of copies, but everybody who bought an album started a band. That’s what you want.
1:29:10 Cliff Beach: You want people to be inspired by what you’ve done, to go do their thing. That’s what I’ve done. I want you to make your own song and come back and tell me, I was inspired by you getting out there and doing it, how tough it was to do it, to believe it was possible. That’s how you have someone like a Roger Banister who runs under a four minute mile in the 50s. People said that was impossible, you’d have a heart attack.
1:29:33 Cliff Beach: But he didn’t believe that. And then he runs at 359 now miraculously after him doing it three, six weeks later, more people have done it. After years of people think it could never be done. Oh, it actually can be done. We just needed someone to show us the way. And so I think for me I learned that nobody gets to say, would you really world not do? And nobody knows. Even if you have someone who’s at the top of their game say this is not for you.
1:30:02 Cliff Beach: They’re just one person. They don’t really know. It’s not a science. There’s no way to definitively know unless you do it. And you know you’re not. They might not be your audience, you know, so like pleasing them doesn’t matter if that’s not your demographic. And also you might have improvements to make and that’s great. You look at someone like a Michael Jordan. He was not led on his basketball team.
1:30:28 Cliff Beach: And that loss led him to launch to what he became because he said, no, I need to go and practice for a year to get better so they can’t deny me next year. Year in the same way. When I was at Berkeley, I kept auditioning for this singer showcase. Seven no’s before that. Yeah, I had to keep getting out there singing my song, saying thank you no. And then eventually I got in there, but I said, no, I’m gonna keep doing it because I got better every time. The reason why I made 10 albums in 10 years was because I knew the 10th would be exponentially better than the first.
1:31:04 Cliff Beach: Which it was. Not that they all weren’t great, but how I learned to do it got better. We know this from school. If you take a classroom, you split them in half. You say, I want you to make on this half your best project. I want you guys to make 10 projects. The people who make 10, always the 10th is better than the ones that made one. Because those learning opportunities, you’re like, oh, I was trying to make a cat. I think that could be different. I think the tail could be different. Eventually the last cat going to be the best because you learned from all those things. Same with Edison. Edison took 10,000 experiments to make the light bulb. People said, how could you live with 9,999 failures?
1:31:41 Cliff Beach: He was like, I never failed once. I learned what not to do. That’s a key. Learning, learning what not to do. You’ve been in all these relationships, didn’t Work out, they failed. No, I learned who not to be with. It’s fine and that’s okay. I think you have to have that acceptance. Like getting kicked off American Idol was great for me because it made me upset. And I used that as a callous to start a band. And when that bad ended, I kept going. I started my own thing or started my own record label. If you don’t want to greenlight me, I green light me.
1:32:11 Cliff Beach: I don’t need you. Because if you’re waiting for someone to say yes to you and everyone says no, that just means create your own thing. That’s what Jay Z did. That’s what all the people selling CDs out of the trunk of their car did. CD Baby was started from a garage. Napster or Napster was started from a computer. Netflix was started from a garage. So they all can be built that way. Apple was started from a garage.
1:32:33 Cliff Beach: Nike was making old waffles into shoes. You know, they all did it. But it’s like they had to go through that process because all those nose and growing a thick skin, a thick skummit stomach, it allows you to, it allows you, from an entrepreneurial standpoint or creative standpoint to realize that there are dead ends and delays and disappointments before finally deliverance, finally getting to that thing.
1:33:03 Cliff Beach: And the people that you see who make it there went through that process. You have to suck before you succeed. It’s just part of the word. And it’s the first half like it just. There’s no way around it. You’re not going to be great. And, and, and that’s, that’s, that’s the point again. That’s why everything is really a practice. So sandbox an opportunity to learn what to do, what not to do with working, what do I want to change.
1:33:30 Cliff Beach: And that’s okay. You get out there and you play that show and this didn’t work. I did a show the other week and I had a bad microphone cable. It kept cutting in and out and we made it through and we laughed it off and I bought new cables and it’s fine. It’s like, you know, I’ve done so many shows, the show must go on and if I have no mic and I go sans mike, that’s fine. The thing is that you learned, oh, I need to have a backup cable, you know, just in case. So now I have to. It’s like, you know, and if they both go bad, it’s like, well, I tried, you know, then I have three.
1:33:59 Cliff Beach: But the, the main thing is That I think having a sense of humor, not taking yourself too seriously and laughing through the pain and laughing through the nose again, you get to say that you did. You, you always do your best. And do you, Beth. And no one, no one can judge that. No one can tell you if you were good enough. You are good enough, you are enough. And if no one tells you that, you will self affirm that invalidate yourself.
1:34:29 Cliff Beach: Because the world doesn’t always do that. Look at that go. Van Gogh didn’t sell one painting in his lifetime. He’s revered all around the world. Nobody got it. The man was crazy and a genius. But the thing is that if he only did it because he made money, that we wouldn’t have got any of those paintings after the first one that didn’t sell. And so you have to do it because sometimes you can be so ahead of your time.
1:34:50 Cliff Beach: Leonard da Vinci had an idea for a flying machine years before that happened. You know, we started making self driving cars 100 years ago. We’re now getting to them. I met Google when they were working on that 10 years ago. Took forever to get it into the market. And so I think you just have to keep plugging away. You just have to keep believing. And I know it sounds like journey, don’t stop believing, but it’s true. You, you have to keep believing yourself and tell yourself it’s okay. Because Edison, I’m telling you, there were people who did a thousand experiments or five hundred or a hundred and quit. And they could have had a light bulb if they did 10,000.
1:35:31 Cliff Beach: But people aren’t crazy to do that. But again, he only did it that way because 900 or 9,999 times he was like, I learned what not to do. He did not see it as failure and thus he never failed. That’s the scientific process. I keep doing it, keep tweaking it, keep adjusting it. As Les Brown says, it ain’t over till you win. That’s it.
1:35:57 B: Oh, I love that. Love that. Perfect for wrapping this podcast up Cliff. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they connect? Grab your audiobook or your ebook, listen to your music. Where are you hanging out and want to connect with people.
1:36:18 Cliff Beach: Awesome. Well, yeah, everybody can find me for the book. My, my blog is on side hustleandflow.net on social media. Cliffbeach music on all the platforms will find me for DMs. They can email me cliffsidehustleandflow.net as well. All the books are on all the audiobook and book platforms under My author named Cliff beach as well as all the music on streaming platforms under Cliff Beach. So you should be able to find me in those places and and if not, if you google me I actually come up pretty, pretty quickly as well. The book is called Side Hustle and Flow.
1:36:51 Cliff Beach: The follow up is Side Hustle and Flow. Shape up talks about weight loss. I will just put a bullet out there that now losing over 50 pounds I’ve learned to hustle harder, healthier. So applying all the knowledge from the first book is easier and a healthier state and healthier not just in the body but in the mind and not just in the mindset. But how you eat affects your thoughts. You have cleaner thoughts when you eat cleaner and no one ever tells you that so you can do it without it. But again a healthier body, a healthier conduit of that information and you have the stamina to really hustle. And then from there the music is kind of like a mix of all the creativity that I do but they, they’re interrelated again showing people the way to hopefully create their own content.
1:37:42 Cliff Beach: That’s my main goal is just to encourage people to live their best life, believe they are creative, believe they can do all the things and become multi hyphenate if they choose to. And there are plans and workarounds around that. But ultimately do the you work, do the things that we need from you because the graveyard is rich with all the things that could have, should have, would have been that didn’t come from you and others.
1:38:06 Cliff Beach: And we want you to be able to, to die empty and get those ideas out there because don’t hoard them, share them because your story influences someone else. Your life may be the only bible that people read or listen to and that could be the thing of starting them on their journey. And I believe that for you.
1:38:23 B: We didn’t even get to talk about any of the health and wellness stuff. We may just have to have you back sometime to talk all about that. There just wasn’t enough time. But this has been amazing. All of those show notes will be down in the in or I’m sorry, all of those links will be down in the show notes. As always, thank you so much Cliff for being here. Thank you so much for links all of this wisdom onto the listeners hearts and for just sharing your soul in everything that you’re doing. I appreciate you and the work that you’re doing so much much.
1:38:57 Cliff Beach: Thank you so much Tanya. I appreciate the appreciate the work that you’re doing and letting me speak to your audience and like I said, we’re all learning and growing and going up together. So they always say with the African proverb you can go faster alone but farther together we’re going to get very far together.
1:39:16 Tansy Rodgers: So here is your reminder creative soul. You don’t have to earn your rest, you don’t have to justify slowing down and you don’t have to fight your way to success. You get to move and flow. You get to trust your timing. You get to follow the path that feels right, not just the one that looks right. What if you gave yourself full permission this week to let your inner wisdom lead? What if you ask, asked yourself what’s the most soul aligned way to show up today and then you just follow that.
1:39:56 Tansy Rodgers: You already know the way. You just need to quiet the world long enough to really hear it. And until next time, keep spreading that beautiful energy you were born to share.
