Deborah Johnson, Goals for Your Life

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Mark (: 00:03

Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And, you know, we, creative practitioners are constantly developing our craft we are refining our personal brand. But today we wanna take particular attention to a creative, perhaps mid-career midlife, and think about what are the next steps to perhaps not just refining, but reinventing the craft and personal brand. And we've got an expert in that regard and someone who can share their experience and their insights. My guest is Deborah Johnson. Deborah, welcome to the show.

Deborah (: 00:38

Thank you so much, Mark. I'm looking forward to our conversation. It's I always enjoy these.

Mark (: 00:44

Yes. Well, Deborah's an international award-winning musician-composer. She's Grammy-nominated in many categories, but she's also an author and a speaker and she's got some good books under her belt that also capture a lot of these experiences. And so Deborah, as would kick things off, speaking to that creative person, maybe a mid-career or midlife, what are some of the unique challenges or steps that you find artists in this regard need to face?

Deborah (: 01:17

Well, the creativity bug never quits. So you just have to decide how to channel that. I think at this point, I have a number of different areas that I'm still working on because I'll never quit creating hopefully. Unless the mind goes, but it just becomes a part of life and you have to decide what you want your life to look like and at the pace and everything else. And I still keep a very swift pace, but I have also decided in the areas in which to spend more time and time is very valuable and to keep the creative juices going. So I've at this point, I think it's important to step back and to see exactly where you are. And I have one of my programs, this is called hero mountain summit, but I have leading up to that is getting out of your roundabout. And so and if you're in the middle of a roundabout, which many people right now are, especially after the two years that we've just experienced two and a half now or three almost, but we've experienced so much upheaval and like, where is a place now for creativity and live performance and, all of these things that are going on and people have found a way to reinvent and that's getting out of that roundabout.

Mark (: 02:42

I love that analogy. The visual is really strong to say, yes, I'm just going around in circles. I gotta get outta here sometime, somewhere. But you know, and you certainly, the gig economy is in every sector of the marketplace, but particularly as we think creatives, you know, freelancers contractors, 1099ers, we all are in this gig economy. And why does that present a unique challenge?

Deborah (: 03:12

Well, I think it does because your last gig is your last gig. Unless you are constantly putting things forward. And so, it's very important. Your network is extremely important. In fact, I still work with the Disney corporation. I'm working there today. I've been working for the last couple of weeks, and the reason, I have done this for over 25 years, is it's not my main gig, but it's one of those things. I'm one of their top subs. And so it's one of those things in my list of things that I can do and when I'm available to do, and I love it. It's a great, great gig, but again, you've got to develop the actual business plan. What are your residuals like as an artist? What are the products that you're putting out? Does it help you move your business ahead? And that's one of the things that I didn't learn enough of when I went through even graduate school and I was teaching, I've taught all levels, but I didn't really learn as much business as I needed to learn. I think establishing the business part and, the arms of your business, and what's gonna actually generate the most money and doing that analyzation not only the most money but what's the most satisfaction to you? What do you love to do? And how can you develop that further? And what's gonna actually pay off

Mark (: 04:32

Yeah. You think about that business side of creativity, the pricing, the contracts, the negotiation, these are like real-world things. Aren't they,

Deborah (: 04:43

They definitely are. And I just kinda learned, I mean, I, I looked online as much as I could back when I finished graduate school, of course, there wasn't an online, we had to look it up and go to the archives of everything. That dates me a bit. But you still find out you still, figure it out. You have to study, you have to see what's out there. I learned how to do contracts by studying contracts, by being a part of organizations, of writers, and organizations, I've studied all of those to be able to put together my own contracts. I've been an independent contractor. I've signed with agents, but never an exclusive. So I've done a lot of work on that. And the contracts are their letters of agreement pretty much, but you've got to have those because you forget all of those details or there may be something you show up to a venue and you're doing a large stage show and they don't have the right type of sound or they don't have the monitors. You've got to, got to study those, all of those details and make sure those are very, very clear. You don't have to be demanding, but just to make sure they're very clear on what your needs are to do the best performance or, this crosses over to speaking, it crosses over to writing everything else that I'm doing. It's, it's very, very similar it's stage work.

Mark (: 06:05

And you know, on the one hand, you say, well, it comes across as Premadona rockstar, take all the brown M&Ms out of my dressing room. On the other hand, what you're talking about logistically I love that on your speaking website, you say, this is the kind of microphone I need, right. I need my piano at this height so I can stand and play. And again, it's logistics. It's practical. It's not a demand at all. Is it?

Deborah (: 06:32

It comes from experience Mark.

Mark (: 06:36

Yes. When the piano is down at your knees.

Deborah (: 06:40

You get someplace and they don't know what a certain attachment is. And you've got to be very, very clear. I have been in venues, of course, because I've been in the performing arts as well. I've loved working with performing arts organizations. I've loved that because you're dealing with the community and they bring in these wonderful audiences. They just love you. But sometimes you're dealing with venues that are in huge, wonderful school auditories but they put the students on your sound and there's not always a professional team. So you have to educate them. You have to know, what a direct box is. And I've flown out bands with me too. And they're always wonderful professionals. And I still remember one of my keyboard players, Rich Kolachi and there was a student that says what's a direct box.

Deborah (: 07:35

And he told me I'll handle it. And so it was like, oh, I hired the right person I had. And we were great. We were wonderful. You have to hire the right team. There's a lot to this, a lot to business that that's a part of this whole big picture. And it's not just being a primadonna. It is the ability to give your best. You need to be able to focus on that audience. And if you can't hear on stage, I've been in pretty much every situation, it's tough, you're concentrating so hard that you can't give your best. So that's really what you are trying to do with all of these agreements is to be able to give your best and to be able to show up early enough that you can provide a great experience for everyone involved, including yourself.

Mark (: 08:28

Well, and you've talked about some of these supporting cast if I could call them that. You know, that we surround ourselves, I think the image of the solo, creative or the performer, you know, getting it, all, doing it all, but the team from the agents and the bookers and the negotiators to the sound people and you know, logistics and everything in between,

Deborah (: 08:52

Right. It is. And when you mentioned agents and managers, it's still the artist's responsibility to promote. It's just like signing a book deal. It's signing an album deal. They'll do a certain amount, but it's still your job as an artist to learn how to promote and how to market, and all of that. That's not done. You don't just hand that over. And that used to be the case to where you think, oh, okay. I got the all-elusive record deal way back when, But it's a lot of work still ahead. It's fun. But you really have to constantly be studying and figure out what's working. I was just on a, a program yesterday that I was listening to a podcast and I'm part of the national speakers association.

Deborah (: 09:46

I was president of one of their chapters a couple of years ago and part of the national group. And there was information on LinkedIn on the new, all sorts of new things that are going on. And this is a big contact area for booking and for professional organizations. But you have to constantly keep up with what's going on as well as always own your own land, always own your own newsletter, and your own property on your website. All of that is important. So there's a lot to business and it's fun, but you have to, you have to be ready for that as an entrepreneur.

Mark (: 10:25

And certainly Deborah, I compliment you, first of all, you exude quite a bit of confidence that certainly comes with all these experiences, and perhaps the up and coming creative or the performer musician, what have, you would look at someone in their mid-career and say, well, they have made it so to speak. They've experienced it. They have all the confidence, I, as a younger creative, perhaps, don't have that yet. Isn't there still that little voice though, in the back, every time. I know every time I turn on the microphone, it's like, I hope this goes, well.

Deborah (: 11:05

I know. Or like, is anybody gonna really know?

Deborah (: 11:09

Yeah, there's that imposter syndrome always. And that does not end it doesn't. I have to, I journal quite a bit that's I mean, and I don't journal long. I don't go through pages. I mean, I might write a line or two, and this is what I encourage people to do that are a part of any of my programs, but that you've gotta get those thoughts out, but those little negative, those little voices that come and, oh, okay, are you really good enough? Are you really gonna, can you really help people? Can you really do this anymore? Can you really play for like, holy, can you really perform that? Or can you really, deliver enough transformational content to help this organization, those little voices never end. And so you have to realize they're gonna be there first of all.

Deborah (: 11:56

But also and I use an illustration in my keynote speech, you have to push those away as well. You have to push the crowd noise away, you have to silence it. That might be the voices in your head. It might be the naysayers that are just saying, what are you doing? It might be a parent saying you really wanna go in the arts, those sort of things, you know, which, could be the case in some situations or, or a friend there's a lot of people that... I was just in South Africa, actually the last, it was a wonderful, wonderful trip by the way. And I'm just, now I'm finally, I think, over the jet lag, but and I've had work all these days coming back, but I, I was able to talk to a high school class.

Deborah (: 12:45

And it was interesting because it was wanting to be a doctor. There was wanting to be a, there were a couple of different things and I was introduced and I said, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. And there was nobody that wanted to be an entrepreneur or one going into the arts. And I said, you have to know the business and you've gotta work extremely hard. And it was like these big eyes, like thinking what is an entrepreneur. But I think that's the reality people come to when they think of finally pursuing their dream and, and they're thinking, whoa, I didn't know, there'd be this much work ahead. And those voices that keep coming.

Mark (: 13:23

Well, you've certainly we've talked about music and performing arts, but you've also expressed your creativity in a five-book. I mean, that's quite a bookshelf. So congratulations on that. And your most recent one, the summit, what's the story behind the summit,

Deborah (: 13:40

The summit. It was not an easy book to write because I just happened to have a couple here. It's an allegory. Because of the book before this, I go through hero mountain, which is my women at half times, is a great book. But the allegory is a story within a story. And I wanted to write a story, a simple story. It's not that long of a book. If you listen to the audiobook, it's about six and a half hours. And I was able to record that because I've got the studio but it's all about the character, Mallory, her name, original name Mallory means not good enough or ill-fated is what it means. And it has to change for her to get to her summit. And it changes to Andreette, which means strong and courageous one, but she has to go through all these little different lands.

Deborah (: 14:34

And in fact, I just had on my bench here, I made maps to go along with this, and you can see this online, on my website, and you can see the maps in the books book, as well as you get the print. And you can have access to some of this online if you get the book. But she has to go through all of these different lands and overcome some of those, the language she has to overcome herself doubt she has to take risks. So all of these things are involved in getting to her summit. There are real business principles in the book, but it's just a sweet little story that you read of someone's journey through this kind of magical journey.

Deborah (: 15:20

You know, it's not quite like the Harry Potter series because it's not nearly that long. Oh my gosh. Although I've read through all of those books, I love them, but, it's that magical journey that she has to go through, these different, you know, lands and such. But the style is music factory. Okay. So there are these different clones of, people taking speeches and it goes through some of the social media circuses. So there are some of these things that she has to pass through to even get to her summit and we all do. So it gives that nice little illustration to where you can identify with something and the different characters that are trying to pull her down.

Mark (: 16:15

It's a nice way to kind of tell the story and teach the lessons without just saying here are the five bullet points.

Deborah (: 16:22

Exactly. I do that enough in other things, but I love the creativity and I went ahead and did live streams chapter by chapter going through little summaries, but you can read a lot online as well. It's on Amazon, it's all versions. I think it's important to provide as many opportunities for people to grow in different ways and in creative ways as possible.

Mark (: 16:46

. And what were some of the similarities and differences between writing music, composing a score, and writing this book, especially as an allegory

Deborah (: 17:00

Well, writing is rewriting first of all, and you have to decide at some point to finish. Writing, this allegory was most like what I had to go through in writing the scripts, and the books for my musicals, because I've written three musicals. And to be able to think about the characters and what the characters were feeling and when something doesn't go well, I've produced two of them on a world premiere stage. And when something doesn't go well with those actors, they let you know, and the directors let you know, and you are up as the writer up all night, writing enough fresh scenes to make sure that it's gonna work for those characters. And this was similar in that way and the type of rewriting that I had to do and the story that I had to develop. And I think we learn with every project that we do.

Deborah (: 17:58

And it was another level for me to have to learn and to scale it down. It's hard, was it Mark Twain that said that, you can write an hour speech and give them 10 minutes. But if you want it down to 10 minutes, you're gonna have to give three or six hours, whatever it's outta that quote. But, it's hard to because music theater, they call it killing your babies. It's hard, which is horrible. It's the first time I heard that cause I have kids, but, but it really is hard to say, you know what? You don't really need this whole page or this whole section, you know, you've already said that in a different way or, and musicals, you don't really need that song or you don't need that scene.

Deborah (: 18:45

It's like, oh no, but I loved that song. Do you know? So those are those things that we all as creatives, anybody listening to this if you're a creative, you understand that. And how hard that is. Well, it's the same thing with writing books. Sometimes I get through books and then they lose me. A lot of them do about halfway through or three and I'm thinking they didn't finish. They didn't stick it out to the end. And I did a live reading of this last book of my summit. And I've never done that before. That's what you always do with musicals. And after we finished, it took three days to go through. And I had people here, I fed them lunch, I did everything. And I noticed the end, it didn't end strong enough. That was another step I needed to go back and I thought I was done. I was so excited. I'm done. I can do a reading. No, I wasn't done yet. because I needed to put the personality with it and I needed to put that actual emphasis at the end. So part of that is, that writing is rewriting and you need to finish it, but you have to be willing to put the work in to finish it as well. I had to go back emotionally and say, okay, I gotta get back to this. I've got to make some revisions.

Mark (: 20:09

Yeah, we gotta definitely stay open to that. And what about the other side of that coin? There are a lot of people who have been writing and rewriting and refining. I knew a guy who was editing a book for like 10 years now. I'm just on my edits. I'm refining. When, when do you feel that you know, it's done, you know, we have this launch, the work into the world, it's time to hit the send button, whatever it is.

Deborah (: 20:37

I work a lot on self-imposed deadlines and I really believe in those I've put out an actual timer for people. It's only like a minute timer, but it's how I've worked in my life. Now you can always extend that a little bit, if you need to, which I've had to do, but you still have a deadline to get it done. And I've known people that have had those great record contracts and they've never finished their first album because it's not perfect enough, which is a shame and people throw away some of the opportunities because they're not, they're not willing to risk, to put out what they have. Sometimes it takes going back and working on it some more. But at some point, you have to get out.

Deborah (: 21:33

It's the same thing. Coming back to the roundabout. At some point you get perspective. When I was rewriting the end of my book, the summit, when I decided to do that I hired in another editor and to help me just refine that I needed a different perspective and that's the second point of our roundabout, but then I had to be willing also to push it out and to get out of that. So you have to be able to emotionally get to a point of saying, you know, it may not be perfect, but it's done, and done is better than perfect. I have heard story after story, after story to say, you know what? I never finished and I regret it now or I never continued doing this. And I just wish I had or I didn't submit my piece in time for a competition because I was still working on

Mark (: 22:33

It. And the missed deadline,

Deborah (: 22:35

The missed deadlines, because done is better than perfect.

Mark (: 22:41

Oh, so good. Well, Deborah, before I get too far, I wanna make sure people know how to connect with you and learn more about your work and follow you. Where can we find you?

Deborah (: 22:50

Oh, well thank you so much. I have a number of websites. I'm hoping not to confuse people but I am a keynote speaker, Deborahjohnsonspeaker.com, but you can get my newsletter as the best way to really stay in touch with me. I don't spam people. I have an article coming once a week and of course, I have a podcast as well, women at halftime, but goals for your life altogether, goalsforyourlife.com/newsletter. And you'll get the programs that I have coming up. I'm starting my learn music again. And that's another part of creativity, but I had to decide how much time I wanted to spend on that. So it's not a whole other program it's using so much of the, what I have and so much of my experience. And you can always find lots of music on DJworksmusic.com. That's I've had that website for a very long time and has tons of music. It's got links to my YouTube. We've got a huge YouTube channel and I love making those videos of songs and a lot of sheet music as well. You can find a lot of my sheet music online and immediate downloads. Now I'm making some of my MP3 tracks available. I've not put those on NFTs yet. I've made them just available. So I don't have multiple mixes. Like some people,

Mark (: 24:11

There you go. I don't have to get my crypto out. And...

Deborah (: 24:14

Yes, I know. So I keep studying that. I've just not taken that leap yet, so...

Mark (: 24:21

Well, but that's so many great resources we'll sort of put all of those in the show notes. So our listers can find them, Deborah, I'm glad you brought up this emphasis on women at halftime. We've been talking about mid-career midlife, which by definition says, we're not done. There's still another half of the game left

Deborah (: 24:43

And, maybe more.

Mark (: 24:45

Yes. What did you see ahead for you? What are you looking towards?

Deborah (: 24:49

Well, I wanna keep writing and part of my plan at this point in my life is to be able to work more remotely. So I'm able to live stream, depending on the internet where I'm at, but I will continue putting on my podcast, continue putting on my programs. I don't work a lot with individual coaching though. I have my hero mountain summit. I offer that twice a year to individuals it's a five-month program. And then I speak and have online programs for people. So, I am able to do connection remotely. I think the online it really opened it up even more with our shutdowns. But that's what my plan has been because when you lose both sides, I've been married for a number of years. My husband is on actually my podcast with me once a month, by the way. So, which is really fun. We've been married a lot of years, and raised three sons. And so we have a lot of stories, but to be able to travel with him right now, we lost both parents, both sides within the last five years. And you realize there are these windows of time and I've traveled a lot, but I wanted to be able to travel with my husband as well on some of these trips that maybe weren't on my bucket list. South Africa was not on my bucket list, but oh my gosh,

Mark (: 26:09

What an experience. Yeah,

Deborah (: 26:11

It was. And, people come outta the woodwork. When I tell 'em I've gone to South Africa, oh, I've been, oh, I wanna go back. And it was like, well, I never even thought about going. I knew friends that had gone, but, but it was what it does is it opens up Mark. It opens up even more creativity. And to be able to experience people to be able to experience those schools with the student's experience, being out and finding the different sort of creativity in animals. Oh my gosh. Just like the different types of antelopes, the types of this were true creativity of being able to put all this stuff together. So it opens up your mind. And so that's really, it gives me more fuel to keep being creative at this point. And so this is what my master plan has been. It's a lot of work, to be honest, to be able to work remotely is a lot of work you have to schedule, you have to be very organized, which is not always my greatest gift, but I've learned I've got all sorts of tools to help me. And I don't have a lot of assistance. I have a lot of tools to help me. So that's, what the plan is ahead. I would like to do three in this sequel of the summit. But that will come in time as when it's ready.

Mark (: 27:32

Yeah. Well, terrific. It sounds like you've got a lot going on as often creative people do. We all have our various ventures don't we somehow. Well, my guest has been Deborah Johnson. She's been up for a lot of Grammy awards, but even more, she's actually published and performed and staged her production. So it's one thing to just create for yourself, together, just as real to be here it world. Thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. And listeners we've stamped our creative passport in Southern California today, but we've been from Vancouver to Stockholm. We've been from New York to LA.

Deborah (: 28:10

Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark (: 28:11

Yes, indeed. Well, we've been traveling to find out what creative practitioners how they get inspired, and how they organize their ideas. And most of all, as we've talked about today, gaining the confidence and the connections to launch our work in the world. So come back again next time and we'll continue to unlock your world of creativity bye for now.