Kellee Wynne:
Hello. I'm back. It's me, Kelly, perfectly imperfect, waiting till the last minute, procrastinating as usual. In fact, last week, I procrastinated, recorded, hated it, and then didn't publish anything. And so what is that telling you? I'm still stuck in this loop of needing to come on and do this, like, some sort of professional perfect way, but it's just me. I'm my own boss, producer, recorder. As I said before, this is the made remarkable podcast with Kelly Wynne. I'm still figuring stuff out after more than three years of doing this.

So hello. How are you today? If you have not met me before, I am an artist, writer, dreamer. That was my original title, if you will, that I called myself way back when I had a blog in early twenty ten, twenty eleven. It's kinda shift and morphed a lot since then. Have you noticed? And I kinda go in these circles of who am I. I'm a mentor now. I help other people with their course business, but the truth of the matter is is I'm still all those things. I'm still the multipassion.

I'm still the person who wants to travel the far reaches of the world and bring that information to you. I wanna explore spirituality. I wanna be a a writer and unload all of these wild ideas I have. I wanna paint big paintings and make little fun crafts, and I wanna help people make art. I wanna help people build their dream business. I wanna speak on stages and inspire people to be their best. And at the same time, I wanna stay on my little couch and not ever leave my house and hide from the world. I'm kinda one of those people.

I'm either at home or I'm on the other side of the world and nowhere in between because it's kinda weird out there right now, and I've been working through all of these things. I wonder, like, what shifted and changed in all of us that this community that we crave, this connection that we work towards. I mean, our creative purpose. Where is it? Are you struggling with it? I'm struggling with it, but I'm still showing up here because I realized the one thing that I can do is this podcast. I can show up here and connect with you here, and so I'm gonna keep pushing myself through all the uncomfortableness, all the excitement, all the wishy washy changing my mind kind of things that I do. I know. Hello. If you've been around a while, that's who I am.

And I would suspect you're a little bit like that too. I I find that almost all my listeners, all the people I work with, even the artists that I've taught, we're all on that multi passionate spectrum, if you will. I mean, I don't know how else to describe it. I wouldn't wanna say everyone's ADHD, but we are on this very wide range creative spectrum where we're still trying to find our way into this world. It's not like corporate as usual. And if you do have a corporate job or a or or a nine to five job, you're still trying to figure out how to push outside that box, aren't you? Because there's more for you. You have a creative soul. You you yearn to connect in a creative way.

And I wanted to talk a little bit today about something more positive than the last time I was on the podcast. Yeah. I was a little doom and gloom. I'm still a lot worried about the future of everything, of being able to make an income, of being able to have freedoms, of being able to travel, of being able to secure my family, of, freedom of speech. Sure. All of those things are pressing. But when you spend a little time looking at the bigger, wider world, 8,000,000,000 people, how many billions and billions of years that we've been here and then start thinking about the universe and its infinity. And then look at the microscopic plants, the cells, the nucleus, and things that I don't even know or comprehend.

Thank you, scientists, for figuring those things out. The minutia gets even smaller. And so there's this thing that, like, happens when when I've been feeling so overwhelmed and stressed out by this point in time on the planet that we are in in this little speck moving around the big, huge, fiery sun in this great vast universe, and I realize it's just a teeny little speck of a speck of a sand on the great beaches of our world. We are in such a small little point in history that when we take it all in, we can see the wonder of it, the awe of it, the connection of us all, and that there have been bad times. There will be bad times. There have been beautiful times. There will be beautiful times, but this is it. This is where we are right at this moment.

And if we can't see the beauty in it and the miracle in it and be at peace to some degree or another. We are creatives, and we have a purpose, and that is the expression of humanity. We are the ones who create the culture. We are the ones who create community in a lot of ways. We're the ones who document the history. We're the ones who recreate it in great paintings or works of fiction or historical documents or architectural beauties that stand the test of time. We are part of that story of time here on the planet Earth. And when we forget that, we're forgetting about our divinity, our importance, our connectedness, our purpose, really.

I was watching a movie the other day called the Monuments Men. Have any of you watched it? I really enjoyed it. No. It's not a perfect, like, Golden Globe Oscar winning movie, but it have some of our well known actors, George Clooney and and whatnot, and it and it's about some art historians during World War two actively working to save our art, our creations throughout time in history. Because during that time, the Nazis were taking everything. They were stealing it. They were stealing it from the Jews that they were burning in Auschwitz. You know? I mean, what a great deal for them.

The more they could point their finger and accuse, quote, unquote, of a witch, they got to keep the loot. Right? And and so here they were all over Italy and France and Germany and and The Netherlands stealing art and in the amount of millions and millions of pieces. And some of the pieces that are famous today were were part of that hoard that they had stolen. And in a and this is based off of a true story just in case you didn't know. In a desperate attempt or in a, maybe noble attempt, many art historians came together, became soldiers, became part of the military, if you will, with a mission solely of recovering these pieces, stealing them back if they had to, fighting for them, identifying where they were, and sending in troops to recapture lost artifacts and stolen artwork. And there were quite a few points during the movie where George Clooney playing as Frank Stokes, I guess, one of the sergeants, I guess. I don't I didn't real you know, I was in the military once, but I wasn't paying attention to their ranks. But I don't think that's the point.

The point is is their purpose and that they more than just felt a moral obligation to it, but as in almost spiritual obligation, and that's my words for it. But I wanted to read a quote that George Clooney said as Frank Stokes. You can wipe out an entire generation. You can burn their homes to the ground, and somehow they will come back. But if you destroy their culture, it's as if they never existed. That's kind of an interesting thought because I'm not saying that the loss of human life isn't tragic. Preserving life is incredibly important. We don't wanna lose life, but we can see this throughout history.

When people are gone, when entire communities or towns or whatever, whether it's natural disaster, it's time and evolution, it's genocide, you can wipe out the people for the most part. They will find a way to come back and renew and start again. That's why we have 8,000,000,000 people on this planet. We survive. We are survivors. But without our documented history, our culture, our art, our our stories, our architecture, we don't exist anymore. You know? It's that that preserves us and who we are through the ages. And what I'm saying is is you are the person who's creating that right now.

The art that you make, the stories you create, the movies you make, whatever it is that you're building in the community, even think of that, the the education you create, the events you create, the collaborations that you do. All of this means something really, really important to this time. We are the documenters, if you will. In fact, there's something that I said way back when I was beginning, to come back to art, I've been an artist my whole life, but I took a long pause during motherhood. I was a crafter more during that time. But as I was coming back to making art full time as an artist, One of the things that I said quite often as I was kind of creating my manifestos or my purpose statements or whatever, all the things that you have to do as you're an artist, I just knew that as everything became automated and digitized, and now we can add in AI on top of that as everything became more formulaic over time and more, robotic. The only thing that could stand against the test of time was the hand and its creation. The heart and its creation, really, because it's through the heart that comes through the hand and makes physical works of beauty.

Right? So so whether it's an upheaval in society, it's destruction, it's changing and evolving time, it's AI or other new modern ways of making things. What can't be taken from us is our need to create and our ability to, hopefully, our ability to keep creating actual beautiful physical things in this world. Right? From the human heart and mind through the hand rather than a machine. So my whole point of this, my whole reason for this is maybe last week I was saying, hey. Look. I'm a little worried about the world. I'm still always gonna be a lot worried about the world no matter what point in time we're in because now I'm beginning to realize what is has almost always been in one form or another. But here we are still driven to survive, driven to thrive, driven to create, driven to make.

Creators are the new revolutionaries. Maybe they're the old revolutionaries. We're just been revolutionaries this whole time. We are the ones who change and shift how society thinks and behaves. If you think about it, I mean, let's go let's go back in time and see how in in turbulent times, great change and innovation has come through creativity. History shows us that unstable times create the perfect environment for a creative explosion. What about the Renaissance? Think about it. After war and plague and chaos and political upheaval, here comes this beautiful time when and mind you, most of it was men, but there are a few amazing women, artists, and writers during that time even if some of them probably had to take on the persona of being a man.

One of my favorite artists, Art Artemisia Gentileschi. Yeah. I'm gonna butcher the name. I I apologize, but she painted the beheading of Holofernes, which many artists had painted, but it's, like, one of my favorite pieces. It's so dramatic. It has a chiaroscuro. It's a a lot in the vein of Caravaggio, also from the Renaissance. Some of my favorite artists from that time period.

But how did this new world of of art and exploration and new sculpture and architecture and it was a revolution at the time. There was a change of thought and a change of way of being, and we can continue to see that throughout history. Think about the Great Depression and some of the most amazing filmmakers come out of that time, the evolution and the growth of the film industry, but it also grew an art form. And it also was the first time that we had filmmakers who decided to create documentaries. Here's another interesting fact. In our '2 thousand '8 recession, everything crashes, but that's when Internet started booming. Like, not just we have the Internet before, but, like, online business, online commerce, online education has started to evolve and change, and that's when Etsy's boom began. That's when Etsy, the whole idea of bringing handmade, human made product to the forefront as a place that you can shop from small business.

And I know it's changed a whole lot over the years. It's not quite what it used to be because there's a lot of crap, a lot of not handmade stuff there anymore, but it still was a huge turning point where we realized that, and I'm sure we're really coming to that conclusion right now, is that people don't always want mass produced. And that's when they turned to finding a solution through Etsy. And then we did it again in 2020. And a lot of our, like, artist support pledge, if you recall that, I did collaborations for free. We came online. We started helping each other. We started providing services to each other.

We started seeing a whole new way of building our businesses and connecting with each other and providing a service of creativity. Right? It's something that's still so important showing up in that service space. Yes. Of course. I believe that in order to continue to provide the best for others, there needs to be some sort of energetic exchange, which is called money. Sorry. We still need it to buy food and put a roof over our head and pay for medical whatever. So that's why we continue to have to do this thing called work.

We all do. We all have to provide. But isn't that beautiful that you could do something in service of others? I mean, really think about that. I can't tell you how many times somebody has created something exactly what I want, and I'm so thrilled to just hand over my money and say, please take it. This is what I've been, you know, dreaming of, whether it's an artist retreat or a trip or it's a coach, a mentor for myself, or somebody who's gonna give me a massage, and it's like, please just take my money and make me feel better. Or even when, like, someone came and knocked on the door the other day and said, you know, it's that time of year. Do you want us to do pest control? And it's one of those things where it's like, well, it needs to be done, and and thank goodness someone came and knocked on the door because I don't feel like doing it. And so all these things that we build for each other, I know we're not in the service of pest control, but we are in the service of creativity.

But everything that we're building for each other, if it's done with integrity, if it's done with soul and honesty, then we are in service of each other. And so what I'm trying to say is is what you do is important, whether it's gorgeous artwork that's meant to be viewed in someone's home and lighten their space and make them like, yeah. I've bought pieces of art that I've seen on Instagram and just been like, I have to have that. Right? Happy to give my money over for something that brings me joy. And so there's a twofold thing I'm trying to get working in your head. One, your art is needed just for the beauty of it, just for the joy of it, just to document the times we're living in right now. We are the monuments from monuments men. We are creating those pieces that stand the test of time.

Now will everything I'm sure a lot of my pieces are gonna end up in the in in the dump when I'm done. No one's gonna want these pieces, but there's still a whole level that we're creating this moment in time, documenting this history, creating the beauty, creating the joy. And then there's the other piece of it is that the work we do is in service of others, and and other people need it too. Even during this time when things may seem a little strange and your brain is telling you, oh, no one's gonna be able to afford this. That's not true. That's our fear speaking of what may happen. We're not there yet. I still see people thriving every single day.

Work is still happening. We're still showing up to do the nine to five to put the roof over our head and feed our kids. There's gonna be a bumpy road. We can expect that, but let's not let fear ruin your dreams, ruin your ability to help other people to show up and create the course, create the workshop, have the retreat, make the YouTube channel, show up on your social media if you still wanna show up on. That's a whole another issue. We are going to re really we are going to address it. Look. I can go on my soapbox for quite some time, but what I'd really like to do right now is give you an actual concrete step towards continuing to thrive, continuing to build your big audacious dream, your work, your business, even when it feels a little uncertain out there because there are actual things you can do that will help, kind of buffer the blow of whatever's gonna come and create your own security that's needed more now than ever.

So rule number one, no matter what's happening in the world, no matter where we are in the cycle of ups and downs, the number one thing you must do is build your email list. That's a nonnegotiable no matter what. Even when you think, oh, man. I have all these viral hits on Instagram or my YouTube channel's growing amazingly well. You just never know when that's bottom's gonna fall out. You never know, what is turning around the corner. But when you build a list, you are building your business security in a way that nothing else can provide for you. So rule number one is build and nurture your email list because we cannot rely on social media.

We can't rely on anyone, actually. We need to really build this security for ourselves. Number two, I need you to get ruthlessly specific about who you serve. I am guilty of this. I know most of you are like, I feel like doing this, and I like this, and I could help this person. I wanna do this thing. And you know that I've be on this subject for a long time now. That is that the more specific we get, the more we, niche because no one likes the word niche, but it's true.

The more that we bring the aspects of our beautiful multipassionate selves into one beautiful story, one world that we're building, You're gonna hear that term come up a lot more in the future where when people see and they walk and step into the into your world, it feels like they belong there. Right? You're communicating to that person and their needs, their wants, and desires. You're making a space that they identify with, whether you're like the rebel gen x woman who is helping all the feminists make bold, loud artwork so that they can express all the things that they haven't expressed in fifty years. Okay? Or soft, quiet, peaceful, nurture, nurturing, art journaling. Like, what is your mood? What is your aesthetic? What is your brand? Your brand and your niche and your and your product, it all comes together in this beautiful world that you're building that when people step through, they know that it's built just for them. So you need to get ruthlessly specific about who you serve. So the next thing that I need you to consider is how consistent are you? How are you showing up? You need some form of visibility. And this part is really challenging even for me because I'm not in love with social media anymore.

I had taken a long break from my podcast. Hello. I'm back, though, because I realized how important consistency is. Are you showing up on that email list that you made? Are you connecting and vibing with other people in your industry that, you know, you can create some collaborative visibility? So how are you showing up consistently? This is important. We all need our rest. We all need our breaks. Are there other ways that you can do this? Yes. By the way, PS, I do believe there's a space for ads and automations and maybe even hiring a virtual assistant to do something like pinning all the pins on Pinterest.

That can create your consistency without you having to do all the work, but you have to be visible. In one way or another, you need to be able to show up and connect with people in order to continue to build a strong foundation for your business, and that is creating spaces where we connect. Leaning into human connection is gonna be the key that brings it all together. Right? Being more of yourself, that means as much as I love to use AI in order to generate ideas and work with me as an assistant and and come up with, like, you know, whatever tasks I need to manage. When it comes to my actual communication, speaking to you, writing to you, it comes from me. It's really real human connection is what we need. And I'm telling you, all of the the members of my program that I've worked with have created this beautiful connection with their audience. The way that they write their newsletters on a consistent basis, the way that they show up organically and naturally without the pressure of going viral on social media to create.

I love the work that they do if they've put their heart into writing or substack, a YouTube channel, whatever it is they're doing, they're doing it authentically. And that's the key that makes a difference, especially in this idea of world building that we had talked about. They are building that because they are creating human connection. So when I say you get specific about who you serve, you also have to show up as, like, this real human connector. Right? So if you're you're a real introvert, you're gonna have to find some ways around it. Although, it turns out I'm quite the introvert myself. Do you remember when I just said earlier in the conversation, it's either the couch or it's the other side of the world but nothing in between? Yeah. That's just kinda how it goes.

But when it comes to connecting, when I'm actually I'm getting on Zoom calls with people. I'm actually having conversations. That's when my soul just lights up, and that's when I know I'm doing the work I'm meant to do. That's when I feel like I'm in service to you. That's why showing up here and talking, you can you can hear the excitement in my voice because this is what I love. This is what I yearn for. Sometimes you just have to get over yourself and get right back to the plan at hand, and this is the plan for you. Build your email list.

Build it. Don't rely on social media. Get ruthlessly specific about who you serve. Build that world. Show up consistently. Lean into human connection. I am telling you, these are the little, quote, unquote, secrets of building a business. There is really nothing more than doing that.

Yeah. There's a ton of tactics. I can teach you all of those. In fact, I hope to teach you all of those as time goes on here on the podcast or if you join me in one of my programs. But the tactics are nothing without the heart and soul. Without this foundation, nothing else really matters. Right? So I wanna just keep encouraging you right now. Please don't give up what you're doing.

Don't give up your dream. In fact, you need it more than ever because we can't rely on the outside world to support us. We have to do this for ourselves, my friends. I hope that this brings a little bit more hopeful spirit back into your day to day. Turn the news off. Turn the Instagram off, turn your social media off, check-in only once a day. I'm trying to cut back myself. I go on my ebb and flow but I'm telling you I am so much happier when I'm here in the moment, in the present, realizing that sun is shining, the birds are singing.

I have a studio where I get to make art, and I feel very fortunate that I get to come on this call and talk to you. Alright. My friends, I think that that wraps up the story for today, and I will be back here next week. I promise I'm not gonna be, hem humming and hawing and second guessing myself. This podcast is everything. This is my connection, my human connection. So I have a lot I wanna share with you, but today, that was the message I needed to deliver. I do have one request from you, and I've been asking this for three, three and a half years now that I'm in into my fourth year of running the podcast.

Jump in the DMs and tell me what you think about the podcast, any questions that you have, any moments, or even just tell me what your biggest challenge is with your work. I said it last week on the podcast. I've said it almost every podcast episode. I say it all the time. Just come in and pop in and say hi. And you're probably thinking, alright. But I don't wanna bug her. She probably gets dozens and dozens of people doing that daily or weekly.

And guess what? I can count on one hand in over three years how many people have actually taken me up on that offer. Isn't that crazy? So what I'm saying is is come say hi to me. Tell me what you thought about the podcast. Tell me where you are with your business. Are you a course creator? Have you thought about being a course creator? What's the one big thing that's holding you up from taking the next big step? I am happy to give you a little pep talk. I'd love to hear from you just because I wanna know who's listening out there. This is just genuine. I'm not gonna pitch you anything unless you want to know more about how to work with me.

I just wanna know who you are. So I am asking you, please. I'm counting on this week getting some inbox DMs right on Instagram at Kelly Wynne. Alright? Have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.