Meemaw’s Blazing Speed Is Because Of “The Creative Professional”

One of the reasons Meemaw can chase down her unruly Chihuahua is because of her New Balance Hook and Loop 577 shoes.  These beauties overcome foot fatigue and limit annoying joint pain for the astounding low price of $76.49.  Even when lounging, she can get mobile quickly because of her kicks nifty Velcro straps.  Put this together with her reconstructed hip, and you have yourself a cookie baking, grandchild lovin’, self-motoring machine faster than you can say “Looks like meemaw has been in the liquor cabinet again.”  The 577s are a wonder of modern technology.

It may surprise you to learn that Velcro was not created by NASA, or some giant corporate conglomerate.  This wondrous technology was invented by a swiss guy working a 9 to 5 with a curious spirit.  His name was George de Mestral.

Mestral was hunting one day when he noticed that there were burrs sticking to his clothes and his dog.  Instead of picking them off and throwing them away in a huff like most of us would do, Mestral examined them under a microscope to see what was what.  He was surprised to see that there was a hook and loop structure on the burrs.  Inspired by this natural construction, he spent eight years tinkering with a design to create a manufacturing process to replicate nature’s wonder.

No one paid him to do this.  In fact, people made fun of him when he evangelized the idea.  In 1955 he patented his design and eventually ended up selling 60 million yards of Velcro.  George de Mestral’s ability to ignore the naysayers, stay curious, and his relentless pursuit of his idea is the reason your meemaw is a force to be reckoned with. No one puts meemaw in the corner! 

The Creative Professional Wins At Life And Business

There are few things better than when one of your cockamamie ideas plays out better than you could have hoped for.  It doesn’t matter if it is some hyper aggressive board game strategy resulting in victory, or a surprise for your wife that actually surprises her while simultaneously making her forget everything about you that is annoying.  

There is an exquisite satisfaction when you solve a problem in your own unique way.

This feeling cannot be bought or stolen.  It can only be earned.  For most people these small victories are the only opportunity to experience these moments.  I would like you to consider the possibility that not only can you create the conditions for these events to happen regularly but you can monetize them as well.  The key is to adopt the mindset of the “creative professional”.  

There is no license required to be a creative professional, you don’t even have to go to school for it.  The only barrier to entry is a curious mind and the willingness to look like a complete moron.  The former is ubiquitous, the latter is rarer than a calm toddler after 8 hours without food.

Be forewarned: almost all of your ideas won’t work and will be impossible to monetize.  If you are able to come up with an idea that the marketplace will love, there is a high probability that someone else has beat you to it.  This is the nature of the world we live in. 

If you can’t accept this reality, you should not venture into the ether and try to bring anything new into existence.  Stick to things that have been done before on your entrepreneurship journey.

If, however, you want to fully create your own life (and not add to the starving artist archetype) you must have a method to your madness.  The creative part of the mindset is where curiosity lives.  The professional part of the mindset is where you are consistent enough to have your idea come to life and that you act enough like a normal person so that the marketplace can absorb your idea.

The first decision you have to make is the method by which you go “all in” on your ideas.  

Don’t Bet The Farm, Create The Engine

Do you know anyone who is committed to the purity of their ‘art’?  It doesn’t matter what it is, if they talk about it in this way they are broke.  There are no rich “pure” artists.  The reason for this is that monetary success in creative endeavors requires a mix of art and business.  Michelangelo had to have a patron and so do your creative projects.

Am I saying that you need to ask rich people for money?  No.  What I am saying is that you need to self-produce your own projects if you want to bring them to light.  Your college professor types will scoff at this idea but that is why they are teaching for five figures a year and wearing jackets with patches on the elbows. Silly.

If you get funding from anywhere else other than your own devices you will, by definition, have to give up some measure of control over your creative projects. 

(Take five minutes and do some research on how first-time founders feel about venture capital after they go that route.)

If you are going to go all in on something, have it be building a business that gives you the time to mess around with your crazy ideas and the money to self-produce them.  This is where the professional part comes in.  The better you are at pulling this off, the more cockamamie ideas you can explore.  Most will fail, but if one works out it could be you selling 60 million yards of something.

Start With The Silly, Then Move To The Serious

Professionals are consistent.  They run in the rain.  One of their secret weapons is making whatever they need to do on a daily basis a non-negotiable habit.  Being creative is no different.  The constraint of the habit is what produces the greatness.  

My favorite example of this is the haiku.  Limiting the poem to seventeen syllables and three lines of five-seven-five creates the conditions for amazing art.  Someone that is a master of it has written thousands of attempts that will never be remembered but it just takes one to be immortal:

Don’t weep, insects –

Lovers, stars themselves,

Must part.

- Kobayashi Issa

So how do you build this habit easily in the creative realm?  Easy.  Start with something silly that has very low stakes.  For me it was I would post dumb things on Facebook.  I wasn’t trying to build a following or a business.  I would just try and write funny lists or posts to get a laugh.  

That habit ultimately resulted in me self-producing a one man show at The Complex Theatre in Hollywood, CA.  That experience gave me a ton of confidence that I could bring my ideas to life with my own money and not go bankrupt.

I continue the habit of self-producing long-shots to this day.  My latest project?  Era Electrolytes.  As an older BJJ athlete I have different hydration needs than the young guns with whom I roll/fight.  After an 8-minute long excruciating thigh cramp, I did some research and discovered that there was not an electrolyte powder designed for athletes over 30. So, I made one.  I’m launching the brand in September 2025 and if you want get updates you can follow @eraelectrolytes on X/Twitter.

This was not cheap to do but I had the funds to do it because I have a writing as a service business that acts as the engine for my ideas. You can do the same.

Start with the silly and then keep going until you are able to take home run shots with your serious ideas.

Irregular Means Irregular

If you haven’t noticed, this newsletter comes out inconsistently.  This is by design.  I get to it when I get to it.  If you want to hear from me on these topics on a much more regular basis, you can follow me on X/Twitter here: @understorybard

More in a bit . . . Wade, The Understory Bard

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