THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello, this is your host artists, Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode number 43 of The Inspiration Place Podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. Today I’ve invited a performance coach who works with Olympic athletes and C-suite level entrepreneurs on improving their mental game. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know that it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out in your creative journey or have been at it for a long time, we all have to work on our mindset to get out of our own way.
So in this episode, you’ll discover how to tap into your imagination to unleash new versions of ourselves, how to use an alter ego to overcome imposter syndrome, stagefright and other adult emotional baggage, and why this isn’t the same as faking it until you make it. But before we bring on today’s guest, I wanted to tell you about how you can work with me to grow your creative business. Many of you know, I sell my fine art and I teach online art classes, but I also work with a select few business owners to coach them on how to grow their art businesses.
If you want to profit from your passion, whether that’s still a side hustle or you’ve been at it for a while and want to discover my proven strategies for booking high end commissions, email marketing and more, I would love to help you. To book your free discovery call, all you need to do is go to schulmanart.com/biz, that’s B I Z. Tell me about yourself. I can’t wait to talk to you. All right. Now, back to our show, I am thrilled to introduce today’s guest. He’s a performance coach and mental game strategist for ambitious entrepreneurs, athletes and leaders who want to achieve wildly outrageous goals.
He’s helped clients reach the Olympic podium, although he’s not going to tell us which ones, built multimillion dollar companies and established brands that have become internationally known. He’s owned his sports science training company for over 20 years and his signature performance system, 90 Day Year has been named the world’s top leadership and skill development program, twice. Today’s guest is also the author of Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform your Life. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Todd Herman.
Todd Herman:
This is great because it’s like me going back in time. I was a 13 when I won a art scholarship.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, you’re serious?
Todd Herman:
Yeah. I’m nowhere near the level of skill that you and your students would be, but it was one of my first passions.
Miriam Schulman:
I didn’t know that. What kind of art did you do?
Todd Herman:
Cartoon stuff, but a lot of landscapes, I grew up on a big farm and ranch. So I loved doing that depth of field type stuff, so not painting, but more drawing stuff.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s awesome. I actually became an artist after, well, first my hedge fund crashed and burned LTCM, and then I was considering going back to work and then 9/11 happened. So I was like, “No.”
Todd Herman:
Amazing.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Not happening.
Todd Herman:
Just as an aside, you don’t look like you could be old enough to be working at a hedge fund back in 2001.
Miriam Schulman:
Thank you so much. I was working in a hedge fund in ’98, So, I’m 50.
Todd Herman:
No way.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. So this year when I turned 50, I actually went to buy weirder glasses. I decided that’s what 50 year olds do, we get the weirdest glass possible?
Todd Herman:
Well, maybe we’ll talk about the power of glasses today on the show.
Miriam Schulman:
We will, let’s dive right in.
Todd Herman:
Let’s do it.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. So let’s talk about alter ego and let’s start with an obvious one. Clark Kent and Superman.
Todd Herman:
Well, I’ve stood on stages for 16 years talking about this idea of alter egos. And I always pose the question of who is the alter ego? Is it Superman or is it Clark Kent? Because most people think the alter ego would be the super version of the person. Everyone raises their hand, they’re like, “Oh, Superman, Superman.” And I said, “Well, if you think about it, it’s not. Clark Kent is actually his alter ego that he uses so that he can walk around in society, to be accepted in the mild mannered version of himself and all that.” But the real version of that individual is Superman. And so my contention to people all the time, because again, I live inside, in between the six inches of people’s ears is that most people are walking around as Clark Kent’s or the female version of that. They’re hiding their superpowers because of the many, many reasons that ends up stopping people from getting out there as their absolute, most heroic self.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s what I really liked about your book. I had been introduced with the whole idea of alter ego because, well actually from you, because I’ve been following you for a while, and we’ll talk about that in a moment. But what I didn’t understand until I read your book is how the alter ego, it’s not that you’re creating this fake version of yourself. It’s like, this is the real version of yourself. What’s fake is that version of yourself that shows up and screws up because you got in your head.
Todd Herman:
We’ve been living in a society where there are a lot of paradigms that people have sort of accepted as the normal operating system for what it means to be a human being. One of them is having a single identity or a single self there’s even terms that are out there. The one that’s very popular right now is, just be your authentic self. And it sounds like a beautiful idea and the intent behind it, isn’t to mislead, but me, because I live in the nuance of understanding language and how it really shapes people, it’s a false and a dangerous concept because there is no such thing as the authentic self. It doesn’t exist and it couldn’t exist because we as human beings, we have one body that we’re operating inside of, but we have many selves and many identities based on the fields of play that we participate on, the roles that we have in life.
And so there’s many selves. And for the longest time, the psychology of the world had trotted out this idea that people who operated with a single self or a single identity were the most healthy, mentally. And that is categorically proven to be false. And now the entire psychology world, which over the last nine years has had some cataclysmic shifts that have happened inside of it that have happened below the surface of society. But three of the major principles to current modern day psychology world had been founded upon, been proven to be categorically false. Two studies that can’t be replicated, and then the other one, which is the single self theory, and now they’ve completely reversed tracks and said that the people who now see themselves as having many selves, many identities are the healthiest mentally. And when you think about it just in life, if Miriam, you only identified yourself as an entrepreneur and that’s my identity and that’s all I am is this entrepreneur.
Miriam Schulman:
Then I wouldn’t be able to paint.
Todd Herman:
Well, not only that, but maybe it’s like, “Oh, I paint because my business needs it, but I’m actually an entrepreneur.” But the other side of that is that if your business starts to- Something happens, circumstance, situation, you start to get unhealthy and now your business starts to suffer. Well, if you’re only an entrepreneur, then of course you’re going to be going into a depressive state because your entire identity is lost because of that. I bring all this up because one idea that cannot be lost in life is that our greatest gift, our real super power that we have as human beings is our creative imagination. It’s the thing that makes us unique on this planet. And me as someone who operates in the mental game world, there’s a lot of self-help stuff out there, leadership and personal development ideas that are not based in truth or fact.
Whereas I like to find existing ideas that are already built into the human psyche and leverage those things to help people succeed. And so, because the creative imagination is our great superpower as human beings, because nothing else on the planet has that, nothing else on the planet creates story and narrative in our brains, we do that. We can create a heaven from hell or a hell from heaven. We get to choose how we want to show up. And so an alter ego and that concept which is, every human being that’s listening to this podcast, today, tomorrow and five years from now has already used this. That’s the beautiful thing about this.
Miriam Schulman:
These are things that children have been doing forever, except now I’m starting to get worried about the future generations. But when we did our dramatic play, we played house. I used to play with a tape recorder with my friends, we would make radio shows. It’s so funny how that’s what I’m doing.
Todd Herman:
I know.
Miriam Schulman:
Right? But all these dramatic plays are creating these roles for ourselves. And that’s what you’re talking about is that we’re multifaceted people. We have different roles that we go into. So a great story in your book is about people who maybe have trouble disconnecting from their day role when they come home and they have to be a dad.
Todd Herman:
In my role in business, because I’m working with, whether it’s type A achievers or people that are very much sitting at the top of their ecosystem, whether it’s professional sports and they’re the people that you see on ESPN during the highlight reels of the night, those are people I work with and they’re living in a demand performance, high stress environment. And so they’re typically challenging personalities as well. And so I’m a challenger personality. I need to break through some of these people because a lot of them have nothing but yes people around them. Well, that’s the last thing that I am, if I’ve been flexing that muscle all day long of being a challenger personality and I like ruminating on the Rubik’s cubes of problems so that I can shape a new paradigm and breakthrough for people, different ideas, that’s where the alter ego effect came from.
The last thing my children want when I go home is for me to be a challenger personality and challenge them on paradigms. No, what they want is a fun and playful and a more gentle version of this human being that walks through the door. And so when I do walk through the door, I have a routine that I go through where I have a little bracelet sitting on a hook right inside of our door here in New York city where we live, and I grab it and I put it on and I snap it. And that’s my little routine of getting into being very, very deliberate and intentional about how I want to bring myself to now, this next role that I have. And I’m inspired now, this is where that alter ego idea and using your imagination comes in is, now I am inspired by the idea of someone that I look up to as the qualities that I’d love to bring to that situation. And now my super powers change, that bracelet gives me a new set of superpowers. And that is inspired from me.
Miriam Schulman:
So it’s Mr. Rogers.
Todd Herman:
It’s Mr. Rogers, a hundred percent.
Miriam Schulman:
You put on the sweater, and now you’re the nice guy, right?
Todd Herman:
Exactly. But it helps me break out of that identity that I’ve just been flexing all day long. And because of some of my history, I’ve been a more, maybe serious individual and going through some tough PTSD and trauma stuff as a youngster and mastering my own mindset really helped me to lead a more playful life because I think life can be challenging. Anyone who is trying to pursue change, life can be challenging. This playfulness that this idea that we used when we were young kids and leveraging it now. Again, hundreds and thousands of extraordinarily successful people have, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther king, Beyonce with Sasha Fierce, David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust, and many, many others. It’s not just reserved for entertainers. We all can use this.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and like I said, I was so disappointed the first page of the book, I’ve thought I was going to find out who all these famous people were that you work with. And the first page you say, “Oh no, I’m not telling you I’m protecting my client’s privacy.” So I respect that, I do, but I really did want to know.
Todd Herman:
It’s not a popular thing for people to do, but really it’s even on the business side of things, it’s my great differentiator in the sports market is, I’m the only guy who won’t share who I work with. And when you think about their worlds, they have nothing but people around them who want something from them. I’ve never asked for a ticket from my clients and I go to games, but I’ve never asked for a ticket from them. And nowadays, I’ve never asked for a selfie with them to go and put it on my Instagram so people can see me. I don’t need it. And that’s why I’ve got this great referrability rate because athletes in that pro sports world know that I’m the guy that won’t trade on the back of their name.
Miriam Schulman:
Like I said earlier, I’ve been following you for a while. My son is a wrestler. So he’s a freshman now, wrestles at NYU. But when he was in high school, I told him about the alter ego effect. Of course, now he claims- your son is how old, one, two?
Todd Herman:
Two.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, okay. 18 year olds know it all. So now he claims he knew all about that, had nothing to do with me telling him. But yeah, he did actually use an alter ego, I don’t know what his alter ego was because he never shared it with me. But I do know that he had these socks that he always put on. They weren’t his, they were somebody else’s that somehow made it home with him. I assume he didn’t steal them, we assume they made it home by accident. But there’s these ducky socks he always wore to activate his alter ego.
Todd Herman:
You wouldn’t be the first and good for him. Borrowing other people’s-
Miriam Schulman:
Clothing, that’s a thing?
Todd Herman:
Yeah. Boring other people’s artifacts. Yeah. If you’ve got someone else that’s just a hero of yours, you feel like you get some sort of power you’re able to tap into their juice or their mojo with it, then run with it. Again, that’s the power of the human mind and what he was using, didn’t realize it, but the psychological term for it is called enclothed cognition, that we as human beings, we create story and meaning from the things that other people wear or have with them and that we wear. So the moment that we put on an article of clothing or something that has meaning, we actually encloth ourselves in the cognitive traits of the meaning of that article, and we will start to more naturally act through it. So an example would be, if you put on a doctor’s coat, without you even thinking about it, if I just handed you a doctor’s coat and you put it on, you would more naturally and immediately start to become more detailed, careful and methodical.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s interesting. I always tell my students to put on their apron. That’s what I always do when I’m getting into the mindset of paint. So it does two things, really. I do call it the superhero cape for them as part of that reference to an alter ego. But it does two things, not only is it what you’re saying, it’s kind of triggering that alter ego, but I feel like it’s the ritual of putting it on, helps me get into the mindset of I’m going to paint now. And I also light a candle a lot of times and do other things too.
Todd Herman:
Or a uniform has been proven out over time. And so even this, are you working with people who maybe perceived themselves as newbies or beginners to this?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. But the thing is, imposter syndrome shows up no matter what stage you’re in and whatever artists I talk to. So a lot of them, my art students, they feel like they’re not a quote, real artist. So that’s why I tell them, put on the cape. And I have to remind them that all of us go through this, even when we reach a certain level, there’s that feeling of that you’re going to be found out, maybe you didn’t go to art school, so you’re not a real artist or someone’s going to find out, “Oh, actually she worked for a hedge fund.” So my husband, when we go to cocktail parties, he wanted me to talk about LTCM, the hedge fund we were talking about earlier, and I was like, “Oh, I just want to sell my art now. I don’t want to talk about derivatives with people.”
Todd Herman:
And on that side of things, I’m like, bring it on. I eat the whole, find me out things, as Cheerios. That’s my attitude towards it. There’s nothing that you can find out about me and really that’s your own story and narrative. It’s such a non-existing paradigm that I’m going to operate through. And again, that’s my inner psychology. Now, I didn’t come by that naturally. That’s something that I started to embrace and go after, and it’s the classic Joseph Campbell who wrote, The Hero’s Journey, and great mentor of mine, not face-to-face, but definitely through his books and his teachings where he talks about entering the cave. Where anybody in any movie or book that you’ve read when they’re not taking the action or they’re not moving forward. It’s because they haven’t gotten rid of all the excuses why they can go forward.
It’s like when Luke Skywalker always wanted to go and fight the Empire, but well, I’m a farm kid, I still live with my aunt and uncle, they need me. And it wasn’t until they were killed where he was finally, “I got no excuses now I can’t use that excuse anymore.” So now he can actually enter the cave. And in that movie, that’s when he went to Mos Eisley with Obi-Wan Kenobi and he entered the cave, he started the journey forward. And so for me, I want to try to live inside of a psychology where that idea of imposter syndrome and people might find me out, it doesn’t exist. That gravitational pull isn’t going to stop.
Miriam Schulman:
That reminds me of my own story. I worked on Wall Street, but I always fantasize I’d go back. But it wasn’t until 9/11, when the buildings burned to the ground, I was like, “Oh, I guess I can’t go back.”
Todd Herman:
That’s an unfortunately great example.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I figured if I was looking for a sign from the universe, that was a pretty-
Todd Herman:
A pretty good one.
Miriam Schulman:
That was a pretty big one. One thing I want to make sure we dive into, because I know our time here is limited, is you introduced something that I hadn’t heard before. So we talk a lot on the show about the inner critic, which you had a different name for. But what I liked in your book is the whole concept of not only giving your alter ego a shape and a form, but also giving your inner critic, or what did you call it in your book?
Todd Herman:
The enemy.
Miriam Schulman:
The enemy. Okay, the enemy. For my audience, we think of it as the inner critic, giving that a shape and form in order to disempower it. Can you expand on that a little?
Todd Herman:
If we just use the term inner critic, well, that’s at least better than what most people do, which is just an internal conversation that’s worrying around in their own mind. And when you think about horror movies or scary, anything scary in a movie, the most scary part of the movies is when they introduced the villain or the enemy or the scary phantom, but you haven’t seen it yet. It’s like jaws, it was music, the thing that terrified people was essentially two notes. When we don’t see something, when we don’t have form and shape for it, we build up a big story around it. Now, we live in a world of duality, up, down, inside out, hot, cold. Well, to bring that concept internally, there’s this heroic self that we’re building out an alter ego to help untap. And we have this shadow self, what Carl Young called the shadow.
When working with people, I want to give it a name as well. It’s not just the enemy. It’s Igor or pick a bully from your past or pick a character from shows that you liked, that you would love to battle and beat or something like that. And now it’s got form and shape. You’ve given it a name and now you can talk back to it. Now you’ve pulled it out of the shadow and it’s no longer scary because you can’t see it. Now you can touch it, hold it, push it back, whatever. And it’s really powerful as a context to bring inside of your own mind because most people understand the power of having friends and allies and mentors in the outside world. But where the root of the actual idea of alter ego comes from is Cicero who named it in 44 BC.
And Cicero’s named is one of the greatest Roman statesman and philosophers of all time, not an average one or fourth best, the best one. So, brilliant mind very wise. And he mentioned the term alter ego in a letter to a friend near the end of his life. The term actually means the other eye or trusted friend. And I’m bringing this up because we all know the value of having a trusted friend, but most people don’t bring a trusted friend between the six inches of their ears, where you spend 24 hours of your day. And so imagine when you’re pursuing something new, the creative process, and you build out a new identity for yourself. Because we as human beings, remember this, if there’s a takeaway for people, it’s this, we will always act through whatever we associate ourselves with. So if you think of yourself as an amateur artist or not even an artist, then you are going to act through that identity.
But instead, if you brought in and you created a new identity and you were even more playful with it, and again, in this space, this is the beautiful part of the art world or an expressive space. There’s so much more latitude that you have that you can maybe act through a new identity, just like David Bowie did in probably the greatest example of someone who mastered this craft of alter egos. He would use these as a way of making sure he didn’t sort of get pinned into a corner for a certain genre or style. He knew that he had many, many different voices inside of himself and he would then express it through Ziggy Stardust. And then even David Bowie, himself.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s awesome.
Todd Herman:
So bringing this trusted friend and ally into your mind to help you battle against that imposter mentality to get it’s ass to the sidelines while you stand here with this paintbrush and that smock on. And so don’t get in my way of my work and my canvas.
Miriam Schulman:
You may need several alter egos. So you may need the one that shows up at the canvas and a different one who shows up at the art show when you’re selling your art. So you may want multiple personality disorder.
Todd Herman:
There was someone that was just listening to this that just was like, “Wait, multiple alter egos?” Don’t forget, you already have many selves. So of course you want that one that you’re custom building to help you when you’re at the canvas and then the qualities that you need to show up and sell that art if you’re at the art show is going to be different. Just like when you put on the doctor’s coat, your donning the methodical detailed and deliberate type individual. If you put on a painter coat, proven by the Kellogg School of Management when they did a study on this, when you put on a painter’s coat, you’re now going to start acting through the traits of someone who’s more creative, expressive, and imaginative. Whether you want to keep on your painter’s coat when you’re selling your art or whether or not you want to have a different uniform, powerful way to again, navigate life.
This is what I was getting to earlier, where so many people are leading lives that are prescribed by a society that doesn’t know what it’s talking about. We can choose it, we only got one shot at this whole thing. So I could care less whether or not someone thinks that I’m being fake because I wear glasses that are non-prescriptive. It’s my way of being my absolute most deliberate best. And now, when that was when I was first starting out in business, I was so insecure with how young I looked so I went out and bought a pair of non prescription glasses. So I could do my reverse Clark Kent, so I could put on those glasses to become my super version of myself.
Miriam Schulman:
By the way, these are prescription glasses. I’m up to trifocals at this point. I’m not kidding. Just you wait.
Todd Herman:
Now you’re dating yourself, Miriam.
Miriam Schulman:
You’re 40, I want to say?
Todd Herman:
43.
Miriam Schulman:
43, okay. Do you need reading glasses yet?
Todd Herman:
No, I still have 20/15 vision. Growing up on the farm I attacked the carrots in the garden and so I’m still benefiting from the massive consuming of carrots.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great. All right. So I do want to share a few things, a few personal things with my audience and my daughter actually, I told about my son who claimed he knew it already, it had nothing to do with mom. But I also shared it with my daughter because she’s a cellist and she was really having a tough time with her auditions. So she also invented an alter ego. And what she did was she combined two cellists, Jacqueline du Pre and Elisa Wallerstein. One is a late cellist and the other is one who performs now. So she combined them into, and I already asked her permission to share this, JacquElisa. So she invented her alter ego by combining two.
Todd Herman:
Nice. She’s a pro at this. I’m going to take her with me when we do these workshops.
Miriam Schulman:
I found out about this through you, when you started talking about it, it was five years ago.
Todd Herman:
Yeah, it was a while ago. Even the name JacquElisa. She’s done a great job of combining the two.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I’m still working on mine. I do have my icons picked out. It’s going to be something like a Gertrude Stein slash Iris Apfel combo, depending on…
Todd Herman:
The key with it is, when you’re finding the source of the inspiration or the sources of it, that you have a really strong, emotional pull towards them because people, for the most part, understand that we have that thinking part of ourselves. So the mental, the emotional and the physical, and most people have a good idea. Even if people are listening, like they know what they would like to go and paint, or they’d like to know what type of artists they’d like to become even. And so they have that idea and they know how they like to show up out there. But then the problem is, is getting that idea to walk across the bridge of emotion, because emotion is the thing that connects the mental, so the idea to the physical world of action. And again, this is actually proven by science that the moment that you ever separate the intellectual brain from the emotional brain, the person has a complete inability to take action on whatever their idea is.
So there’s many different books on Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, that if they ever separate the two, the person can even think about the fact that they want to tuna sandwich. This is actually the example of one person, but they can’t get up and take action, even though they’re hungry or they want it, and they know that they want the tuna sandwich, there’s no connection between the emotional self.
So the emotional self is the thing that actually drives the action forward. So if that’s the case, then when we’re creating and associating ourselves with a new identity, we want to be emotionally connected to it in a powerful way so that we can take the idea and get it out into the field of action. So finding that source of inspiration that really resonates with you, because when you step into that alter ego, I talk about in the book, honor it. When I put on those glasses and became that super richer version of myself, I would never dishonor this identity by not showing up. I had defined what these glasses meant, which is smart, articulate, decisive, and confident. And if I ever caught myself in a moment of doubt or something like that, those glasses would come off because that’s that other identity. That’s not the real confident version of myself.
Miriam Schulman:
Great. I just want to remind everybody that they can get your book at schulmanart.com/bookclub. I also talked about it a few episodes ago, episode number 35, Building Creative Confidence with seven Strategies. One of them I mentioned was putting on your apron for your superhero cape. I both got the hard copy and listened to it.
Todd Herman:
The audio book?
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Well, I switched back and forth, I didn’t read the whole thing and listen to the whole thing, but I knew I had to get it done by the interview. So that’s a little trick I’ll do.
Todd Herman:
It’s a forced deadline. You’re a good 90 Day Year student, then.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. All right. Yeah. So if you want to listen to it so you can listen to this while you’re painting, you can grab a free trial over at schulmanart.com/audible. And if you want to grab the book or check out Todd’s website, you can learn more about his program The 90 Day Year. That will all be also at schulmanart.com/43. He does have a program to help you reach your goals in 90 days. And you really though should check out this book as well, all awesome. All right, Todd, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Todd Herman:
Beyond the idea of the whole alter ego and some of the other things I talk about is, the biggest mistake that I made early on in life was I had that ego where I wanted to climb to the top of the mountain on my own and plant that flag up there and say, “I did it and I did it all on my own. I didn’t get any help to get up here.” It wasn’t until I met a mentor and he just sort of laughed at me as that’s one of the stupidest and slowest ways you could ever reach success. And thank God I got this sort of lesson early on in my career. But my point about it is, anyone that I’ve ever met that has achieved really great things, and again, this goes beyond business success or sports success, just good human beings that are amazing parents or amazing grandparents.
They’ve done it on the power of being around other really great people. And so I just encourage people that whatever path you’re trying to pursue, get around as many great people as you possibly can, always build and develop more and more relationships. Find those, I talk about in the book, find allies and mentors to help you. Because anytime you’re up against something, you’re climbing the mountain and you have to get over a rock, to think about the way that I was doing it, which was slow and trying to climb over that rock by myself. Now I’m within hands reach your arms reach of any one of a number of friends and allies who can help me get over that at any one time. So I just encourage people the power of getting around other great people.
Miriam Schulman:
It really drives me nuts when people say that you’re self taught or they try to glorify self-taught because even though I did not go to art school, I am not self-taught, I’ve had plenty of art classes. I still go to art classes. I hire business coaches, I take classes and I definitely believe in the power of mentoring and education. So I’m really glad you pointed that out.
Todd Herman:
And there’s nothing that’s more rewarding, even for those people who are quote-unquote individuals like I am. I love that individual drive and ambition that I have, but nothing is more powerful than shared success. I get such a great kick out of and reward from seeing people who take the alter ego, and just the amazing wins that I keep on getting pinged on Instagram and elsewhere is amazing. Or being able to share success with the team. And it’s just a way more rewarding way to live life. And at the end of the day, the biggest studies that have ever been done on fulfillment in life, the only common denominator of all of them is that those people invested a lot of time and energy into having powerful relationships around them. So just an encouragement for other people. They’re in the right place obviously by getting around you, but continue to always, it’s like a hungry hippo, grab at more and more amazing people.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that. By the way, congratulations on writing this book. Aren’t you dyslexic?
Todd Herman:
I am dyslexic. I actually memorized the book in order to read the audio book.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s crazy.
Todd Herman:
I have a brain that’s been flexed in that direction for a long time. I didn’t get diagnosed with dyslexia until I was about 21, after a car accident. And then I’m like, “Oh, well, that makes a lot of sense now.”
Miriam Schulman:
I have some form of it as well. I don’t think my diagnosis is dyslexia, exactly. But it goes along with having artistic abilities, just having a different kind of brain I think.
Todd Herman:
Yeah, for sure.
Miriam Schulman:
This is a lot of fun talking to you, Todd. Thanks so much for coming.
Todd Herman:
I appreciate the time.
Miriam Schulman:
We’re going to wrap this up now. I just want to remind my listeners to subscribe to the podcast. So if you have an iPhone, that means hit that purple subscribe button. If you are listening on an Android, you do it in Spotify. Actually, I don’t have an Android. I have no idea how that works. But I have some good episodes coming your way next week, we have Katie Lane, who’s going to talk to us about protecting your art from copycats and freeloaders. So if you ever were worried about people ripping off on Etsy, that’s the episode for you. All right, guys. Thank you so much for being with me here today. I will see you same time, same place next week. Make it a great one. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook @facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart, and of course on schulmanart.com.
Miriam Schulman:
Once again, this episode was sponsored by The Six Figure Artist. If you’re interested in hearing how you can earn more for your passion with concrete marketing and business strategies that work, head on over to schulmanart.com/biz, that’s schulmanart.com/biz.
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