Welcome to the Metaphor Mindset Podcast!
Greetings from just one little island in the shining archipelago of basements and garages across the storm-tossed sea where are podcasts are born!
I’m Shannon Borg, and I’m an artist, writer, poet, playwright, and art & business coach.
This podcast is for artists, writers, makers and creators - I”ll talk about the creative process, business, and how to live a creative life you love.
Art is Life
Maybe you started as a writer and now you’re a professional musician, perhaps you first studied painting, and now you're secretly a sculptor. Or, perhaps you made drawings as a child and now you’re obsessed with fiber art. Whatever the medium, most of us have been doing this in one form or another since childhood as a hobby, as a vocation, an avocation, an obsession. My own journey started with writing, and I finally started painting at age 50. Now I'm an artist and art & business coach, and I help other artists achieve their goals.
Why do we do it? You might have heard the phrase that people are driven by one of three things - money, power, or fame. Most artists are driven by fame but it’s not what you think. Fame comes in many forms, and can just mean the satisfaction you receive from your friends, from your small community from your fellow artists, or from the board of directors in your head.
We Think in Metaphor
I hope to shed light on how artists already think - we think in metaphors - how one thing can be transformed to become something else - meta - greek for across - pherein - to bear, as in birth, to carry - So metaphors carry meaning across , bring something new into existence.
And that is what you do as artists - in your work, yes - but also in the projects you are passionate about - as innovators, inventors, connecting with specific communities of like-minded people, networking, referring, sharing, educating - that this way of thinking is the road to business health and growth. As an artist - you may not want a 6-figure, multi-channel business like we hear about so much on the internet. But I can imagine that most artists want a way to develop their passions, sustain income, and to thrive artistically, emotionally, and physically.
I hope to connect those dots - to draw and paint some dots, and then connect the dots, to carry across new meanings - explore new ways for us to think about our work - your work and your business so you can get past some of these anxieties - fears of technology, past traumas around finances, the poverty mindset, impostor syndrome, all that. So you can dream your own dream - and OWN your dream.
I believe that the ways you ALREADY think as an artist are precisely the ways that can help a creative business develop over time into something you are proud of calling your own, and that can sustain you financially and creatively.
