The Creator of Stop The Starving Artist: A Talk with Lennon Bone

Do you feel like your artistic dreams are scattered and unattainable? Lennon Bone, the musical maestro and trailblazer behind the Stop the Starving Artist Movement and the Creative Impact Academy, joins us to share his transformative journey and how he's paving the way for artists to connect with their audience and monetize their art. Discover the distinctive value of art and the start of the culture of undervaluing creative work. Lennon's personal journey is a testament to the power of persistence and passion.

We explore the fascinating world of mindset transformation, with Lennon shedding light on the efficacy of affirmations in challenging limiting beliefs. From small steps that redefine our thinking, to using evidence to prove we're already who we aspire to be, Lennon's insights offer a roadmap to personal and creative growth. More than this, we delve into the heart of self-reflection, understanding the costs of our actions, and questioning our motivations. Listen to Lennon share invaluable lessons on coaching, which can help us unravel complex narratives and simplify our life stories.

The episode concludes with a deep dive into the Creative Impact Academy, a bridge between artists and their target audience. Learn from Lennon's experience of building trust with potential customers by merging stories and art, and creating resonant messages. Moreover, Lennon shares his transition from being a musician to becoming a creator, his struggles with identity, and how he overcame doubt and learned self-acceptance. Lennon's journey is a treasure trove of wisdom and an inspiration to all artists looking to make an impact, monetize their art, and most importantly, accept themselves.

Transcript

Lea Ann Slotkin : 0:00

Welcome to Mind Over Medium, a podcast for artists who want to make money doing what they love. When you tune in each week, you will learn how to attract your ideal commissions, approach galleries for representation, have a great online launch of your work, and how to do it all with less overwhelm and confusion. You will have the opportunity to hear from amazing artists who will share how they have built their successful creative businesses. My hope is to create a space where artists and the creative curious can gather to learn about one of the most important tools creative entrepreneurs need in their toolbox their mindset. Thanks so much for tuning in to Mind Over Medium podcast. Let's get started.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 0:46

Hi everyone, before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that the waitlist is now open for my 12-week course Artful Decision Making how to transform your artistic journey from scattered dreams to focused success. If you feel like you are stuck on the hamster wheel and would love not only some support but practical tools to create a business that makes you feel overjoyed more than overwhelmed, you should get on the list, and I will offer special pricing for people on the waitlist, so you should definitely sign up. The link will be in my show notes and on my website. So head on over to leanslotkincom to sign up. Today I am so excited to be chatting with Lennon Bone. Lennon is a musician, creator of Stop the Starving Artist Movement and the Creative Impact Academy, a program where he helps artists see their own worth and make money from their art. I really appreciate you being here today and you have the distinguished honor of being my first gentleman on the podcast.

Lennon Bone: 1:50

Oh, that's amazing. I love that. That is a huge honor. I was in a mastermind for learning launch processes and I was the only guy in that and I was also their first like her, first like guy client and I always think is that weird or is that just creepy? I hope it's right. It just is what it is. Yeah, that's right Well.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 2:20

I'm happy that you are here today, and I always ask my guest a couple of questions at the beginning, just so my listeners can get to know you a little bit better. So here's the first multi-step question Introduce yourself, who are you, where do you live and what do you do. And then the second question is what does an average day look like for you?

Lennon Bone: 2:41

Okay, as you said, my name is Lennon Bone. I always kind of preface that by saying my adolescence was absolutely a treat with a last name like Bone. You never knew what was going to come out of these like 12 year old boys' mouths. It was the worst. But I live in Kansas City.

Lennon Bone: 3:01

I have two girls at this time they are seven and 10 and very creative, little, brilliant souls and then I have a wife who's an illustrator and her name's Jamie. And then we yeah, we are doing everything we can to like our kind of. Our family mission is how do we help people be the best versions of themselves? And artists just tend to be our primary people, just because that's how we identify and that's our tribe. Average day for me is wake up to a child slapping me in the face, probably, and we do a little cuddle time in the morning. We get up and we'll either get the kids on the bus and then it's one of two things my wife and I will sit down and like we'll chat and have a little coffee, or I'm off to the coffee shop and I'll do work there. So I, because we run everything online, it's nice for me to be around people but not have to talk to them and so I tend to do a lot of work in public and I jump in there.

Lennon Bone: 4:07

I'm almost immediately like answering a couple of emails, thinking about what we're going to, what needs to be done in the business, what our primary focus is for the month, and then talking to our people in the community, giving feedback, doing social media audits, maybe a podcast interview, maybe a couple of TikToks. It's just like this weird conglomeration of being a coach and somehow, in a bizarro world, like a media personality, even though it's not that. It's just this weird life to be like. I present everything online and on the internet and I never used to do that because as a musician, it was all in person. We did everything live, and so it was. It's such a wild transition to now solely do my work like this on a Zoom call.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 4:51

Yeah, it is strange, isn't it? And I find thank you for sharing that, first of all, and I find that people who are not in this space have a very hard time understanding what my day looks like.

Lennon Bone: 5:03

Yes, yeah, because there's so much freedom with also so many constraints. Yes, it's like I could if I didn't show up on TikTok. That would be fine, but I also have a limited amount. Like I still need a good internet connection, I still need a quiet zone, I still need it's this bizarre, just different set of problems, but I'm so grateful for what we're doing and so it's really fun.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 5:30

It is fun yeah. You're a big deal on TikTok. Tiktok scares me, so I'm impressed.

Lennon Bone: 5:37

It should be very scary for everybody we're going to scare the pants off.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 5:41

That was my initial reaction. Yeah, yes, there's one really big thing that we have in common, and that is our desire for artists to know their worth and to be paid for it to be paid for their talent and their expertise. And I was looking at some of your videos and you said something that brought up a question for me when do you think this culture of undervaluing creative work came from?

Lennon Bone: 6:05

Oh, I love this question. I think it started with because, at a certain point, I think creative work was incredibly valuable From early on. It was the creatives that made everything work, and it still works that way. But I think now and I'm not a history buff, so we're not going to go down that road.

Lennon Bone: 6:24

Somebody out there is probably like when and you're an idiot, you don't know your stuff but my feeling and we all know that our feelings never lie to us is that we had this point where, when art became a reality, when art became commercialized, someone else took control and when that happened, the artist relinquished that control. And so I actually and I might get chastised for this blame artists for where it is now, because we let people say, oh, you got to do this and this and it was so enticing to let someone else do all the hard work of telling your story and getting your stuff out there and all those things I just want to do the art and that ended up creating this space to where now some white bearded dude like me is out there with control of someone else's creative property and they get a say and a cut of everything, and now everything. This whole exposure line has just leaned everyone into this place of feeling as though they have to succumb to that. And so if I'm a musician, at least I'm getting exposure on Spotify, yeah. But how are you justifying getting paid a quarter of a cent for a stream Like? How do you justify that?

Lennon Bone: 7:43

I'm going to let and this is no offense to like any specific business model, but let's say Etsy. If I'm on Etsy, they're getting me my clients. How do you justify the fact that you're putting yourself in a position if you're not careful not for everybody of being in the Dollar General section of the art market? That's a real danger that I think we should all be aware of, and I think that it's just this overcoming feeling that they've been told their whole life two things One, this is not a place where you can make money, and if it is, you need to find somebody that can do it for you, and I think that's all baloney.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 8:19

Yeah, yeah, you bring up really interesting points, and the first one that came to me when you were talking and it was and let me think about how I'm going to say this I think oftentimes as creatives, we're either told and there is some fact to it that we use one side of our brain really well, but we don't use the other side of our brain all that well. We use the part that runs a business and does the accounting, the administrative, and we buy into that flakiness or scattered artist trope or whatever you want to call it.

Lennon Bone: 8:54

Yeah.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 8:55

And I think that can hold us back from taking ownership, like you said.

Lennon Bone: 9:01

Yeah, it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy right In the community, in our community. What I try to do in every meeting is we start with wins, so everybody gives wins. And we start with that, because all I want to help people do is collect evidence that says you are already this kind of person. You're only looking at the problem versus like where you're already solving it. And it's a phrase we use with our kids all the time. I think it comes from a children's book when someone tells you don't look at the elephant, don't look at the elephant, don't look at the elephant. What do you look at? The elephant? And so I just think that's where some people have taken advantage of artists to this point where we just rolled over and said, oh, I guess this is how the business works, and now more than ever it's getting turned on its head and those people are seeing it. But the problem, I think, still is that artists are like slow to realizing the potential that exists currently.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 10:00

And that's not bad.

Lennon Bone: 10:01

I think that's normal. I think that's just part of again, when we're just for lack of better terms like gas lit into these mindsets that we just actually start to believe it, then it becomes a real problem. It's hard to change our mindset. We're literally carving new neural pathways. Like it takes time.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 10:18

Yeah, and a lot of times, you don't even think to challenge these limiting beliefs because you just think they're fact. Like I coach a lot of people, a lot of artists, and when I say where do you think that? Like, why are you choosing to believe this? Is this even true? When you like, just start to poke a little hole in it, they're like actually, that's not true. In fact, I just got coached today.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 10:38

I have a coach and I was working with him today and what were we talking about something? Oh, I had this big story in my head how I'm wanting to try this new thing, but it's going to take a lot of time. I'm going to have to reconfigure my studio, all these things. Okay, tell me, how much time do you think that will take? I'm like not an hour. And she's excuse me, what? Like you were making it sound like it was going to take six weeks. And that's how my brain was working, like it was going to be this really big thing and it's going to be really hard. And that's why I think it's great to have someone like you or me to say wait, let's look, let's break it down to being factual, because our brain wants to tell us a lot of stories.

Lennon Bone: 11:18

That's exactly right, and we often feel like we have to do all the prep work, and if anything that I've learned to be true is that the prep work nine times out of 10 is a real distraction, it's not actually the work that needs to get done. We will, our brain will find all the ways to be like not yet, like you shouldn't do it just yet. Make sure you do this, oh so true, it's so true.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 11:44

It seems to me like you've done a lot of hard work on uncovering limiting beliefs and working on your mindset, and can you talk a little bit about that? What was that process like for you?

Lennon Bone: 11:54

Oh, I'd love to. Yeah, I worked with a coach for about two years. I've only not had my coach for about six, I guess more like nine months now. So she ended up having a baby and at the same time, like I was just in this, more of an in a phase of action, so I was like okay this is a good time to split for now.

Lennon Bone: 12:13

But when I met her, she came to me and was like hey, here's what I do. And I was like that sounds crazy. She's, that's cool. I just didn't understand this concept of someone is going to help me just listen to myself more or understand my. I was like but you're not a therapist, she's no. So like okay, and I just thought about it a lot and she's like it's a lot of money. And I was like okay, and so I invested. I think it was like $18,000, just so much money, and it's not like that was half my savings in one foul swoop. And I was just like this is crazy, but what happened over the next year? I will never, ever regret spending that money, because what I learned was that one I'm a prover, I have to prove somebody wrong, and I'm simultaneously a people pleaser. So not only do I want to prove you wrong, I want you to love me while I'm doing it, and that's just a little confusing. Yeah, you're telling me like I was living it.

Lennon Bone: 13:18

I was real. So, for instance, I tell the story a lot. My wife and I were talking about this and I got to the bottom and one of our calls of me feeling like I had to prove something. And my coach goes what do you get from that, from proving this thing? And like I don't know, I guess I feel a sense of righteous. Yeah, I feel like I'm righteous in my idea and she's okay, what is it costing you? I was like that's a really great question. It cost me a lot of stress and anxiety for no reason, because I'm sitting there plotting how I'm going to prove somebody wrong. It's causing me, it's costing me time toward my real goals. It's costing me relationships.

Lennon Bone: 13:57

At some point all these things and that was those two questions became the back and forth that I would constantly ask is what is this, what do you get and what's this costing you? And so I told my wife this and so we were chatting about it. She's like that's great, like that. You came to this point. And then we're sitting there and I look up at the ceiling and there's these like speckles on the ceiling. And she goes I think that's looks like there's like holes. We're in an apartment and I was like no, I think it's coffee grounds and she's like it might be. I think it looks like holes.

Lennon Bone: 14:27

I had to get up on the counter and check to prove that I was right. And she goes Lenin, what do you get right now for being right? And I lost my mind. I was like, oh my gosh and I, we both had this like great laugh and I just realized how ingrained all of these subconscious, like how I was constantly living in these beliefs in the most maximized and minimized places in my life.

Lennon Bone: 14:56

And that was such a tell for me to where I just always had to be on guard, to where, if big feelings came, I had to ask why, to your point, what? Where are these coming from? Are they real? Is this fear speaking up, all those kinds of things? And so that was the beginning of the big pivot point for me, along with constant up and down and realizing that we're all just honing into the same thing and you'll solve the problem. And then, all of a sudden, you go a level deeper and you solve the same problem a level deeper. And then you go a level deeper and you solve the same problem. And it's frustrating. But once you just get into that zone, you're like, oh, this is just part of trying to be a better human.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 15:37

Yeah, that's really interesting. Like, practically speaking, do you do anything to support your personal growth? Do you journal or meditate? I always find this fascinating, to know what people do.

Lennon Bone: 15:49

Yeah. So my more recent practice is amalgamation of a little bit from the artist's way, and so I'll do morning pages. Part of an exercise that I did with my coaches. I named these versions of me, so I have, and you've maybe done something similar, so I have.

Lennon Bone: 16:08

Lenny is the CEO version of me, who wakes me up in the morning and he holds a piece of paper in front of me and says this was this quarter's goals. And you're down here. What the hell's your problem? I mean constantly like stressing over our numbers and looking good. He wants to look like a professional all the time.

Lennon Bone: 16:28

And then I have Pat, who is like the panicked version of me, the people pleaser, who if there's a fire, he'll run in with the fire hose and slip and fall on his back and then just start bawling and just being like oh, I knew it was worthless, I shouldn't have even tried. What's the point? And they sound silly because they are. They're like these extreme versions of me, and it's like the more that I've made them extreme, the more I can see the silliness in what they're saying to me.

Lennon Bone: 17:02

And so in my journaling I'll be like hey, pat, do you have something to say about this? And then I'll let him speak up or like all right, lenny, what do you say? And he's obviously we're just going to lose all of our money and your kids are going to be going on welfare soon, and blah, blah, blah. Then Pat's, of course, and then I ask wisdom to speak up and like wisdom, what do you see? And to me this is like an opportunity for, in my faith journey, just to kind of let God show up and speak through me and like what's happening, and so that's been a practice that's helped me cycle through a lot of the ridiculous things that I tell myself on any given day.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 17:35

I love that and I think the thing that I find so fascinating is that you've created space for you to be able to watch yourself thinking, which is so helpful and a hard thing to wrap your mind around at the same time, and I think that you giving it names and I've heard of other people doing that too, and I think it's really brilliant. Yeah, it's so smart and I do like that you can help you not take yourself quite so seriously at the same time.

Lennon Bone: 18:06

That is exactly right yeah.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 18:08

Talk to me about your programs and like what someone in your program might experience. And then do you have a common theme that you see people like struggle with? Yeah, more about that.

Lennon Bone: 18:22

Yeah, so our ideal client is an artist who might like the medium doesn't matter as much. You could be a musician, a photographer, a painter, and I'd say, in order of my percentages, we're probably like 70% visual artists in sub capacity, 20% musicians, and then like a mix of other poets or whatever. And we're looking for people that have figured out how to make their thing work in real life, but they don't understand how to do it online, and so we help them build a bridge between themselves and the people that they want to reach and impact with their art, so that the idea is we're going to help you build a community that supports you both monetarily as well as emotionally and do something that makes it different. So that's the big things. We want people that they want their art to do something for people, not just for themselves, even if they don't know how to make that happen yet, and, honestly, especially if they don't know how, because that's our thing. Yeah, so that what that looks like from a practical standpoint is most artists.

Lennon Bone: 19:33

I don't really believe that. I don't think it ever really has. I think it's always had someone speaking on its behalf, whether it's a friend, whether it's media, whether it's a gallery owner, whether it's an opportunity or an experience, rather, and the faster that we can allow someone to connect your art to a story or an idea that relates to them, the more likely they're going to A trust you as the artist and that this is something for them, and then B actually purchase your work right, and then B a true fan, because we're not looking for people to just buy and then be gone. But how do we continue to build customers for a long time?

Lennon Bone: 20:17

And most of the time, artists aren't doing that because they're just like doing TikTok trends, where they just flip around and show their work. There's no real connection in that. There's no opportunity for someone to say do I trust you, do I like you? What are you all about? And we buy things from people we trust. And TikTok and Instagram is not a gallery, it's a social media platform, and so we were trying to help people use it as such and, practically speaking, how?

Lea Ann Slotkin : 20:46

do you help them build that trust? I mean, I'm not asking you to give away all your secrets, but just oh, I'll give them all away. I don't care.

Lennon Bone: 20:53

Yeah, you ask whatever you want to ask. You ask whatever you want. I'm happy. I'm happy. I want someone to walk away being like, oh, that was helpful. Yeah, same thing, no worries. So I think of it like, if you have, we're going to build a Venn diagram podcast style.

Lennon Bone: 21:11

So we have one circle of the Venn diagram. This is one of them two circles with the crossover thing in the middle. So one circle is your art and the story of your art, the process, all those things that you see people typically do on social media, and the other circle is you as a person. What do you believe in, what's your story, what makes you excited or frustrated, what are you fighting for, what are you fighting against? And when you marry those two things together, it creates really incredible opportunity for people to connect. So, for instance, if Like with my wife so she was the guinea pig of this she does illustrations for moms, but at first it was just her kind of like, making these illustrations around her journey through postpartum depression and feeling like she wasn't enough and letting our kids cry it out. What made her feel like she was not being a great mother and she had to see that she was a good mother and she realized, oh like, moms need to hear this message. There's a lot of other people like me. So we looked at that and said, how can we reach these people? And so she started to share her own journey through the lens of like how is this valuable to these other mothers. What am I going through that's potentially going to help them in some way? How can I make connections for them, put them in some sort of community or whatever? And what was interesting is that she built this message that basically, you're still a good mom If your intent is good, your heart is good, even if you have to let your kid cry, even if you have to step away, even if you have to, whatever, you're still a good mother. And she was, through this, able to get. She was cold called by Netflix family to do illustrations for them, cold called by two publishers for potential like of writing books.

Lennon Bone: 23:07

Then COVID happened, had stuff on board Panda, huffpost like things going like incredibly viral and it was all because of that message of this is her story, this is what she believes in and this is what she's fighting for as an artist, and people latched onto that like crazy and we've seen this with a bunch of other people. So, for instance, we had an interview with Morgan Harper Nichols in our community. If you're familiar with her fantastic artist and she was I asked her like what is it about? If you don't, if you're listening and you don't know her, go check her out. I asked her like when these bigger brands or these other people that like come to you, what is it that they're resonating with the most? Is it your art or is the message? And she said it's always the message and that's what we're practically looking for is like mining into your story and beliefs so that it's an authentic message, not something fabricated, because I don't think you have to necessarily change the art you make. You may just need to change the way people see it.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 24:06

Yeah, that's really great and I love how you I loved your Venn diagram idea of that and I think it's true. It's what you said about the art standing alone. I think that's a very rare thing, if ever. So I do think that's true and that is something that I run into with my clients a lot. They're like okay, I've made all this work, it's not selling, or they might have a little bit of traction because friends and family or that just like one ring outside of their circle. I just heard someone say this. It's like they stood out on their street and yelled it to the houses, like the four houses around, and so maybe they got some traction with those four houses, but they need to be yelling to the block, to the town, to the city, all of that.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 24:53

And it's a hard thing for them to realize that you've got to fine-tune your message, You've got to be willing to put yourself out there which I'm using air quotes because that comes up a lot being afraid to put yourself out there. So I'm sure you see the same thing.

Lennon Bone: 25:09

A thousand percent. Yeah, an analogy that I'll use a lot is let's pretend that this couple is in some mountain town. Let's say they're somewhere in Colorado and they're like on vacation and they walk into this little local shop and they buy a piece of art from a local artist. What are they actually buying? They're not really buying the art, they're buying the story. They're buying a piece of that experience that they're having in that moment. Some people think that's frustrating. I just spend all this time.

Lennon Bone: 25:44

I'm like there's freedom in that, because if you don't tell your story, they're gonna be telling it themselves. Like our brains are innately wired to create a story around something, and so when we understand that, I think it actually gives us freedom to say, oh, I get to shape the story that I want to shape, and that's fun, and your story as an artist can be the story. So what I like to say with our clients is don't worry so much about whether the story of the art is fully in alignment with your story, because our brain will create the lineage automatically. It's like when I tell you, my wife and I, the specificity of it, like my wife and I argue about who's gonna do the dishes, you might say, my spouse and I are my significant another, and I don't do that, but we do argue about the laundry.

Lennon Bone: 26:35

I didn't have to create that parallel. Your brain did that automatically, and so that to me, that's the powerful thing. It's if you want your art to be more valuable, you can also just be a more valuable human being, and they will draw that parallel over to the work that you make, especially if the work's great. Obviously, you still gotta make good work. You gotta do quality. Yes, I'm not dismissing any of that, so hopefully that makes sense.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 26:56

No, it makes perfect sense. And when you were talking about the couple in the mountains, I'm like, oh yeah, because I've been that person, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna buy this thing. So I remember this trip. And maybe if I was at home I'd be like why am I buying? I would never buy that thing.

Lennon Bone: 27:10

Right, yeah.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 27:11

So that made perfect sense to me and I never really thought about it like that, but that's a really great way to think about it when you're thinking about marketing your work and selling your work and connecting with people 100%. And when you're working with your clients, my guess is there's some resistance to telling a story or thinking that they don't have anything to say. Is that true, and if so, how do you help them with that?

Lennon Bone: 27:38

Yeah, the resistance is usually around fear, not so much that they don't want to. Most of the time, I think I'm pretty clear on what our beliefs are, and so I think by the time they get into our community they know I want to talk about this thing, I want to be more authentically myself online, so they want that. But they just are like, yeah, they're like I'm not interesting. There's a great storyteller, isn't? It Is Matthew Dix. He has a book called Storyworthy, which is a fantastic read for someone who's trying to learn storytelling.

Lennon Bone: 28:13

So at my previous job, we had him come and do like a workshop with our community, and what was really cool is he was like he said two things that I thought were really interesting. The first was that he has this crazy story around how he was thrown out of a car and literally died and was taken to the hospital. All this stuff, wild stuff, and people are interested in that story, but the one they remember is the one where he talks about him being a dad who, because he was hungry, packs his child's lunch with too much food, because he was hungry when he was a kid. It's that relatable thing where we're like, oh, that's humanity, that's the thing that. And so another way that I think about it if I have this little container here and I just said, oh, I had 15 of these lined up, but I said one of them was my great-grandfathers, that he used to I don't know, carry his whatever in, somebody's gonna be like, oh, my granddad had something like that too. It's just that it's what my buddy, jeff Bartsch, calls the thing under the thing.

Lennon Bone: 29:23

So looking at something and making anything, anything could have a level deeper. What is this really about? So if I'm going through something frustrating here in my business, yeah, some business owner's gonna get that, but the thing under that is really about I'm honestly just afraid that I'm gonna blow it and not be very good at making this happen. And anybody can relate to that. Not everybody can relate to the business side, but anybody can relate to the feeling of I'm not enough, I don't have what it takes, and I'm always battling through that. So that's the thing that I think about. Your story is interesting. You just have to see it as interesting, you have to believe that it's interesting, and sometimes it can help to have somebody point it out and be like oh yeah, I see why. That would be a connector.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 30:07

Yeah, I'm really into that and I think too, because of social media I think we put on such a veneer or facade which we think people wanna see, which I don't know, maybe they do, maybe they don't it can be hard to know how to push into that vulnerability, because ultimately, that's what we're talking about. It's making yourself vulnerable and why you're already making yourself vulnerable because you're creating something from nothing by being an artist, and then they're like wait, I have to be more vulnerable by talking about it.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 30:39

It's almost like a muscle you have to build up.

Lennon Bone: 30:42

Yes, and here's a great way to think about that. I love Brinay Brown's version of vulnerability. I think it's I'm gonna butcher this, but I think the idea is essentially that you're gonna do this act, you're gonna share something without knowing how someone's going to react. Like that's it, and our instinct is to go completely on the deep end. So I gotta be crying on camera and sharing the worst things. And we talk a lot about the deep end of the pool and the shallow end of the pool. You can't have a shallow end unless you know the deep end first. So you do have to start there. And so let's go back to my wife's analogy, because we've already talked about it.

Lennon Bone: 31:25

So her dealing with moms who are dealing with postpartum depression, feeling like they're not enough, Like that's the deep end. They're frustrated, they're dealing with all these things. So you're saying I wanna help these people, but I also am just uncomfortable right now. So deep end would be you're crying in your bedroom and things are just suck, but what's shallow end version of that Shallow end could be like? Hey, I know that maybe you struggle with a lot of anxiety. Have you tried the Headspace app? Meditation is something that really helps me get through it. That's a very practical shallow end thing where you're still calling out. You can say, if you're a mom who struggles with postpartum depression, you might try this thing. So you can go and call out the person, the problem and do it from a more shallow end perspective. So person problem practical versus person problem like deep end, like heavy let's, you know. But you can't do that unless you know the heavy end first.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 32:22

Yeah, that's great. Yes, I do agree that I think most people think that they have to share by burying their deepest, darkest, only safer therapy things on social media, and I do think that's why that whole I'm afraid of putting myself out there become such a thing. So it sounds like you really normalize and neutralize what that looks like for people.

Lennon Bone: 32:45

Yeah, because it's either two sides they feel like they have to go super deep or they feel like they have to be an influencer and I'm like yeah.

Lennon Bone: 32:53

I'm like you don't have to be an influencer, but you do have to have influence. If you want somebody to buy your stuff, you have to be influential, and it's much easier to sell your things through service than it is to sell your things through sales. And so that's where I think this idea of like, how do you wanna change your little corner of the world as an artist, like those beliefs that you have? I think that can really help in that way.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 33:20

Yeah, definitely. It seems like you have a natural tendency to be a really amazing encourager. Have you always been like that and did you have someone who was that way for you, or Thank you for that.

Lennon Bone: 33:34

And no, I don't think I was a bitter. A lot as a kiddo. I found myself often to be jealous of someone else's success. The reason I was a musician, I think in most instances was like I wanted to be cool. How can I show that I'm, like, worth something? And I don't know fully what happened, but I think there was a moment where I just thought what's the end game here? Because when you're operating from that mindset, there's no level that you can ever reach that feels fulfilling. And so I think it was.

Lennon Bone: 34:16

Somebody said to me and probably was my coach where she was like we were talking about building the business and all these things and she's so. I think we were talking about pricing my course and I was like thinking about $97 or something and she's sounds like it's worth way more than that. It was like really and she's a sounds to me like maybe you're in this place where you want to keep one foot with your audience and one foot without, like outside of it. But how are you showing someone the potential if you're not willing to step away? And that was like a really eye-opening thought.

Lennon Bone: 34:53

My goal is to show people possibility and to see that there's an opportunity there, whatever that looks like, and that success is not what society tells us is. That's all BS, and you can't do that through a right and wrong sort of way. You have to let people find their way, and I think that was like my revelation, because I had to find my way and so I was like I wish that's who I want to be for somebody, not the right or wrong. Why aren't you doing this? Yeah, there are guidelines that are going to be helpful, but you have to put your voice in here. If you don't, all this other stuff is worthless.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 35:34

Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting because we just recently met so a scene is you as someone that was like the bitter, like how you described yourself. That seems hard to imagine. I hope you take time to feel proud of yourself for making that change, because that probably wasn't easy.

Lennon Bone: 35:53

Thanks. I took a lot of realizing that my identity is not wrapped up in what I do, and that was a lot of hard work, because the moment that I said I'm no longer a musician in the terms of that is my identity. That was a really challenging day. But I remember also, a few weeks later, feeling this freedom of oh, I can be all the things and that's awesome. That sounds way more fun than just what is the one thing that everybody knows me for.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 36:24

Do you miss touring and doing all those things or with being a musician?

Lennon Bone: 36:31

I don't really, to be honest, I wish sometimes that I did, because it's like those are moments of my life, that some of the most fun times I've ever had getting to experience the world, like literally touring all over Europe and the US and all these things but it was just like it was that chase that just felt empty at the end of the day, where I became a social alcoholic and was just like not living two separate lives, and so it was important for me to say, oh, this isn't the guy that I want to be, this isn't the legacy that I want to have.

Lennon Bone: 37:07

And so, yeah, I like what I get to do. Now I miss certain aspects of that side of the creative process, and so I'm trying to figure out what that looks like for me now, because music was an escape for me, as I think art becomes. For a lot of us, it's a healer, and now that I'm in this place where I don't need that sort of a healing, I don't have the same relationship to it. So I've been trying to rediscover what my next phase is.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 37:35

Does that feel fun to you or daunting?

Lennon Bone: 37:40

Yeah, yeah, right now it's daunting because, as when you're building a business, we're on year two and we're seeing a lot of great customer success and our community's growing and there's all these things happening, but yet we're not in a place where it's financially fully stable, and so that becomes a thing where I'm like, okay, I got to figure that out, and finding the balance between that and also figuring out a whole new creative outlet does feel daunting at times. So I have moments where I'm in a good space of just playing and trying things, and then others where I'm just nose to the grindstone.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 38:19

Yeah, yeah, I totally get that. Not the musician having any kind of musical talent, I don't get that part, but the other part yeah.

Lennon Bone: 38:29

Actually I've been playing more with printmaking and a lot more like visual things, because that's my wife, so she's got stuff. Our house is loaded with all kinds of art supplies and so we'll get them out with the kids and play with stuff, and that's fun.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 38:44

That's great and it's nice. You don't have to be overwhelmed in the art supply store and be like what do I need? What do I want? This all looks so amazing.

Lennon Bone: 38:53

That's right and it's really fun to also, I think, allow myself again to be a beginner, so the expectation is much lower. I do find myself letting the ego be like what will your clients think when they see you sucking at this and I have to be like I don't know, Maybe it doesn't matter?

Lea Ann Slotkin : 39:12

Yeah. Yeah, that ego is a tricky thing. Yeah, I just had that being a beginner experience with podcasts, because this is fairly new for me and I had to keep checking myself. Of course, you don't know how to do this. You've never done this. It's interesting, as adults, that we think we should just know how to do everything just because of our age or time on earth, which makes zero sense, but we all think that way, yeah.

Lennon Bone: 39:37

And we love to rake ourselves over the cold oh yes, so much.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 39:43

What emotion do you think is most important for creating success?

Lennon Bone: 39:50

I believe a positive mindset is everything and I say that with a lot of caveats that it's something we pursue. It's not something that we automatically possess. Here's how I've seen it come around, just even in building this business. So my previous job was I worked after leaving, touring and doing all those things.

Lennon Bone: 40:19

I worked for a company where we helped our clients grow their YouTube channels and we had clients like we grew their audiences by millions and their views by billions, all organically, all through storytelling and messaging and things, and so when I decided I wanted to take it to artists, I thought I just had all that imposter syndrome. Oh, but you're not a visual artist first, you're not a photographer first, and even though my visual artist friends were like dude, this is absolutely positively like, applicable to me and I needed that extra bit, and so I would hit these walls where I would go and just want to lay down and sleep, because I was just like it's not working, and so that's what I would do and I would call it self care because I'm like I'm just tired.

Lennon Bone: 41:06

I've done all this work, but the story I was telling myself is that doesn't really matter anyway. And I had to start to reframe that story into a place of where you're at is not a reflection of the actual outcome and just starting to really collect more and more evidence of what's really happening. So I had to really get intentional about let's look at the numbers Like what did the numbers say? Let's look at all the growth measurements, what's declining, and let's get real focused on stuff. And those were things that I feared but they created more positivity because it was like I could see the things that I could celebrate. But when I was just running and gunning it, it took me back to the old days of like when we first started touring, where we're just like let's just go play some shows and there's no strategy. But once you develop a strategy and you don't make it mean something about you, like it's a game changer. And so now I get hit and I'll whine about it to my wife for 20 minutes and then I'll go back to work.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 42:13

Yeah exactly, and I think too. For me it's always. I think I've come to the realization like those whiny moments or moments of doubt. They're probably never going to go away, but I've been shortening how long they last, which feels like a big win.

Lennon Bone: 42:29

What's been your process for that?

Lea Ann Slotkin : 42:32

For working through.

Lennon Bone: 42:34

Shortening that gap of yeah.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 42:37

Honestly, getting coached is a big deal and really being onto myself about my thoughts and I do a lot of journaling and thought downloads and is this an all ass Once I write things down in the morning. Is this true? Is my brain likes to feed me a bunch BS and when I can see it on paper, I'll even go through and just put a T or an F next to it. True or false?

Lennon Bone: 43:05

And half the time it's false.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 43:06

I love that, yeah, that I'm telling myself just are not true. One thing recently that's been helping too I find that a lot of times I know I wanted to figure out why was something happening, Like where did this come from? Like this limiting belief or this thought I had about myself, and I've just stopped wondering about the why or where and just been like I'm a grownup now and I get to decide. We have all these thoughts about I'm just someone that isn't good at math or whatever it is. I'm like where did that come from? I'm not saying that's the one, but that's just an example. It doesn't really matter at this point where it came from. I'm grown, I can decide. If it's still true, it's just given me a lot of freedom to decide how I want to move forward and what things I want to keep and what thoughts and feelings about myself that I want to believe.

Lennon Bone: 44:05

I love that. Yeah, because it is true we get to collect the cards, we're dealt a hand right, but we get the option to modify that hand. And I do believe that and I'm in many ways an eternal optimist. But I do think that, for instance, my wife the other day was like I feel like God's telling me this thing and I was like, oh cool, and she's, but I don't know if that's really what's happening. And I was like, does it serve you to believe that's what's happening? And she said yeah, and I was like then, by all means, I think that's a beautiful way to.

Lennon Bone: 44:39

Yeah, and that alone can be, because we always, like you said, we want to be like but is this real or isn't this real and it's, or where did this come from? And sometimes the pursuit becomes another distraction man, we're good at distractions.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 44:53

I know it's so true. It's so true we're so good at it. What does self-acceptance mean to you?

Lennon Bone: 45:00

Oh my gosh. I think self-acceptance is maybe something that is another one of those lifelong pursuits where, to me, it's probably along the lines of what we were just talking about. It's probably a feeling of recognition, it's being trained, it's training your mind enough to know that when something comes up that you can talk yourself into the truth, like actual truth. I think it's believing that you have and finding and believing in what you want to do. Purpose is like a big word. It's heavy, because I've just also learned to realize that life is so seasonal.

Lennon Bone: 45:55

I'm sure you're feeling this too. For me at 42, it's oh, I might do something completely different again when I'm like 58. And I'm okay with that now, whereas before I felt, oh, if I pick this, I got to be committed forever, and so to me it's like self-acceptances, allowing ourselves to explore and just be okay with what you're pursuing. Sorry, I had another thought come up and this was like the big thing is I want also to be in a place where, at the end of the day, I truly feel like I've done everything I can, and not that it's all worked out, but just that I've tried. Yeah, that's a gummy question. It's really good. I don't know how to look at that one.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 46:43

I like what you said at the end of the day To me. I always equate that to like when I lay my head down on the pillow, it's like a good tired. Yes, not that wrung out or wired tired it's. Oh, that was a good tired.

Lennon Bone: 46:55

Yeah, and it's a feeling to me sometimes. I sometimes say, yes, it's hard to put yourself out there, it's hard to figure out what you want to do in your life, it's hard to whatever, but nine times out of 10, wouldn't you agree that it's only hard because we're avoiding being our actual self, we're so afraid and we need to feel like we're fitting into some box or we were afraid we're going to say the wrong thing, we're afraid of something, and so the hard work is really just every day being a little more of you truly, who you are, than you were the day before, and so I think that's hopefully the pursuit that I'm on.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 47:38

Sounds like you are to me.

Lennon Bone: 47:40

I hope so. Yeah, I think most days I am, but there are definitely still weeks where you're like it's like what am I doing? Yeah.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 47:47

And this has just been a delight. I appreciate you being here with me so much and the things that you shared. I think we're very valuable and helpful, and I know other people will think so too. So where can people find you?

Lennon Bone: 48:01

Yeah.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 48:01

What would you like to share?

Lennon Bone: 48:03

Do you want my address, my home address, or?

Lea Ann Slotkin : 48:05

Yeah, I'd like your home address and your social security number, please.

Lennon Bone: 48:08

Yeah, three major credit cards yeah, so we you can find basically anything. Stop the starving artist. So if you stop the starving artistcom, stop the starving artist. On YouTube, there's a poorly hemped podcast. There's TikTok and Instagram yeah, just wherever you can find all kinds of goodies through that.

Lennon Bone: 48:33

And right now. One of the things that we're doing right now is, if you're in this place of trying to grow your audience and it's just not working, then there's an application to do a free social media audit so you can go on our site and fill out that and then, if the application goes through, then we'll send you a free audit and see if anything we have available would be helpful for you but definitely give you some real actionable, practical steps on a lot of the stuff we've talked about today.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 49:03

That's awesome. Thank you again. It was a delight.

Lennon Bone: 49:07

Oh, you're awesome and I want to acknowledge you for just being willing to take this thing, this podcast, and be willing to step into something that I'm sure was very uncomfortable and so uncomfortable Like to just do it anyway, and I went back and staggered some listens and I can really hear you finding your voice in this landscape too, and it's a beautiful thing and you're helping so many people and I just think that there's no better thing that we could do for each other than just try to help so great work.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 49:40

I appreciate that. Thank you Well, you have a great day.

Lennon Bone: 49:43

You too, thank you.

Lea Ann Slotkin : 49:44

Thank you so much for listening to Mind Over Media and Podcast today. If you found the episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me on Instagram at leaannslotkin or head to my website, www. leaannslotkin. com to book a discovery call to find out more about working with me one-on-one. You can also head to my website to get a great tool I've created for you to use when planning your own online launch of your artwork. It's an exercise I've taken many of my coaching clients through and it's been very helpful. It's my way of saying thank you and keep creating.