Back in the early nineties when I launched my career on the speaking circuit, my motto was to “speak anytime, anywhere, for free even for a fee.” That philosophy paid off handsomely, ultimately leading to upwards of 85 speaking engagements a year. The lesson - laser focus on mastering your craft. Author Cal Newport highlights this view in his two bestselling books “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” and “Deep Work”
Thank you for your insight ! I think speaking is an example of how exposure have a higher degree of immediate return because it's a live practice where your self is involved, unlike making visual art which has so many obstacles to link an artwork seen somewhere to an artist. But broadly I would say that my concern with exposure is not so much about whether it *can* work but about asking, is it a sustainable, equitable model for creating a fair and inclusive creative industry ? There are many people showing how to successfully function and work in the current system, Newport for example, but personally I'm more in the business of questioning the system itself, and how it limits our imagination about other ways of doing things :)
Back in the early nineties when I launched my career on the speaking circuit, my motto was to “speak anytime, anywhere, for free even for a fee.” That philosophy paid off handsomely, ultimately leading to upwards of 85 speaking engagements a year. The lesson - laser focus on mastering your craft. Author Cal Newport highlights this view in his two bestselling books “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” and “Deep Work”
Thank you for your insight ! I think speaking is an example of how exposure have a higher degree of immediate return because it's a live practice where your self is involved, unlike making visual art which has so many obstacles to link an artwork seen somewhere to an artist. But broadly I would say that my concern with exposure is not so much about whether it *can* work but about asking, is it a sustainable, equitable model for creating a fair and inclusive creative industry ? There are many people showing how to successfully function and work in the current system, Newport for example, but personally I'm more in the business of questioning the system itself, and how it limits our imagination about other ways of doing things :)