Author / Nathan Coumbe

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Posts by Nathan Coumbe

My mission is to learn, inform, inspire, and improve. I am a passionate teacher, an avid writer, a leader of people, and a strategic thinker. Wherever I am, whatever the work I am called to do, my goal is the same: make my little corner of the world better for everyone in it. To do this, I ask better questions and solve more interesting problems for those I serve. Think deeply. Think often. Keep exploring. Always be curious.
by Nathan Coumbe

Take the pressure off

Seth Godin said something in his podcast “Pizza & Sushi, Joy and Mediocrity” that really resonated with me today. One of the listeners asked him a question about whether he should find a job while he pursues his art or just dive straight into creating. I’m paraphrasing his answer here, but in essence his response was that sometimes less-than-ideal work allows you to create your art unhindered.

Let’s think about this for a moment: what if the only source of income, of survival that you had was your reliance on producing your art, of developing your craft? How much pressure would that put on your shoulders? How stressful would your art, that thing you love to do so much, become if it was the only difference between feeding your family and going to bed hungry? How generous and authentic would your art be if it was the only thing keeping you from losing your home?

There are plenty of creatives that I know who would be just fine eating beans and rice and living in a van. For some of them, that is the life. But for me, with debt to pay off, a roof to keep overhead, and a wife who leans on me (and I on her) for financial support, it is too much stress.

So get a job.

Do something, anything, to keep the wolf away from the door. Drive for Uber or Lyft; deliver pizzas; wait tables; work in retail. It will not be glamorous, and it might be boring and tedious to the creative mind. But it isn’t forever, especially if you start down a path to your dream job.

If you can take the financial burden off of your art, whether it is visual art, speaking, music, theater, or writing, it will be that much easier for you to produce meaningful work. You’ll also learn a lot of useful skills you might not otherwise gain working on your art, such as leadership, communication, planning, business skills, and countless others. You also will make a lot of contacts with other people who might someday benefit from your art.

More than anything else, you’ll worry less about survival and focus more on creating and making the world a better place for us all to live.

Again, I am not advocating working in something you don’t want to do forever; I certainly don’t plan on doing that. So get to work, make some money, and make your art without worrying about where your next meal will come from.

If you would like to start down the path to your dream job or start your own business, I recommend going through the 48 Days to the Work You Love Seminar and joining the 48 Days Eagles group, a community of creative, like-minded individuals supporting each other in finding and creating work that is meaningful, purposeful, and profitable.

by Nathan Coumbe

But I want it all!

Our choices seem unlimited, the resources at our disposal infinite (at least compared to other countries), and our interests are wide and varied. It’s no wonder so many of us still don’t know what we want to do when we grow up. We have too many choices, too many roads we could take.

I’m slowly coming to the realization that I cannot do it all. The many passions I have, the countless skills I want to learn, the dozens of projects I want to start and complete…there isn’t enough time in the day. My choices are either pick something, or a few things, or stop working and do a dozen things. Even then, I still wouldn’t have time to do everything (and unless one of them made money, I’d have a whole mess of problems to deal with).

At some point we have to start focusing on something. It might be the wrong choice – but you won’t know until you try. It’s that fear, the fear of making the wrong choice, that keeps us paralyzed; it keeps us from making any significant progress. We are so caught up in the future, that if we take this one path, we might fail. We might not enjoy it. Or worse…

We might get so far along the path and succeed that all the other things fall by the wayside. All those other things you wanted to do don’t happen. How horrible!

Well…maybe.

by Nathan Coumbe

You can’t expect crops if you didn’t plant seeds

It seems rather absurd to imagine a farmer standing out in his field, scanning the horizon, scratching his head, and wondering why his crop of corn didn’t come in. It’s rather obvious why…

He didn’t plant any corn in the spring.

Why do we think the same rules of farming don’t apply in our personal and professional lives? We expect a raise or a promotion without putting in any extra work or without doing anything extraordinary to earn it. We ask for a big gig or a huge project but don’t have a portfolio of work backing us up to show that we can handle it.

This is very similar to a message in one of my previous posts about preparation for the unknown opportunities that come our way. However, this is about the things that we know we want and are actively seeking out.

If you are a part time freelancer, you may have to create some work on your own time outside of your day job in order to back up what you say you can do. If you want to move up into management, you’ll have to start leading and developing other people before you get a leadership or management position. They don’t give you the role and then have you show that you can do the work; you have to start showing and doing in order to get the role.

We cannot ask for benefits, rewards, and extra responsibilities if we have not put work that shows we deserve them and/or can handle them. Employers and clients just don’t work that way. You still have to earn it.

by Nathan Coumbe

Irony

My reading today got me thinking about education and our attempts to fix it. A bunch of people who grew up in the industrial education system we know today are trying to fix and/or revamp the way we learn using the very education they seek to change.

I have hope, though. It’s going to take a lot of hard work, a lot of failures, and a lot of bravery on the part of us that seek to make it work. If we seek to push through and get it right, however, it will be worth every second.

by Nathan Coumbe

Resources for you

Today I felt like sharing some of the magnificent people and resources that have helped me along my journey to this point in life. I may turn this into its own page at some point as I am sure the list will grow.

Dave Ramsey – what can I say? He really hit me over the head with how stupid I had been for close to a decade. If you want to know how to handle your money and get on the path to becoming wealthy, his book The Total Money Makeover is a must-read. Dave also first planted in my mind the idea that I should find something meaningful in my life to do for work which led me to the person that I will now offer up as my next recommendation.

Dan Miller – writer, speaker, coach, entrepreneur, mentor, Dan is one of the kindest and most giving individuals I’ve ever known (and we’ve never even met in person). He truly inspired me to look inward to find work that is meaningful, purposeful, and profitable. 48 Days to the Work You Love is his masterpiece; it will completely change the way you view work and will put you on the path to doing what you love for a living. He also has the 48 Days Eagles community, an incredible group of people who are supporting each other in stepping out on their own as entrepreneurs. His book recommendations and his idea of investing 3% of my income back into myself led me to discover some of the most powerful learning I have ever experienced as taught by…

Seth Godin – quite possibly one of the most influential people I’ve ever encountered, Seth is a serial entrepreneur (as are Dan and Dave), a master of marketing, storytelling, business, leadership, and one of the greatest teachers from whom I have ever had the privilege to learn. His blog is brilliant, to say the least, and his many books and courses will change your life. That is not an exaggeration. His podcast is one of the most entertaining, thought-provoking, and enjoyable I have ever heard. I have never failed to learn something when I hear Seth speak. As an aside, he is also the reason I decided to get out of my own way and start writing and publishing my ideas.

I hope these resources will benefit you in some way. I will attempt to update them as I have more time and as I continue to put together my “best of…” lists.

by Nathan Coumbe

What is school for?

Today, I am simply posing a question to anyone who wishes to leave a thought. Please feel free to comment below or at one of my social media sites.

This particular question hit me very hard after listening yesterday to Seth Godin’s podcast (click here). I recommend you listen to the podcast in its entirety at the link above as you think about this question. It’s only about 20 minutes long.

So tell me – what do you think school is for?

by Nathan Coumbe

Prepare the way

I have been guilty many times in my life of sitting and waiting for things to happen for me. It is only recently, in the last couple of years, that I decided to be proactive and seek out opportunities for myself. 

How many of us have sat with the mindset of, “When [some random opportunity] happens, then I will start to learn/practice/develop [the skill needed to accomplish said opportunity]?” I will bravely raise my hand. Great opportunity may come to those who wait, but I think we’d all be better off if we started preparing for things while we wait. 

“Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.”

– Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top

We cannot sit on the couch, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the phone to ring with that new job offer. No one is thinking to themselves that they should call you with a gig or a show unless you have proven yourself by developing a following, building relationships, developing your skills, and making a ruckus in the world already. This idea is very similar to my previous blog post “Take your eye off the prize” in that sometimes you just have to work, learn, create, and do without thought of reward, without letting the notion of “What’s in it for me?” hold you back.

Be persistent, find out what you need to learn and do to get where you want to be, and start doing it. The opportunities will come, but you have to be prepared when they arrive. If you get an offer for the NBA, and you’ve been sitting naked on a bean bag chair eating Cheetos for 3 months, you aren’t prepared and will therefore fail in your opportunity.

If you want a job in marketing, you are going to have to learn it on your own time and start doing marketing, maybe for a friend while you hold down another job to pay the bills. If you want to make a living as an artist or a graphic designer, you are going to have to start doing work and putting it out into the world whether or not you get paid for it. People have to see you and know you before they will want you. You will have to sell yourself as an expert in what you do and that means you have to do the work, build a following, make noise in your little area of the world.

You are going to fail, probably more than once. That’s fine, just start another project, call another business, reach out to another person who might need your expertise. Just keep working.

“When you work and develop your skills and talents, your day will come…[and] if your day never came, you would still be the big winner. Inside you will be the knowledge that you’re doing your best with what you have.”

– Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top

I’m going to keep preparing myself so that I am ready when opportunity comes knocking. What about you?

by Nathan Coumbe

Make it a game

One of the reasons learning a new language with Duolingo is so effective (in terms of practicing if not fluency) is the idea of streaks. The app creates a streak for you to link together, treating the learning as a game instead of a tedious task. The longer you continue the streak, the harder it will be for you to give up and break it.

Start a streak with your creativity. One of my friends is attempting to draw every single day; another is hoping to read a little every day. The key is to just do it, whether it’s five minutes of reading or doodling something in your notebook. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece or an entire novel – you get to make the rule of your game.

Find a way to start a streak in an area of your life you wish to improve and keep it going.

by Nathan Coumbe

Hobbies

Get one. Seriously, everyone needs a hobby (and no, vegging out in front of the television after a long work day doesn’t count).

Learn a new language. Pick up a musical instrument you have always wanted to play. Start drawing or painting. Take one of the thousands of online courses in a subject that has always fascinated you (hard to go wrong with history).

Whether you are making a living as a creative or not, you need something creative and stimulating in your life that is purely for fun and pleasure. It’s just for you.

Find out what resources you need in order to get started. Write them down. Write down how the hobby will benefit you personally. Write down any obstacles in your way to making the hobby a reality, and if necessary, find a teacher.

Anyone looking to be great needs a hobby. Maybe it will make some money, too. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

by Nathan Coumbe

Take your eye off the prize

When was the last time you did something with no thought of recompense? I don’t mean a hobby, something that you just do for fun. I mean doing something in the hopes that it helps someone else, that it makes the world a little bit better off because what you did exists. It could be a hobby as well, but the purpose is different.

I’ve been doing that with my blog – there is no financial gain for me, no increase in status. I don’t care that 100,000 people haven’t read it yet. I simply have things on my mind that I wish to say in the hopes that someone will read it and be better off for it.

If you have a gift, an idea, a message that will benefit humanity, then share it selflessly without any thought of what might be in it for you. Perhaps the money or the notoriety or the personal gains will come later, but again, don’t do it for those reasons.

Give selflessly. Take your eye off the prize.