The Neo-Renaissance is an era where more people than ever before have access to the tools, knowledge, and guidance that enable them to provide value and make meaningful contributions to the world. If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I believe we’re well into this era – a golden epoch that brings with it golden opportunities.
But this time and place in history is not without its problems, challenges, and traps – with every light that shines, a shadow is also cast.
These tools, which are capable of liberating us – both in the physical sense (financially, locationally, and temporally) and in the non-physical sense (mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) – are also capable of confining us.
And while nearly all of us have access to these tools, the majority of us (maybe even you) default to using them as chains that bind rather than keys that unlock.
Through unconscious use, they provide endless distraction, unearned dopamine, and sap the individual of their very life force by insidiously evaporating their time, energy, and attention.
Luckily, the root of the problem – what determines the nature of the tools and the impact they have on your life – is simple and clearly defined: liberation comes from using these tools to consciously create, while entrapment comes from using them to unconsciously consume.
That’s why the pursuit of creative excellence is so important, arguably more important than ever before.
By pursuing your natural proclivity to create (what I believe is the default state of the human being, a conscious entity designed to connect with insight, give rise to value, and forge the world), you’ll avoid the pitfalls of your technology, while at the same time living in alignment with your highest function – in an age that has never been more conducive to it.
By embracing, cultivating, and refining your creative autonomy, you not only set yourself up for achieving success in whatever form you wish for it to take, but you also bring freedom to yourself in a way that can only be experienced through meaningful creative pursuit.
The virtue of creativity
Creativity is the capacity to give form to the formless, to externally crystallize the essence of your internal energies.
This process can manifest in an infinite number of ways – from writing to engineering, to sculpting a statue to sculpting one’s own body – to bring something new into existence, or to advance, reimagine, and/or evolve that which already exists.
To live a life without creative action is to live passively – to exercise no agency, direction, or force of will.
It is a vapid, hollow, and discordant way of being, yet it is how so many in the modern world live their lives.
Days spent in perpetual listlessness, an atrophy of the defining quality that makes us uniquely human – the ability to enact self-directed evolution.
I fully believe that this is a major contribution to the widespread mental and emotional issues that plague so many in today’s world. People are meant to create, but don’t – causing severe dissonance and internal misalignment, a spiritual starvation of one’s soul.
In this way, to hone your creativity is to act in pursuit of your highest good and greatest benefit. To explore your curiosity, refine your sensory sensitivity, and seek insight that inspires the infusion of your very essence into something of value.
That is what you should continuously strive towards, because in that striving is found purpose, fulfillment, and meaning. And beyond your own benefit, what you create also stands to benefit others.
In this way, creativity is a virtue.
It is your contribution to the whole, your commitment to (hopefully) a vision for a better civilization and future that you contribute to bringing into fruition through your creative action.
It is the artist and the architect who shape the aesthetic of a culture, the writer and the orator who shape its awareness, the designer and the engineer who shape its tools and technology. What is created influences who it is created for, and who it is created for influences the direction of the collective.
You shape what you create, and what you create shapes not only you – but the world.
A golden epoch of value creation
There has never been a better time in all of human history to pursue creative work. The modern miracles of our day and age have fully democratized the information, education, and mediums of expression that give rise to creative excellence.
I couldn’t fathom not taking advantage of this fact.
I could never see the opportunities available and stand by apathetically as they pass me by. I want you to feel this as viscerally as I do. You have within the palm of your hands a window into the collective superconscious of humanity – an archive of all information, knowledge, and wisdom that has ever existed, and instant access to all information, knowledge, and wisdom continuously being brought into existence.
It is a vast and endless library filled with anything you could ever want to know, instructions on acquiring any skill you could want to master, and directions on walking any path you could ever want to travel – a modern and globally accessible Alexandria.
Coupled with this is the erosion of the gatekeepers. Before the internet, you needed to go through a multitude of intermediaries if you hoped to see your work held by the hands you hoped to bring it to – agencies, publishers, producers, studios, and labels.
Now, anyone anywhere can build a platform for themselves through social media and digital marketplaces. This doesn’t mean the process is instantaneous, without its difficulties, or void of hardship. But it does mean the sharing of your work – as well as the nature of the work you pursue – is yours to direct as you see fit.
The power is in your hands.
Finally, we are continuously moving towards a time where value is becoming more and more predicated on information. Entrepreneurship is no longer confined to the world of physical goods and commodities. It has expanded into the realm of digitized knowledge, content, and education.
If you’re curious about something, someone else somewhere else is as well. If you can direct that curiosity into deepening your understanding and cultivating expertise, you can find a way to monetize it.
The range of what constitutes a product, service, or partnership has never been greater, the ways to approach scaling a fruitful business have never been so varied, and the tools with which to do it all have never been more conducive to the creatively inclined.
Financial abundance through creative autonomy
Let’s talk practicality.
It’s one thing to understand creative action conceptually, but it’s another thing entirely to put it into practice.
Conceptual understanding can only take you so far. Experiential action is what allows you to fully make use of the principles discussed above.
The first place you need to start is curiosity. Developing an awareness of the knowledge that holds your intention and pulls you into a deeper effort to pursue the ideas, interests, and fields associated with it.
You’re either in one of two places – you know what draws your curiosity, or you don’t.
If you know what draws your curiosity, the answer is to delve deeper into the subject and begin to think of where you can develop applicable expertise that can provide value to another person. That’s all any offer or business is.
You want to…
- Identify Results – Determine the benefit(s) others can gain from learning more about and implementing your fields of curiosity and expertise. Don’t focus on every viable benefit, but the 1-3 most important ones. Ask yourself “if I were to sell this as a product or service to someone, what is the single benefit they’d need to recieve that would make their investment worth it?”
- Offer Guidance – Think of yourself 1-2 years ago. What would you have liked to know? How would you have benefited from figuring out what you know now sooner? How would it have sped up results, circumvented struggles, and made your life easier? That’s what you’re selling when you package knowledge into an offer.
- Provide Systems – What actionable aspects of your knowledge can an individual “plug-and-play” into their own life & business? How can you help them systemize their process for greater ease & efficiency?
If you don’t know what draws your curiosity, I encourage you to reconsider and suggest that you likely do. Because everyone is interested in something, and often a multitude of things. But to clarify, you want to…
- Pursue Understanding – If you needed to maximize the quality of your life, your sense of fulfillment, and alignment with your purpose, where would you look? What concepts, ideas, and topics would you seek out? Start exploring.
- Prioritize Application – Knowledge is power-potential, applied knowledge is power. Experiment with what you discover through deliberate study & intentional action. Be process oriented rather than outcome focused. Apply, refine, & repeat.
- Share Discoveries – Expertise is the result of experimentation filtered through experience. Once you learn something, there is someone somewhere who doesn’t know what you do but could benefit from learning it. Seek out and share what you learn along the way with those that are 1 or more steps behind you in your journey.
By following these guidelines, you’ll be able to gain greater degrees of clarity in discovering your curiosity or you’ll be able to develop an actionable path in optimally channeling your pre-existing curiosity.
The next step is to hone in on your messaging, determining how you want to communicate that curiosity to your pre-existing following and/or in pursuit of growing one. My advice is to think about it in these terms:
- Concept – The “big ideas” you explore, share, and work to expand. These are all encompassing fields of information – such as philosophy, psychology, self-improvement, entrepreneurship, etc. Determine what concepts will serve as the foundation for your message.
- Context – The “broad frame” from which you present concepts. Stories, lessons, actions, self vs. resistance, etc. These are the circumstances that color the concept, the initial manifestation of form through which a concept can be understood and assessed.
- Content – The “specific lens” through which your concept is viewed. This is the type of story (personal / anecdotal / parable), lessons (conceptual / metaphorical / applicable), actions (steps / alternatives / resulting outcomes), Self vs. (self / other / world). These are the distinct perceptions, experiences, advice, etc through which a concept can be integrated and applied.
Next, packaging the knowledge and developing an ecosystem around it. You need to make sure that it fits the four eternal markets, as this will always reap the greatest rewards:
- Health – That which helps someone look and feel better, usually (but not exclusively) physically.
- Wealth – That which helps someone generate more money, create more freedom, and access greater degrees of optionality.
- Relationships – That which helps someone improve communication, improve pre-existing connections or establish new ones, and have more romance / intimacy / sex.
- Fulfilment – That which helps someone access greater depths in spirituality, creativity, and clarity. I am of the mind that this aspect being present is what differentiates a “viable” offer and a “great” offer within the aforementioned 3 eternal markets.
Once you’ve determined which of the markets synergizes with the knowledge in your head, you need to understand the anatomy of a successful offer – how you’ll align your expertise with those who are willing to pay for it:
- Transformation before features – The potential outcome is more important than the process they follow to get there.
- Building for someone a step behind you – Facilitating a single step forward is all an offer needs to be valuable.
- Prioritize the minimum viable result – The ONE thing that makes their investment worth it, “if all this does” over “this needs to do”.
- 3 magic benefits – Good things come in threes. Identify the three primary benefits your offer provides.
- Building with beats building for – Launch your minimum viable offer, improve it through the feedback & experience of your customers & clients.
- Ship imperfect prototypes – Perfection is the enemy of progress. What you offer doesn’t need to be groundbreaking in order to be life-changing.
The above frameworks and principles, when put into practice, will allow you to build the “bridge” you need to connect the pursuit of creative autonomy with financial abundance.
You’ll avoid the most pervasive traps the majority of creators find themselves falling into – the trap of the starving artist, and the trap of creative limitation in the name of profit.
You will circumvent both, allowing you to get paid as a result of continuously expanding the flame of your creative essence rather than diminishing it.
If you want to go much further in-depth into each of these aspects, enroll into my 100% free Absolute Abundance Compendium – a 12-part video masterclass revealing everything I know about building a profitable purpose-driven brand & business.
Staying ahead by expanding perception
In closing, I’ll leave you with a concept that, when kept in your awareness, will benefit your life in a general sense, but more specifically your creative pursuits and the journey you’ll embark on to ensure their success:
Zoom out.
The majority of your doubts, anxieties, and fears will dissolve once you do.
Keep your eyes fixated on longer time horizons, act in days and weeks, but lock your pursuit into years.
Allow your awareness to expand outside of the bubbles you occupy, remind yourself that the world is much larger than what you perceive it to be and that thoughts of “I should be here by now” or “I should have accomplished this by then” are largely illusions.
Everyone’s journey is different, and it unfolds uniquely for each individual.
Consistency, persistence, and a focus on what you can control is where you want to direct your attention.
Prioritize internal betterment, and stop getting caught up in external comparison to others, preconceived notions of where you should or shouldn’t be, and aspects of the process that are outside of your direct control.
Much love and, as always, thank you for reading.
– JCS
P.S…
If you know the path of value-creation is the path you’re meant to walk, and you want to learn step by step exactly how to develop your infinite idea capture + content production system, create profitable purpose-driven offers, and build an impactful personal brand you can happily commit your life to – all while doing what you love, serving others, and adding value to the world – check out my flagship 8 week program, The Absolute Abundance Academy.
It is my magnum opus, far and away the crown jewel of my entire brand and business ecosystem.
I’ll see you inside.
