With more than 4 million podcasts available, why make another one? That was the question I was asked to answer in my talk at the Amos Fortune Forum in Jaffrey, NH. During my presentation — which you’ll hear in this episode — I talk about my unconventional journey from clueless amateur to an award-winning podcast producer. I also take the audience through the No Time to be Timid Manifesto with inspiring stories from a wide range of artists. You don't want to miss that! You’ll hear me mention the “Declaration of Conformity,” which you can check out on my website triciaroseburt.com.
With more than 4 million podcasts available, why make another one? That was the question I was asked to answer in my talk at the Amos Fortune Forum in Jaffrey, NH. During my presentation — which you’ll hear in this episode — I talk about my unconventional journey from clueless amateur to an award-winning podcast producer. I also take the audience through the No Time to be Timid Manifesto with inspiring stories from a wide range of artists. You don't want to miss that! You’ll hear me mention the “Declaration of Conformity,” which you can check out on my website triciaroseburt.com.
Hey there, I'm Tricia Rose Burt, and in this podcast, we talk to artists who show us how to find the courage to take risks, step out of our comfort zones, and use our creativity to make our work and change our world. Pay close attention, because this is no time to be timid.
Hey there and welcome to this special edition of No Time to Be Timid. We haven't talked in a while and a lot of things have happened since then and none of it seems to be very good. So it's up to us to put as much beauty and joy and creativity in the world as we can. I don't know about you, but to do that, I need as many bravery boosts as I can get to make sure I don't “run out of brave” as our guest Barry Dean said in last season's episode eight.
I had to screw up my courage at the end of August because I was invited to speak at the Amos Fortune Forum here in New Hampshire. It's a speaker series in its 80th year that has featured a host of prominent folks, and I was just really honored to be included. Now, the stage is one of my favorite places to be, but I'll admit, I was nervous. I hadn't been on a stage in four years. Plus, that same day, they were tearing down my late mother's house, which was the right thing to do, but still, the end of an era and it was a tricky day for me. Then I remembered somebody said, this is no time to be timid. And if I'm going to talk the talk, I had best walk the walk. So in this episode, we'll be listening to my presentation. I refer to some visuals in the talk and I'll try to pop those on my website so you can see what I'm referring to. Hopefully my words will give you a bravery boost, too. And I'd love your feedback. You can reach out to me at podcast@triciaroseburt.com.
In the meantime, thanks so much for joining us. And remember, this is no time to be timid.
(Presentation Begins)
I am indeed Tricia Rose Burt and I'm excited to be with you this evening and I'm honored to be a part of this great Amos Fortune Forum tradition. And before I get started, I mean, how about these flowers? Honest to goodness. I mean, you know, it's talking about me going from corporate to an artist. She even has a pair of pumps in the – I mean, it's really wonderful. So I shout out to Bonnie for such a great floral arrangement.
So we're gonna talk about courage and creativity in my podcast, No Time to Be Timid. And we're actually recording this evening so we can use it as a special bonus episode of the podcast. Now, if you're a listener, you know that at the start of each of my episodes, I ask my guests to say, “hi, I'm Vince Gill and I'm a songwriter and this is No Time to Be Timid” or “hi, I'm Laura Wilson, photographer and member of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and this is no time to be timid.” And so tonight, I'm gonna say, I'm Tricia Rose Burt. I'm speaking at the Amos Fortune Forum in Jaffery, New Hampshire, and my audience wants you to know, and then at that point, you're going to say, this is no time to be timid. Okay? Okay, I promise that this is the only audience participation we'll have all night long.
So we're gonna try it, see if we can get it done the first time. Okay, let's see, here we go. Hey there, I'm Tricia Rose Burt. I'm speaking at the Amos Fortune Forum in Jaffery, New Hampshire. And my audience wants you to know that. This is no time to be timid. Oh my gosh, Adam Arnone, my producer’s in the crowd, did we get it? Do we need to do it again, are we good?
Adam:
They nailed it.
Tricia
We are so good. This is amazing. All right.
Okay, so it's 1989 and I'm about 29 years old and I'm working for one of New York's top PR firms as a senior account executive. I'm in my office at Rockefeller Center. I'm wearing pearls and sensible pumps and I have a small window that overlooks Midtown Manhattan that makes me feel kind of important. And I'm on the phone with the director of marketing of Z100, which is the largest radio station in New York at the time.
And I'm prattling on about this promotional idea for one of my clients. And the marketing director stops me and says, Tricia, I'm not remotely interested in this promotion, but you have an amazing voice for radio. If you come down to the station, I'll do a demo reel for you for free. You need to be on the radio. And I said, no, thank you. I said, no, thank you to a powerful radio executive, who believed in my abilities enough just by hearing my voice and without even knowing me, offered to do a demo reel for me for free. It's been about 35 years and I promise you not a year goes by that I still don't wonder what would have happened if I'd had the courage to say yes to that offer.
But I wasn't raised to be courageous, at least by doing something new. I was raised to conform because the goal was security and stability. And I would find, I was told that I would find that security and stability by conforming to my family and society's codes of behavior. There was this unspoken declaration of conformity that I was expected to follow. And here's what it looked like.
There's a lot to take in. You don't have to read all of this, but some of the highlights are, and you might actually respond to some of those boxes that are up there, some of the highlights are I should be in business, I should obey the rules, and I should not draw attention to myself, which obviously didn't pan out. But another way to say that was I was not supposed to take up space.
So I think you're getting the gist of this whole chart, but so let's just go straight to the bottom, which is if I said yes to conformity, this is what I truly believed, that if I said yes to conformity, I could count on approval, community, possibly even salvation. And if I said no, if I didn't conform, I was convinced that I would face rejection, abandonment, and a lonely wretched death. The stakes seemed high, too high to risk on the possibility of a radio career. I didn't have the courage or the imagination to do anything different than what was laid out in front of me. And I wasn't surrounded by risk takers, lovely people, but not risk takers. Most of the people I knew wanted to fit in and they were encouraging me to do the same. Plus, radio seemed like fun and fun never seemed like an option. Nowhere on this declaration of conformity is the word
fun mentioned. Lucky for me, somebody invented podcasting and now I'm getting a second chance.
Now, you may think with 4 million podcasts in the world, why do we need another one? Well, there are nearly 160 million books in the world and I for one get excited whenever another one's on offer. There's no way to know how many songs there are, but people take a stab at 300 million. Some say there are billions of songs and who doesn't want more music? And there are approximately half a million movies to view, and that doesn't include short films. Podcasting is just another medium that people are using to express themselves, get ideas across, move people, tell stories. And as some of you know, I'm a storyteller at heart.
But podcasting is first and foremost about the listener. What a podcaster does is create audio experiences that accompany listeners through their life. And what makes podcasts unique is the intimacy. The podcast medium fosters an even more intimate connection than radio, which at one point was thought of as the ultimate intimate medium. It's the one, that one-on-one connection with the host and the DJ and the listener. There's a man named Eric Nuzum. He's a podcasting pioneer and he wrote a book called Make Noise. And he says there's two reasons for the intimacy of podcasts.
First of all, almost all podcasts are consumed through headphones and earbuds. You're literally sticking earbuds in your ears. And it's a very physical and really emotionally intimate experience. And secondly, when someone listens to a podcast, it's purposeful. They don't just want to hear a random country music station like they could on a radio and then when they get tired, change the channel for classic rock.
There's an active listening. They're intentional with what they select. And they're looking for a really specific experience. And listeners want to hear a small part of themselves being nurtured and nourished by what podcasters do. As Nuzum goes on to say, a great podcast lingers and resonates far after you finish listening. It has altered you in some way.
Now I've only been creating this podcast for the past three years. We've just completed season four, but it's clear that my podcast has been in the works well before podcasts were even invented. And when I look back, I can see these moments in my life were leading to my producing an audio experience around creativity and courage, starting with when I said no to the demo reel offer.
For about 10 more years, I stuck with a public relations and communications career, billing my time in 15 minute increments, working for clients like retail banking, traffic reporting, hazardous waste recycling, nothing that really blew my skirt up, until eventually I snapped. And what snapping looked like for me is I left a lucrative full-time job, started consulting, and I went to art school part-time. And after three years in art school, I realized that I wanted to dedicate myself to my artwork. And I also realized that if I do this communication job for one more minute, I'm gonna die. Slowly, but I'm gonna die. And the problem was I had created a life for myself in Boston that required a high paying consulting gig that I didn't want anymore. I was getting these internal marching orders that I needed to uproot myself and put myself in a completely new environment. So my plan was to suspend my consulting practice and move to the west of Ireland where I'd recently taken a three-week watercolor class. I thought I'd need about six months to start making this transition from consultant to full-time artist. And my friends hear my plans and they start voicing their fears for me pretty loudly. They say, the fear is, and the fear iss and what we're afraid of. And I kind of start to waver a bit.
But a priest at my church tells me, you know, Tricia, everyone will tell you the cost of going, but no one will tell you the cost of staying. After that conversation, I was out of there. And one week I quit my job, sell my car, get rid of my apartment, divorce my husband – this was not a whim, we'd been separated for more than two years. I cash out my retirement account and I moved to Ireland. And I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. I'm writing, I'm painting, I start dating a man seven years younger than me with a ponytail. You may know him as my bird watching, hawk tracking husband, Eric Masterson. And if you want to know more about him, listen to season three, the special bonus episode.
And when I leave my corporate career to become an artist, I know I'm onto something because my soul isn't being crushed anymore. Instead of six months, I stay in Ireland for four years. I keep making art and writing. I marry Eric. And eventually we decide to move to the United States and we end up in New Hampshire. And I spend more than a decade as a visual artist and I'm most often creating works on paper or of paper.
And then the market crashes. And no one buys visual work. And no one hires consultants either, which at that point I'd forgotten how to do anyway. And I thought, I know, I'll go into performance because that's so lucrative. It made no sense and I was terrified. But ever since I went to Ireland, those internal marching orders were kicking in again and I felt compelled to write this one woman show, which had nagged at me for more than a decade, right after I did a small performance at art school. And so for about five years, I practiced monologues in secret to the dashboard in my car. I write vignettes out in longhand in a journal that I hid. The only person that I talked to about this is Eric. And then one day, we're walking the dog and I'm going on about this imagined show. And Eric stops me and says, Tricia, stop talking about the show and do it. You've got to do the show.
So as it turns out, I had a solo exhibition of my visual work coming up at the former Redmond Bennett Gallery in Dublin. I don't know if you remember that gallery. It was a beautiful space and I was expected to give an artist talk, you know, like, I use graphite on Stonehenge paper, something like that. But instead, I asked the gallery owners, Laura and Bonnie, if I could do a performance piece, which of course was not yet written and I had absolutely no idea how to do.
And they took a chance and they said yes. So I had a date, had a venue, and, fingers crossed, an audience. Now I just needed to write the show, which again, I had no idea how to do. But I had help from Kathy Manfrey and Nancy Knowles and Christine Destrempres and Dan Hurlin, who's been on this stage at least twice and appears on season one, episode seven. Listen to that podcast. This community of artists all came together to help me develop and deliver this piece that, which after many revisions, eventually went on to win an award at New York's International Fringe Festival.
Now some of you may have seen the show. It was originally called I Will Be Good and then was renamed How to Draw a Nekkid Man where I talk about how I left my corporate marketing career to become an artist. And the risk of doing that one woman show pays off because it lands me on The Moth stage.
Now, if you're not familiar with The Moth, it's an organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. My neighbors, the amazing authors, Sy Montgomery and Howard Mansfield, season three, episode eight, introduced me to it. They said it'd be fun and maybe I could get some exposure for the show. So back in December 2010, Eric and I drive down to New York the day after Christmas, right before a blizzard hits, so I can attend a StorySlam at The Bitter End in The Village. I put my name in the hat, my name is called, I get up on stage and tell a story in front of 300 people I'd never seen before in my life about going to art school and drawing from a nude model for the first time. It ranks as one of the biggest thrills in my life. I didn't win the slam, but I fell in love with storytelling. And The Moth loves the story and asks me to come down to New York and tell a longer version of their story on the MainStage.
So five months later, I hop in my Suzuki wagon, I drive down I-91 from New Hampshire to New York, convinced that I'm going to tell the best story ever. It was this train wreck of arrogance and naivete. I walk into the rehearsal spaces at The Moth offices. It's this small room separated by this huge, thick curtain. It was purple. It was like 15 feet high. And I meet my fellow storytellers. There's four of them.
And one of them is an international scientist who tells a story about studying the jumping spider in Sri Lanka during a coup while corpses are floating down the river. There's the recovering addict who'd been in a shipwreck and had to drink his own urine to survive. The other two stories are just as extreme about racial injustice and family dysfunction.
And I went to art school. And I am mortified.
And after rehearsal, I go straight to the artistic director's office, the fabulous Catherine Burns, season one, episode three, and say, you have made a horrible mistake. I have no business being on this stage. All I did was go to art school. And she says, Tricia, first of all, do you think we would put you on that stage if you weren't ready? And secondly,
Not all stories are extreme, but they need to be told.
That's some of the best direction and encouragement I have ever received. And I pass it on to you. I have based my career on telling small moment stories and helping other people tell theirs. Screw up your courage, tell your story, no matter how insignificant you think it is.
So The Moth airs the story on their podcast and nearly a quarter of a million people download the episode. Now I think I'm a pretty good storyteller, but what people were resonating with was what that story was about, stepping into our creative selves. People start writing to me asking me how they could leave their jobs that were crushing their souls or maybe just how to take a painting class. I actually had a young woman call me who was in her fourth year of a five-year PhD, MD program who wanted to leave university and be an oil painter in Santa Fe.
And I could relate. I was raised to follow that safe and predictable path, but that path made me miserable. And I kept looking for other ways to lead my life, a blueprint for how to do things differently. And all these other people wanted the same thing. And that's when the idea for my podcast began to germinate, even though I didn't know it was going to be a podcast at the time. I thought it was going to be a memoir. So telling stories with The Moth was like learning at the feet of the masters.
And I learned the three key elements of storytelling, which you may know. Theme, stakes, and narrative arc. I run every podcast episode, every season, and even my life by these elements. The theme of this story is from conformity to courage. And if I'm doing this correctly, every detail I'm including in the story underscores that theme. I'm using it as my editing tool. It helps me decide what to put in and what to leave out, constantly moving the story and that theme forward with every episode and every season and every choice I make in my life. And I'm asking myself, am I moving the story forward?
And stakes of course is key. If there are no stakes, there's no story. What can be won? What can be lost? And what's at stake for me and maybe for my listeners and maybe for some of you in the audience is my soul. And whether or not I will regret the work I might have done instead of stepping out of my comfort zone and feeling the joy that comes from doing it and making the impact that I can have on the world around me. Art school taught me that the Declaration of Conformity is backwards, that my approval and my community and yes, my salvation comes by taking creative risks, not following a predictable path. That the riskiest thing that I can do, perhaps any of us can do is play it safe. Because by playing it safe, we reject our dreams, abandon adventures, and tempt dying that lonely wretched death. So those are high stakes.
A narrative arc, you know who I was at the beginning of the story, and in a little bit you'll know who I am at the end, but I can guarantee you I am a constant work in progress.
But even with my success with The Moth and the popularity of How to Draw a Nekkid Man, I still struggle on stage because if you recall that Declaration of Conformity, I was raised never to draw attention to myself. And throughout my life, I've been told that my big personality was not an asset. It was a liability. I'm not supposed to take up space. And so I'm conflicted. Performing completely energizes me and audiences respond well, but every time before I go on stage and even afterwards, those old tapes were playing in my head that a lady doesn't draw attention to herself. And I sit in the green room and I beat myself up for not hiding this big personality. And I think somehow this is gonna cost me. Then one day I'm backstage at The Moth’s sold out MainStage show in Somerville and one of five storytellers. I'm sort of pacing back and forth wondering who I think I am to be doing this at all. And then the director approaches me and she says, “hey, Tricia, we need you to open the show. I realize that's a tough spot, but you have that big personality and we know you can fill up the space.” Her encouragement felt like an anointing, like I was seen for the first time. My story career launches at that moment and I have not looked back.
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So I started telling stories and teaching with The Moth, which I still do, and I do it for several years. And it leads to a sensible and lucrative gig with a marketing company out of Nashville, teaching storytelling to businesses, which I did for four years. And right before COVID hit, it's February, 2020, and I'm in Algoma, Wisconsin, at the height of winter, at a roadside motel, not hotel – motel with an m – with that scary disinfectant smell. And I'm in Algoma to teach precision machinists how to use story in their customer messaging. I'm sitting on the side of the bed and I'm looking to see if it takes those quarters to activate the Magic Fingers massage function. That's how old this room is. And I'm starting to feel that if I do this work for much longer, I'm going to die. And I think, okay, wait, I have been here before.
So for several years before my Algoma moment, there were two thoughts that were running through my head. First, I felt compelled to read about Joan of Arc, though I never did read about her. And second, I'd been working on a memoir. And at one point I was thinking, should I be writing a memoir or a manifesto? I didn't really know what a manifesto was, but I thought I should be writing one.
So I hired a creative coach to give me some direction. And he says, well, Tricia, in your wildest dreams, what do you want to do? And I thought, you know, I'm paying this guy a chunk of change, so I might as well go all in. And I said, I have this big personality, and I'm incredibly vocal about creativity and how it's transformed my life. And my Moth story motivated a lot of people to change their lives. So it sounds crazy, but I feel like I'm supposed to lead some kind of movement. I don't even know what that means when I say it.
And he says, well, Tricia, I think you need to go read a book by somebody who led their own movement. I think you need to read about Joan of Arc. And my jaw drops a little. And then he goes, and while you're at it, why don't you write a manifesto? I was like, are you kidding me? So I did what he said. And I decided to spark the No Time to be Timid movement, which you are now all part of, and pulling from all of that encouragement I received over the years, I wrote the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto, but I didn't know what to do with it.
I'd been kicking around the idea for a podcast for years, but I couldn't get any traction with any kind of idea. And then in February 2022, right after I'd written the manifesto, The Moth called and said they wanted to air one of my stories on The Moth Radio Hour in three months. It was a story I told in 2014, I'd almost forgotten about it, about how when my first husband, not Eric, my first husband and I separated, I'd accidentally moved across the street from the woman he was having an affair with. That's a true story, which was tragic at the time, but really funny now. And you know what made that funny? 15 years. 15 years. As they say in my line of work, tragedy plus time equals comedy.
At any rate, in the story, I talk about how making art helped me get through that trauma and how art saved my life, which is the theme of most of my stories. So I said, you know, that'd be great if you aired that story, but you know how you read a storyteller’s bio at the end? And they said, yeah. I said, Would you mind saying that Tricia Rose Burt is the host of the popular new podcast, No Time to Be Timid? And they said, sure.
Now to be clear, I didn't own a microphone. I hadn't even taken a class. I didn't have the first idea how to produce a podcast. But I was not going to miss that opportunity of more than two million people hearing about my podcast on The Moth Radio Hour, even if it wasn't made yet.
So like the first time I performed my performance piece, I had a goal and a deadline that there was no way out of. That bio was going on air. Now I just needed to create the show in three months. I took a class. I bought a book. I tried to get as smart as I could by diving into this medium I knew nothing about. And they asked important questions like, who are you? What's the expertise or passion that you're bringing to this show? Who is your listener? What do you have to say? And what effect do you want to have on them after they've listened to your show?
And I knew that the story I told more than a decade ago on The Moth stage about finding the courage to step into a creative life wasn't just my story, it was my mission. And I wanted to help aspiring and practicing artists and writers and entrepreneurs find the courage to make their creative work, to offer the encouragement that I received from my priest and my husband and fellow artists and several directors along the way at just the right time to do the work I was called to do instead of just talking about it. I wanted to give them a blueprint for what a creative life could look like. And over the years, I developed a vast network of creatives, some well-known, all major talents, who have taken significant risks. I thought I'll showcase those artists, many of them from the Monadnock region, and I'll give them a platform to tell their stories because as Henry Matisse says, committing to a creative life, which means saying no to practical choices and stepping into the unknown, it takes a lot of courage. And I wanted my guest courage to rub off on my listeners and me. I wanted to rub off on me.
There was another thing that they stressed, which was sustainability. How can you sustain a podcast financially? How can you sustain it from a content standpoint? But most importantly, how can you sustain it energetically? As artists and writers and entrepreneurs and leaders, we have to ask that question all the time. How can we sustain it? So I thought, I won't launch a weekly podcast. I'll produce one season, see if I even like making a podcast. And I thought I'll use the manifesto as my framework. It has 10 principles, so I'll produce 10 episodes, drop them every other week with 10 guests to exemplify each one.
Now this is a manifesto that works for me and you're welcome to adopt it. You may want to craft your own manifesto, but right now we're gonna review each of the principles of mine and I want you to think of which principles resonate with you and what principles you might want to add to it. If you're like me, you'll like this way better than the Declaration of Conformity.
So the first principle of the manifesto is “the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe.” It's my own personal mantra and for good reason. My life is littered with instances where I said yes, because I thought that would make me secure and then more often than not, things exploded instead, like my first marriage or my job as a corporate communications director. But there's also times I said no to things, good things, because they were gonna push me out of my comfort zone. Like the radio story I told you in the beginning. So if somebody offers you the chance to do something you've never tried before and that makes you a little nervous, say yes. You don't know what that may lead to.
The second principle of the manifesto is “there is more than one right way in life.” I interviewed Liz and Matt Meyer-Bolton of The Salt Project in Keene. They are in the back of the audience. Hello, Liz and Matt, season one, episode two. They're ordained ministers, both raised by ministers, but now they're award-winning filmmakers and podcasters. Instead of saying, we're going to be pastors for the rest of forever because this is what we do, they transferred their skill sets to a different medium. Filmmaking started as a side hustle while they were in traditional ministry, but then it became their focus. And when I interviewed them, Matt had just finished up a podcast series on Vincent Van Gogh and the season of Lent. And as he said, it's basically the same muscles as preaching. It's just done in the podcast format. What continues to define their work is finding things that are unseen or not seen enough and bringing them out into the light. So it's a similar set of gifts and talents, used in a different set of media. So think about how you might be able to expand how you use your gifts and use them in a different way.
The third principle of the manifesto is “don't expect a linear path.” I just interviewed an author named S.C. Perot, season four, episode nine, who wrote the book, Styles of Joy. Now the pandemic helped her realize that she loved everything about being a corporate lawyer, her coworkers, her clients, except writing contracts, which is what she was hired to do. So she left her career and then she went through a difficult divorce. Afterwards, she just experienced this tidal wave of loss. She found solace in walking and while she walked, she listened to the good energy music of the pop star Harry Styles. Before she knew it, she was seeing 17 Harry Styles concerts across five countries in 10 months. SC not only transformed from a Stanford educated rule following corporate lawyer into a bedazzled boa-wearing fangirl dancing in a mosh pit with complete strangers. But she also rediscovered her joy and her creativity in the process. She's now an author, an instructor in human and organizational development, and a thought leader in the transformational power of joy. Sometimes the straightest route is a crooked line.
The fourth principle of the manifesto is “creativity is not a frivolous pursuit.” When I worked as a corporate communication consultant, I was a consultant conveyor belt. I just kept shooting out the same solution over and over again. And that all changed when I went to art school. Right at the beginning, our instructors gave us a large thick sheet of paper and told us to work on that same piece of paper for 10 minutes every day for the next 10 weeks. They didn't tell us what to do with that piece of paper. We had to decide for ourselves. I'd pin my sheet of paper on the wall, then I'd stare at it, panic, and start to cry. I cried a lot in art school. And my teacher sees me in distress and she says, Tricia, just ask yourself, what happens if I do this? And then make a mark and see what happens. And so I make a tiny mark, and I survive. So I made another mark, and over the course of the class, I made all kinds of marks with different mediums I'd never used before. And every day, my painting transformed into something more interesting. So now I try to ask myself, what happens if I do this? In my creative work and in my professional work, and I can tell you my clients can tell the difference. Practicing creativity opens your mind to ideas and solutions you never considered before.
And there's another reason why creativity isn't frivolous. It actually affects your health. My creative coach, Mark McGuinness, season one, episode four, who's also a therapist says, “one thing I've discovered is I actually get physically ill if I try to neglect or avoid or put off my creativity. And I've seen all kinds of versions of that in my therapy practice. At a certain level, you can't deny the creative person that you are.”
The fifth principle of the manifesto is “logic can work against you.” One of my favorite interviews was with a comedy writer named Steve Young, season two, episode eight. He was a writer for David Letterman for 25 years and he wrote the bit Dave's Record Collection. Anybody see Dave’s Record Collection? And when he was doing that, he accidentally discovered the little known world of industrial musicals. And when he was searching for records in flea markets, and stores, he found these albums stamped not for commercial sale and found out like huge companies like Westinghouse and Hardee's and John Deere would commission Broadway style musicals, sometimes with budgets of millions about their product lines that would be performed only one time at national sales conventions. And they were recorded on these albums. Steve amassed this huge record collection, which led him to write a book and then be the subject of the award-winning documentary, Bathtubs Over Broadway. In the film, Steve says, life can be so rich and wonderful when we step off the logical path and embark on eccentric adventures. And if you haven't seen his documentary, I urge you to do so.
The sixth principle of the manifesto is “practicality is overrated.” My dear friend, Rachel Perry, season one, episode six, decided to go to art school at 36 while she was raising a first grader. Not exactly practical. Sometimes she'd sketch with one hand and drive with the other while she was taking her son to school. She's now a nationally known artist. She's been a fellow at MacDowell at least four times. And last year she was part of a theatrical experience at Carnegie Hall. Sometimes it pays to put practicality aside and just go for it.
The seventh principle of the manifesto is “constraints are opportunities.” All the good artwork I ever made came from a financial constraint. When I was living in Ireland, I didn't have any money and I didn't have any money for oil paint. So I worked with other people's, I can't believe I did this, I worked with other people's used tea bags from a coffee shop. This was way before COVID and apparently I was unconcerned about my health. A few of those pieces are now in some prestigious corporate art collections. The financial constraint pushed me to creatively problem solve. Twyla Tharp, the choreographer, tells a story, a wonderful story about how she made her worst work when she had no deadline and unlimited cash. She needed parameters of time and budget to work against. And here's what I didn't know about Grandma Moses. She produced over 1,000 paintings in the last three years of her life, but only after her arthritis made it impossible for her to crochet. She worked with this constraint. She couldn't do crochet anymore, so she started painting. What we think is a limitation may be the thing that ignites our creative thinking.
The eighth principle is “failure is your friend.” When my memoir didn't get picked up, I called my friend Amy Grant, season two, episode one. She's a Grammy award winning musician who's been around the block a couple of times. And she said, Tricia, in our house, a no is as good as a yes, because it just redirects you. Which completely removes the rejection component. If you say my creativity is going to end up looking like this, then the only result is it either looked like that or it didn't. It's a pass or fail. And so creativity requires no's because then you go, okay, well, we won't continue in that direction. We'll keep going, but we'll go in a different direction. And then it all just becomes exploration and adventure. So if you get a no, don't be discouraged. A no can be helpful. And I find eventually a yes will come. Plus you just repurpose the material. A lot of my memoir has ended up in my podcast.
The ninth principle of the manifesto is “there is courage in community.” It helps to have fellow pilgrims on a journey. Everything is easier when you have someone to cheer you on. And this season, one of my guests was the number one hit songwriter, Barry Dean. He's written for folks like Little Big Town and Tim McGraw. And he's also the CEO of a company that makes smart technology for wheelchairs because his daughter's in one. And if you only listen to one of my podcast episodes, listen to that one. It's season four, episode eight. And in it, Barry talks about the impact one of his colleagues, Chris, had on him and on his songwriting career. Barry told Chris, “there's a whole lot of voices in my head telling me I can't. And the one that says I can sounds like you.”
That's what we hope we can do with this podcast. Be the voice in your heads that say you can.
Now the 10th principle of the manifesto is “make a mark now.” Just like my art instructor told me, make a mark and see what happens. Creativity matters no matter when you start. I went to art school in my mid-30s, got on stage when I was 50, and I started a podcast at 62. I have no idea what's gonna happen when I turn 70, but it's probably already in the works. And I'm in good company. Julia Child mastered the art of French cooking when she was 49. Laura Ingalls Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods, her first book in that series when she was 64. And speaking of 64, this season I featured three women on my podcast who are doing incredible things, they're also 64. And one of them happens to be Jaffrey resident Amy Meyers, who started her business, Mrs. Meyers Etiquette, and has nearly 90,000 followers on Instagram. Yay, Amy.
Listen to the episode and check her out. A dear friend of mine who's been working in Haiti for years, and she told me about a man named Colie Gorham who first visited Haiti in 1998 when he was 80. For the next 20 years, he and his wife empowered young Haitians through education, raising money, and endless visits, not stopping until he was 100 years old. My personal hero is Iris Apful, the fabric designer turned fashion icon in her nineties.
So whatever your dream, it's not too late. And to help you along, I have copies of the manifesto for everyone. My husband, Eric, and Amy Meyers, will pass them out as you exit. Post them in your home, adopt it as your own.
Last year, we completed season three and we received a Signal Award, which is a prestigious podcast industry honor, in the arts and culture category that included– get this –Oprah Winfrey. I will never tire of saying that my little production company, I Will Be Good Productions, which consists of me, who has a good sense to work with Adam Arnone, was in the same category as Oprah Winfrey. She got gold, we got silver, and we were thrilled. But I will tell you that podcasting takes an enormous amount of work. Of those four million podcasts I mentioned at the start, many are dormant, only about 32 % of them have produced 10 or more episodes and only 4 % are consistently creating content. There's a real thing called pod fade. People start a podcast and then realize how hard it is to make a good show and they just abandon the project. On my end, it takes three or four days for each 45 minute episode. And that doesn't include the heroic efforts of Adam who works so hard to make each episode sound flawless. And the show wouldn't be possible without support of my executive producers, Amy Grant, Nancy Perot, and Sage Wheeler, as well as those who contribute to my factored Atlas fiscal sponsorship. And unlike a live audience for the podcast, you don't get immediate feedback. It can be a grind. And sometimes it just feels like we're putting stuff out into the air. Unless a listener reviews the show or sends you an email, you don't know if you're making an impact.
A few weeks ago, I was pretty low. I was exhausted by season four and telling my husband I wasn't sure whether it was worth all the effort. I opened my emails and there was one waiting for me from a listener and she wrote, thank you for the impact that your podcast has had on me. Your manifesto made so much sense to me. It was a call to arms. I am a South African living in Spain with a day job in marketing and a relentless dream to write children's books. Each episode has given me some form of creative input and encouragement. The one with Nora Fiffer changed things for me in a significant way. As someone with a full-time job and two kids, I envied her ability to work within her child-rearing constraints and not to wait for the perfect conditions. That triggered a conversation with my husband about carving out time for me. And since January this year, I've enjoyed four precious hours every Saturday to be completely creative. I have completed an online course by children's book author Julia Donaldson. I have finished a new story, started a substack, started another story, plucked up the courage to read my story to 200 kids at my children's school, wrote a cover letter for literary agents, and started to reach out to a long list of them. I finally feel like I'm wielding my talent and my passion. Anyway, thank you, Tricia, for having the audacity to draw a nekkid man all the way to doing this podcast. It's meant and means so much to me.
That listener became the voice in my head that says, I can. So there will be a season five. It launches next spring, maybe earlier, and the manifesto will still be central to our efforts.We're going to keep having conversations about creativity and courage, which we all need now more than ever. And I hope you'll tune in, listen to past episodes because they're great. Do the work you're called to do and remember, let's say it all together like we did in the beginning and say it like you mean it. This is no time to be timid. Thank you very much.
No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Tricia Rose Burt. And our executive producers are Amy Grant, Nancy Perot, and Sage Wheeler. I'd also like to thank contributors to my Fractured Atlas Fiscal Sponsorship, which helps make this podcast happen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of I Will Be Good Productions.