Art/Work Austin: March 30th 2019

Join me in downtown Austin, TX on Saturday March 30th for a one-day workshop exploring the growing edges of my work around both story and storytelling, and the power of taking an artistic approach to your work.

Building A Body Of Work

I have a business owner friend who’s around my age. We first met 5 or 6 years ago when most of the entrepreneurs and marketers I knew were older than me, many considerably so. I’d catch up with this friend maybe 2 or 3 times a year and it seemed like every time I saw him he was knee deep in some major new plan for the business. He’d have pivoted one part of his business to serve an entirely different market. Or be working to establish his expert status in a totally new industry. One time we caught up he’d just sold one of his companies. Within a year he’d started a couple more. The pattern has continued to this day. There is no pinning this guy down or predicting what he’ll get up to next. He is a true serial entrepreneur.

I used to look at my friend and feel like I must be doing something wrong. I wasn’t operating at break neck speed. I wasn’t constantly sniffing out the next gold rush opportunity. I was just plugging away at the thing that seemed most meaningful to me. I knew other entrepreneurs too who weren’t as extreme as this guy but were definitely much more interested in chasing down the money than I was. They made strategic decisions based on the best financial opportunities in a way I was never able to. I started to get an inkling that somehow I wasn’t the same as these people.

A Different Kind Of Entrepreneur

It took a few years but eventually I realised something. My serial entrepreneur friend and I, we’re fundamentally different kinds of entrepreneurs. He is a business person type entrepreneur – his passion is primarily for the game of business. He gets a buzz out of spotting gaps in the market and business opportunities. He loves starting companies and planning exit strategies and the high-speed game of chess that business can be. And he loves orchestrating the whole thing whilst not having to be the one to do any of the work itself. This is the traditional idea of what an entrepreneur is.

I am not this kind of entrepreneur. I’m an artist-type entrepreneur. An artist-type entrepreneur’s primary passion is the work they do. They may build a very successful business around their work but their main interest is building a body of work they can be proud of. You don’t have to consider yourself an artist to be an artistic-type entrepreneur. Do you care more about building a body of work than building a business? Is your primary passion for the work you do rather than for the game of building businesses? If you answer ‘yes’ to either of these questions then it’s very likely you’re an artist-type entrepreneur.

And the artist-type framework really refers to types of entrepreneurial thinkers rather than just business owners. Many artist-type entrepreneurs may not have their own business. They may be working within businesses or organisations trying to build a body of work that reflects who they are in any way they can.

I started to put all this together when I began to realise I had more in common with my friends who are artists and academics than most of the business owners I know. I had never thought of myself as artistic or creative but when I talked about work with my artistic friends I realised we shared a very similar approach to our work even though on the surface what we did was totally different.

The Rules Of Work?

In my early days of getting into business and self-development I read voraciously. After a while someone gave me a book called ‘The Rules of Work.’ It was the first self-help book I couldn’t get along with at all. I had such a strong reaction to it I stopped reading it. Even in the midst of my phase of not knowing and wanting to learn everything I could from others, I had a very definite sense that this book did not apply to me. It was written for a different kind of person.

When I entered the marketing world I paid attention to the rules being taught – my Catholic grammar schooling means I’m a well-trained student and a good girl – but I found those rules didn’t seem to apply to me either. When I followed the rules they either didn’t work for me and I wasn’t able to replicate the success of others, or doing things according to the rules made me feel uneasy and somehow at odds with myself.

Looking back now I can see all of these rules were written for business-builders rather than body-of-work-builders. Over the past few years I’ve been consciously wrangling with this and trying to figure it all out. Because there are major implications. If you’re an artist-type entrepreneur but you’re operating according to the rules of the businessperson-type you’re going to struggle. Most of the advice out there has been created by businessperson-types for businessperson-types. And so it leaves artist-types feeling inadequate and confused, and struggling to make meaningful lasting progress in their work.

It took me years to realise the problem was I was following a prescription that was written for somebody else.

When I first realised I’m an artist-type body-of-work-builder rather than a businessperson-type business-builder, I wondered if that meant there were no rules. I wondered if I had to simply throw away those old rules that didn’t fit me and feel it all out blind. And I kinda did that for a while. But over the past couple of years it’s become clear to me that there IS a set of guidelines I can follow to make life and work less of a struggle, less of a mystery, and more productive and fulfilling.

For the first time I have formalised my guidance system and at the one-day workshop in Austin I’ll share The ‘Rules’ of Business for Artist-Type Entrepreneurs. The nature of building a body of work that reflects who you are is always going to be inherently unpredictable and will always involve uncertainty (your best work often can’t be planned in advance). BUT, there are some clearly defined guidelines you can use to contain your creative process and find the balance between doing the work you care most about and making the economics work.

The Rules Of Story

The past 6 months or so have been a lot about formalising structure in my work and articulating the rules and process I follow in my work. I’m not sure why. Maybe my focus on rules and containment comes from having a toddler in the house, testing limits at every turn.

When I started working with Perry Marshall on his story for a particular aspect of his work last year I took him through my storytelling process and walked him through my Tell Your Story (TYS) model. On one of our monthly calls after we’d nailed his story down we were exploring ways he could best use it in his marketing. “Megan, I think you’ve invented a new type of marketing collateral,” he said. “And there are rules to this thing. You’ve told me some of them as we’ve gone along.”

He went on to tell me the rules he’d picked out and implored me to name this thing, whatever it is. Rule number 1 of the TYS model is ‘You’re not allowed to try to convince anybody of anything with your story.’ As Perry fed this back to me I realised, “Oh yeah, I guess that’s pretty much the opposite to every other piece of marketing collateral in existence.” Marketing is all about convincing people of something, of selling them something, of starting with the end in mind. But Perry’s right; the TYS model is an entirely different thing.

When Perry gives me advice I pay attention. So I started to ask myself, “What are the rules of my storytelling model?” I work pretty instinctively when I’m working with clients to tell their stories but as I started to think about it I began to see what the rules are. There are 9 in total. I’ll be sharing them for the first time at the Tell Your Story Live workshop in London next month and I’ve decided to share them with you at Art/Work Austin too.

“I don’t think the marketing world really has a name for what Megan does. Maybe it will in a few years.” – Perry Marshall, author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing

As well as discovering The Rules of Business for Artist-Type Entrepreneurs and The Rules of TYS Storytelling at the workshop in Austin, you’ll also witness me putting my storytelling model into action with people in the hot seat. You’ll watch as I tease their story out of them and turn it into something coherent in front of the room. This portion of the day will be like a mini Tell Your Story Live workshop. A rare opportunity to see my storytelling model in action outside of an official TYS Live two-day workshop.

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Join me for the Art/Work Austin workshop on March 30th 2019

The workshop takes place in Downtown Austin, Texas. Book your ticket now.

Standard Seat Ticket $500

Booking Deadline: Tuesday 26th March 2019

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Working with Megan at Tell Your Story in NY was a life-changing experience. I was excited to be doing this, and honestly, more than a little nervous. Going up to NY on the airplane I kept thinking "Why did I want to do this? What if my story is just not that interesting?" I was very relieved that my turn in the Hot Seat would be on Day 2, so I could spend the first day observing and learning.

As soon as we began, Megan instantly put the entire group at ease. She created a safe space for story telling, sharing, and questioning, and out of that safe space, we all began weaving common narratives of desire for community, connection and sharing our gifts with the world. One of things I found most fascinating was that while the details of the stories changed from one person to another, the common themes were so often exactly the same.

Megan's trademarked format of 14 Elements in 4 Acts is quite remarkable in helping people to organize their thoughts and discover the "meat" of their own stories. Again and again I watched her work her magic with other participants on that first day. By the time my turn came on Day 2, I felt comfortable, safe and ready to explore my own story. I had a good sense of what my story was about, but I don't think I could have found a way to make sense of it the way Megan is able to do. She is a true master of getting to the heart of what matters in each person's life.

If you have the opportunity to work with Megan, take it. You won't regret a minute of it - from the pre-call to the follow-up call. I'm still learning and I look forward to exploring this format for future writings and blog posts.

Robbin Marcus Alexander Technique of Decatur GA/Marcus Music Studio Georgia, USA

Join me for the Art/Work Austin workshop on March 30th 2019

The workshop takes place in Downtown Austin, Texas. Book your ticket now.

Standard Seat Ticket $500

Booking Deadline: Tuesday 26th March 2019

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