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Welcome to our fourth installment of our monthly Behind the Bookcase series, where we dive into the unique personal topics that fascinate us and make our hearts sing! This month we are excited to feature Dave Lee and his journey as a creative; what his journey has taught him and the advice he shares to stay consistent.
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Creativity and progress come in waves. As an artist, music producer, and caretaker of my brother who has autism, I’m going to share with you a couple of insights that have helped me stay consistent with my work and family life, while allowing myself some grace when I feel I have fallen short.
Let's start off with talking about vulnerability. Like many creatives, I’m already hard on myself– I feel anxiety begin to build when I’m running late to a session or a meeting, or when a client comes back to me with so many revisions. I question why they even hired me in the first place! I also feel this unease when I change my order at a restaurant.
There has always been this desire (that probably stems from my childhood) to out perform, be frictionless, and to over correct myself when I feel like I’ve made a mistake. But overtime I’ve realized the importance of being kind to myself while remaining receptive to improvement. There’s this vulnerability that occurs when we are able to take a deep breath through our nose, see ourselves for the human beings that we are, and understand that mistakes and anomalies within our lives and our schedules will undoubtedly occur. With vulnerability comes receptiveness. When we’re stressed and hard on ourselves, we become defensive and it’s difficult to learn from our mistakes when we aren’t being encouraging to ourselves.
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Repetition and consistency comes next. James Clear said it best when he stated that repetition unlocks value. I’d like to add to this quote that frequency raises and optimizes value. The value of your first workout increases the more you exercise, and given that you do it more frequently, your workouts will become more effective and efficient. For musical artists, the value of your first song increases the more you release music, and you learn the ins and outs of how to effectively release it the more frequently you do it “Day one continues to compound.”
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Lastly, you've heard this one before — hire slow and fire fast. Given our busy lives, it can become really difficult to manage all of our interpersonal relationships. As you begin to increase your own value in your career, artistic endeavors, and/or family life, your glass ceiling begins to raise and it will take more time and effort to break through that ceiling. The truth is, the more you allow people who aren’t in alignment with your current life stage to affect your time and energy, the more you allow your ceiling to be in alignment with theirs. Therefore mind the gap – if you’re operating at a different level, consider quickly letting go of old acquaintances so you can make room for people who operate on your level. Just remember to take your time vetting the people you do allow into your life – HIRE SLOW.
So that’s it for my quick tips. If this helped you, feel free to connect with me @davejylee.
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Though it might be easy to assume our AAPI community doesn't necessarily need support - either because the community often presents itself as strong and successful or because folks are just now learning about the many years of hurt that have gone unsaid. Regardless, a large percentage of AAPI businesses are suffering in silence, especially in the past year. In supporting Asian-owned brands, it only benefits the business owners, but it also lends itself to increased equity, develop generational wealth, help dismantle the harmful “model minority” myth, and build solidarity.
In celebration of AAPI Heritage, we would like to encourage you to continue being intentional with your spending and considering supporting or sharing these AAPI-owned businesses; below are a few we support and proudly work with.
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[Pictured on the right] South Asian-American small business, Scrumptious Wicks is based out of New Jersey. They use high quality ingredients to create some beautiful unique scents for their candles.
[Pictured on the left] Los Angeles-based fashion label Goodfight, is also a creative studio led by Asian-American power couple, Christina Chou and Caleb Lin.
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[Pictured on the right] Vietnamese coffee roasted in Brooklyn? You're not reading this wrong. Nguyen Coffee Supply is on a mission to transform the coffee industry through diversity, inclusion, and transparency.
[Pictured on the left] South Asian-American small business, Young Mountain Tea in Oregon, is sustainably sourced, delicious tea that's direct from farmers across India & Nepal.
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March was a milestone in setting the tone for the AAPI community. Since then, we've worked closely with Stand With Asians and raised $600K via an NFT auction, and distributed it to 24 AAPI nonprofit organizations nationwide.
The funds were raised in a unique, highly efficient way, with Pplpleasr creating a video art piece that sold at auction for 310 Ethereum as a non-fungible token (NFT) minted on the blockchain. The NFT, a 46-second animated video, was purchased by PleasrDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) consisting of 30 members of the Ethereum community. This innovative collaboration allowed for nonprofits and grassroots organizations nationwide that received these grants to immediately provide assistance to AAPI populations severely impacted by the recent surge in violence and discrimination. “We selected smaller nonprofits and grassroots organizations since they need money and can move fast on the ground — $25K will go a long way,” said Tian He, co-founder of SWA.
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