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The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Idea Phase: Why are you about to embark on the journey that you are going to embark on? Is it important to you or to someone else? If it is important to you, why is it important to you? How will accomplishing this journey change you? Planning Phase: What is necessary for you to accomplish this journey that you can reasonable foresee needing? What do you already know you will be in short supply of? How long will you be on your journey? What will happen if you lose sight of your goals? Strategy Phase: What can go right as you pursue your goal? What can go wrong? Are there any other factors outside of yourself that you need to take into consideration? Is this something you can accomplish with minimal assistance from others or do you need to build a diverse team? you in providing them with the information? Can any of them help you with the Planning, Strategy, Finance or Realization Phases of your current journey? Financing Phase: Where are you going to for financing. Your network? Outside grants? Scholarships? Private funding? Public donations/Crowd Funding? Realization Phase: How much time are you currently putting into your journey? Can you afford to put in more? Are you at a point where you can invest less time? Measure opportunity costs. Success Phase: The biggest investment you can make is in yourself. Self improvement is important. Before embarking on a journey write down where you are right now in your life. Keep a journal, take pictures to remind you. When you finish do the same thing and take a second to realize how much you have changed. Marketing Phase: Who needs to know about your journey before you go on it? While you are on it? After you return from it? Why do they need to know it? What’s in it for them in sharing the information with them? What’s in it for 1 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler The Artist’s Arena is written to be used to guide the lost Artist on a path of enlightenment towards their future goals. This is the first of a three book series to give the introductory knowledge needed to pursue your apprentice years. This guide will provide assistance and also ask questions that no one else might have asked you about yourself and why you are undertaking the current journey that you are on. Have you been walking down the correct path or did you take a wrong turn if you stop and take inventory of the decisions you made in your life to date. Time management is the one thing that everyone must learn before it’s too late to learn it. We cannot go back and change the past, but we can make a conscious effort to do better today and then continue making positive progress in the time we have left ahead. “The Artist Arena: Level 1 – Apprentice” is about highlighting 12 very important categories in every true Artist’s life and examining why it should be important to an Artist and how it can be improved. Nothing worth lasting is created overnight, and your journey as an Artist is no different. You might have to complete the introspection of yourself and analyze your association with society a few times before you start to see positive results and change. Trust that you will reap what you sow in earnest. We will begin covering the first years of your life as an Artist in this book by covering: 1. Character. An Artist must understand oneself, before they can understand and truly connect with another. As an Artist completes their journey and embarks on the next one, they will not be the same Artist as they were before. Experience and Time will always change an Artist from who they were before. This is why it’s important to reflect and re-evaluate on a consistent basis. 2. Power. An Artist must have something to contribute to the world in order for the world to stop and take notice of the Artist. Value comes in many different forms, but value must be present in order to open up opportunities. If you have to plead for something, maybe your value is not where it needs to be. Always take stock of your value, maybe you might not know that you possess talents that are in demand. 2 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler 3. Community. An Artist derives their creativity from those they most surround themselves with and interact with. This includes intimate/close associations and loose associations through other social interactions. Community changes as an Artist moves geographically or moves up or down social-economically. 4. Foundation. Family and friends with long lasting connections fill this category. Also any permanent accomplishments in education or training. This is the foundation for which all other things will be based off of, and support for the Artist will come from within this category. 5. Artistry. The ability to lead or create something new that didn’t exist before falls into this category. Art and children, which are created and crafted by the artist are within this category. Leadership takes managing a group of people and figuring out how to lead them to a successful outcome. Without creativity. Real work from within the artist direct personal life comes out of this category and the art that the Artist is most proud of will be inspired from this category as well. 6. Health. All forms of health are important. Money/value cannot provide for time or health. The ability to live without pain is one that is taken for granted until it is lost. Spiritual, physical, mental, and if/when necessary, intimate relationships with others and how they directly affect you are all within this category. 7. Business. No matter how talented one is (or thinks that they are), time eventually runs out for everyone. This is why it is important to have and maintain partnerships. Partnerships can vary in size and complexity, but remember they for every partner that one takes one, resources must be allocated to that partner. Partnerships (or relationships) that lack time or resources fail to become meaningful partnerships. 8. Resources. Resources are important to becoming successful. Resources makes things run, and it allows them to keep running. Resources can come in a variety of different forms, but the typical forms are currency and the barter system through a lend-lease relationship. Lend-lease/barter system relationships become of great importance when you have an abundance of talent, but no money/value to trade for what someone else has that you made need. 9. Culture. Education like resources comes in many different forms. This can come from traveling, attending institutions of higher learning, attending workshops, finding a mentor, etc. Education is important as your art is a direct reflection of your experiences and influences. 10. Stature It does not matter how great an artist you are, if no one knows you are an 3 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler artist. Social Status comes from credibility in all of the categories. Becoming known as someone who can produce quality results consistently leads to success, and this is what leads to higher social status. Higher social status will in turn lead to better opportunities and increase the Artist’s value. 11. Network. Networking connects an Artist with other successful Artist. This allows the Artist to challenge their community thinking in contrast to how the greater community thinks about the artist and their ideas. Hearing from other successful artist through a constant growth of their network will lead to better results when surrounded by the right people. will not be seen at first, but as you continue to loop the circle, your growing network will begin to free up your time to make better decisions with your life. This is because as you network and consistently grow and evaluate your network, resources will come from those that follow you to help you continue to do the work that you need to do. If you only build up a few categories while neglecting the others, your entire circle will fall out of balance. Most people suffer from a perceived lack of time, so let’s begin with the first chapter. The Chapter of Self. 12. Society. The way society is playing their role in the background is vastly important to the Artist. If the Artist is happy and Society is in chaos it doesn’t matter. If Society is happy and the Artist is in chaos then that’s where interesting art is created. The talent of an Artist is to get that chaos presented in a healthy way for society to change when things aren’t what they seem. By addressing these 12 important categories and constantly evaluating them, an Artist can begin to bring harmony to themselves. Once that happens it will spread to their family and then to those around them. It’s hard to help those before you help yourself, but helping others in fact helps you. This 4 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler nobody is perfect. It all starts with an idea, a spark. What is it that you want to accomplish? That you are willing to sacrifice everything to obtain? Make sure it is a talent and not a monetary value. If money and materialism is your goal, then at least make your talent the skill of finding out how to make money. Then once you develop that talent fully then trade it for all the money the market says you are worth. The lessons here will lead you on a path that is not linear. In fact you can find yourself walking an infinity sign of decisions and cross roads that will follow you from the day you set off on your journey, until the day you return home. What’s necessary for you to be successful on this journey? Education. Knowledge and Wisdom will protect you from a lot of the pitfalls that befall those that set off to the left and right of you. The more information you absorb and retain will carry you and make you more resilient when the nights get darker. The more you do anything, the easier it gets. Make sure it’s legal in current ideology, because if it’s not you have to be perfect every time...and The knowledge that you will be successful starts when you are young. When you have all the resources that are provided to you and for you without you having to prove yourself. The resources come from your parents; However, If not, with the ways we are connected, hopefully through social programs and school that children are getting a fighting chance. This book is written to my son, Jeremiah, who has had to deal with fewer resources because his Father has been perfecting his talents. To anyone looking for guidance on how to create opportunities there isn’t much additional that I can do for my son, but introduce him to the path I followed because there are similarities in every story. Climbing the ladder of independence is the hardest thing anyone will ever do, because it takes a dramatic change that most will never accept doing. To accomplish this change takes seven to ten years and most won't commit to the time that it truly takes to master what they claim they want to do. Talent is important, but commitment to crafting that talent is just as important if someone wants to make a life out of what it is they claim they want to do. If you are doing something for the fame, that’s not the game as what you need to choose should be a life long commitment or 5 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler you are just wasting your time. Time management is important, and every minute you spend doing something you do not want to do makes it harder to turn around and go down the correct path. The idea should be something you can speak about just as passionately today as you felt about it yesterday. It should be an idea that you will feel accomplished with if it was the last thing you did in the future. Most people won’t say at the end of their life that they wish they worked more or made more money, they will say they wish they had more time. Living healthy and happy and focusing will give you a higher chance of accomplishing those goals, or at least passing them on to the next in your lineage. Make sure it’s not something you value, not what someone else values. You can’t pursue someone’s passions with all your heart. That’s because their passions don’t belong to you and can be taken away from you...or shared. It’s going to be a roller coaster ride, no matter what you decide. You will go straight, then drop and go up and be flipped around, but trust in the seat belt and ride you are building. Even if your roller coaster isn’t that exciting today, the more you practice building roller coasters and testing them the better they will become. Also as you get older you will learn from others that have built their own and those that will build better ones in the future. All of those people will teach you a little bit to make you a better builder. As I told you earlier in life, don’t commit early to anything and try everything. I started as an actor and changed to many other titles before settling on being a life long artist. The world will belong to artists and even if you don’t want to be an artist, all I want for you is to learn to communicate more efficiently and effectively. When I see you I will continue to guide you and teach you, but follow my words, until my words don’t serve you anymore. You will eventually know more than me and will experience things I have never faced, but until your knowledge develops to where you are the leader...listen to your father. I will explain to you how to build the foundation for the journey you will be going on and how I wish I had better prepared for the journey that I still am on as I write this book to you. Idea Phase: Why are you about to embark on the journey that you are going to embark on? Is it important to you or to someone else? If it is 6 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler important to you, why is it important to you? How will accomplishing this journey change you? Planning Phase: What is necessary for you to accomplish this journey that you can reasonable foresee needing? What do you already know you will be in short supply of? How long will you be on your journey? What will happen if you lose sight of your goals? Strategy Phase: What can go right as you pursue your goal? What can go wrong? Are there any other factors outside of yourself that you need to take into consideration? Is this something you can accomplish with minimal assistance from others or do you need to build a diverse team? Realization Phase: How much time are you currently putting into your journey? Can you afford to put in more? Are you at a point where you can invest less time? Measure opportunity costs. Success Phase: The biggest investment you can make is in yourself. Self improvement is important. Before embarking on a journey write down where you are right now in your life. Keep a journal, take pictures to remind you. When you finish do the same thing and take a second to realize how much you have changed. Marketing Phase: Who needs to know about your journey before you go on it? While you are on it? After you return from it? Why do they need to know it? What’s in it for them in sharing the information with them? What’s in it for you in providing them with the information? Can any of them help you with the Planning, Strategy, Finance or Realization Phases of your current journey? Financing Phase: Where are you going to for financing. Your network? Outside grants? Scholarships? Private funding? Public donations/Crowd Funding? 7 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Foundations are important and it’s imperative that you hope for the best, but plan for the worst. The major thing you need to start to build is a network. Your network is your safety net. Your parents are a part of your network, but your parents might not have the same passions as you do. I planned for the worst. I left you with your mom when you were three, but I always came back to see you at least once a year. Find a diverse group of people to interact with and don’t close yourself off to people with differences. You can learn something from anything or anybody, even if it’s a validation of what you feel or a realization of how wrong you were. That time has increased as you have gotten older because now you and I need to have more in-depth conversations, but I will sum them up for you here if you forget. Always be learning. When you set off always keep your focus and take a moment to prepare yourself for the day every morning. You will never have enough of everything you need and you cannot wait until it’s to let to do what it is that you are desiring to do. You have to do your research. You have to prepare as much as you can for the things that you know are ahead of you. There will be things that you can easily plan in advance for, but some things will happen to you unexpectedly. You have to know how you will get out of a bad situation: whether that’s me or your mom, another relative or a friend that you know will come and find you. This is the packing phase of your life. There is nothing wrong with you coming home to do more “packing” as you get older, because you aren’t supposed to get it right your first time, but your mom and I will do our best to make your failures softer and your successes easier. Meditate or pray and check the weather and the world for hazards before you set off. Some days, something won’t be worth your life or testing the elements and know when it’s better to use it as an opportunity to take time for rest. I have braved many elements to see you. I know throughout you would have understood if I postponed my trips when you got older; however, in your youth it was my job to be a producer and make sure I made sure you laid eyes on me. Make sure you only bring things that you can’t live without, and that will never be a woman. Women (and individuals in general) will come and go out of your life. No one is meant to be around you 24/7 and you should never want to be that close to anyone unless they are a part of a journey you are currently on. 8 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Sometimes on quests you need others with expertise and knowledge that you lack, and in those expeditions it is important to diversify your talents to make sure you can cover any issues that could manifest that you lack the skills to potentially overcome. Resources will be the thing you need to watch and make sure you know how far you go away from your sources and make sure you have enough in you to get back or ask for help quick enough and ration what you have until comes. Make sure you rest. Make sure you have fun. In your plans always make time for that. Take time away from struggle and sit and reflect and look around for those that you see with similar looks in their eyes. Also look around for the dangers, because they are all around. You aren’t safe anywhere, you just are SAFER in some places than others. Learn to protect yourself and do not show what you own. Always keep your valuables to yourself or risk them being taken by those not willing to go through what you have endured. Learn now what it means to be focused. Many people will try to pull you off your path onto theirs...you have to have a strong focus on your goals and walk to them relentlessly. Know who is important to you and who is with your time. I always made time for you and left a way for you to contact me when I was away. The most important things you own are your talents and your commitments to those talents. Learn to create and communicate and those will separate you from the ones that would rather simply be given things. I will explain to you about how to prepare as a writer and communicator and how to keep yourself out of trouble as you learn to use the ability to communicate both written and orally. Some people will be offended by your lack of fear of performing or being outspoken. Embrace it and learn to use it to separate your voice from the billions of people living on this planet. Idea Phase. Do you possess what you already need for the journey you are about to embark on? Take an inventory of what you find important. Look at what you have that is tangible and intangible. What talents do you naturally possess? What skills have you learned? What experiences prepare you for the journey you are about to take? Planning Phase: Write down what talents you have from most important/unique to ordinary. Write down what things of value you own. This is the time to create a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threat analysis on what you have in your possession. Is anything old? Can anything be upgraded? Strategy Phase: How can you use what you have most 9 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler efficiently? This is where you take your talents, skills and experience and mix them with your valuables. Do you have what you need just in case for contingency? What is the best possible outcome? What is the worst possible outcome? What if something you thought you had falls through? needs is important, but a comfort item or two doesn’t hurt. Also carry items that you are willing to barter with if necessary. Since the items you are carrying are only important, make them as high quality as possible. Staying to needs will make you a minimalist and will help you to transition and change directions when you need to. Marketing Phase: This is where you figure out how your network can help you with any of your weaknesses or threats from the planning phase or to help maximize your plans in your strategy phase. Let people know what you have and what you need; it’s not possible for you to know everyone, maybe someone else can save you time by asking someone who they know is looking. Financing Phase: The key is to save as much money/time as possible while maximizing your results. Reach out to your network to see who can help you. If your strength isn’t asking for help, maybe someone already in your close network can help you if you just let them know. Realization Phase: Make sure that all of your talents, skills and experience is up to par. Check your equipment to make sure everything is function properly. Phase:Success Everything you have is what you need. You aren’t carrying anything extra that can weigh you down. Separating wants from 10 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler rules you will struggle with being stuck in bad situations. Now is the time for you to mentally test the path that you are about to go on. There are a lot of things that you need to do at this time that will prepare your mind for your journey before you physically set off on the horizon. You must realize that you must take all that you have experienced up to this point to prepare you for the next journey. The comfortable tests no one. You must leave your comfort zone in order to grow. You must test yourself in order to know what you don’t know next. If you don’t depart you don’t know what’s around the corner if you just trust yourself. People want you to succeed...good people want you to succeed. You will find that the mind will play tricks on you. It will make you question yourself and you will wonder why you are thinking of things that others don’t think about. It’s because you stopped following and you see the world a little differently. The platinum rule dictates that you treat someone the way that they want to be treated. This rule is important when dealing with certain personalities. The golden rule is treating people the way that you would want to be treated. This rule will keep you from being used by others. Never let someone apply the silver rule or bronze rules to you son because I have personally taught you to be an artist since as far back as you can remember. I have been your teacher and you have it in you to be successful already. If you wish to pursue a path that I haven’t taught you then it will be necessary for you to learn to be an apprentice to someone that can teach you what I have not. There is nothing wrong with working for no tangible value if you are receiving something intangible instead. It’s important to study with people better than you. It will elevate your skills and allow you to grow faster than surrounding yourself with people that just agree with you. Studying and surrounding yourself with others will teach you more about how the mind works and how to interact with others. Always play out scenarios and think before you act (or speak). After a while the time it takes between you thinking and acting will become faster and faster and that’s what will separate you. There are two rules you must learn to be successful. The platinum rule and the golden rule. If you fail to navigate these two When entering new environments it’s better to be underestimated and over perform than to be overestimated and disappoint. 11 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Stay close to your “siblings”. Your family is what was forced upon you at birth. Your mom and I are what you are made of, but your true family will be the ones you decide on later in life. Your mom and I hope we do well enough to be in your life when it’s a choice, but our job up until that choice is to guide you. There are a lot of emotional things that will happen to you when you decide to embark on your journey. The one thing I will emphasize is don’t stop. You will make it if it’s what you truly want. Know what you are willing to die for because after three more steps it will be time for you to be ready to begin whatever hero’s journey you decide to embark on. You will be the hero of this journey, because it’s your story to tell. No one owns your story, but you. Allow good people to guide you, but at the end of the day let your heart, mind and your ethics guide you. Lastly know that there is “evil” in all of us and that there is “good” in all of us as well. You must always let the good outweigh the evil and use the evil to make lasting changes in your life and others. That’s what makes a leader. Why are you currently in the environment that you are in and is it constructive to helping you become the person that you want to become? Planning Phase: Write out who you associate with, what you do and how long you do it and why. Is it because you have to or want to? Is it a health relationship/activity that helps you grow as an Individual? What can be better about your environment? Strategy Phase: Map out where you live and who you associate with. Compare that to the time you currently spend every day and focus your time on the things that help you instead of hurting you. Marketing Phase: As your close friends and relatives not directly associated with your passions for their honest input. Maybe there are things you can do better that you aren’t able to see being so close to what you are trying to accomplish. Financing Phase: Eliminate activities or individuals that harm your resources without any healthy benefit. Time is more valuable than money, don’t give both to someone or something that wouldn’t do the same for you. Pick one. Where you live and who you associate with closely says a lot about you: Realization Phase: Idea Phase: You are who you surround yourself with, and where you spend the most of your time. 12 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Surround yourself with good people and slowly your life will start to improve. Success Phase: Your community should continue to become more successful and thrive as you do the same. Your community should be a healthy relationship, or your community should be re-evaluated back at the planning phase. Life is too short to be unhappy, surround yourself with those that help you and not just hurt you. 13 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler need to know or all the things you should know from me as I’m writing this to you as your 35 year old father. Don’t let the family that you are born into dictate your life. You were granted an opportunity many people do not have, the ability to experience life. People can give you experiences or you can create ones for others. People either work for you or you work for someone else, but everyone has a responsibility. This is the last time you get to sort out your emotions before you set off on your journey and it’s important for you to run a check list on making sure the things you will worry about when you are gone are taken care of. Just like life will change for you, it has changed for me and it will continue to change and our job as family is to spend some of that time together weathering the storm. Be prepared at this moment to start feeling emotions that you haven’t felt before. Remember the differences between right and wrong. Remember that losing doesn’t matter if you can get up tomorrow and try again. Remember that you aren’t suppose to be perfect and you can make mistakes. Those that judge you are too busy worrying about you to worry about themselves. Remember that life isn’t fair, but you should try and be as just as you can be. There is a different between being a good person and being used, you will learn the differences as you get older and learn to see them sooner. Every time I left you, I hugged you and told you I loved you. I told you that I prayed for you everyday and if God forbid something happens to me that you would have my twin, your uncle, to help you through life. People will change just as fluidly as water. Don’t hold people to their words, if they don’t keep them just remember that and keep moving forward. You were my home son, no one or nothing else. My art was my passion, but the foundation of who I was began when I saw you for the first time. Your home is not a physical location, but where you feel at peace. I left home a long time ago, but I always carried what was important with me and it’s brought me peace in a crazy world. Family is important, but it’s not what defines you. Your family name won’t be what helps you in the next life, it’s your actions in this life that will define you. This book won’t teach you everything you Let your art and your heart guide you. You will not know everything, but combine your heart with what’s in your head and you will create the work you need to create to be successful. 14 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler This is the time you need to start clearing out all the things you don’t need to weigh you down anymore. Whether that means taking a break or ending the situation completely. This goes for items you own, people you associate with and habits that you might keep. As you move forward, the more baggage you carry with you will keep you from moving as fast as you need to. The people that tell you that you need them, really probably need you. Don’t listen to people’s words, watch their actions. Family is just as capable of using use as a stranger, and sometimes the fact that they are family allows them to justify it. Next we will talk about getting the final focus you need to depart and what it means to be a leader. Your family is the group of people you are born into. You can create a new foundation that includes them or better serves your happiness. Idea Phase: relationship with those individuals. Technology doesn’t replace face to face time with a person. Strategy Phase: Talk with those that are important to you and let them knows what you are doing and why you are doing it. Communication is key. Figure out how you plan on maintaining contact with the individual. Realize that face to face time is irreplaceable. Marketing Phase: Let your network know before you leave that you are going to be leaving, while you are gone so they aren’t looking for you (or alternatively waiting for you to check in) and know when you are coming back. Take photos before, during and after. Financing Phase: Talk to your important people about the journey you are embarking on. Maybe they have advice to give you or resources to share with you. Realization Phase: Is your journey one that you are embarking on to return and share with your family, or to escape from them? What is is that you are seeking that you are willing to leave your natal foundation for? Do what you say you are going to do, if you say you are going to keep contact. Take pictures to verify adventures and make sure to share with your family and friends. Planning Phase: Success Phase: List out what is important to you and who is important to you. Set up time that you anticipate returning too maintain a Having people that support you and ask you about your trip means that you are successful. If you have to remind people 15 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler that are close to you that you went somewhere you did a poor job communicating. 16 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler You will need to focus if you want to be successful. Unless someone is climbing the same ladder as you take their advice with a grain of salt. You will see people do things and wish you could do them as well, understand that everybody is on their own time. You need to be a leader and not a follower, but the first step to being a leader is following. You need to follow the right people, and those people should elevate the level of work you are doing. As you grow you will find more right people to associate with. Stay creative, it will make you different than most of the world around you. Most people lose their creativity because they start believing what others tell them instead of trusting themselves. You might not like everything someone says to you, but you will have a general feeling of how someone makes you feel. Keep the ones that make you feel good, and let the bad ones go. Life is too short to deal with bad people. Leading means not allowing your values to be compromised for selfish reasons. There are things that will harm you, but do not let anything destroy you. around you are more successful than you because they are having fun. Know that they are just having fun now, you will have your fun later. The more you put into your talent, the more you can demand for your time. You will find people worth that same value in time as you continue along the road. This is because they have made similar hard choices and that’s why you ended up in the same room. While we might interact with many people on a daily basis, you can tell the ones that connect with you by the look in their eyes when you talk to them. People recognize those that have gone through things similar to them, because they see similar characteristics that it took them to become successful. Passion cannot be taught, my advice to you is do what you love and love what you do. Find the category of your passion and be happy being anything within that category until you learn enough to move up. Don’t become comfortable, even in a good job. Meeting people creates new opportunities and new stories every day. There are only two things I’ve found worth doing for the rest of my life so far, and those are being an artist and being your father. Get up every day and be productive, even if it’s spending time with someone you care about and sharing something that can possibly change their life. Time is relative for everyone. Some people can do things faster than others, but faster Working hard will make you feel that those 17 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler doesn’t always mean better. Idea Phase: If you can do something better and faster than the majority of the people around you, you will always have an opportunity. This is because you can AT LEAST charge to teach the ones below you that can’t get access to the people above you. What are things that you like to do that seem to come easier to you than the community around you? What have you been recognized for? Learning to lead means also learning to manage your emotions. Going back we’ve talked about managing your self, your valuables, your moves, your family and now your ability to focus and move forward. Next we are going to talk about your health: what you eat, how to prepare your body for the trip ahead of you. Creativity is what separates you from the next person. Techniques can be taught, but using those techniques in a creative way to bring something new forth takes varying degrees of talent. Talent can be developed to a certain extent, but everybody has their own natural talents that make them unique. The more talented you become, the more leadership ability you will command as you gain credibility in your field. Leadership is both managing a project and leading it to a (hopeful) successful outcome. Leadership comes from studying from people more talented than you, this is also known as apprenticeship. Studying can come in the form of taking classes, in the field experience or sitting down with a mentor and having personal development conversations. What is going in the world today that connects to you or reminds you of situations in your past? What are future problems that concern you? Planning Phase: Look around and observe your environment. How does it affect you? The temperature in the location you are in? The weather outside? The amount of people or lack of people around you? The amount of money you make or have? The amount of free time you have to focus? Figure out where you are better suited to be creative and set aside time to make sure you give yourself the time you need. Strategy Phase: Set aside the time you need daily by keeping a calendar. Time management is the most important part of being creative and being successful. If you do not control your time, it will control you. Diversity within your category before expanding out to other things. Understand both the theory and practice of what it is you want to do. This will make you an allaround expert in your field. Marketing Phase: 18 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Let people know about what you are about to do, what you have done and what you are about to do. People might be able to give you sound advice or help you with revising your idea by giving you varying perspectives. having the time to be creative is an indicator that you are going in the right direction. Financing Phase: It takes time to be creative. Time is an opportunity cost, which means if you are spending time being creative you are not spending time making money until you become professional at being creative. Make sure you keep your expenses low and your income as high as possible. This happens by staying out of debt and networking with others with similar goals at similar or more successful points in their lives. Spending time to make money to pay someone else’s mortgage or interest on a credit card before you can generate your own money will never lead to success. Realization Phase: Keep a month expense report to see where your money is going and how much you are bringing in. Obtain credentials and higher networking contacts as you develop your skill sets. Success Phase: Creativity should start coming easier, the more you use your creativity. Creativity comes from freedom, so managing time and 19 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Protect yourself mind, body and soul. Take some time everyday to maintain yourself. Take 10 minutes to pray. Take an extra 10 minutes to find something a tad bid healthier to eat. Get at least 30 minutes of exercise. It’s not about you not needing it now, it’s about keeping you from needing it later. The more you train yourself to endure, the less you will have to think about it when things get busier in your life. If you create a successful routine, it will help you to stay focused. If you don’t build important things into your routine, they will fall by the wayside. You love chess and I love that you love chess, because it’s about strategy. Understand that choosing not to do something is the opposite side of every coin. We don’t consider sometimes the consequences of even positive decisions. When there are no win-win situations and you still must choose between two options then you will start to see what all of the advice I have given you and your experience will come into play. You must learn to learn from your decisions, not be defined by them. I have had more successes than failures, but I have had failures. Failures teach you more about yourself than the successes. It’s not hard to make money when you learn to focus yourself, so don’t focus on money. Once people start coming to you, that’s when you know you are becoming successful. Always try to at least get a yearly physical, you don’t want to die from something you had no clue you had and it was preventable. Don’t mix alcohol and anything important. If you remember, I only relaxed when my dad duties were done for the day, but we still then relaxed on the couch and talked and spent time together. Remember to take time to do that for yourself as you go out into the world. Work hard, but take time to relax and take time for yourself and those around you. You will start to meet people like you at this point and don’t expect to know all of them for the rest of your life. Create memories, but don’t become attached to anyone, especially not until you reach your mid 30s. Your heart, mind and body will continually change. You will love and hate, you will have good thoughts and bad, you will be healthy and sick. This is a cycle that comes with everything and affects everyone. 20 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Always know sickness will pass, but seek help if it’s available. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or feel you need to tough something out. I’ve waited until the last minute a few times in my lifetime, and recommend that as soon as you think you need help ask. If you are a good person (which you are), you will find the help you are seeking from your network. Watch what you put into your body, and be mindful of whom you share things with. It’s easier to associate with someone, than to disassociate yourself once you do. Always think about 1-3 years from now when making a long term decision. Most times love isn’t love, don’t commit to anything until you have finished the major journeys you have in life. You need your time for you, because you only get to follow your dreams once. This is where you need to reflect on everything one last time and then prepare yourself. The world isn’t as scary as you’d think, but it is massive. The world will shrink for you as you get older and older and build on your experiences. You are about to meet people that will love you, and people that will hate you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Embrace the ones that care and avoid the ones that want things from you. Give to givers and avoid takers. Don’t take from takers because that still creates a relationship between the two of you. You are who you associate with, don’t associate with someone you are ashamed of because you are now a hypocrite. Don’t use people for what they have, there are people that are good that have the same things out there for you to work with. Just work harder to find them. Nothing comes to you, until you get to a point where you have earned the right for them to come to you. You aren’t important until you are important. Always try to keep your word if you can. Sometimes things happen, but try your best to honor your word, because that’s your most valuable currency in life. Good luck to you in the world and be mindful of what’s around you. There is no such thing as safe, but there is such a thing as “safer”. You are safer with good people, living in a good area, and staying out of trouble...that doesn’t mean that trouble still can’t find you. Surround yourself with good people, because their network will start to become a part of yours the longer you know each other. Try and find five people that you really connect with and stay connected with them 21 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler in your life. fighting to keep ahold of. It’s in your past already, look forward. Your first real lifelong friends will come in college, because they are like minded as you to wind up venturing off into the world at the same time as you. Don’t pretend like your past didn’t exist, they were lessons and experiences that prepared you to be the person that you are now. You have everything in you to be successful, and I wish you all the success in the world. The advice that I give you from here on out will involve the ways I’ve learned to interact with the world. Take what I’ve learned and create the world that you will bring your children into. If you have your health, you will be able to endure. Being able to get up tomorrow without pain and doing something to change your life is a powerful thing. Health is multiple facets of yourself that you must maintain in order to be able to perform at your highest potential. Your mental state is directly tied to your physical state which is why diet and exercise is important. Stress is detrimental to creativity and desperate individuals do not succeed. You must learn to be okay in the moment. Discomfort is necessary for growth. You can maintain comfortably, but growth takes work and real work takes discomfort. If it’s not worth your life it’s not worth doing. If it’s not worth your time it’s not worth keeping around. Don’t expect anyone to understand how you feel, but expect people to empathize with you. Only you know what’s in your head. Don’t be so sure of yourself that you don’t allow others that genuinely care about you to help you. Stay physically active and mentally stimulated. When the mind and body stop working, you being to lose your creativity to a sedentary lifestyle. Meditate to find your focus, take naps to recharge your mind. The harder the work (mentally or physically), the more time necessary for rest and recovery. Using your willpower, focus and creativity to bring something into existence requires connecting to yourself and being in the moment with your surroundings. Distractions of any sort will hinder your ability to create. Focus is key. Build a routine that makes maintaining a schedule that works for you manageable. Stressing out and quitting creates setbacks, take the time necessary to build the right foundation. You are what you eat. You are the result of the work that you actually put in. You are a reflection of the things you share and the Let go of the things in your past that you are 22 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler people you spend your time with. from that point on will define who you are. Your time on Earth is limited, who you spend it with and what you spend it working on says volumes about what’s important to you. This is true also for any profession or goal. You must first decide to act, before you can act. Actions speak louder than words, praying and meditation without meaningful changes is meaningless. Regularly check your health, minor things that you never knew about can become major in the blink of an eye. If you don’t take care of yourself first, you can’t help others. Focus on yourself until you can help others without losing yourself in the process. Emotional pain might hurt more than physical pain sometimes, but with time things will get better. Nothing is hopeless if you can wake up tomorrow and make a difference. Every major change starts with an idea. Temporary problems and obstacles will always show up to test you to see if you are ready, embrace the challenges because facing them will change you. Trust yourself and make decisions after gathering information. If you are young trust mentors, but as you get older you will be the leader people look to for a final decision. You are not a leader until you order make the decision to lead. Deciding to lead makes you a “leader” and the decisions you make Whether you succeed or fail in that chosen action is a matter of your preparedness and the opportunities you create as a result of the work that you put in. Acknowledge that the world is bigger than you, and that you aren’t the only one that is suffering from what you are suffering from. Someone is waiting for you to show them that it’s possible to pick yourself and move on. Idea Phase: What is the ideal self you want to be and what do you need to work on to achieve that goal? Your ideal self isn’t someone else because you are unique. Do you need to maintain a certain body fat percentage? Consume less processed foods? Meditate more? Exercise 30 minutes a day regularly? Be kinder to yourself and others? Planning Phase: Research what it is you want to accomplish and compare where you need to be to where you are now. Write down where you are, both the positives and negatives, and determine which goals are short term goals and which are long term. Strategy Phase: Arrange your goals in order from easiest to hardest. The start of anything new is the hardest thing to do, and the accomplishment of easier goals make the harder goals more 23 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler achievable. Marketing Phase: Talk to people you trust about how you can better achieve your goals, especially if they have already done the things that you are trying to do. Take all advice as simply advise, everyone is unique and will have their own successes and failures. Success Phase: You have a stronger network, a stronger body, and a stronger sense of who you are. People will notice the changes in you before you notice the changes in yourself. Metamorphosis takes time to affect the behavior and the thought process, but people will see it in you. Trust is something built over time and just because you meet someone in a reputable place doesn’t mean that they actually belong there with you. The work and actions will separate people you can put your trust in from those that you cannot. Financing Phase: Look at your goals and make sure that you have the time and resources to achieve them. Look into how you can better manage your training program and what is absolutely necessary to achieve your goals. Something are wants and not actual needs. Remember people accomplished things before technology came along. Realization Phase: Set a routine and a schedule that’s manageable. You will not stick with a routine that’s easy to quit or avoid. People will see the results of your work before you do, but that’s only if you actually do the work. The only person you cheat by not doing the work is yourself. Someone else is getting the experience, you are just taking credit for it, but that person will not always be there to help you. 24 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Up until now we have talked about the inner connections that you need to make in order to set off on your journey. Every time you return from a journey, take a minute and reflect. Journeys can be as simple as a night out with your friends or a trip to a new land. It could be four years of undergraduate study, or your postgraduate career. Every journey is an opportunity to discover something new about yourself. Don’t sit behind a desk, doing what someone else tells you to do in a job that you are only working for money. That is a waste of your time and your talent. Make your life an example for them and don’t make them live the life you wish you had. The next six sections will talk about: business partnerships and ventures, how to make money from the world, the importance of higher education, travel and surrounding yourself with good people, how to deal with growing fame and success, standing out and using networking and finally how to keep your sanity/creativity in an insane world. Know what your talent might be and test them on smaller journeys before you head off on larger ones. There is nothing wrong with starting small and growing and it’s what I suggest. I’ve seen many go big and go home. Life is a marathon not a sprint. Do good work and people will follow you. Keep your word and good people will trust you. Do what you say you are going to do and people will start to rely on you, for better or worse. Know that surrounding yourself with people with less than you will bring you down. There is nothing wrong with charity, but make sure it doesn’t spell your demise. Put society before your family, but your family before yourself. You owe something bigger to the world than offspring. 25 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Don’t take money from strangers. Get to know every person you want to do business with before you do business with them. The second you ask someone to do something for you it creates a capitalistic relationship. Quickly return any favor or allow someone to do it on their own behest. Socialism means doing the best at your talents and letting society take care of your needs. Networking is creating your own socialism network. If you partner up with people that are at your level in their own individual talents, the results will create quality work. Own your own work. There is nothing wrong with helping others as long as your work is complete first. Create your own work and then license the work, but not yourself. Stay focused. Regrets of missing deadlines because of wasted time are hard to overcome. Make sure others you work with feel the same way. When working for others make sure you are receiving a partnership and not simple compensation. Money comes and goes, but the results of your work (if it’s quality) will be worth more in the future than it is today. Don’t let people place a value on you. Always run comps to see what the baseline is for your service, but you are your own business and your time belongs to you. You are worth what someone is willing to pay you. Either be expensive to those with money or status than you, or be free to your friends. Don’t be cheap to people that haven’t worked as hard as you because it degrades the value of your work. Art is subjective, but your years of actual experience and training aren’t. If you studied and trained, you should get paid for any art form. Don’t let people put a value on your work. They don’t know how much time went into you becoming as good as you are in the moment the work was created. Stand up for yourself and for your work. It’s your intellectual property. Fine art, and visual communication in general, is an intellectual art form and you created it. You are putting your talents into your art which is why it’s valuable. Make sure you surround yourself with people that understand that. You will always undervalue your work, but if someone is willing to pay you to do something, what you are giving them or saving them is worth more than they are paying you. Try and do everything on your own, but don’t be afraid to turn to your network for help. Only ask for help from strangers if 26 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler your network can’t help you. and any other business you associate with. Business is contracts, and contracts are business. While oral agreements are great, getting it in writing avoids disagreements in court. The longer you associate yourself with something or someone the more you will be known for being connected to it. Don’t get married. We all change many times over the years. How you feel today won’t be how you feel later if you are an artist. You owe it to yourself to stay an artist and that requires freedom. You cannot work for yourself and someone else at the same time. Working for yourself makes you an independent artist, while working for others makes you a work for hire (or an economic slave). If you have to work for someone, get a partnership/retirement. Your network will take care of you if you manage your network. If no one knows who you are no one will help you. If you don’t ask your network for help they won’t know you need assistance. Watch who you associate yourself with. Permanent associations can be a positive or a negative. For this reason you should invest in people, not ideas or money. Partnerships are investments. They can cost you money, save you money or make you money. Partnerships are any relationship outside of yourself. You are your own business. Your choices effect you the most internally and externally, not just financially. Partnerships are your family, your friends, your mentors, your advisors, your teachers, Trust no one until they earn your trust. Then once you trust them, give them your trust until they have betrayed you. Not all mistakes are betrayals, but all wrongs are not mistakes either. People do what they want to do and then claim that they made a mistake only because it didn’t work out the way they wanted it to, not because they were wrong for doing it to begin with. You are who you spend your time with. If you want to be happy, spend time with happy people. If you want to be successful, spend time and learn from successful people. If someone makes you unhappy, you can be unhappy by yourself. Life is too short to spend it wishing you were somewhere else. Keep your word. You will be known for what you do and don’t do versus what you say and don’t say. If you don’t know, say you don’t know. If you make a mistake, admit that you make a mistake. Partnerships are about trust. People respect people that can admit their mistakes and step up and fix them if possible. The moment you ask someone for something, it becomes a capitalistic relationship. Make sure you want to owe favors to or be owed 27 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler favors by someone before you do business with them. Also this goes for association. Finance Phase: Once you associate yourself with someone, it becomes hard to separate yourself from them if things don’t work out. Make disassociation the default filter until someone earns the right to be associated with you. As you market and network, your financial phase will grow. The best times to grow partnerships are when you have something else going on that generates resources for you so you can focus on building healthy, mutually beneficial relationships. Idea Phase: Realization Phase: Why do you need to create a partnership to achieve the goals you want to achieve, or are they better suited to be achieved on your own? As you seek out new partnerships, it will allow you to also evaluate the network that you currently have. Make your current network has flaws, or could benefit from the addition of a new team member. Maybe you might need a new team altogether. Planning Phase: Write down what you are looking for in a partnership. What are you looking to gain out of the partnership? What are you providing to the partnership in exchange? Strategy Phase: Success Phase: As you continue to become successful and grow and become a better person, your relationships and the people that want to work with you will become stronger and healthier as well. Understand that it’s not right to ask someone for something without providing anything in return. Understand from the previous categories what your value is and who you are and plan on sharing that with your potential partners. You are who you associate yourself with, if your close friends are becoming more and more successful and you are spending time with them, you are as well and just might not notice it yet. Marketing Phase: The key to being successful at anything is a solid education. This is where you reach out to your network and see who can potentially help you or recommend you in the direction of where you need to go. Also they also might be looking for someone that possesses the value you have from category 2 and work with you themselves. An education will allow you to better decipher and interact with the world around you. Pursuing higher than basic education will open up opportunities in the world and 28 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler unlock hidden potential within yourself that you might not be aware of. 29 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Where do you get resources? Resources are not just monetary, but money is a means of bartering for what you need. Resources can be bargained for with other resources, or for your time. Never give someone both your time and talent at the same time, unless you are getting something in return. Resources can be accumulated through various means, but the means that you want to eventually get to is where resources are voluntarily given to you. You never want to trade your time for resources, but at the beginning of your career that is exactly what you must do to learn your craft. It is okay to do this at the beginning of any career to apprentice, because your skills are not at the point where you can command a higher wage. Make sure you spend your time where you want to spend your life. At the beginning of any quest, make sure that your assets outweigh your liabilities or you will need to know how to replenish your resources as you are in the field. This is the point in your life where you will meet people outside of your close friends that will interact with you and shape your path. You will have to adapt. This is where communication skills are important. It is also important to quickly decipher the type of individual that you are talking to and what they can and cannot do for you. You will meet people that will tell you to stop doing what you are doing and to follow them. Don’t. If you know what you want to do- focus. You will meet people that will tell you giving them all of your resources is the way to get what you want. Don’t. There are no short cuts. You will meet people that will “say” look at me, give me money and I can do it for you. Don’t. The only way to retain results is to do the work for yourself; while someone can teach you or give you a spark, they can’t make your career. Only you can. You will learn more about yourself on every journey. You will also learn a better way to embark on the next one, even if it’s what not to do next time. Death and rebirth are the reoccurring theme of any journey. You cannot return the same way you left, because once you’ve experienced something it’s happened. 30 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Life is about the decisions you’ve made, versus the decisions that others have. You will meet people along the way that made better choices than you, but also you will meet people that have met worse choices than you. The worse thing to do is to die with regret, not having lived the life you wanted to live. Time will catch up with you. Instead of chasing money, work on your talent and network until money starts to chase you. Your talent and network will be what supports you in your life. If you do good work and meet good people, good people help other good people. If you can’t attract the resources you need, first look at the person that you are. Go back and look at the first six stages and see if you correctly prepared for your journey. If not do better next time, if there is a next time. Do your best only to expend your resources on things that are important to you. Not your friends or family, to you. The most important resource you own is time. The second is your education. Always keep a level head during adversity, once you stop thinking you’ve lost. Higher education and traveling are important to being who you will become. I highly encourage both. In the next section we will discuss the importance of both in detail. Without resources it will be hard to become successful, and even harder to maintain success once successful. Resources are anything that can be used to help you achieve your goal. There are personal resources and outside resources. Outside resources come from a variety of different sources and can come in variety of different forms. Resources are not just money, resources are anything of value that can be provided to you. In business the goal is to acquire resources for as cheap as possible and then turn around and transform those resources into something that can generate attention. The smarter you are, the more educated you and the more experienced you become will allow to obtain the same or better results with less resources, but nevertheless resources are still necessary to achieve a goal. Even societal beneficial artists, companies or organization need funding. For the time that you are giving up to achieve something, resources need to be provided to maintain a quality of life while achieving the goal. The quality of life that one seeks should match the years of experience that they have in their chosen field. If you are just starting 31 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler out on your journey, you don’t need an expensive house or car or clothes. You will be working most of the time so invest the resources into things that will make the things that you are already doing to become successful easier. Money will be a reflection of all the work you put in from categories 1-7. Nobody owes you anything and it’s important to develop yourself into somebody that is desirable in any aspect. a hybrid ranking system based off both lists. Look at a time line. Most successful (not famous, but successful) individuals take an accumulated 7-10 years of real, dedicated actual developmental work to become who they want to be. The more time and the more focus you put into surrounding yourself with good people and pursing positive opportunities the faster success will happen. Idea Phase: Marketing Phase: What is it that you need to achieve your goals and why do you need the resources to achieve it? Are there any other ways of gathering your resources through any of the work you’ve done in the previous categories? Tell people what you need and why you need it. If you are a good person and have built up good will with people, they will come to your assistance (just maybe not when you want them to, but when they can). Remember asking for favors create a relationship, make sure you are providing something in return to those that help you. Planning Phase: Write out what you need to start versus what you need to finish. Write down hard deadlines and soft deadlines and how it correlates to your life and what is realistically achievable with your schedule. While the work will always be there, the quicker you do the work that is needed to be done, nobody has time to wait for anybody, until that person becomes important enough to wait for. Strategy Phase: Rank what you need resources for in order from most important to least important. Then rank them from what’s easily obtainable to what’s hard to obtain. Create Always come to a marketing Phase with something to show someone. Whether it’s verifiable previous experience, referrals or overall credibility from your previous body of work, when you are asking people for their resources you are asking them to put the time they spent into you. The more you show you have invested interest in what you are trying to accomplish the easier it will be to get people to assist you in your goals. Do the work first, then ask for resources. Financing Phase: As you begin to generate resources have a plan for how to track and manage what is 32 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler coming in versus what is going out. This is also known as a budget. Keep track of how you allocate your resources, especially if you are responsible for paying taxes and managing your own retirement when you get older. Realization Phase: Put your resources to use and show people that you can do what you say you can do with the resources that they provide you. While mistakes happen, understand that nobody likes excuses. If you need additional resources, show people that you are returning to what you did with what they gave you first before asking for more. Success Phase: Resources continue to grow to the point where it becomes easier and easier to manifest when needed. Time is the most valuable resource in the world and the more time you can save yourself or someone else, the more successful you will become. Can going back to school or studying under someone make you better at what you are trying to achieve? Category 9 talks about education and travel. 33 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Being the light in the darkness is the thing you must become comfortable with to succeed as a leader. There will be familiar decisions in your life as you shed your youth, earlier clues for exits as you gain wisdom and stories to tell as you grow old. They all will make up who you are known as. Knowledge is power. It separates categories of society. Being an artist is the freedom to profess your talents to the world. To be an artist you must be of the world, to connect with the world. Materialism early in your career before you establish yourself will lead to unnecessary stress. Take the money you would spend on ridiculous items and lavish living situations, and invest that same money in yourself. You don’t need the stock market to become rich, you need a network. People throw their money into the stock market for various reasons, but diversifying your personal skills and networking will work out the same way down the road. If you are in debt, even when you make money it isn’t yours. Find some way to make money doing what you are passionate about. The money (things of value you want) will come, but only if you do the work. You reap what you sow. If you pretend to work, your results will be disappointing. Higher education increases critical thinking skills. Study with others, not by yourself. Traditional education is the way to go, but there are non-traditional ways of still getting a quality start to your education. Surrounding yourself with likeminded people will only breed more likemindedness. You need to be able to communicate with everyone if you want to become truly successful. The ability to communicate is what makes an artist an artist. Writers communicate through the written language, while artists can also communicate visually or through performance. Universal, or all around, artists can do all three. The university is a setting where you develop skills in a variety of disciplines in order to begin unlocking your potential in life. A university simply isn’t about the name. The name attracts the talent pool. The 34 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler university is about surrounding yourself with different people and learning how to adapt to new situations successfully. We talk how we write and we write how we talk. If you don’t like the way a person speaks, you usually won’t like the way that they write either. Time, Talent and Value/Money/Resources are the three things you need to become successful. You need at least one to start your journey. Two will make you successful. All three will make you famous. To be a master at education means to be able to take the most complex theories and make them simple for all to understand. Communication to the common denominator will be what gets everyone on the same page. To talk about social status and fame will be the topic of the next section. A better education does not have to start with face to face interaction, but eventually to overcome plateaus a trainer, teacher or mentor is necessary to apprentice under and learn from. Education can come in many forms and can come from many different sources. There is primary/direct experience and secondary experience from people that have done it before you. This is why you must learn to both do and say, not just one or the other, in order to become a complete artist. Education doesn’t have to cost money, but it will always cost time. Everything in life is an opportunity cost, you are trading something (usually its time) for something else. Consuming other people’s content (such as watching movies or episodic content or playing video games) is using up your time. If you are going to give it away, give it away to something that is going to make you a better person. As you continue to learn more, you will realize you didn’t know as much as you thought you did and that there is still so much more to learn. Never stop learning or being connected to people that can keep you informed. Knowledge is power and the second you think you don’t need it anymore, the sooner you will be on the road to replacement. A brilliant, creative mind is a terrible thing to not use to its fullest potential, be careful with the information that you allow to permeate and store itself within it. Traveling is one of the best forms of primary education. If you are ever lost or feel stuck, travel and it might change the course of your life. Learning a language shows your intelligence. You should learn to use at least one other language besides your primary language. If not for you, for the people you might interact with in the world that might not be able to speak outside of their own language that you can help. The better you can communicate and the 35 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler more comfortable you can be with strangers, the easier it will be for them to be themselves around. Your education is one of the few things that cannot be taken away from you, which is why you should invest in giving yourself a solid education. It will change you in all 11 of the other important categories. Learning takes time, as a result you must plan to be able to take the time to study. Idea Phase: What is it that you want to learn how to do, or learn how to do better? What are you missing that you could become better at? What new skills or opportunities are on the horizon that you would like to acquire or understand more about? Planning Phase: Research where your passions are known for location wise. Are any of them near you? If not can you relocate? How long will it take to acquire the skills or knowledge that you are looking to acquire? already done and people that have switched out of your position and into something else. Ask all of them what they know and don’t know, and see where you can find opportunities to help or learn from them. Financing Phase: Education, Travel and/or training costs money. The key is to find out how to accomplish your goals with as few resources as possible. This includes your time. Take inventory of your experiences and skills and what you already have credentials in. Can any of that stuff cut down on what you need resources for? Realization Phase: Start taking classes and not simply attending. Half the work is showing up and the other half is actually doing the work that it takes to improve and get better. Set up a routine and a schedule that includes the most vital things to your previous categories, but also leaving time to enjoy what you need to do in this category to improve as a person. Success Phase: Strategy Phase: How can you best use your time during the time that you are pursuing your education? Is there any previous experience that you can transfer over to have the results achieved faster? Marketing Phase: Reach out to people doing what you are doing, people looking to do what you have At the end of your journey there should be a visible difference in your demeanor. If you have achieved a credential you set off to obtain, you’ve become successful. If you’ve visited a country that you always dreamed of visiting, then you’ve been successful. If you can speak a foreign language proficiently because you went and immersed yourself in the respective culture, then you’ve done something that people talk about doing but 36 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler never actually take the time it takes to accomplish it. 37 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler There is a leader in all of us. Some of us will lead our families. Others our friends. Some our communities. The more talented you are, the higher you will climb on the hierarchy. Everyone starts somewhere though. You are not at your full potential, but you can miss out on obtaining it if you don’t learn to manage your time now. Right now you should be learning to follow. This means listening and taking in what you are being told by people you are assigned to follow. This doesn’t mean blind obedience. As you grow and learn from others, you will start to develop a taste for what you like and don’t like. This goes with anything you choose to adventure into. A career. A relationship. A business venture. Understand that you will have many stops along the way. Your network will grow. Understand that you will never out grow your parents in age, but that it is entirely possible to outgrow your parents in knowledge and wisdom. You must always continue to learn, because when you stop learning you start to become obsolete. Someone needs an individual that can adapt, if you don’t know what to adapt to by time you realize you need to change it will already be too late. I’m teaching you to be an artist. An artist is someone that can communicate the world in a way that the common man can relate to. Everyone can’t be an artist, but you can be. Being an artist means thinking outside yourself and into the future and relating it to the present. Most people focus on the here and now and how they can make themselves happy today, you need to worry about how to be happy in 10 years. 10 years is how long it takes to become successful in anything that you want to do. You will start to see the results of your work in 7, but others will start to see changes in you around year 5. Change starts when you profess that you want to be something. A producer isn’t a producer simply because he or she says the word. A producer is created as a result of the body of work that is created after that profession. If you profess that you want to help others get in shape, you must get in shape first and 38 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler no one is going to pay you to work for yourself. How trained you want to be is a personal choice, but the longer you work on your talent the more people will care about what you have to say when you want to share it. The more trained you become, the more you can request to be compensated for copies of your work. Once again, sell your work, not your time. You are too valuable to sell yourself to someone else. Partnerships are fine, but don’t marry. You will outgrow everyone you meet because everyone isn’t made to be together everyday forever. Make time for your children, they will be more successful than you. Your children will be a reflection of you and your fan base a reflection of your body of work. Be a leader always. It won’t always be the most popular thing to do, but people are always watching you. Stay safe. Wants and needs aren’t the same and neither is fear versus danger. Stay away from danger and take precautions when you have no choice. It will take your entire life to become goodat whatever it is you claim you want to be good at. Be ready for a long journey. Two more categories left. Next we will discuss the importance of clubs and networking. Without networking, none of the things you are doing mean anything. As you climb the ladder of success you will start to see yourself separate from the rest of the people that refuse to continue challenging themselves. Your job is not to be loyal to an Individual, but loyal to your values and ideals. Love your children because they are your children, they are you. No one else matters, because if you set a good example for them, you will set a good example for society. Be who you want the world to be. This is because when you ask of someone to be something that you ask, you better be just as good if not better. Stand fast to the core ethics that you hold when you are faced with adversity. When you are in times of tranquility always challenge them within yourself to make sure that they still align with who you have changed into. People will look up to someone who is steadfast in their beliefs. No one likes to be surrounded by someone who changes with the way the wind blows. Own your mistakes, but never stop learning. You will fail, but winners fail less often and learn from their mistakes to avoid repeating them. Know when to follow and know when to lead. You are meant to do both, but not at 39 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler the same time. Marketing Phase: Social Status improves with humility, but remains with hard work. Don’t linger on mistakes, but know if you want something from someone else not everything is on your time. Real power isn’t control, but respect. People will do more for people that they respect than people that they feel controlled by. This is because everyone wants to be respected at the end of the day, but not everyone is willing to do the work of people that achieved that status legitimately. Idea Phase: What is it that you want to be known for and why do you want to be known for it? Will you be okay with it in 5 years? If your family found out? If your children found out years later? Planning Phase: What are the steps that it will take to accomplish the idea? Research others that have accomplished similar feats. Everyone starts out an amateur, but it’s the education and training and resources that separate individuals. Strategy Phase: Work out the end goal of what you want to accomplish. This is the word that you want to define you. This is the word that you start out professing in quotes and then over time learning how to step into the role you profess. “Producer” to Producer. As around to see if anyone within your network has done what you are trying to do or is looking for an assistant. Reach out to former colleges and colleagues that are still active in the field that you are looking to develop your talents in. Most jobs come from referrals, not applying to random job ads. Financing Phase: Utilize your network and ask for referrals. Also look for ways to grow your network by adding to your skill sets. Realization Phase: Look at the quality of your network and your credentials now versus last year. Have. You evaluated them lately, added to them recently or upgraded the quality of the top four people that surround you? Success Phase: The quality of your network and your experience should make you confident in the roles that you currently are occupying. While the experiences in the role may be new, your life up to this point has prepared you for what you are facing now. 40 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Your network will be what protects you. Your network is anything and anyone outside of you. Your network is your faith in yourself and that things will work out okay if you continue along your path. You must surround yourself with good people. You are the average of the success of the people you surround yourself with. If you want to become an actor, surround yourself with other talented actors and act If you want to be a writer, surround yourself with other talented writers and writer. If you want to be a director, surround yourself with other talented directors and direct. The key pattern here is apprenticeships. You grow in your talents by studying with people just as talented, but also more talented than you. Colleges and universities give you instant access to a network of vetted mentors that can potentially teach you skills to improve the quality of your work. If you want to become good at something, you must go to where it is known for and study there. Always seek out the highest quality seat of knowledge you can access and attend. No matter where you go, instead of running around trying to figure out what to do first, seek out people you know that have experience. This is why networking is important. While you might not know how to do something, someone in your network might be able to provide you with that missing skill set. You will never be able to learn how to do everything in your lifetime. This is not because of your lack of talent, but the limited lifespan of a human being. The key skills to develop is a skill, and then the ability to communicate. Without the ability to communicate, you cannot effectively lead. Leadership is the desired quality in any individual. Most people are lost and are looking for someone that is not afraid to make a decision. Place knowledge behind your thoughts and experience behind your decisions. As you grow older you will learn how to control your interactions while still being authentic. Tapping into networks will save you time 41 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler and money. Not everything costs money. It takes money/value/resources, time and talent to be famous, if someone is lacking more than money offer them that instead. If someone only needs value, don’t expect to get something for free and find something of value to trade them. Don’t let someone guilt trip you about your success. You have to make sacrifices that they weren’t willing to or aren’t willing to make to be standing where you are. Surround yourself with 5 good people to grow with, but if you see someone losing focus for matters within their control...warn them first, and then replace them second. Always give someone a second chance for minor offenses if they have built up good will. Be fair with others, especially in public. People will only keep your secrets as long as they have a reason to. This includes business partners, family and all previous and current relationships. People don’t keep secrets for people they don’t like. Avoid making enemies, but know when you have no choice but to stand up for yourself. Always try to do the right thing, sometimes moral dilemmas happen, but think about your actions before you do them. Think before you speak. You control your actions, but you can’t control others reactions. You are always being watched. This means you are always being auditioned and possibly admired. Be comfortable with knowing you are being watched. Finally I will discuss how you being who you are and sharing what you learn will impact the world and yourself. Your network is going to be what makes or breaks you in your life endeavors. While your own journey will be individualistic and will be judged a success or failure on your own terms, your network will be the support system that helps you on that path. Sometimes you will go on a quest that will involved one or many others and sometimes you will have to embark on your own. Sometimes you will embark on your own and will meet people along the way that will assist you or join you as you reach that next level. Not everyone you meet at the beginning of your quest is meant to be there at the end of it. No one survives every quest, and eventually time catches up with everyone. Time can end in many different ways. 42 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Redirection of focus, quitting, or death or several ways in which time can end a network. Sometimes networks grow based off of death. This death does not necessarily have to be a physical death, but a metamorphosis as discussed in chapter 8. When you change as a person, you begin to attract a new set of Individuals that might not have noticed you before. This is the death of your old self and a rebirth into a new way of being. Death is not bad or certain and is simply the final ending of the known cycle of life. Everyone lives their lives in cycles, until that final cycle in which time ends as we know it to end on this physical plane. Due to the many ways in which things or beings can die, you must be okay with death and use it to gain focus on what is important to you in every given moment. Understanding that death comes for us all gives you power that most individuals lack. The understanding that time waits for no one and you must do the things that you say you want to do now. Just as time waits for no one, there is not enough time in life for any one individual to accomplish everything because of the fragility of human existence. This is another reason why networking is important. As one progresses up the ladder of their own individual talents, they will encounter others at the same heights of their own individual ladders. Networking with individuals at the same level as you are in your field will bring about more creative ideas in your field. Networking with others in fields that you lack the expertise in to accomplish in your lifetime and you will now be a specialist/artist in your craft instead of just a particular job. The easier you make it for someone to connect with you, the faster you can make a connection. This can be good or bad, so always take time to evaluate who you are trying to network with. Sometimes it’s hard to get rid of them after the fact if things don’t work out. Don’t make permanent connections with anyone that is no related to you by blood from the beginning. Relationships fade as people grow and priorities change, but your children will always be your children. If your network is not growing correctly, evaluate yourself in the former categories first and make sure your network is up to date on what you have going on. If you and any trusted mentor believe that all of your previous categories are efficient, 43 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler then it is your network that is flawed and you need to improve your existing network from within or diversify your skills to gain access to a different network. Idea Phase: Do you want to accomplish and grow something within the same field as your own or in a diverse field where you lack skills that others may already have mastered? Planning Phase: What skills do you possess to achieve your goals that you are competent in? What are you looking to gain in the endeavor you are now planning for? What can you offer to others in order to gain assistance in achieving your goals? Strategy Phase: Rank your skills, experiences and education on a scale of 1-5. Any skills ranking 3 or less you should make a list to outsource. Marketing Phase: Look for successful people. The more successful an individual is the more you need to learn about what that individual wants. Learn how successful people market themselves and motivate themselves and emulate their characteristics into daily living. Financing Phase: Your network will be able to help you if you are helping yourself. As you continue to attract attention by doing the work and being recognized, your success should go up which will lead to access to higher profile individuals and opportunities. Realization Phase: As you continue doing the work and networking, eventually people will start to know your name when you introduce yourself. As you continue along that path, people will start to know your name before you even introduce yourself to them. Rank your resources on a scale of 1-5, where dependability and accessibility are the two key measures. Success Phase: The three important things to make sure you can obtain or have in reserves before any endeavor are: Resources (Money), time and talented individuals to oversee and utilize all of the above. As you become more and more talented and accomplish things in less time, you will become more and more popular. Your network will be able to grow on its own once you hit a certain threshold. Make sure to survive as an artist by having some piece of software that’s mass producible to sustain 44 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler yourself. I call this a take away. Have something someone can buy to remember you with once they leave your presence. At the beginning of your career this might simply be a business card, but as you progress it could be movies, books and any other type of merchandise. 45 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Understand that it doesn’t matter how much you know when you lack the ability to communicate it with others. You will accomplish many things in your life, take opportunities to turn around and appreciate them and share them with the world. There are more people behind you looking for you to be successful than you know, you will never hear them. You will only hear the loudest voices in the room because they are too busy talking instead of doing themselves. Take time for yourself to recover. Changing as a person takes a lot of energy. Resisting the pressures of the world takes a lot of focus. Staying educated takes a lot of time. You need time to reflect as a person and it’s okay to take time for yourself as long as you don’t forget about the ones that care for you. It’s not selfish to take time for yourself to grow as a person. The only person you owe your life to are the ones that come as a result of it. Having or not having children should never be a matter of resources, but a matter of time. Each child requires time to grow as a person from their parents. If you or your significant other cannot dedicate time to being a parent, wait to have kids until you can. It takes a village to raise a child. Parents aren’t expected to be around 24/7. As your child gets older they need their own individual experiences to make them ready to approach the world as a person. Children need adventures and stories to grow. So do adults. Stories provide guidance on identity, dealing with isolation, independence and how to create interpersonal skills. Living that life and developing as an individual will change you every adventure you set off on and return back from. Usually solitude is where the best work is done, it’s because of the silence and not being disturbed. You set the example for others, but when you stop working you will be passed by. The world is a hierarchy, a network of people that interact with one another. Believe in a higher power, I have witnessed things that have confirmed for me that God does exist. Miracles do happen, and just because someone tells you something can’t happen 46 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler doesn’t make it true. Maybe they just couldn’t do it. People like to set standards based off their own limitations. Don’t let strangers tell you what to do until you understand their motivation. Sometimes people have bad intentions. Always work for yourself before you consider working for someone else. You are your best investment, both short and long term. Keep your mind sharp, the second you stop thinking danger becomes a greater possibility. Trust no one until they give you reasons to trust them. Then be mindful. Goodwill should forgive minor transgressions. Be kind in the way you treat others. Treat people you interact with on a long term basis better than you treat yourself. You never know when you will be the one that needs help. How does your accomplishments to date and future goals measure up with the rest of society? It doesn’t matter how much you have, if you leave the rest of the world with nothing. Evil is caused by social-economic inequality and a lack of education, experience and knowledge. Everyone must work according to their talents, but not everyone is as talented as everyone else. Only about 10% of any hierarchy will be able to ascertain enough knowledge to command the attention of the rest of the pyramid. True knowledge is understanding your place in society and that hierarchy. Experience allows one to become successful on that level within their hierarchy and mastery is showing others below you how to make it to your level. Experience will show you how to lead by example, and you are truly prepared everything will come naturally and things will happen easier and quicker. Once this happens look for ways to move up to the next level. You will make mistakes, as I have, but don’t let your mistakes define you. Allow mistakes to be the platform to which you begin the climb to your next goal. Once you begin climbing in the correct direction with a steady foundation you will know. Until it happens keep your expenses low so that you can be free to be happy in the process of your climb to the top. A bad thing to do is be a burden to others, but it’s even worse not to ask the people that care about you if you are truly in need. 47 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Treat everyone with the golden rule that you want to keep at a distance. Use the platinum rule of being of service to those you want to learn from, and avoid the ones that try and use you. Give to givers and take from takers. Help the ones that you can tell need help, but too are afraid to ask. Remember you had to be taught to ask, seek and knock. What can you provide to society free of charge that can benefit them? What can you provide to society at cost that can benefit them? What have you mastered through your own skills, expertise and training that you should be known for? What you should be known for is what you should be compensated to do for others. Planning Phase: Lend help to those to whom have helped you when you are in a position to do so. You shouldn’t be too busy for people that were not too busy to help you. Be kind to everyone, but work with those whom have sacrificed the same to arrive at the same space and time as you. You are not obligated to be friends with everyone that wants to be friends with you, but try to be kind to those that take the time to reach out to you if you have time. The ability to face someone and communicate with them competently will be in high demand now and in the future. Technology will be able to make determinations based off of factors, but humans have the ability to connect with each other by asking questions and going deeper and relating. Idea Phase: Who in society is already doing what you should be known for? What were their life experiences? What kind of education and training did they receive? What hidden advantages or disadvantages made them successful? (Disadvantages can make someone successful by making them think outside the box and become resourceful or find a new way of solving an old problem due to necessity). Strategy Phase: How can any of the other 11 categories be used to help develop the thing you should Be known for and bring it into society? This should be a realistic timeline. Time is the key component here because resources can be found, but you cannot find more time once your time is up. Some goals have set times that cannot be changed and supplementary goals should be created to build along side it while accomplishing the 48 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler main goal. Marketing Phase: See who has done what you have done already within your inner or outer circle. Ask for help and shortcuts on getting from A to Z by trusted individuals. Always verify information received from sources that might have ulterior motives. Trust your growing education, experience and seek advice from established mentors that have done what you are trying to accomplish and believe in your goals for you and not for them. Financing Phase: Understand what you can provide society within those three categories: Free, at Cost and Exclusive Content based off education and life experience that only you have. Free: this content should be created while you have minimal overhead and maximum time to develop your own unique style and your education. Don’t try and make money while learning because you cannot do both efficiently and they will be suffer as a result and you will be judged independently on both. At this stage your training should provide you with room and board and a small stipend to cover expenses. At Cost: this is where you are developing new clients, keeping old ones engaged with you and have more time to devote to your craft now that you have moved away from being in education, travel and training. At this point you are new in your career, but have the experience, knowledge and credentials to perform your profession at a level above those that didn’t take the time to train. You will be able to generate income at this level by networking consistently and raising your rates after every job and doing great work in the process. Premium: there are things that you have learned or will create that will cost resources to make happen. As you had to sacrifice to make those things come into existence it is not right for those that have the ability to train, but are lazy to do the work themselves, to profit off of you. At the premium level you have sacrificed time, talent and resources to create things that hopefully last and resonate with your audience. You deserve to be compensated for that work. Software is just as valuable as hardware, so all forms of Intellectual property become fine art when created by a talented individual and has worth. Realization Phase: If you are a point in society where all the other 11 categories are in harmony, you will see society reach out to you for your talents. Success Phase: 49 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler You begin to see your network grow because more people are finding you for the first time every day. This new reality comes with benefits and dangers and health and safety will become more and more important as you continue to redevelop yourself. All of the content that you create should belong to you so the work that you do in year one will still be accessible in year seven. Especially with technology it is important to be mindful of what you share with others and put out into the world, because it will be associated with you. 50 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Life happens in cycles son. Just like the seasons and how everything comes around once a year, your life will be a circle as well. It will be a rollercoaster. You will go through moments where you think you know everything and then will realize there is something you overlooked. You will succeed and you will fail. Maybe your failure will be public failures or maybe they will be private ones. Maybe they will be a huge deal to some and a minor deal to others, but you are meant to make mistakes. No one is perfect. No one is pure good or pure evil. There is redemptive qualities in the worst people if you take the time to see why they are the way they are. Anger masks pain. People use anger and lash out to cover up the hurt that they have felt over their lifetimes. We all have a dark side, but you must learn to control it. The dark side develops from repressed pain and emotions that you hold back. This is why I thought you communication was important You must communicate, it’s part of the cycle and once you stop communicating you lose. Communication is the art of getting your point across as well as everyone on the same page. Communication is both external in the way you interact with your family and your friends, but it is also internal in the way you work out your decision making. Always communicate. Never focus too much. Focusing too much is dangerous, because it can cause you to not realize when you need to make a change of directions. Remain calm, even when you are letting your emotions take over. Continue to think and evaluate throughout. This is why training is so important. The more you train the less you focus on what you need to do and can do what you want to do. Everything happens in cycles. You will start things, focus on them and hopefully complete them, then evaluate what you have gone through to start the preparation for the next adventure. Never stop being adventurous. Make great lifelong friends and don’t focus on being comfortable. Comfort is for the lazy and you have a lot you need to accomplish before you earn the right to be lazy. Everyone is on their own life path that 51 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler started way before they met you, youth is not the time that you should enjoin yourself to someone forever. When you read this book again think of how your life has changed since the last time you’ve read it. Sometimes it takes reflecting on the journeys you’ve been on to remind you that you are ready for the trials ahead. I love you always, Your Father JaMarlin Fowler 52 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler JaMarlin Fowler is an Artist, originally from Dallas, Texas. He was born December 14th, 1983 and currently has one son, Jeremiah. He has been active in the Performing and Visual Arts since he was 8 years old. He began performing in Virginia, and has performed in various parts of the United States. He has appeared or has been mentioned in various works and also produces his own content. He lives in Southern California, where he co-founded Visual Fire Productions in 2013. He has obtained degrees from multiple colleges and is also fluent in Spanish. In 2018, Visual Fire Productions became Visual Fire Media. 53 The Artist’s Arena JaMarlin Fowler Copyright page. USA Copyright 2019 First Ed. Author: JaMarlin Fowler Publishing Company: Visual Fire Media Publisher Address: 4804 Laurel Canyon Blvd. #148 Valley Village, CA 91607 ISBN- 54