For the Love of Creatives: Unlocking the Power of Community
Imagine a space where your creative spark is truly seen, a community where people get you. That’s what Maddox and Dwight bring each week on For the Love of Creatives. As your hosts and “connections and community guys,” they dive into conversations that bridge the gap from solo journeys to powerful collaborations, transforming “me” into “we.”
In each episode, explore a variety of engaging formats, from insightful dialogues between Maddox and Dwight to conversations with everyday creatives who’ve overcome challenges to reach new heights. You’ll meet fellow artists, innovators, and heart-centered creators sharing their stories, and together, we’ll discover what it means to create, collaborate, and co-elevate.
Tune in, share, and join us each week as we celebrate the magic of community-driven creativity.
For the Love of Creatives: Unlocking the Power of Community
#020: Creating Mental Wealth: Sherry James on Well-being and Creative Expression
A revolutionary approach to mental health emerges through Sherry James's powerful concept of "Creating Mental Wealth." Drawing from her 30+ years in corporate America and personal journey through profound loss, Sherry introduces us to a framework that transforms how we understand our emotional well-being.
The magic of Sherry's method lies in its accessibility—she teaches people to treat mental health like balancing a checkbook. Every experience becomes either a deposit or withdrawal from your mental wealth account. A walk in nature might add millions to your balance, while a toxic relationship could represent a significant withdrawal. This simple yet profound reframing helps individuals recognize what nurtures their spirit and what depletes it.
"The number one thing that supports suicide is silence," Sherry shares with raw honesty, having lost her father to suicide at age seven and her mother at twenty-seven. For decades, she kept these traumas locked away until therapy following her divorce in 2016 helped her understand how unprocessed grief affected her life. Now, through her company Phoenix Speaks and nonprofit 2020 Lives Changed, she helps others find their voice—because "the words need to be spoken in order to be healed."
Particularly valuable for creatives is Sherry's wisdom about consumption. "Be careful of what you're consuming," she advises, referring not just to food but to media, relationships, and information. "If what you're consuming doesn't pour into your art, limit your access to it." This perspective offers creatives a practical way to protect their energy while nurturing their gifts.
Ready to transform your relationship with mental health? Discover how to build your mental wealth through Sherry's speaking and coaching programs. Connect with her work at Phoenix Speaks and learn how small shifts in perspective can create profound changes in how you experience life's inevitable challenges.
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For the Love of Creatives Community
but yeah, I I'm not going anywhere. Like as long as I'm breathing, I'm saving lives. So, uh, if you see me in the community, if you guys are, oh, oh. The last thing I forgot to mention is that I'm a creative designer for a photography studio that gives me like a $40 million mental wealth deposit every time I do it. I love styling fashion shoots. That night I met you guys. There was a gentleman there who was my intern 30 years ago and now he's got his. He's running his own entertainment company now, which is super cool. He said he's got like 70 people, but it's really awesome to be able to come back and like, give back, like I'm so excited to be able to give back and say, yep, it's possible, it's, you can do it If you just stay focused and don't don't hide the words. The words need to be spoken in order to be healed focused and don't hide the words.
Speaker 2:The words need to be spoken in order to be healed. Yeah, this is something that creatives across the globe need to hear.
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome to another edition of For the Love of Creatives podcast. I'm your host, dwight, and joined by our other wonderful host, maddox, and today our featured guest is the wonderful Sherry James. Hey, sherry, so glad to have you here with us, here with us, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, welcome to the podcast, thank you. So a little bit of history. We just met Sherry recently. We were at a big event that was filled with all kinds of creative people I won't mention it but what it was. But we just randomly bumped into her there and struck up a conversation, and it was a really good conversation and Dwight and I kind of looked out of the corner of our eyes at each other and said, yeah, let's ask her to be a guest on the podcast. So here we are. You know, we've kind of breezed over some of your story. I think Dwight's looked at it a little bit more thoroughly than I have, but I've certainly looked at it and we think you have a lot to share and we're really excited to hear it and share it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thanks for having me here. Yeah, if I recall correctly, I would say that the three of us were probably the best dressed at the event that we were at, and that's what brought us together is our obvious love for fashion and color and all of those things.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for that. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:I really was taken by reading the your contribution to the ripple effect of impact. I love the way that it told your story and it seems like everything that you're about is sharing some things that were very painful for you. To make things a little bit better and actually make those ripples and touch people's lives that, in your own words, you may never even see.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, dwight, before we jump in that, can we give Sherry just a moment, kind of to tell the audience a little bit about who she is and what she's about?
Speaker 3:That's where I was going next.
Speaker 1:I felt that segue coming. I felt it coming. I felt it.
Speaker 2:And then we'll get into the, you know, the deeper stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I know that there may be a lot of people who have not gotten to experience your story and the way that I have, so how would you introduce yourself to our listeners, sherry?
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Dre. I appreciate that. Yeah, so my story has several layers, and so I always like to start with that typical corporate layer, because that's what I've been trained or programmed I don't know which one to do, but I did spend well over three decades in corporate America. I worked in various leadership positions, from training development. That's going to be important later for a small company. Neither of you probably ever heard of AT&T. I don't know if you're.
Speaker 1:But I worked with them for a long time. They moved me to Dallas, they moved me everywhere, but then, when I got to Dallas, I loved it. They wanted to move me again and I was like, nope, I'm staying here. I love it. So back in the 1900s, I started a company called Sankofa Management, and that was me kind of leaving my past behind. I had a lot of trauma in my earlier life when I moved to Texas. It was me kind of starting over with a new slate, and so I decided to call my company Sankofa Management, and Sankofa means we must return to the past in order to move forward, which is very interesting because when I met you, gentlemen, we were talking about how it was our first time at this particular event, but that, maddox, you and I had been around the Dallas creative scene even before there was such. And so in that span of time, in that 30 years between coming here almost 30 years I went into corporate.
Speaker 1:I spent a lot of my time leading and mentoring others, which I absolutely loved. I always had a group of interns that I would pour into, and I got divorced in 2016 and went to therapy for the first time like ever Right, and my therapist is like, well, we should talk about I want to talk about my ex husband, of course, right, like let's talk about this guy. And my therapist is like we should talk about your past. And I'm like like yesterday, like that's about as far back as I'm willing to go, and eventually she got me to break down and talk about my parents and talk about the fact that I'd lost my dad to suicide when I was seven and my mom at 27. And I never told anyone. I just walked through life with this little box on a shelf in the corner, wrapped very tightly, that I promised to never unwind. And when I unwound it, as it turns out, I wasn't the only one struggling.
Speaker 1:As I decided to change my keynote speeches from servant leadership and project management, I started talking about burnout in the workplace and you know, as it turns out, corporate wasn't too excited about that message. You know people weren't hired like, oh, let's get shared and talk about how hard we're working our employees, so yeah. So I decided to branch back out on my own. I started Phoenix Speaks in 2019 so that I could now do both things. I love I can help people who are in a place where they don't understand what's going on with their mental health, because sometimes we take on other people's stuff and it's not really ours, or we self-diagnose it's not really ours, we might just be having a bad day. So I created a program called Creating Mental Wealth. It's a different way to look at mental health and I teach it all around the world universities, companies, nonprofits and I just go where I'm led. So I was led to come to that event that night to meet you guys. So here I am.
Speaker 3:And that's beautiful. That's quite an arc and quite an amazing story and I cannot recommend highly enough that if anyone wants to learn more about the nuances of your story, if they're not able to actually go and see one of your presentations in person, that they will definitely be moved if they hear about what you share in that in your entry in that anthology.
Speaker 1:it's amazing thank you, yeah, and it's, and thanks for mentioning so. The ripple effect of impact, uh, in essence was a closing of a chapter for me Pun intended, no pun intended, because it was just one chapter, but it really was me deciding that I have identified my trauma as such and that I know where my trauma belongs and that every now and then, something will remind me of it. But writing that chapter in that book meant that whatever impact I was going to have had to be positive, going forward. I could not keep talking about my trauma and my past and the things that happened to me, because those things happened to me so long ago. I have evolved, hence Phoenix Speaks, right, I am that phoenix aflame rising above my ashes, right? So it's very different. Like, I want to help people have conversations proactively, to talk about their just every day, just like we used to do.
Speaker 1:I think both of us all of us are old enough to remember checkbooks. Remember when you forget a checkbook and you're like okay, my deposit was $1,000 and my rent was $2,000. Oh, we're eating peanut butter and jelly for two weeks, right? We understood balancing checkbooks and I think, for my generation, I think we were a little bit better at balancing even the mental stressors of our work. We knew how to turn off work and turn on home and people don't know that anymore. Nobody's teaching that, even to our university students. The college students don't know how to balance. Nobody's teaching that even to our university students. The college students don't know how to balance the mental check.
Speaker 1:Like, hey, this is going to be a big test today. That's probably going to be a mental wealth withdrawal. I should probably not go to a rave the night before, right, let them do their own calculations. What's a good deposit, what's a withdrawal? Their own calculations what's a good deposit, what's a withdrawal? But yeah, I've taken all of the things that I've learned in corporate America and I now try to make it easy to understand. So children as young as five years old we go into kindergarten classes talk about feelings and emotions and things from Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart. That's required reading for everyone on the team to understand that there is a myriad of emotions between good day and bad day. There's so much more.
Speaker 2:I love how you've positioned it. I love the mental wealth, but also the whole analogy of, you know, checks and balances.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the whole reconciliation analogy is perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what, when I do this keynote guys, it's interesting because I make them, I make everybody do an exercise. I'm not your regular keynote Like I, don't just stand up there and look pretty Like I. I get off the stage, I am walking around people because we understand as creatives that this is an energy exchange, right, and I don't want to project out and down. I want to be in there with you, I want to feel what's going on, but we're dancing. It's not a woe, is me conversation, it is. Hey, this morning I woke up I felt like a million bucks.
Speaker 1:Now somebody might've cut me off in traffic on my way here, but I didn't allow that to be a withdrawal, and so when people see that and feel that they're like, hold on, I can probably. Maybe I could do that too. Maybe I could decide if the news today is going to be a mental wealth withdrawal or a deposit. I think that if I lived in a country and, as someone who only cared about billionaires, became president, what I hear is I need to become a billionaire. I mean, it's simple.
Speaker 3:Love the spin. I love it.
Speaker 1:You have to do it in order to keep your account balanced right. I mean, it's what you have to do. There are some external influences that we can't change. The only thing we can change is how we respond to it that hits me right here yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Some some of these words are her words that I actually hear right now, so thank you you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Everything happens on purpose. Do you guys remember my word from when I met you? Do you remember the word I tried to introduce you to Pronoia?
Speaker 3:Yes, pronoia, yes, oh, you remember? Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:I keep remembering the essence of it, but I can't seem to get the word lodged in my mind Every day or so. I'll go well, how did you say that word again?
Speaker 1:Just think paranoia and you take para out and put pro in Paranoia, knowing that everything that happens is supposed to happen to you when it's supposed to happen to you. It kind of puts you at rest. For me, anyway, once I got to 50, I started caring about a lot less. Maybe it was just me. Was it just me?
Speaker 3:be caring about a lot less. Maybe it was just me. Was it just me? Well, you know, a lot of people take a long time to reach that level of maturity and some people don't live to see it.
Speaker 1:Agreed.
Speaker 2:It's compartmentalized for me. I'm thinking about it and realizing, yes, there's areas of my life where I care a lot less, and then there's other areas where I still care a whole hell of a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but even in those, in both of those spaces, just knowing that it's all going to work out right. I was in Philadelphia a few weeks ago and someone asked me, like you know, what do you think, what do you want to do when you retire? Where are you going to move to? And I'm like bro, I just want to know what I'm having for dinner tonight. Like I the long-term plans that I can I make it through today. Like, if I make it through today, we'll talk about tomorrow. Right, but it's, it's. We all talk about being present, but we don't know what that means. That means, do you have a plan for something two weeks from now? Yes, absolutely, but your brain just needs today.
Speaker 1:Just like we used to check our check registers every day. Every day we spent money. We had to pull out that check register and write down oh, negative, blah, blah, blah. So maybe I should go find out what's one of my deposits. Find out what's one of my deposits. One of my deposits is art. I'll go to a museum. That's like a million dollars worth of a deposit into my account that might, depending on the day, not cost me a dime, right? So I walk people typically through this exercise and I'm like write down the five things that bring you joy. And people are like you know, the first couple of people that I pick on, they're like my guys, my family. I'm like nobody's, you know, nobody's recording this. You don't have to say that.
Speaker 2:My family liar.
Speaker 1:You don't have to say that If it's your car, you can totally say it's your car, Right. But we use that kind of levity to make sure that people feel comfortable, Right, and saying here are my five highest deposits my family, my emotional service animal, shoes. You know, every day it could look different and I have them then assign a value to that. And I have them then assign a value to that right. Like, well, how good does it feel for me to have my emotional service animal here right now? Like it might be negative 5,000 because at any moment she could hop on the keyboard. I'm going down this path of what could happen. However, all we're talking about is the value of the moment being present in this moment. The value of her being here now is amazing. She at 2 million plus, just because she's here, she's quiet, she's calm, which is calming me down, which is also a deposit, right. So everything that is a withdrawal on the outside.
Speaker 1:If we analyze it further, if we stop and slow down, we do this thing called seven seconds of silence. If you can just give a thing, seven seconds of silence, All right. This is actually worth. This is like an interest bearing activity on this call. Hopefully everybody is gaining some, some you know something and some deposits. So this is a huge deposit for me, right, and maybe that's 4 million. People will always tell me that the negatives are more, but they never come out that way, Like ever when we do the exercise, they never come out.
Speaker 2:I'm having the awareness in the moment that some of our relationships, all of our relationships, can be looked at. Is this relationship a deposit or a withdrawal?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it's amazing to me. I mean, I wouldn't have had the language for this but in the last just few years, like three or four, I have withdrawn my funds out of some of the relationships that were withdrawals.
Speaker 3:There you go, understood yes.
Speaker 2:And you know I hear all this conversation. We're kind of off topic a little bit but conversation about cancel culture. I have walked away from some relationships and I don't feel like I'm canceling people. I don't hate them or have anythinging people. I don't hate them or have anything against them. I didn't fire them. I just moved away because it was a withdrawal, absolutely. You know I had to make the deposit in me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for using the vernacular. I love it. That's true. It's interesting because when we walk through that exercise you just nailed it Right when I walk through, like, what are your withdrawals? And those same people who started out with, like family is my number one deposit, they're also like family is my number one withdrawal. It depends on you know the mood, but the truth is our relationships can have a significant impact on our mental health and if we're not talking about it, especially if we're not writing it down so this is not popular at the college campuses y'all Like they don't like this at all.
Speaker 1:You have to write it down, don't type it on your phone, don't. No, you need to use. There's a thing, there's a science behind what happens when you write things down, especially the good things. Today was an amazing day. I got a parking spot right in front of my favorite restaurant and this was where that added $5,000 to my account. If I'm going around all day writing down the good things that are happening to me and because of my pro noia state of mind, which means I already know it's all working out for me anyway, then all I see is good. Are bad things happening, absolutely. Could you look at that thing, dwight, and say, well, I think that's terrible, sherry, and we could both be right?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:We can both be right. We could all be right and we could all then be all right if we knew how to balance our mental well checklist every day.
Speaker 2:Well, most of us have probably had experiences where something came into our lives and at the time it seemed really terrible and then later in retrospect, you could realize how it played a key role in your life in a very, very positive and powerful way. Your life wouldn't be what it is today if it hadn't been that awful thing back there. I know I can certainly look back in my life and see some things that you could offer me to rewrite history, and I would not do it. Even though the things that I went through were incredibly painful and I wouldn't wish it on even my biggest enemy, I wouldn't rewrite it because if I rewrote it then I couldn't be who I am.
Speaker 3:And I want to be who.
Speaker 2:I am.
Speaker 1:I am and I want to be who I am. I agree, that's so important. Just deciding, deciding what's your narrative like, what's your story and what of it do you choose to bring it into this next generation? You know this next cycle of life, right? So so?
Speaker 2:I have a question. I'm ready Because you know our intention with this podcast and with everything we do with creatives. It is our. Creatives are our life and our business right now, and I mean truly. I eat it, sleep it, dream it. You name it. It is. Oh, wow, lord, okay. So we talked to creatives from all walks of life and every form of creativity, and creativity can show up in almost everything and anything. Listening to your story, you're very much an entrepreneur. Yes, would you call yourself a creative entrepreneur? I mean, that's a, that's a term we're hearing right now a creative entrepreneur.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So about terms, about terms and labels, I would probably just give myself like I'm an advocate, right, the work that I do spans so many different groups, like from our, and obviously art is my thing, fashion is my thing for, uh, yeah, I will wear a highlighter, neon sweater and neon boots and a white suit. I don't care. Like I love fashion, I love the, the arts, and also I own businesses, right, but I don't want to. The two are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion, right, like everyone's got their work that they do, whether it's a nine to five and in corporate, or if they're building a new company, or if they, like everyone's on the same cycle, cycle, right, everyone, at some point in life, you will hit a part of a cycle where you got to work your tail off using your body and your mind 24 hours a day, and then there's a season of life where you don't have to do that and you can slow down a little bit and you can relax and you can recoup and you can revitalize. And so I think that, like when people title themselves, or they put themselves in these buckets, like I'm a creative entrepreneur, well, what if? What if, in six months, I decide to go back to project management, which I have every right to do, am I not? Am I no longer a creative entrepreneur? Do you know what I mean? Like I'm trying not to put myself in any particular bucket, and that's very new for me.
Speaker 1:To be honest with you, maddox, I always wanted to be a corporate speaker, corporate leader and oh, by the way, I'm creative and I do creative shit right. Like that wasn't like the fine, fine fine print. But in this season of my life, I am disabled, I am a business, owner of a nonprofit and a for-profit. I plan on changing lives for the rest of my life. That's it. I want to have people, right, and so what happens is if you put yourself in too narrow of a bucket, then in some cases you will find you're just in that bucket by yourself, right?
Speaker 1:As opposed to saying I'm a person who loves people, I love art, I have to eat, I have two children, one of them is 17. So I still got to feed him too, right, but I don't want that to define me, maddox. Does that answer the question at all? Like, I don't want to be defined by a label or a term. I am creative, I am an author, I am, you know, a TV show host, because that's what creatives do? We do all the things, we do all the things. So yeah, I am, I'm very happy in my life and it's the first time that I think I've been comfortable saying that.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm so glad that you are breaking out of all those boxes because just the way that you're sharing it, I'm thinking it's going to give our listeners permission to to look at themselves and think about how they don't have to be defined by their job title or where they are in any particular way that they might measure themselves and they can listen to their heart. I'd heard that you mentioned your team and you mentioned a lot of the ways that you reach out and you have events where you're among people. It sounds like community is a big part of the things that you do.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah. So one of our business part of our business model when we started Phoenix Speaks and funny story. You guys will have to know this story because they'll say you haven't talked to Sherry. If you don't know the 2020 life change story, you guys will have to know this story because they'll say you haven't talked to Sherry if you don't know the 2020 Lives Change story. So I decided to start a nonprofit after I started Phoenix Speaks and you know I prayed about it, I slept on it and I woke up with this number 2020. So I'm like we're going to change 2020 lives next year. That's what I thought Incorporated my nonprofit with that right because I wanted to be very present in the community. I wanted to make sure that I was doing just as much work in the community that I was doing for paid speaking gigs. As it turns out, the name 2020 Lives Changed ended up having a lot more impact than I even would have imagined. Right Like I was like I don't think I got it until like August and I'm like you know what y'all?
Speaker 1:The name of our company is 2020 Lives Changed. While everyone is like 2020 is the worst, but, as it turns out, that was when people were ready to talk about their mental health. People were confined to their homes and had no choice but to talk about their mental health in some cases, right and so it's so awesome to see how the universe aligns when you lean in and say, hey, I'm here to serve. I don't know what it is about my corporate background that I'm bringing into this season of my life, I just trust it. And that's what happens. You end up with an organization called 2020 Lives Change, where you can go into schools and, like the Veterans, associations and professional development places who can't afford to bring a keynote in, but we can still touch that community and teach them how to be mentally wealthy, teach them how to talk to their kids about something more than a smile sheet good or bad day, right.
Speaker 1:So the community aspect has been baked in since the beginning. It's my favorite part, which is what makes it so difficult to get paid to speak, because if I go, I'm going to speak right, and so if I get paid, that's nice. That rarely happens in the past. We're changing that in 2025 and beyond, because I thought this was, this is my philanthropy, right? I created this to give this back, and so community not only helped to build it, because my team is all volunteer and they've been with me since day one, right? And so that says a lot about this mission and the fact that we believe everybody has the ability to be mentally wealthy. They just knew how to do it. If we just could show them how.
Speaker 3:That's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your story is incredible. I would love to know where this all started. You know what? Where were you and what happened when you realized that you wanted creativity to spill into everything that you did?
Speaker 1:A really good question and I'm so happy you asked it because I've been holding this on my heart for a while. So thank you, maddox, you are kind of in my psyche. So my love of fashion never left. So for your listeners who have never met me, I am five foot two inches.
Speaker 1:I'm a tiny thing, pretty close to bald, but before this I had dreadlocks. So I would come to work pretty much dressed no different. Like my jewelry, I always wore a black leather cuff band. So your eyebrows, maddox, I love you so much. So I say that to say, and that was a statement piece for me, right, that was a very bold statement pieces. Like you know what? I am artistic, I am creative, but I also am managing a multimillion dollar PMO. I am doing both things at the same time with red glasses and a red lip and maybe red bottoms, right, like. So, like, my creativity just kind of moved around a little bit, right. My love of fashion and the arts never stopped, even while I was working in corporate. I was one of the charter members for the Perot Museum. I had an opportunity to see Michelle Obama and Spike Lee, so the arts were always a part of me. That doesn't ever go away. Who pays?
Speaker 2:the bills.
Speaker 1:That might change from time to time.
Speaker 2:Take us back to the very beginning, though. Where did it start? I mean, were you, like you know, five years old and you know making mud pies in the garden?
Speaker 1:or where did it start? That was not it, um, I was. So where did it start? I don't, I don't know. I think, well, my well, um, I'm going to fix this light y'all, or I'm not, it's done. So my mom actually was a model before she died, when she was much younger, and my childhood actually used to be looking through, like Lord and Taylor, magazines and, oh my gosh, I loved Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and Cosmopolitan. That was my kind of escape. So I was a mad nerd, right.
Speaker 1:So imagine me in, like fourth grade that's probably my earliest memory of me falling in love with poetry and we got a summer reading assignment to read some, read a poem or a series of poems and come back and talk about it. I was in the fourth grade, um, and I came back and I wanted to recite um the raven from Edgar Allan Poe. And so I remember the counselors. I got sent to the counselor's office because they were like, why is this poor baby reading Poe? Like, why is she reading Edgar Allen Poe? I was supposed to be reading, like whatever little kids were reading at the time, right?
Speaker 1:So there's always been a combination between me reading and exploring the world through books, because, as an only child as an only child after my dad died, you know, as an only child after my dad died. I had to then be there with my mom as she slowly descended from this place of despair into depression to, ultimately, her death. The thing that was consistent for me was fashion and books. I want to know more, I want to read more, I want to see more about more places. That was my therapy. Art was likely my therapy for especially the time between my mom and dad's death, because there was so much trauma that happened to me in that time, and so my escape, if I didn't have a magazine to look through, was to go find a book, and the bigger the better.
Speaker 1:The longer I could read, the longer I felt safe. I felt safe in books. Read the longer I felt safe. I felt safe in books. And so I remember thinking that like I'm going to be an author one day and I'm going to write a book, and just having so much negativity coming to me from my family, like you're not going to write a book, like you're not going to you know you're not going to you're going to end up just like your dad, and you know again, that's one of those challenges of healing and going to end up just like your dad and you know again, that's one of those challenges of healing and going to therapy and ripping that box open is then you start remembering some of those things. But then I also remember the fond memories of me going. I'm going to show you.
Speaker 2:Oh, you took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say, girl, I already see you and know that. That just spurred you on. I'll show you it did.
Speaker 1:It really did. But it's so interesting because now that I'm older, I'm researching the bond between Black mothers and daughters and it's so deeply broken for so many generations back. So when we think epigenetics, right, a lot of people think epigenetics when we're talking about Holocaust survivors right, and mothers didn't know how to love us. Their mothers didn't know how to love them. Their mother's mothers, and sometimes their grandmothers, were slaves. They weren't taught nurturing and you know, spending time and quality time and being present. No, they were working in fields and they then taught their daughters not whatever you do, don't work in a field but didn't give any direction to do anything else. And so then now these young women are like I just don't want to be like my parents. I will move as far away as I can, I will take a job, no-transcript mothering. So I've got to do something about it. So when I was able to do something about it, I looked back and realized I had everything I needed. I don't need anything, I don't want for anything. I've done all the things. I've flown in the jets and I've been in places on the beaches and I knew this day would come Like I feel, like when I was seven, eight, nine years old and I would escape to books. I saw myself at a fashion event, at a, you know, at a hoity-toity fashion event where, you know, several people knew me when I walked in the room. That was my escapism, right, my ability to project. No, that is who I will be and I will continue to work until I get to be that and then tomorrow I get to be that times two, right. So I hope that answered your question, maddox, just the kind of the step from the beginning of like. I've always loved art and fashion and also have a little dark. You know, there's a dark side that I've always kept at bay, and my reminder was my leather cuff bracelet, right, so that that never went away. My love for the art never went away. My love for fashion never went away, and I am a continuous learner. I read six to seven books a month and I want to be smart enough that I can support anybody in the community who needs me, and if I don't know it, I know someone who knows it and I want to be able to make those connections, and so that's how we got to meet. I'm so honored to have been, you know, been a guest on your show. This was amazing. But, yeah, I'm not going anywhere. Like, as long as I'm breathing, I'm saving lives. So if you see me in the community, if you guys are, oh oh. The last thing I forgot to mention is that I'm a creative designer for a photography studio that gives me like a $40 million mental wealth deposit every time I do it. I love styling fashion shoots.
Speaker 1:That night I met you guys. There was a gentleman there who was my intern like 30 years ago and now he's got his. He's running his own entertainment company now, which is super cool. He said he's got like 70 people, but it's really awesome to be able to come back and like give back, like I'm so excited to be able to give back and say, yep, it's possible, you can do it If you just stay focused and don't hide the words. The words need to be spoken in order to be healed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is something that creatives across the globe need to hear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is, it is, and I think it's great that you have this perspective of being able to see how that intern went on to have a flourishing career, on to have a flourishing career. Are there other great successes?
Speaker 1:like that that you can reflect on and share with us. Yeah, this is going to be. This is going to be. This is where the conversation gets awkward a little bit. You ready, maddox, hold on, hold on, we're ready.
Speaker 1:No, it's not that bad. So there was a gentleman that I represented when I still had Senkosa management and he was one of the most talented spoken word artists that I'd ever met. I love poetry. It's not all Edgar Allan Poe. Obviously I've got Maya tattooed on my arm, so it's not that bad. But this guy, I just lost my train of thought. I almost made it Maddox through the call and I did, you know.
Speaker 2:I did that a few minutes ago, but it came back, thank goodness. So don't feel bad, it just happens.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we have to hop the track, and that's okay.
Speaker 1:No, I mean it's gone. Maybe ask the question again. I love this. I want people to hear this because this is how you use.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just saying you'd shared how you met the intern who had gone on to have his own huge success.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3:And were there other similar stories that you could share?
Speaker 1:So, tim Ross, thank you so much. He's always good to have a younger, smarter, a younger brain, more elasticity in the room. That's great.
Speaker 2:That's why I have him.
Speaker 1:Good job, good job. We needed this. We needed this today.
Speaker 2:I'm smart. That's why I have him.
Speaker 1:So you did a good job, thank you, maddox. So Tim Ross, when I met him, I represented him. He wanted to be, he wanted to be a rapper, right. So he's this amazing lyricist. I remember one of his events was here in Dallas and he said you guys don't believe that I can just rap about anything. And he gave he had me, of course, as the manager, cause that's what we do.
Speaker 1:We did back then uh, give everybody big post-it poster boards and they had to write a word on it and whenever he would point to you, you would put the sign up and he would put that word in his presentation or in his rap, right. So I took his information and his music to New York City and I shopped him to a particular record label and I had to come back and I cried the whole flight back because I had to tell him that this particular record label said there is no room for good boys on bad boy. And it completely like I mean it crushed me to have to go back to say that because the talent that this young man had, I was just determined that he was going to get signed Like.
Speaker 1:I just knew it Like there was no, I had no doubt. But when you fast forward to today to you know, recently this particular person has millions of followers online. He now has a program he calls the Basement and, with his people, called the Basement Dwellers. But he's and he's a. He's a preacher, he's a minister, but not the kind that you see in churches standing on pulpits like he and his wife, juliet, talk about parenting. They talk about one of their episodes, one of their episodes. I want to say that someone asked a question about women being honest with their husbands and Tim's response was most of you can't handle your wife giving you the opinion that she really has of you, like you know what I mean so he's not just a typical, you know, he's just like here's how you can live life as a married Christian man.
Speaker 1:You know he's like stop asking her for her opinion, because if she tells you the truth, your feelings are going to be hurt. But this man is a he's doing, he's living so much beyond what he thought he was going to be. Right, he thought he was going to be this, you know, clean rapper, this Christian rapper, which would have been great, but it would have been A associated with this particular agency, which right now he wouldn't want to be. Right, that's one of my biggest successes, right? Just to say, hey, I sowed a seed, I planted a seed, and I watered it and I pruned the tree a little bit and then I left and to come back and to see that it is, it's bearing fruit by the millions, um, because I believe that, as a creative, you should strive for success and not fame.
Speaker 1:Fame is short-lived, success is forever right, say that again that means I can go to the grocery store without people taking pictures of me and nobody knows who I am, and I can live and move about the planet the way I want to. But having all that you need is great. When you see someone that you planted a seed in and they've gone on to become this amazing exactly what they were supposed to be there's a sense of just like I'm doing this right, like I didn't know what I was doing. I just planted a seed. I planted a seed and I taught and I coached and I mentored and I did what? Again, what I felt was the right thing to do. So there's quite a few stories like that, but I'm not like I don't. Those aren't the ones that I want to talk about, right? I mean, I want to talk about the folks that I haven't met yet, who don't know that it's okay to talk about not being okay, and that I say this on every podcast that I'm on.
Speaker 1:The number one thing that supports suicide is silence, and we can't do that anymore, right? And so if people are, you know there's 988, there's a hotline. I was a big part of the push for 988 to become a resource for if people are struggling and they need someone to talk to, to talk them through a crisis. They can do that by calling 988. And, depending on which city you're in, that should go to a crisis helpline center and not to the police station. Right?
Speaker 1:So, behind the scenes, like, I will never stop working for the community when it comes to mental wealth, all of us will be mentally wealthy. I'm going to be sure of it. I'm going to make sure that we are. And then we want to make sure that the next generation can see that there's hope somewhere. Right, the hope always comes from art. It always comes from the creatives. We are the ones who actually leave the imprint for this part of our era, for this era. Right, people will go man, were you around during 2020? Like, yep, I lived through it. Were you around when? Yep, I remember when that went away? Yep, I remember the repercussions of that. So, know that we are now the elders. We talk about this, right, maddox? Like we are now the elders.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Nothing we can do about it. It is where we are Now. What do we do with that?
Speaker 2:power said about silence is, you know, not the way we maintain mental health or wealth. I've done some studying about shadow and one of the things that they teach us, you know, is that shadow is anything that we hide, deny or repress, and if you hide, deny and repress long enough, it will grow in power to where it can overcome, you, take you over, and we're seeing this played out in the news every day. We're seeing it played out because people have. We all have light and dark inside of us, but when you can't give the dark a voice, I have learned and Dwight can attest to this the darker voice. I have learned and Dwight can attest to this that when I'm feeling dark, I have to get it out of my body, and the way I do that is to speak it out loud to somebody that's there to hear. Can't speak it out loud in a room by myself. I have to speak it out loud in a manner that it gets heard by at least one other human being.
Speaker 1:And then it dissipates.
Speaker 2:It dissipates when you can get it out of your body like that, giving it a voice helps to diminish it, because shadow work says that darkness cannot survive in the light of consciousness.
Speaker 1:Well, but nor can light survive without the dark right, so they both have to exist um either. If they didn't both exist, then neither would exist.
Speaker 2:So we live in a, in a universe of duality, exactly yes, can't have up or down is that I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know that we should. So I really wish we could get away from the light and dark vernacular Right, because sometimes dark just tends to always have a negative connotation. And so shadow work, in my opinion, like my shadow is. My shadow has her place. She should always be behind me. I should never see my shadow because there's nothing I can do about it. I've already passed through that place right Now. Whatever, if you get my shadow, it's because you miss me, you miss the real me. If you get my shadow and that doesn't mean just like actually, physically speaking, when I'm walking I can't see my shadow. I typically always walk with the sun behind me, right, and that's literally and proverbially like. I want to make sure that the people behind me are carrying the same radiance of light inside of them that I am, so that there is no shadow cast. There is nothing dark or bad, it is just a different perspective, because the same thing that was terrible for me 40 years ago. I'm so thankful for it today. So it wasn't good or bad, it was what it was meant to be. It's that pro noia mindset, right, it's not good or bad, it just is.
Speaker 1:Alan Watts does some significant studies. I loved Alan Watts. If you've listened to him and listened to his work, he talks so much about us assigning a good or a bad and instead of just being, we are humans. Being In this moment. Shadow work can have a negative connotation to some people. Right, maddox? I understand what you're saying 100%.
Speaker 1:The challenge is, when we're speaking to younger people, sometimes they're very literal, right? Or sometimes they'll take it and they'll Google it and they'll be like, oh and whatever. The first thing that pops up, which means whoever paid for the first ad, is what people believe. And so that's one of the other things about creating mental wealth is understanding that exchange of energy. Maddox, when you're like, I just have to say it to someone, it's an energy exchange, because if you say it out loud in a room to yourself, it just comes back to you and you're like I need now, I have.
Speaker 1:Now I'm disappointed in myself because I said it out loud and as opposed to an energy exchange, as long as it's a healthy one you're making deposits. This is a withdrawal for you. So you're making, but you have. Did you choose to make a deposit instead of withdrawing from others? Because you are being withdrawn from, which is very easy for us to do Having a bad day. Don't talk to me, don't call me, don't touch me. I don't want to. That's kind of a human, sadly, even more so after 2020. People are like. I'd rather not people for the next six months.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't say that before the pandemic, right, but that exchange of energy, maddox, that you talk about is what we encourage in this creating mental wealth. Who gives you the biggest deposit? You don't have to call them. Maybe you can just shoot them a text and be like hey, I just want to let you know I was thinking about your friend, and that person could have been in the rock bottom of most rock bottom places and that text was free, took you three seconds to do it, but it could have very much saved someone's life.
Speaker 1:And so, especially in times when there's a lot of chaos and volatility in the news and social media, like, well, what's what do you have right here? Like, but what's what do you have right here? Right here on this screen are three creatives who care enough about the community to come together, have a fireside chat, as it were. This, this won't ever end Right, there's always going to be people like us, people who are creatives, who will find a way to keep the art alive, to keep the you know fashion we'll say fashion forward. Whether we're in a courtroom, a boardroom or a lunchroom, right, we'll always stand. I have a feeling the three of us will always stand out wherever we go. But that is planting a seed into the next generation to say, okay, if she had the nerve to wear red lipstick and red glasses, maybe I could do that too, right? So I love that we're at that age that we can just be.
Speaker 2:It's definitely a personality thing that totally suits who you are and your energy. I think that that might look ridiculous on some people if it didn't fit their energy. I think that that might look ridiculous on some people if it didn't fit their energy. You know, as a beauty professional for 40 years, one of the worst things I would see other beauty professionals do is put the latest trendy haircut on somebody that it didn't match their persona. It didn't match who they were at all. You know you have hair that's about an eighth of an inch long and it's bleached blonde and it looks absolutely fabulous on your skin tone and with what you're wearing. You look like a well, I'd say a million dollars, but somebody used to every time I'd say that they would say what do you mean? Green and all green and wrinkled.
Speaker 1:Wow, you know what Next time someone says that say no, uh, like the black card, it just like. No, like the black card. Just flip the switch and just tell them no.
Speaker 2:Yes, your look definitely is an extension of your energy and who you are, as it should be.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yes that, thank you, yes. So, sherry, what if you were going to sum it up and share some words of wisdom for any creative that might be going through a challenging time in their creative journey? What would you say to them?
Speaker 1:I don't want to. I'm not going to say the standard keep going right, because everybody says that. Um, I'm going to say the opposite. If your body says stop, then stop, listen to your heart. Um, your, your heart and your mind work in sync. Um, actually, your heart, your mind and your gut work in sync, actually your guts in control. So for my creatives that are out there, I need you to feed your mind by feeding your body the right things.
Speaker 1:One of my best friends, john Sally, was on an episode of my show and he refers to meat as like carcasses, like you're eating other dead animal carcasses. That being said, be careful of what you consume as a creative, whether that's actually eating, whether it's what you listen to, it's what you see, it's what you read. Be careful of what you're consuming, and if what you're consuming does not pour into your art, I would suggest you limit your access to that. Creativity exists when you are inspired by things externally, but then you go internally to interpret it. So just be careful what you consume. Doom scrolling for hours at a time does not help your craft. That social media was created to keep you distracted, but you were born with the ability to create, and now we have amazing tools with AI to allow you to create and then share that art. Just don't get caught up in the web. That's it.
Speaker 2:You know, I am pretty far on the spectrum, leaning into an empath, and I suspect that there's probably a pretty high percentage of creatives that are in that spectrum somewhere that are empaths. And we do have to be very cautious about what we consume. And you're right, it's what you read, it's what you look at, it's what you watch, it's what you eat, it's what you drink, it's everything. I particularly have to be very careful about what I consume visually, because I'm extremely visual, really discern reality from fantasy Like I cannot, as an empath. I cannot watch a horror film because I'm in the film, I'm the one that the monster is chasing and I don't. You know. It's so real to me that I can't say, oh, it's just on the screen. My nervous system reacts like it's actually happening to me and it's been that way my whole life. And I know that's the empath part of me. And so I have to be very careful about what I consume. News is the same way. I have to be very careful about what news I consume, big time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely Agreed, wholeheartedly, I mean.
Speaker 2:I love what you're saying right now about be cautious about what you consume. Nobody else has said that in any of our interviews. That's not necessarily a question interview I don't use that word necessarily question that. We've asked other creatives, but you're the first person that has come up with that as a here's my words of wisdom and it's just like wow, yeah, Like ding ding ding, ding, ding hit the bell.
Speaker 3:And I think that we need to appreciate all that you've said, because one of the things that you shared before was just with the whole. Your whole program is another way of approaching the topic of equanimity, in a way, but also being in control of what you can be in control of.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 3:Bad things are going to happen, but here's the thing. They were probably going to happen. Anyway, you can choose how you show up. Yeah, yeah, absolutely no matter what's happening. We have a say in what our experience is of it.
Speaker 1:We do and we determine how it gets written, right. I mean, I keep going back to that and I don't know if at some point somebody's going to go man Sherry said that but, like, like, literally, at some point people are going to refer to the art that we collect and buy and, and you know, donate, like someone's going to say our names at some point. Right, and so when you know that you live differently, you walk differently, you communicate with people differently. It's not just about me, it is when I'm writing and when I'm creating. You know things, but this is my gift is for others. As a creative, your gift is for others. It's not to be kept for yourself. It's a gift that was given to you so that you can amplify that gift and give it to others. But make sure that what you're giving is something that is healthily consumed, right? So just like we want to watch what we're consuming, we should also watch who's consuming what we create.
Speaker 1:There are some parts of my conversation that I obviously don't tell if I'm in a kindergarten class Completely irrelevant, not top right, Not time to talk about it, wrong audience. And as creatives, we need to have that amount of emotional intelligence as well and self-awareness, to understand that it's not always time to tell our story. Sometimes it's just to say hi, Right. And once that relationship has been established and there's a safe place for you to share, then, Maddox, the way you mentioned, make sure that the person that you're that's receiving that energy can handle it, that they've got the bandwidth. And so when we talk about wealth, it's an easier conversation, Like how are you doing today? How's your mental wealth account doing today, Maddox? How are you feeling? You feeling 5 million-ish or about 200? Like where are we at?
Speaker 2:You know, I would have to say, after this conversation I am feeling much more mentally wealthy than I felt beforehand. So thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Yay.
Speaker 2:I'm glad.
Speaker 1:All right, this has been a complete joy. Thank you. It's awesome, Dwight. What about you? What's your? What's your balance sheet? Look like.
Speaker 3:Oh it's. I'm seeing lots of zeros.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what? We're going to be seeing lots of zeros for the rest of 2025. Even though it's it is the year of the snake, I know we're going to do some. It's the year of the snake, which is a very good year from pretty much everybody else around the world. So we're going to use our paranoia skills and make this our best year ever. We're going to be the mentally, we're going to be the wealthiest ever, mentally and otherwise, and until then, I will see you at some amazing gathering somewhere with a bunch of other amazing people, I'm sure, sometime soon.
Speaker 2:No doubt yeah.
Speaker 3:I know I, I know that we're uh, we're running a bit over time, but uh, do you have time for a few rapid fire questions?
Speaker 1:I'm ready.
Speaker 3:Okay, Uh, first question what's your creative spirit animal?
Speaker 1:Uh, black Panther.
Speaker 3:Ooh, love that.
Speaker 2:That is fitting you, sexy thing.
Speaker 3:What's the best decision you've made in your creative career?
Speaker 1:Never stopping.
Speaker 3:That hits and what's one way you give back to your creative community.
Speaker 1:I am the silent partner, so I connect people with people who they need to know, even though they don't know that I'm the person that did that. That gives me a joy that I can't explain when people are like, oh my gosh, I don't know how this person ended up in my inbox and then, you know, I get to just watch this beautiful thing grow. So my, I like being behind the scenes and just making things happen. Sorry y'all, that philanthropic side. I actually like not telling people who I work with. It's not, I don't do it for my own glory, I do it because it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I love that. That's you're. You're like the fairy godmother.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I totally will receive that. I am fairy godmother for the rest of this year. I like it.
Speaker 2:Just sprinkling gold dust on everyone.
Speaker 1:We'll do that when we see each other out. We'll just do our little.
Speaker 2:It'll be our own little.
Speaker 3:Well, I've got to tell you, this has been absolutely delightful. Is there anything that you would like to share with our audience that we haven't talked about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so shameless plug, since it's time for that right, because creatives, we're always hungry. We always need to eat right. Starving artists is a thing, so we recently, this year, started a speaker academy at Phoenix Speaks, and so we have speakers that are traveling all around the world to speak. What I'm noticing is that the community needs someone to teach them how to speak eloquently in front of people, and that's a new offering.
Speaker 1:Interestingly enough, the event that I met you guys, where we met, I think, a couple of people kept saying like I'm struggling with speaking, I hate speaking, I don't want to be a peer, I'm a troubled speaker, and it's literally one of those moments where I was like I should just go up and say you do know I could help you with that. Like that's literally what I've been doing for 30 years, and so I encourage people to reach out. I mean, allow me to be creative and support creatives, not just in the photography world, but also when it comes to speaking skills, because I, you know, I did the toastmasters thing for two decades, which might make me a masochist, I'm not sure, but I learned a lot about how to effectively communicate, and so that's what I would love for your listeners to do is find me, hire me or refer me so that I can continue to give back.
Speaker 2:Well, and we will make that very easy for them. So, for the listeners, just know that you can look in the show notes and find the ways that you can connect with Sherry and what she has to offer. Thank you so much for this. This has been amazing, yes an absolute delight.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Sherry.
Speaker 1:Thank you too, until we, until we see each other again yes, yes.