Unbranded newsletter 1: we don't have to choose
TLDR Outline:
I’m sending you an unbranded, non-promotional email because I want to connect. And it’s my birthday*.
Creative freedom vs making money: I’ve been exploring this all my life. I really don’t think we have to choose.
How can we feed our stomachs/families and feed our souls? We find ways to craft our jobs or businesses as vehicles for creativity and self-actualization. Don’t worry, I’ll explain.
I’ll be writing to you once per month in the hopes it helps, inspires or entertains. I hope you’ll stick around.
Audio: Click here to listen via audio (released under the ArtistCEO podcast)
Text:
Hi! Some of you know me as an actor/performer/artist, some of you know me as a brand namer, and some of you know me as an ArtistCEO. I am all of those things, and more of course.
But I am writing you today as just me.
“Shannon? Refrain from branding?!”
Your surprise is warranted. I am keen on cultivating truth in branding, and finding ways to use branding as a tool for discovery, actualization, even art and expression. It’s true: I do have a personal brand.
But branding is not the point of this letter.
I have been building a brand agency for over a decade, and while I am most assuredly obsessed with the power and craft of identity creation, I’m also fucking tired of everything having to be branded. Including my person.
Likewise, I’m a little tired of my art having to be Art, and always appearing on a stage, page, or screen.
Don’t get me wrong: companies need brands. Sometimes even people need brands! Brands are incredible tools of communication.
Likewise, Traditional Art mediums exist for a reason.The frame and context helps us see it as intentional - as Art!
But what adhering to a brand or a particular frame doesn’t always allow for is a more nuanced expression of self. I don’t want to be “on brand” or “making art” if it means being boxed in beyond healthy creative restraints.
I want to be free, yo.
Plus, allowing for an undefined, constantly shifting sense of identity is a guilty pleasure of mine. Like buying too many day planners or hot-tubbing while on conference calls.
Thus, here, I choose to remain unbranded.
To be frank, I’m writing you from a place of completeness. I turn 40 today*. And this strange feeling heretofore unfelt is dawning on me: contentment.
Out of habit my mind goes in search of what to fix, what to improve, what goal it will next pursue. But everything it retrieves falls apart upon deeper inspection. All my complaints, ambitions and desires seem charming, beautiful, valid… but fundamentally empty.
I see that my life truly lacks nothing.
I ask myself: what do I want to prioritize for the next 40 years of my life?
It’s not: the picture I had in my head at 20 or 30, fueled by ambition, gold stars and disco lights.
It is: the picture now emerging: one of calm, creativity, connection, curiosity. Being of service, easefully.
I realize I want to spend the rest of my life cultivating my ability to simply enjoy my life.
Can I tell you a story?
When I was a little girl, I played dress up and wrote short fiction stories and bound them all professional-like with my picture on the back cover and an “author’s bio.” I talked a lot and was often seen cartwheeling. I choreographed many trampoline routines to Disney songs. I read poems out loud to the wind and whispered secrets to flowers and fell in love with bugs. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I said a poet and teacher and ARTIST.
I loved to stare out the window and imagine that I was one with the stars and the moon and the endless, infinite sky.
And then the inevitable accretion of unspoken expectations by family and society began.
In other words: I had to grow up.
While a gradual process, it was marked by one moment in particular.
At 17 years old, when my high school career counselor asked what I wanted to study, I said in all earnestness: “Mass Communications. Because it’s marketable.”
I went to college and worked hard and got a job and worked harder, maybe too hard, and was diagnosed with Bipolar II and, devastatingly, lost my only sibling to similar struggles. I learned about the mental illness in my family history and in my culture at large.
So much efforting. Not enough time for poems.
I still longed to whisper to stars but saw what kind of livelihoods artists made in our society. I saw what happened to people who fell through the cracks and I remembered what happened to my brother.
I saw that stability was important, whether emotional or financial. I learned about the paradox of money. That:
$ = freedom but also $ = giving up freedom
In pursuit of resolving this paradox, I started a business and with the help of many wonderful souls grew it from an idea into a seven-figure business.
This business gave me freedom, and freedom it also took away.
While I was (and am) grateful for the opportunities my career afforded, let’s be real: bootstrapping a business by naming backend cloud server technologies (and eventually: writing performance assessments and learning about HR compliance protocol) is probably not the dream my 17-year-old had in mind.
And certainly not the dream my 7-year-old had in mind.
HOWEVER: putting in the grunt work of building a business but never losing touch with my creative impulses allowed me to learn that both my 7-year-old and 17-year-old selves were right:
It’s important to talk to the infinite sky, AND it’s also important to create financial stability.
And so, I continue to listen to my creative instincts as I approach my business, and life.
I’m still on a mission to see how business, creativity, and health can live in harmony -- and, in fact, catalyze each other.
We really don’t have to choose between being a creative OR making money, nor do we have to choose between being in business OR being in touch with our creative soul. We really don’t.
We can absolutely, positively do both.
It’s not always easy, but I found it is possible to feed your inner artist AND save for retirement. It takes time, imagination, courage, and -- I’m going to say it -- compromise.
This what I’ll be writing about: my learnings found on the journey toward creative, professional and spiritual fulfillment in the hopes you find it helpful, inspiring or entertaining.
If you stick with me, you can expect crafted writings on what I’m exploring these days:
The value of integrating art/creativity into business, & relating to business as works of art
Businesses & our jobs as vehicles for self-actualization—and a call to new entrepreneurs and experienced leaders alike to think about how to create/run successful businesses for this purpose
How to lead teams, manage brands and build thriving businesses without losing your creative soul
Identity, selfhood, and how we craft our public image—when to craft it out of truth and when to say ‘peace out’ (I’m looking at you, social media)
Mental health in the modern working world—how do we actually cultivate the essential skills of resilience and self-care in a world that will suck us dry if we let it?
Creative inspirations and expressions: yours, mine, others
Updates on my experiences with integrating all of this in pursuit of creating a life of sublime wholeness
I hope you’ll join me.
No hard feelings if you want to unsubscribe.
I’ll be posting here all things as I create them.
*my birthday was actually Monday, but I decided to send out my newsletter today so I could spend the day enjoying my life. I think I made the right choice.
