The Output Trap (Guest: Michele Bonds)

Ask yourself a dangerous question: if you stopped working today, how long before the revenue stops?
 
Michele Bonds spent ~20 years at the top of Wall Street — chief of staff in the C-suite of an elite law firm through the 2008 crisis — and still ended up owned by her own output. When COVID leveled her and willpower finally failed, she rebuilt her whole life as a sculptural paper artist… and ran the studio like an operator.
 
She breaks down the dual operating system that protects the creator while the machine finds the collectors: the front-end systems that end "convince mode," the switching boundary between business time and creative time ("the divine has its own timeline"), her three trained AIs — "a writing coach, not my writer" — the 80/20 market double-down, pricing with zero benchmarks, and the first-hire math she can't unknow: one plus one equals eleven.
 
And stay for the last three minutes. Johnny asks what she'd tell the version of herself lying in bed with COVID — and after a long silence: "There is a point to all of this. It's worth it. Keep going."
 
Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OYBaNDtm1CI
Find Michele: michelebonds.com · Instagram @michelebondsart

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Our guest today spent nearly two decades at the epicenter of Wall Street, navigating the 2008 financial crisis from the C-suite of one of the world's most elite law firms. She reached a pinnacle of success only to realize that her life was built on systems that depended entirely on her output, which meant the business didn't just employ her, it just owned her. Today, Michelle Bonds is here to show us how she traded the burnout of the high stake hustles of a dual operating system that protects the creator while the machine handles the collector. Michelle, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Hi Johnny, thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Michelle, I'm so excited for this for this episode because again, you and I connected so well and we have similar stories and how we we're trying to do things different. So my first question to you is you know, it's gonna go right into your story because I I want the listeners to know about you and how we got here. So you were chief of staff at Sullivan Crown, you know, uh during that 2008 crash, you managed the high stakes crisis on the highest of the planet so far, and you were laying there with COVID, you know, trying to push through, and you said, What was that specific moment you realized that the willpower was no longer a scalable business strategy?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

That's a really good question. It was actually in the middle of my illness. I just knew somewhere in there that I didn't feel like there was passion in my life. Like I didn't know why I was getting up out of bed and doing it again. At this point, I had left the law firm, I'd gotten an MBA, I had changed careers, I'd become an executive recruiter, and I was sitting there thinking to myself, is this it? Is there anything else? And a couple of weeks later, when I was feeling a little better, I was in an art class at that point, and I made a piece of art the week I went back to class. And right as I finished it, something magically opened up inside of me, and I knew that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Now, I don't know if you know much about being an artist, but it's not a career path that's usually encouraged by parents. And there are good reasons for that. It's a very challenging path. So that practical side of me went to have a conversation with the part of me that was feeling this excitement. So there was that dialogue within myself for quite a while about is this a good idea? Am I even going to make be able to make a living at this? What is going on inside of me? But I knew that there was something about purpose in me that had changed and I hadn't noticed it. I had purpose before in my life. There was a reason for me to get out of bed. People depended on me. I knew what I was there for. I was a crisis management person, I was really good at it, I really enjoyed it. But I just kept getting to the point where my edges that were being pushed were just around how much I could give in a day with the energy that I had. And I kept pushing that line and pushing that line, and I just found myself emotionally and physically bankrupt. But then when I made that one piece of art, something in me knew, something opened up, and I felt like I knew all of a sudden that there was a new path for me. Oh, I think you can have a purpose in life and it can change. And it had changed for me. And then I had to figure out how to be an entrepreneur because I'd never had my own business before. I'd always worked in a corporate structure. So there was that element to it too. And figuring out how to weave all of this together. These are big shifts. These are these are the biggest shifts.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

That is the biggest shift for sure. And in anything in life, you're gonna have to figure it out, right? You're gonna have problems, you're gonna have hardships, especially owning a business where you're wearing so many different hats. So walk me through. You went from you know, being a crisis management to then that very first art, and then you probably had a conversation with your parents right then somewhere. Um, how did you turn that into a business? And and then I know you know there's that first art that you made, but how did you turn it into a you know a profit-making machine?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Well, I started out thinking if I'm going to do this, I have some good skills. You know, I've had great mentors, you know, back at the law firm. I worked for the chairman of the firm. And, you know, he's very well known in the finance world. I had learned a lot about that. I had gotten my MBA, I'd been an executive recruiter, I had a lot of operations expertise and admin expertise. I thought, you know, it's a business like any other business. You can just go do the things and it will be a business. And I came to the art world and discovered that it's not quite the same. It's a very different space. It's a combination of luxury and it's an object, but the value doesn't really tie to anything else of value. Everything is perceived value. So there aren't any benchmarks, there aren't any of these things that you know occur in other businesses for you to really align with and find this path that you can just follow. So I realized I needed to be more of an entrepreneur than I had anticipated being, because all of the structures around the business were different for this business. So thinking through with specificity what that means, you know, was really interesting. I also didn't have a sales and marketing background, which is critical for this particular industry. So I've had to learn that on the fly. And like most entrepreneurs who are starting out, I had to do all of this on my own. It was a one-person shop for a very, very long time. I've just recently started bringing in real partners for certain components of what I'm doing. And it is an absolute gift. But I also spent a lot of time thinking about what is it that I need, where is it that I'm, I can do the work, but I'm not as strong as somebody else might be, not as devoted to these particular skills, and free myself up so I can spend more time actually making art in the studio. But one of the challenges I find in the art world is that there isn't a lot of clear guidance around how to be an artist and a business person. There's a lot of support for being an artist and making great art, but the business part wasn't really there when I came here. And there are people out there that are coaches for artists and they they try to teach you sales, and some of that works really well, but every single artist has a completely different market. I don't know if it's like this in your business, Johnny, but you know, you have a niche essentially, and you need to go and occupy this niche, and no one else really occupies this niche that you occupy. And you have to build your own audience, and you have to build all these different components of the business. Um, and you have to figure a lot of it out yourself, but then you get maxed out. You get to a point where you're like, I can't do all of the things all of the time. I've recently reached that point myself where, you know, early stage, it's all you, you're doing all of the building. And I just reached a point where I said, you know, as soon as I get some more money in, I've got to get some help because this is not sustainable. I need a day off. I haven't had a vacation in five years.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Welcome to the club. But yeah, that is so true.

unknown 8:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

And um, I love you what you talked about, you know, you don't have a benchmark on your business because again, all it's intrinsic, extrinsic value, and you're creating on your own, and you just kind of figured it out. I usually say to clients, they're starting out, and and you can slap me virtually if I'm wrong here, but it's like I I tell clients, look, they ask me, it's like, hey Johnny, what should I charge? You know, $50, $100, $200. It's like, look, pick a number. You're gonna be wrong either way. Pick a number and then change it later, you know, like and and then start the reiteration process that until you get to a point where it's like, I think this is the right place. I feel confident selling what I'm selling, and it might be a thousand dollars, right? And so forth. I see one of your arts probably fine behind you. And I think probably for you, my goodness, I can't imagine in the first you know, three years of your business not having the answer in the back of your book, and then just kind of flying by the seat of your pants and it's like, okay, I'm gonna do this, and but there's no mold per se of what to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Well, one of the th one of the core things that I did was I decided to walk away from all of my industry expertise and going into an industry that I didn't know. I didn't have a network. So in some ways, some people like a blank slate, some people enjoy having that, and other people find that inefficient or too uncomfortable. Just depends. It was the right thing for me, you know, it was the right thing for me. I like what you're saying about the advice on pricing. You know, pricing in the art world is its own entire podcast, probably, you know, many of them. I will say that grounding myself in thinking about that part of my business was really core to figuring out where my market is. So that, you know, getting very clear about who do you serve will help you also understand how you should price. And it doesn't need to be that you answer one or the other. You can be answering them in tandem, which is how it worked for me. It was very challenging. I've had people that I paid, I've had free advice, I've had all of the different parts of it. And one of the interesting things about the art world, the way that I think about the structure of this in terms of creating your business is in the art world, you can either be a vertical or you can be a horizontal. And what I mean by that is you can have one particular style of art and you can own the whole vertical of that. So you can have the really fine art at the top, you can have, you know, lesser expensive pieces, and then you can have mugs, you know, with your prints on them, etc. But if you deviate from that style, you have to create a whole new business. Then there's the horizontals where they stay in a particular price point, but they can create different original, interesting types of work within that price point range. But they can't really go higher or lower. They kind of stay in this other range. And I chose to be a horizontal because I knew I wanted to make fine collectible art right out of the gate. I've actually recently made a, I guess, a pivot or a double down in many ways, where I realized I don't like making the small works anymore. I want to make really big pieces and I want to make them for big spaces, and I want to make them globally. And that's something else that people don't always talk about, I think, in business, is that you can be going down a particular path, and then you can suddenly decide, you know, I'm gonna 80-20 this. I'm gonna 80-20 this and I'm gonna double down. And it's not necessarily you responding to where that 20 is. You can decide, all right, I'm 80-20ing, I'm doing my 80-20 analysis, 20%, 80% of my business comes from 20% of my market, and I can either go into that further and cut that 80% that's not efficient, or I can say, this isn't where I want to be. I want to go somewhere else and make another decision. And you know, that's an option that I've discovered is an interesting um option to explore when thinking about an analysis like that in your business.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Wow. Yeah, uh I love the vertical, the horizontal and the horizontal and the horizontal, vertical and horizontal ways that you explain. Um, I want to go back to a point. Uh, you know, a lot of finding out who's your customer, right? So the ideal client profile, ICP, you hear that on business all the time. And um, you have to dig deeper, you have to understand, you know, who they are, what they're going through, the questions that they have. And and I actually was walking through a client uh yesterday on this, and it's like, why do you and it was a long care business. It's like, hey, why do you think they want an extra mole on their front yard in December? Right? And then you can ask the question, you can see it in the business owner just thinking about it, thinking about it, it's like, oh, it's because they want to show off to their neighbors how well their front yard looks like, right? I was like, Yeah, there you go. You know, from my situation as a CPA firm, all my clients want is to feel like they are the only client that I have, right? So we need to know about their family, about the kids going to sports, you know, they're performing and so and so. And and and you have those those conversations with clients that build that trust. So, one of the unique things about your business, you have to use a boundary, right? You have that specific boundary that that I was able to realize, you know, you have this creative work and it's beautiful, and and you use all parts of the brain that you don't use on this side of just being very specific and driven. And it's like, no, we're going this route. For the business owners out there that have that difficulty of splitting, right? Those two hats that you wear or the two sides of the brain. Um, let's walk them through a little bit on this, right? Because you switch that back and forth all the time or work, but I bet you have a system that uh we can learn from.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

I have a lot of systems. I'm a system-oriented person. And you're right, I do have a system for switching back and forth, and that is very carefully structured because when I'm in the studio and I'm making artwork, I talk about it as being in touch with the divine. And the divine has its own timeline, creation has its own way of operating. So I set an alarm for the time period that I'm in the studio and I turn all of everything off so that I can completely focus and be utterly devoted to being in that mindset and in that space when I'm in that space. The alarm goes off and I have lunch, and then I sit down and I do my business work. And what's fascinating about that is, you know, in science, they you can talk about it like right brain, left brain, but actually it's you know, it's not it's not a right or left hemisphere thing. You're going across all those hemispheres all the time. But you I find that I do occupy, I have to go through a switching period. You do occupy different parts of your mind for different activities. I've actually been deep digging a little bit into brain science, and I've learned that actually, if you're stuck in a negotiation, one thing you can do is you can stop and look at artwork for 15 minutes, and it'll reset your brain, and it will help you be more creative about a solution. So art and being in that part of your creative mind actually can feed business. So creativity is sometimes thought of as a synonym for chaos or disorder. And then there's this structure component, right? You know, order and moving things forward and moving through time and executing and getting things done by a deadline. Both things are very important. And we do ourselves a disservice if we over-index on one and don't feed the other part of our mind. We're not tapping into the full capabilities of our mind, which is one of the things that's really special and unique about what I do now and how I live now. So time boundarying both activities so that I can be as focused and efficient as possible is really critical for what I'm doing and how I'm doing it now.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Wow. That yes, I wholeheartily agree with that. So I've been a CPA for 14 years. So the left side or the right side, I can't remember right now what's the analytical side, is you know, it's always on and it's it's just my default mode. And now I find myself, you know, playing with social media, being you know, more involved in the social media world, recording videos. I feel like I'm I'm a little teenager again, right? It's part of the creative work that you're talking about, the being chaos. So it's like, no, no, no. I'm actually having fun with this, I'm actually enjoying this, and it's my scapegoat from all the stress and the number and the spreadsheet from the CPA world where I can be creative, right? So I I love that. And and and it seems that you use sort of uh a batching system, right? Like your morning is your creative work, and one of the things that I'm dealing with right now is energy management, which it seems for you, like your morning is your creative side, and then the afternoon after lunch is more of the uh the analytical side of working on the business and so forth. So talk to me about deadlines. Do you have deadlines in your creation process to meet, you know, to deliver the art uh to the buyers?

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Oh, absolutely. You know, this is where my operations background is really helpful. Time boundarying the time within, you know, so I have business time, I have personal time, and I have creative time has been very helpful. And I want to share something with you about this. I've optimized that for how I work and how my energy flows. I used AI and I had a whole conversation with three different AIs about how to do that, when my brain is the sharpest, when I'm in my best headspace for actual artwork creativity versus business creativity. As an aside, I do find that entrepreneurship and business is equally as creative as making art, but art is really going into the void. Art is you have a blank slate and you can make anything versus business. There are structures in place, and how do I maneuver through the structures and how do I decide when to break rules and when to observe rules?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

We're breaking rules. You're talking to a CPA. I don't think I can do that.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Well, um, maybe it's more like think of it a little more neo-esque, right? Bend the rules.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I mean when you look at physics, there are rules of physics, but there are always exceptions to the rule. I had a great conversation in my studio on Friday last week with someone talking about energy is a like is a wave and a particle. And they found that depending on whether you're observing it or not, will change whether it shows up as a wave or a particle. And I think about business in the same way. Yes, you've got to file your taxes on time. You have, you know, like if you are publicly traded, you have to file your K's and your Q's, and there's all these things that you need, you know. I came from law and financial services, you know, I was in the world of rules and rule interpretation and rule making, etc. You know, there is creativity everywhere if you make space for it. There's always something evolving. It's like it's the laws of nature and the laws of physics to have both structure and lack of structure existing side by side. There isn't one that's better or worse than the other. They both have to coexist. So, in terms of what does that mean for business, that's how I think about my business is making the art is where I get to go into the chaos, and then the business side is where I get to go into the order, but they bleed a little bit at the edges.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

That makes sense. I love that. Is like it seems like we also in the role blending uh mechanism. You said you said the keyword there that, of course, I'm gonna ask. You know, you talk about AI. Um, how is AI? Impacting the art and how is AI impacting you, the business owner?

SPEAKER_01 22:07

That's a great question. I use AI quite a bit for the business side, and the business side I need to qualify. It's not just keeping the books and making sure I email people back. It's a partner for me in iterating and thinking through how to communicate my artwork. One of the core parts of being an artist is telling the story of the art. And I find AI can be a thought partner, but it's a thought partner that I have to manage and give feedback to and edit and iterate with. So I think of it more like, you know, a writing coach as opposed to my writer.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

That makes sense. And you have to feed, you know, you created the art, you have the relationship with your customer, and you know, input, garbage in, garbage out. So I I I love that little nuance there that you mentioned. Um, and I'm assuming you're using that every day, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Oh, yes, absolutely. I use three, I have three AIs that I use, all are good at different things, and I've trained each one. You know, that's the other thing about AI. You have to spend time training it. It's like a brilliant child, is how I think about it. Like a genius child that wants to make you happy, but doesn't know how, and you think you've communicated with it clearly, and then it gives you something back, and you're like, that's not what I said, and it gets very unhappy that it didn't make you happy. And, you know, so it's an interesting, it's a really interesting tool. Like I remember when the internet happened and everybody thought that it was going to be the end of days with that. I find it extremely helpful. I'm just pushing the edges of my own knowledge every week. In fact, part of my weekly schedule is I have a couple of hours blocked out on the weekend every week to learn about AI and try to build things on AI because I find that this tool is so important to the time we live in that developing my skill set around that is worth devoting precious hours to. It changed so much about how I work. And it's also shown me where its limitations are and where I actually need to bring a person in. So the way I think about AI is it's great at executing, but it's not great at figuring out what to execute.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Oh, that's a good one. I love that. I love the analogy of putting AI as this like a seventh grader that it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

It really is like that.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

It really is. Oh, so what I keep hearing you saying, and I love this, again, you're touching upon some things that I talked about all the time, and I've been talking about this for many, many years, is you're very intentional with your time, right? Time from a dad perspective with three, right? Seven-year-old, five-year-old, and three-year-old, time is going to pass. You've heard the phrase, you know, the days are long, the ears are short. You heard all this stuff. But what I'm hearing from you right now is you're very intentional with your time. You have scheduled time to learn AI. You your mornings are structured like this is my creative, this is lunch, right? This is my business time. I there there's there's a part of you that is is needs to tell this to people, and people need to hear it more often. You are very intentional with with your time, how you spend your time, how you learn about it, and how you reiterating where you're not stuck in just one way, but always learning a better way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

I spent I spent 20 years on Wall Street, and I was a full-time workaholic. Now, part of the deal I made with myself when I made this change was that I was gonna work just as hard for myself as I did for everybody else when I used to work for other people. And I started to do that, and I realized wait, isn't there a point where I get to work smarter? Because I'm really good at working hard. But I think at this point I've earned the right to think about my work in a smarter way and be more efficient and create more value for others and create opportunities for others and build teams and approach this from a very different angle. So the intentionality in my life actually comes from a real true desire to be lazy, even though I'm not lazy. I just want time to not work. And as I was, I used AI to optimize my schedule. That was one of the first tasks that I used it for recently. When I did that, one of the pieces of information I fed into it was that I tend to be a workaholic and I'm not great at taking breaks. So I need it to help me schedule that in. And I found that when I did that, I have evenings to myself, I've got half a day Saturday to myself, I have all day Sunday off. And this is a person I'm used to working seven days a week, but I don't think it is, it doesn't put me at my best when I do that. And I'm noticing that now that I'm in this new rhythm, that I show up better, I show up smarter, I'm delegating more to my I have one person that I'm working with as a teammate. I my first 1099 hire was a videographer.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Yeah, I am not great at being on both sides of the camera. I'm not great at editing. So I found somebody who loves doing that. And I said, Hey, would you like to work with me? I have this unique story to tell, and I could use a partner in telling that story. And it's been fabulous as we're working through the structure together. I'm drafting SOPs and I'm doing that for us. But she's excited to take more on, and she's excited to learn business from me, and she's excited to grow and be more expansive in how she's approaching this and to build her business. And so I found a situation where her goals and my goals align, and we can really just add to each other, and it's shockingly exponential for both of us. I am just amazed at that, and it's encouraging me to actually bring on more people into my team for more help because the math isn't one plus one equals two, it's one plus one equals eleven now. Yes, and I can't unknow that.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Oh, and I the thing that comes keeps back into my mind is that how you have trained yourself intentionally to be okay of doing nothing, because we are wired to with the phrase that nobody's going to out-hustle Johnny, kind of kind of phrase, right? And the same way for you, nobody's going to out-hustle Michelle. And then you come in here and you say that after five years and developing systems, and again, you are preaching, and I was like, Come on, give me some more. I was like, How how long did it really take you, four to five years, to train your brain to be okay of doing nothing? Because again, we are so worried that as soon as we sit down on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, it's like, I'm missing something, I gotta do something.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Well, there's this myth that pushing that all the time is somehow gonna get better results, and that's simply not true. It's tough though when you come from a culture where you come from that hustle culture, because that's seen as the norm, and it's violating a norm by going in a different direction. I had to be outside of Wall Street in order to do that. Because the Wall Street culture, in my experience, is a whole hustle culture, and there's, you know, there's FOMO built into that. Fundamentally, in my opinion, hustle culture is based on a scarcity mentality. Part of my deliberateness, part of my consciousness and my mindfulness is I want to live in abundance mentality. If other people can build global businesses, then it's possible to do it. And there are probably smarter ways to do it than the first person who did it. So maybe applying the wisdom at some point might be a smart way to do it. And we're also, again, in an AI time, so we can create these efficiencies, and we haven't maxed out on the possibility of this yet. So there's also this cool window of learning how to be more efficient with automatable things while discovering what's not automatable. You know, I think of AI kind of like a brilliant, unemotional human is another way to think about it. You know, uh, in you know, if we were thinking about it in terms of neurodivergence, that would be like being a psychopath or a sociopath. You know, you can imitate what it is to be human, but you're not really feeling it, right? It's interesting to have a tool like that. It's like this optimized part of humanness, but discovering what makes us really human is what is so interesting about what AI has to offer us. So fine, go ahead, automate all the automatable stuff as far as I'm concerned. Let's see where that leads us in terms of our humanness. And part of being human is being present and being connected with other people and with nature and with the passage of time and with all of these other things. That's part of the reason I make the work that I do is because I speak to all of that in my work, and I find that topic really, really fascinating. So I think we're at an incredibly interesting time where you can be an amazing entrepreneur, you can do incredible things, and you can still be home with your family and your loved ones, and you can still see the world, and you can do you can do it all now.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yes. Uh one of my mantras, one of my core beliefs for for what I'm doing here is that you scale like a machine, you sell like a person, right? Like these two worlds have to live. And it's funny you brought this the the the psychomatics of uh the you know the mindset behind it is like I you often say to my staff and jokingly that I I'm either on something or onto something.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

That's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

I like that. Um, so I yes, you have to express the creative, you have to express the the structure uh in business. And with AI, I think what I tell clients is this, and which I love when clients bring tax questions to me using AI, and it's like, hey, I found this AI, you know, that gave me this answer. Like, all right, cool, how can we apply that to the business, like your situation? And and I often say that chaos plus AI is more chaos, which you implemented AI, like everybody's trying to do now. However, you you first focus on your mission, on your North Star. Hey, this is my purpose, here's my client, so that when you implement AI, which is a multiplier, you can get a better result, right? Because you fix one of the main factors that I'm seeing out there that a lot of people are not doing at first, which is like, I just need to multiply chaos and I'm gonna get a good business. I was like, that's not how the equation works. No.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

No, it's not. And um, Johnny, you'd asked me a question earlier about how do I use AI in my creative process? And I'd like to answer that question um quickly. I use it for research. I have a research-heavy process, particularly in the beginning. And I use it to find good information. And one of the tricks that I use is I check the AIs against each other. That way I have some backup around hallucination risk. So I do use it for research. Right now, I've been really focused on astrophysics and astrology and where those two things overlap. So it's a combination of science and um spirituality and imagination. And where do those things come together? So those are different research pathways that I explore. Other things that I use it for are if there's a technical component that I want to solve quickly. For example, I had a client that wants an artwork for their, I call it their spa, you know, their restroom. I called it their spa. But it's an environment where there's a lot of moisture. So I went on to the AI and I said, you know, I have this, you know, about the kind of work that I do because I have a master prompt. What can I do to finish the work in such a way that it's coated and covered and it won't mold? It's mold resistant because that is going to be a moisture-heavy environment. Um, and how do I do it so that it doesn't change the finish that's currently on the piece? So I'll use it for things like that technical components. I needed to create a stencil yesterday of an image that was six inches by six inches, but I needed it 30 by 40 inches, and I have a regular printer, which is eight and a half by 11. How do I print this out so I make a stencil? So I'll use it for things like that, but I don't use it to actually make my artwork. Everything in my artwork is made by hand.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Oh my goodness, I love those. I really love the how you're using it, how do you make it from beginning to end? And and you brought up the question that we asked before. So I gotta ask the question how what are other things that we have not covered today that that you want to say? Because my goodness, you have so much wisdom for sure we'll bring you back because this has been amazing so far.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Oh, thank you. I would love to come back and talk with you more, Johnny. I feel like we're just getting the conversation started.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

I know, and we are 43 minutes. I was like, oh wow. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

What else that we have not covered? So, do you want to get tactical on you know how you separate and how do you found out and questions that you ask AI on how specific you um you were about energy management, your time management, or do you want to explore more about your art? Like who is your client base, who are you looking for, and your website, and so forth?

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Yes, I think the latter might be the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Sure. Um so um tell me, so tell sure you have, you know, you have um, if I remember right, your your customer base are collectors, right? Yes. Okay. How did you get in the situation and this niche of collectors? Like you said, you didn't have a relationship, right? You didn't have referral partners, you just kind of went in and it was like, here I'm in, here's my art.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

At the very beginning, I would describe the process as pure and utter chaos. It was me throwing spaghetti noodles at the wall and seeing what sticks. There are a lot of different reasons for that. First of all, the artwork that I make is relatively unique. This is not paint, this is all made out of paper, and I layer paper between 10 and 100 layers, and then I carve into the layers to reveal what's underneath. I don't know of any other artists that work quite the way that I do. So I have a completely different artwork. So there's process components of it, and then there's the topical components of it, what I explore intellectually through the work, and the fact that it's abstract. So finding the people that are interested in all of those different pieces has been just a process of me going out and meeting people in different environments and figuring out who resonates with the work. And over time, I have created a body of collectors, and now I have enough that I can look at that and look for patterns. Because in the beginning, you go through the marketing exercise, right? You make your marketing archetypes, and then you attempt to figure out how to connect with those people, and then you eventually ship. So I just recently made a shift in how I'm focusing on finding people that really resonate with what I'm doing. But much like a service business, you have an expertise. So I make fine art, I make masterfully made objects of deep meaning and that are deeply researched. So the question became you know, not just how do I find my people, but who am I?

SPEAKER_00 40:49

So who are you?

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Well, in a service business, right? The people are buying you, you know. You know, I I Johnny, I I'm sure you're a brilliant accountant, but my guess is you're not the only one.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Right. And you may have a market niche, but I imagine you have competitors. So what is it that's unique about you that you bring to the table that's different? Well, what you bring to the table is you. And and your mind and your interests and your background. I've, as you pointed out, I have an unusual career path. You know, I started out doing everything from being an executive assistant and an accounting clerk and a runway model. You know, then I went to school and I was studying political science and history, then I worked at a law firm, you know, I became a chief of staff there, got my MBA, executive recruiter, now I'm an artist, you know. There's this unique patchwork of stuff that is me, and I have interests in ancient and classical traditions, and I have interests in neuroscience and physics, and I also have interest in meditation, and I have an interest in food, and I have an interest in fabric, you know, and so I have this unique sort of smoothie of me. My own.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Yeah, it's kind of the blend and just mix it all up, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Right, right. And you know, everyone has their own sense of humor, and everyone has their own way of thinking about things. And that is what I find a lot of people connect with. So my collectors tend to be people right now that are interested in creative people that are pushing certain types of edges. And there are some edges that I push in my work that are a little bit unique to me and to my work. Also, abstract. Not everybody's into abstract. A lot of people prefer something that looks like something. I like artwork that looks like nothing that you're, I don't want to be told what to look at. So I find a lot of people that look at my work can connect with the feeling that I am expressing through the work. And some of those feelings and ideas are heavily informed by my past, and they're heavily informed by my research, and they're heavily informed by my curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

That makes sense. And in you brought up the fact as you start asking, it's like, who are you, and who this is like, okay, who is Johnny? Right. And then I've been going through that same process right now, especially through the creative work and being social media, being you know, creating the reels and creating the videos and all that. And one of the things I have found that you know, it's like my North Star is not doing taxes because at the end of my career, 30 years from now, I I don't want to be a member of just a well prep, you know, a warehouse full of well-prepared tax returns. Like that's not uh what I want. I want people to succeed. I want business owners and business success to be the norm. And I truly believe that good people should make good more money so they can have do more good things in the world, in the community, for their families, right? It's not the greedy part of the money, it's about what the money allows them to expend of who they are and how they represent that through you know their doings, either by giving and and and changing generational curses and becoming so much more than what you originally made. So one of the coolest things is you mentioned this in the very beginning, and I was like, man, I need to I need to talk to her about this. And I'm glad that uh that I was able to insert this. It's not about the journey, it's not about the end result, it is about who do you become through that journey of becoming that business owner? Because I wholeheartedly believe that I'm a better father, I'm a better husband, I'm a better friend, I'm a better CPA to my clients because I am an entrepreneur. And I will defend that sentence with with teeth and nails and fight, and I will fight anybody on that.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Um Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, I believe said something like this recently. He's I think he said that about 30% of people are wired to be entrepreneurs. And this is his his idea. The rest of people are can be brilliant employees, but not everybody is wired for the risk profile of an entrepreneur. I lived in corporate for several decades. We'll just say that. I was a corporate creature for many decades. Then I came over to entrepreneurship and I had to work through a lot of discomfort, a lot of fears. Um but then I turned some corner and realized this is who I was born to be. My life is entirely a life of service. Everything I do is to be the best that I can be, so I can be of service to others. And the best and highest use of me is to make art and be an entrepreneur. That is what I am wired to do. So I find that by going towards that, despite the discomfort, despite any fear or doubt or anything that I have to overcome, my core driver is because I get to be the best me, and I get to help others through that. So my life, I don't like help people, and the I mean I help people, but I don't think about it like I'm here to help people. I'm here to be the best person that I can be. And a byproduct of that is that I help people. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yes, it does. And and the in is the videographer that you're working right now, and she's he or she is asking you questions about business and how you run your business. Like you would have never had that relationship if you were not an entrepreneur, and you didn't you didn't realize that you needed someone to help you on the air of the business, that you are now pouring a little bit of Michelle onto them, and it's like, hey, here's how I do it. It might not be right, it might not be wrong, but at least here's what has worked for me, and it might work for you too.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

I'm a builder. I'm a I'm a I'm a problem. Give me the hardest problem, the hardest, most unsolvable problem, and I'll solve it. And if you give me a toothpick, some duct tape, and a week, I'll build you an empire. That's how I'm wired. That's what I'm wired to do. And for for so long, I was trying to do what other people defined as, you know, success or socially acceptable. And I kept trying to push me that was the square pagan to the round hole for for so long. And I learned a lot during that time. I know it must sound like I'm complaining, and I'm really not. Like I had the most incredible mentors and the most incredible experiences and training in my corporate life. But I just got to a point where I knew that that just wasn't where I belonged. And I needed to go do something else. And it's incredible to even have this conversation with you, Johnny, because this person that's in front of you, the person that I have become in this journey, is able to have this conversation with you because I made that decision on that day when I made that piece and I hit that last stroke, and I sat back and I knew that this was what I was gonna do. And has it been easy? No, not even a little bit easy, but it's getting easier, and I'm hitting my I've been hitting my stride these last few years. And you know, it doesn't you just get newer problems, you get different problems, right? As you go along. But you feel excited about that as opposed to afraid of that. You welcome it. You're like, yeah, I've got some new problems. This is cool. I'm gonna grow some more. And that's amazing to look at life through that lens of everything that happens happens for a reason, and I am here for it.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yes, yes, you are, and for everybody that is listening, you should take a note of this. I was talking to someone last week about this, and it correlates exactly what you just said, and it's this in the beginning, and that hustle culture will tell you that is the push mentality, right? It's the push motivation. It's like you just have to grind it and you grind it. Again, I grinded from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. for five years here in the pantry office, right? And to build my CPA firm. But then you get to a point where you need pool motivation, which is like you have your North Star, I know where I'm going, I know my purpose, I know I have become, I need to become a different person, or I need to learn something different, or I have to move my standards a little higher to get to where I wanted to be. And you cannot do that unless you know where you're going. And that pool, that motivational pool of your North Star is going to help you go through those hard moments because yes, it's not easy to be an entrepreneur. What do you think it is? That uh, you know, you just start create an LOC and go live on the beach. Like that's not how it works.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

That'd be nice. Right. But actually, I'd probably get bored, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

I'm bored. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Yeah. I mean, like sitting on the beach sounds like fun for a week or two, and and then I start wondering how this thing over here works, and I've got to go dig into that, and I get really focused on learning something, something new. Yeah, it's an incredible, it's an incredible experience. And if it's for you, it's for you. You know, it's absolutely for you. I've never felt more alive, I've never felt more motivated and clear and excited. You know, every day I get to get up and create every day.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

And your clients feel that too. And if they feel that energy from you, right? That three, you know, two, three years ago, Michelle and Michelle today, and how this the energy that you are pressing. Again, I can feel the energy virtually right now. I can't imagine being right next to you.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Oh, Johnny, thank you. That is that is really nice to hear. It's it's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing. I feel so blessed to be able to do what I do. It's it's a real gift, and it's been an honor to be here with you today, Johnny. This is an incredible conversation. I am really excited after having this chat with you. I'm feeling motivated.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

Do it.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

Um, last question. And I have now have not realized this for the past three podcast interviews that I've done that this question really hits deep on the interviewee. So, Michelle, if you had to go back to the Michelle right before she had COVID and she was in the middle of it, what would you tell her that you know now?

SPEAKER_01 53:14

Okay, I would say there is a point to all of this, it's worth it. Keep going. That was what I would say to myself. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

That's really wild.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Michelle, this was amazing. I have no words to describe besides just beautiful. I love our conversation. Uh, and but I want to know, I want the uh people that are listening and watching to this right now to know more about you. Where do they can find out about you online, social media, your website?

SPEAKER_01 53:54

Sure. So um, if you want to really follow along with me in the studio and me as I'm creating, Instagram is the best place, which is at Michelle BondsArt, or my website, which is Michellebonds.com.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Okay, we will put the the exact links in the show notes. Michelle, one more time. Thank you so much for having and spending the time with me today, and and just going through business acumen to finding out who you are, to implementing AI, and then going back in the past and say, we can do this. Just there's a there's a moment in life that this is part of it, and you're going to learn from it. Beautiful. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

Johnny, it's been a delight to be here. Thank you so much for sharing this time with me.