The Self-Employed Ecosystem with Jeffrey Shaw Part 2 (of 2)
“When we slowed down as a society, nature was more than willing to step in.”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM jeffrey shaw
From humble beginnings, Jeffrey Shaw became one of the most preeminent portrait photographers in the United States. His on-location style and fine craftsmanship made him the go-to photographer for families of C-suite executives of Anheuser-Busch, Twitter, and many others, Supermodel Stephanie Seymour, news anchors Jim Nantz and David Bloom, sports icons Tom Seaver, Pat Riley, and Wall Street executives too many to mention. His portraits appeared on The Oprah Show, CBS News, in People and O Magazine and hang at Harvard University and The Norman Vincent Peale Center.
After 35 years of exceptional service to his exclusive clientele, Jeffrey decided to share his knowledge of business, branding, and marketing to support self-employed and small business owners as well as progressive-minded companies. He's an in-demand keynote speaker at conferences such as HOW Design, Growth Marketing, corporations the likes of Verizon and BMW, and institutions such as Florida Atlantic University and the Adams Center for Entrepreneurship. Jeffrey is also the author of two books, LINGO and The Self-Employed Life, a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and a regular contributor to various publications.
In 2014, Jeffrey started a podcast, Creative Warriors, later rebranded as The Self-Employed Life which is amongst the top 15% of all podcasts. His TEDx LincolnSquare talk was later moved to TED.com which is so rare it’s been said you have a better chance of getting hurt at home by your toilet. With abundant passion and a strong commitment to serving, we can expect there is much more to come.
on intuition
“I think photographers have some of the best intuition on the planet. Because the speed at which we release the shutter is a fraction of a second…your brain can't operate that fast. So knowing when to fire that shutter is from gut intuition. There's just no other way. What has always concerned me is those very same people with tremendous intuition doubt themselves when it comes to being in business. I truly believe, and I talk about this a lot in The Self-Employed Life, that I think kayaking has taught me more about business than almost anything else I've ever done. Because and I'm sea kayaking being here in Miami, and it's an inflatable kayak no less because I live in an apartment. Now the sensing is off the charts. There are such nuances to the current. There is an island with a sandy beach that my partner and I like to go to and so that's our destination. In business you know you can have your destination, but we never are able to get there in a straight line ever. Because you have to sense the current you're either going to. You're either going to hit the current straight on, or you're fortunate enough to be with the flow of the current. The last place you want to be is undecided because if you're sideways to the current, you're gonna get beat to hell.
It’s a lesson in business. We love to be in flow. We love it when our businesses and our lives are working in flow. That's a great, run with it. But you know, if not, it often means you have to hit it straight on. So often the way we get to that destination to that island, just like our destinations in business, is this long arch that we have to take in order to get there. But every time we take that long arch, that's when we cross manatees and dolphins jump out of the water…the most beautiful things are seen when you slow down and pause. Does it take us longer? Do we have to slow down in order to make that wider arch to get to the destination? Absolutely. But the sights along the way, are so beautiful and life changing. Being in flow is great in how we experience life and our businesses. But it's almost boring to me now. It's like just hopping on the current and going with the flow, I'll ride that wave to where I want to go. But that opportunity to slow down to have to go against the grid and current that you're up against in life, you're going to find your most beautiful sights and your most beautiful lessons along the way.”
BANYAN TREES
“A banyan tree is this massive tree with a good size trunk. My daily reminder is the banyan tree because I pass them all day in Miami. So as the limbs grow, it drops a vine. When the vine hits the ground, it anchors into to the ground, and the vine becomes a trunk. And it keeps doing this. So you wind up with these trees that almost look like one trunk ,but you realize it's actually a series of trunks and it keeps building. Down here Miami, there are some trees that are so massive, they've not been touched and they've not been messed with. As the limbs grow, they drop a vine, and the vine becomes a support for the now bigger limb. I look at these trees every day. And I think all lessons of life are in that tree. Why don't we support ourselves as intelligently as that tree knows to support itself?
As it grows, it drops into anchor to hold it's new growth up, and then it keeps growing and it drops another anchor. It is astonishing, astonishingly brilliant, that I look at these brand new trees with absolute awe. All lessons of life are in that tree. I just find it astonishing. What breaks my heart is that there are some of these trees that are close to the road. Of course they get big, they're hanging over pavement, and these vines have to be cut. And the inevitable is going to happen in that you now have limbs that the tree knows need to be supported, but man has cut off the line. And these trees, these limbs hanging over roads are going to crash down at some point because the trees intelligence knows that it needs the support.
The brilliance of these banyan trees… literally I walk a lot all day long, and I walk past these trees. I don't think I can pass a banyan tree without seeing what feels to me all the lessons about life that nature wants to teach me in that tree.”
slowing down as a society
“And I have to say that I think that moment comes from me on almost a daily basis because the contrast, like I totally appreciate the advancements that we've made as a society and the advancements we've made through architecture and technology. I love watching that. I love advancement. I love new technology. And I love putting that up against the brilliance of a banyan tree and say, hey, guess what mankind like, we just don't have the intuition and the brilliance of this banyan tree. No matter how big you make the city, a good strong hurricane that Mother Nature decides to put forth is going to win the battle.
I was actually here in I was living in Miami Beach at the time when Hurricane Irma hit here. And one thing I didn't know about hurricanes is that it picks up a lot of salt water, so it burns everything. So shortly after the hurricane, when I returned back to my neighborhood, it looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off. Within a few days, everything was burnt. And the palm trees, of course, were all blown over. The city being used to it, they just prop those suckers back up. They don't plant new palm trees, they just take the palm trees and stand them back up, and they reroute themselves. Within two weeks, everything that was brown and burnt was glorious and green again.
And you realize, nature's got this. Just let nature do its thing. We just have to stop screwing it up. You know, as mankind, we’ve got to stop polluting our waters. And it was a beautiful thing during the pandemic, during lockdown, that really the safest place to be was on the water. And that's how I took up kayaking down here because it was safe and you could be out in the kayak and away from people. And because of how much quieter the waters had become.. free from boats and just a lot less activity. Almost instantly, nature recovered. I mean, the manatees, we're getting more intimate, coming closer, far more sightings of dolphins and sting rays right up to the land. It was quite dramatic, how quickly when we slowed down as a society, nature was more than willing to step in.”
the Self-Employed ECOSYSTEM
“I broke this down into what I call, the self-employed ecosystem. I'm referring it to an ecosystem in nature. In nature, in a self-employed ecosystem, you've got three main components. You've got personal development, because your business can only be as successful as you develop yourself into being. Then, business strategies that are right for relationship-based businesses, and then daily habits, things that you do every day to sustain your forward momentum.
Like an ecosystem in nature, if anything is off in an ecosystem, I literally refer to as an invasive species in your business. If there's an invasive species in nature or in your business, it's destroying the whole ecosystem. And an ecosystem to work well does not mean equal, or imbalance, because we will always put more time in our businesses and in our business strategies. We will never put as much time into our daily habits, but they need to be present in order to support the daily business strategies that you're applying. So a healthy and thriving ecosystem is never about equal parts. It's just knowing what all the parts are, and that they're all healthy and interconnected. This is fundamentally the biggest difference between self-employment and other types of businesses. When you're self-employed, there's little to no division between who you are as a person and your business. Unlike traditional businesses, we don't have the luxury of saying, Business is business don't take it personal. It's all personal. And it's personal, not just in that we get our feelings hurt, it's personal because your level of success when you're self-employed is directly related to your level of personal development.
If you want more success in your business, you have to increase your own belief in yourself - what you think you're capable of, and what you feel you deserve. That's the personal development work that you have to do before you put more effort in. Otherwise the symptom of an unhealthy ecosystem is you feel like you're all over the place or you're working really hard but hardly getting ahead. A lot of entrepreneurs know that feeling of working really hard, adding strategy, and not getting anywhere. It’s because you haven't done the personal development work to open up your capacity. It’s like trying to overstuff a sack - it's not going to go anywhere.
So to me it all comes down to elements of nature. Because my entire process of survival while writing this book was spent in nature, there's a huge amount of influence, right down to the fact it's called The Self-Employed Ecosystem. So the color you reference, the color of the book is what one would call Aquamarine. And while it's a color I like, I had no influence over the publisher choosing this color. Not only was it the accent color of my house.. not only did I love it. I understood the meaning of the color Aquamarine. The psychological impact of the color Aquamarine is that it is meant to demonstrate the activity and ferociousness of the ocean waves, but the calmness that's also available by the sea. It's a combination of blue and green. In the book, I actually described the ideal state of mind for success as being highly passionate about what you're doing, but able to make decisions with a calm mind.”
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