Transcript
Les Alfred (0:01)
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
Les Alfred (0:12)
Welcome to Sheets so Lucky. My name is Les. I am your host and this show is all about the ways that we can create our own luck. I often sit down with incredible women who create their own luck and talk to them about how they did it. And I pop in with the occasional solo. And today it is just you and me and me. And we are having a conversation that is near and dear to my heart that I have with myself very often. And that is when my motivation is wavering, when I am not sticking through with my habits or doing the things that I know I need to do to reach my goals. I will often say to myself, what would Beyonce do? And that is the theme of today's conversation. WWBD what would Beyonce Beyonce do Now? I was recently in Portugal with my friend Christina. We had a girls trip in Portugal and it was such a good time. And honestly, we were just in Portugal for a week, vibing out. We did have an agenda with different itineraries of things, but it was mostly just us chilling and walking around Portugal. And every two to five business seconds I would find some way to bring up Beyonce. And we got a few days into our trip and she was like, les, I know that you like Beyonce. I know that you go to the concerts and all the stuff, but I didn't realize how much you love Beyonce. I feel like you don't talk about that as much on the podcast in your content. And people who just follow you online may not know how much you love Beyonce because these past three days you can't stop talking about her. And I'm like, yes, that is the IRL experience of me. And I thought I should bring more of my love of Beyonce to the podcast because it is something that is actually very important to me and I would not consider myself influenced much by people. I often get asked who my favorite influencers are and things of that nature, and I sometimes have a hard time answering just because a lot of the creators that I love to follow I'm also friends with. And I see it less as being influenced and more of, you know, supporting and keeping up with the online lives of my friends. But I would say if there is somebody who does influence me, it is indeed Ms. Beyonce Giselle Knowles Carter, for many, many reasons that I want to talk about in this episode today that all have to do with motivation and trying and honing in our craft. Now, I don't know if you have seen people talk about online this idea of not being afraid to be Seen trying. It is something that has been a very popular sentiment over the past few years with people who either want to try new things, whether that's a new hobby, whether that's a new business venture, whether that is putting themselves out there online or launching a business of some sort, just this idea that it is okay to try, that it is okay to potentially fail, that it is okay to be a beginner no matter what stage of life or business or whatever that you are in. And I am a firm believer of that. I'm a firm believer that it's never too late to try something new, to pivot, to change course, because there's so much that is potentially available to you that may not exist yet. I often use this podcast as an example for me where so many people feel like if they have not achieved something by the age of 25, that it is too late, or if they have not reached some sort of height of something by a certain arbitrary milestone, it is too late. And if I would have listened to that, that idea that, you know, by 24 or 25, that's the pinnacle of success for you. Podcast would not exist. Because when I happened to be born as a geriatric millennial, podcasting just wasn't a thing then like it is now. There were not as many opportunities for business and to have a platform and to make a full time living podcasting for people who are not already broadcasters or journalists the way that there is now. I started this podcast when I was 29 years old. I took it full time when I was 34 and have been doing it ever since. But if I would have said, oh no, I didn't achieve this when I was 25, I can't do it, that actually would have made no sense because the opportunity literally didn't exist. And when you think about how quickly things are rapidly changing in the world, there is so much that could be available to you that doesn't exist yet. So are you going to stop because you didn't do it straight out of school, or because you didn't do it in your early 20s or because you're a certain age? No, you should just sees it and you should do it, because why not? And often the people who will criticize you the most for trying and for doing are the ones who are not trying or doing anything whatsoever. Because anybody who has actually tried to do something respects those who also try. Okay, so after that pep talk, we are all not afraid to be seen trying. How does this relate to Beyonce? I believe Beyonce is not afraid to be seen trying personified. Because there is often this idea that in order for something to be valuable, it needs to be effortless. In order for something to be successful, you need to not try. And it needs to just be this magical special sauce that you just have. And it's not on you, it's in you. And I do think that there are some truth to that in the sense of each of us has our own unique essence. I think we all have certain gifts that we may be naturally inclined towards, and we do all have kind of our own space, special sauce that we can apply to different things. And so much of what you want to achieve or have or move through the world with also needs to be learned. And it is a matter of taking your own special sauce, applying the reps to really strengthen it, to have something special and putting that out into the world. And I think that Beyonce is a really great example of that, that she is someone who did have, obviously a natural talent when it came to singing and performing. But the level of excellence that we see her at today and for the last two, three decades has really been from putting in the reps and from putting in the work and from trying now for those who are younger, who are not around. In the early days, the early aughts of her career, the early days of Destiny's Child, in the early days of her being solo, people used to talk so badly about that young woman. She was called extra. She was called everything but a child of God. Not because she was super extra, but because she was trying. She would go all out. She would try different creative things and different forms of artistic expression to figure out who she was and where she wanted to be in her artistry. And oftentimes there is this idea that if you are trying, that if you are putting effort towards something, that if your effort is out loud, that it's being seen as extra. But again, nobody whose opinion actually matters is going to call you extra. Nobody who is maybe doing better than you or who you're looking up to is going to say that about what you're doing, because they know what it takes to get to that point. And I often feel so inspired to try and to put in the reps and to practice and to rehearse and to stay on my zoom from seeing that progression in real time. As somebody who was old enough to remember the early aughts and to be a fan who throughout this whole span of time, and it's something that I'm so grateful to have had a front row seat to but when I really learned to truly take inspiration from Beyonce, when it went from just like, I'm a fan, I like the music, I like going to the concerts, to, oh, this is genuine inspiration for how I want to run my business and dedicate myself to my creative endeavors and move about the world, particularly professionally, is what I'm talking about about here. Just because that is the context that we know her in best. The switch happened for me around the Homecoming Coachella time frame. I remember watching the Coachella live stream that first weekend in the yellow outfit. I think I was watching it on Facebook. It was being live streamed on Facebook because I unfortunately was not at Coachella in the spring of 2018, which for me, 2018 was really big turning point year in my life. I entered my Saturn return that year. I had a really significant breakup that year. I started this podcast that year. I had some big career changes that year. My grandmother passed away that year. Like, that was just a moment in time where I was so badly seeking something that I could look forward to and something that I could look up to. And it was also a time in my life where I was going through hard things and I was really learning how to believe in myself. Because oftentimes the ways that we build confidence and the ways that we build self belief is through experiencing things and getting to the other side of it. So I remember being in this season that was the thick of all of that, and watching this live stream of the Coachella performance in 2018 and feeling like it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. And I was thinking, didn't this woman just have twins? And she was in her, I think, mid-30s at that time. And because I was still in my 20s, I had this very warped perception of the 30s. And I thought that the 30s were so old, as a lot of people in their 20s think, until they entered their 30s and they realize, oh, it actually isn't. And it's very similar. And I just remember being in awe. Being in absolute awe. Fast forward a year later to the spring of 2019 and homecoming was released on Netflix. And I remember having a watch party with some of my girlfriends when Homecoming dropped on Netflix. And so that was when we got to not only relive that amazing performance, but we also got to see those behind the scenes element because it's that kind of documentary concert vibe that we all know and love. And seeing the behind the scenes of what really went into that performance and the grit and the dedication and the things that she was saying around the sacrifices that she was making the things that she was saying around the importance of rehearsal and of being willing to try and of messing up the choreography and of feeling weak and rebuilding your strength and being a student and not being afraid to be seen trying truly unlocked something in my brain. And I remember after the watch party for Homecoming, going home that night. It was literally late at night, probably like 11 o', clock, and I went home and I recorded a podcast episode about it to be released the following day. It was a Thursday. I used to do these short Friday episodes back then. I would do interviews on Tuesdays and I would do short solo episodes on Fridays. That Thursday night, I immediately recorded an emergency Friday episode, bumping whatever I had initially had planned for the following day about what I had learned from Homecoming. And I published it the next day. And it's still up. If you want to go all the way back to the archives, you want to go Back to, like April 2019, it's still back there, so you can go listen to it. I don't fully remember what I said. I probably some something similar to what's here because I haven't listened to it since then. But I talked about what my takeaways were, and I talked about how inspired I was to jump in and to be more creative and to just try things that I knew I was going to be bad at. And that was such a pinnacle point of my career as a creator. I'd been about six months into this podcast. I was beginning to put myself out there online more. I was contemplating moving to Los Angeles at the time, which I did ultimately end up doing a few months later. And it was just laid the groundwork for all of these things that ultimately changed my life in so many different ways, because it made me less afraid to take risks, because I realized that risks are just a form of trying. And sometimes when we try, it can be hard. But I started believing that I could truly rise to the occasion. And so from that point on, from that first rewatch of Homecoming on, I would then implement this idea of what would Beyonce do? And I say it to myself, when I start wavering for something, when I know I have a podcast script and a prep that I need to work on, and I'm being lazy and I kind of want to scroll on TikTok instead of preparing for my podcast recording, what will get me into into gear real fast is I'll think, what would Beyonce do if Beyonce had a podcast? Do you think Beyonce would go to the studio unprepared for the conversation that she's about to have. Do you think Beyonce is unprepared for anything? No ma'. Am. She would get her notes together, she would get her questions together, she would rehearse. She would do the best that she can to be as prepared for this moment.