Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#320: Zoro (Drummer and Percussionist) (pt. 2 of 2)
Today we released part two of our interview with Zoro. Known by musicians around the world as the “Minister of Groove,” he’s one of the world’s most respected and award-winning drummers. For more than thirty years, Zoro has been consistently voted the #1 R&B drummer and clinician by music industry publications such as Modern Drummer, Drum! Magazine, and Rhythm Magazine.
He’s toured and recorded with celebrated musicians, including Lenny Kravitz, Bobby Brown, Frankie Valli, New Edition, and Jody Watley. In addition to performing, he’s a teacher, author, and an inspirational speaker who’s worked with organizations such as Compassion International, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and the Head Start Organization.
You won't want to miss this uplifting story of a teen on the edge of homelessness who overcame adversity to become a performing artist who uses his experiences to help others reach their goals! https://zorothedrummer.com/ and https://www.zoroministries.org/about-zoro/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heiss.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. Zoro is on the podcast today. Known by musicians around the world as the Minister of Groove, he's one of the world's most respected and award-winning drummers. For more than 30 years, Zoro
Nick Petrella:has been consistently voted the number one R&B drummer and clinician by music industry publications such as Modern Drummer, drum Magazine and Rhythm Magazine. He's toured and recorded with renowned musicians, including Lenny Kravitz, bobby Brown, frankie Valli, new Edition and Jody Watley. In addition to performing, he's a teacher, author and an inspirational speaker who's worked with organizations such as Compassion International, big Brothers, big Sisters of America and the Head Start organization. As with all our guests, we'll have his websites in the show notes, so please check them out to see all the great things he's doing. Thanks for coming on the podcast Z.
Zoro:I'm happy to be here. How are you guys doing Great? Okay, there's pictures of my family history and there's pictures of my career history, and so it's pictures with me and everybody, from Paul Allen on his yacht to Jimmy Fallon singing Happy Birthday to me on the Saturday Night Show, to all the different people, and then even my childhood memorabilia, where there's pictures of entries from my diary, so you can see that what I wrote was verbatim what's in the book. You know what I mean Because I still have the diaries. Here's another thing I want to just share real quick before Andy asked me the question.
Zoro:I'm really big on decrees and writing things out. So decree is to. The Bible says decree a thing and it shall be established. In other words, I always say things as if they're done and that's an act of faith. Right, I just go. I don't say when I get a book deal. I don't say if I get a book deal or if I ever find a wife, or I go when I find a wife, or when I do this, I don't leave in my mind the option that this cannot happen. So it's audacity, it's faith, it's confidence, it's not arrogance, it's just this belief that we've all been given this ability to believe and so if you don't believe, how are you going to make it happen? And then I write things out. I've always written things out.
Zoro:A little trivia for you when you look at the cover of Maria's Scarf, the memoir, if you look behind the title and you look behind my pictures and stuff, you'll see this kind of little writing behind it and that writing is me writing out all my visions and dreams when I was 15 years old and that piece of paper is the cover of the book Sideways and I still have that piece of paper. It's a little orange paper that I wrote out when I was working at the county fair and I wrote I want to be a professional musician and showbiz. I wrote I want to be married to the love of my life. I wrote out like five things and one of them is as funny as hell. You'll just bust out laughing. I won't give it away, you'll just crack up, but it's so authentically pure that you just go. Oh my God. And there's a picture of that whole list in the book, along with my childhood memorabilia, and I say that. And then the writing of Maria Scarf, the font, that is my own childhood writing and so everything about that is so personal.
Zoro:But I say that because, uh, in all the years that I've taught, I always teach my students to write out visions and dreams for themselves, and write out a vision statement and write out what would you do, what would you like to accomplish in this world, professionally, personally and spiritually? Because we're all three of those things. We are spiritual beings, everybody in this world is a spiritual being, and you're wanting to connect to something that's bigger than just the flesh of the world. Right, you have a vocation, you have a gift, a desire to use that, and then we are personal people. So, to me, a truly successful person, by what I define as success, is a person who is thriving in those three areas. There are many people that only thrive in their career, their vocation, but it's at the expense of their children or their wife or their relationships. There's many people that are on a spiritual high, a spiritual plateau, but they're so heaven-bound that they're no earthly good. In other words, their head's always in the cloud, but they're not accomplishing anything with the gifts that God gave them. So, to me, thriving in your personal relationships is the key to personal success. Vocational success is to use your gift. It doesn't mean you have to make a lot of money or be rich or famous, but it means you have to be using the thing that's in your heart to do. And then the spiritual thing is some connection with God, a higher power, where your purpose of life is just deeper than working and making money and going to bed. You know where you're impacting society with something deeper and richer, by a relationship that you have with God. And so to me that is the full picture, and if you're missing one, you're not. But I also have this other sense that none of us. This is just my own as a Christian.
Zoro:My own spiritual belief is that even if you're thriving in all three, that's as good as it's going to get on this side of eternity. And even with that, there's still going to be a little unfulfillment. There's still going to be a little bit of a discontentment, because inwardly we're all longing. We all sense that something bigger is there. We all sense there's a God, we all sense there's a better world, but we can't touch it. But we feel it and we're always going like oh, I want an Oscar, I want a Grammy, okay, how come I'm not totally, like 100% fulfilled? Because when you accomplish one thing, then you're looking for the next thing. Right, we're longing for another home, and that is something I believe God put in the heart of every human being is this knowledge that he exists and this knowledge that there's something beyond this world that we see, but we sense it in our spirit and until we're there, we're not completely. There's no such thing as like full on happiness here on this earth. There's moments of it, there's glimmers of it, but it's not like it can never last, because we were made for eternity. So that's just my.
Zoro:So I just take everything with a grain of salt. I go, I look at everything in light of eternity. Decisions I make, decisions I've made as a husband, as a father, as a leader. You know, like, how is this going to affect my people that I leave behind? How is this going to affect my people that I leave behind? How is this going to affect the people that I'm with? In other words, I've given a lot of my life away. There's been so many times I've been on trips and people want to talk to me and talk to me for an hour or two. I know other guys that will not give that time away, but I always go. You know what? This is my only chance to impact this kid in the car while he's driving me to pick me up from the airport to go to a guitar center clinic. I could be on the phone taking care of business, but he was desperate for my attention or time. But that hour I have found many times.
Zoro:I would run into those people five years later, 20 years later, and they would say you changed my life and I was like, really when? Who are you? Like? I was in a car ride with you and I was going through a really hard time and you talked with me and you listened and you prayed for me and I go. That's my treasure in heaven.
Zoro:You're not always rewarded here according to what you've done. You know, sometimes you'll do great things that are invisible and nobody sees. But those are the. Those are the. Your treasures will be the people you've made a difference in your life. That will be your only treasure. Whose life got better? Because Zoro, andy and Nick lived? Whose life did we impact? And that's how I roll and so everything is from that lens and that keeps me driven and that keeps me outward focused and not self-centered. And people give me compliments, like anybody else. Of course I love the encouragement, the affirmation, but I always go hey, you know what? I'm just a dude who discovered a pot of gold, but I just went and invested it. But I never gave myself the pot of gold, which is the gifts and the talents. I just merely discovered what was already there.
Zoro:So, I can't take credit for that. I can take credit for turning it into something. So that keeps me humble.
Andy Heise:So the music industry is notoriously competitive. There's a lot of talented musicians vying for very few and limited jobs, opportunities, gigs, whatever you want to call them. How do you navigate that competition? How did you navigate it early on? How do you do it now, and what strategies might others be able to take from from that?
Zoro:very good question and a very poignant and deep and purposeful question, one I, I, I have this belief that I have my own song. In other words, there are thousands, if not millions, of writers right. There are probably hundreds of thousands of drummers, I don't know how many. Maybe there's, I don't know but there's a lot of people who do what we do. We are not unique in the sense that the gifts we carry nobody else in the world has. They're common to many other people who have that gift.
Zoro:But I came to learn early on that and I embraced my uniqueness, like where I decided okay, I used to do clinics, you know, with all the great drummers in the world, and then I thought you know what? Dennis Chambers is playing, steve Gadd's playing, dave Wilk was playing, I'm playing. All these people are playing. I cannot do what they do, so I'm not going to bother to try. I'm going to embrace what's unique about me and the way that I play, and I'm going to play like me and be happy with that. There's nothing more attractive than a person who's comfortable in their own skin doing them. Nobody can be a better me than me, right? But if I try to be somebody else, I'm going to be second rate. So at some point you learn the basics, you learn the foundation, you learn the fundamentals of a skill Drumming, teaching, writing, speaking. You go to the source of all the people that are great and you study them and you learn from each of them. Michael Jackson did it. It was a perfect example. Most people who watch Michael Jackson wouldn't know his background or know who he was influenced by, but he was influenced by these two black brothers called the Nicholas Brothers, which were incredible tap dancers. They were insane. He was influenced by Frank Sinatra, by Dean Martin, by Sammy Davis Jr, by James Brown. There was a little bit of all those guys in Michael, but when it came out, it came out Michael, but he was inspired by Fred Astaire. You could see. So in any of us, you have to go to the source and you have to go to what preceded you and you go to the greats, but eventually you let it all become you. So, in terms of being yourself, I think that's the strongest thing that you can do. I had to learn that, as a writer, I'm not Ernest Hemingway, I'm not Mark Twain, I'm not these other guys. I can read their books, but I got to write the way Zoro writes. And here's what's interesting, to encourage people In the 15 years that I was writing and pitching my memoir, it was turned down over 100 times by major publishers.
Zoro:But I refused to give up and I refused to and I realized that eventually, when I first started, I was hiring a writer to write my story because I didn't think I could do it. Writing a memoir, it would be kind of like if you're a rock musician, you played in the group Kiss and now you're going to play with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, or like a classical. Like one doesn't mean you could do the other. And I knew that I was not that kind of a writer. I could write motivational books and all that, but writing a memoir you have to learn. Like dialogue, you have to learn scene setting, character, you have to learn plot line. It's complicated and I didn't think I could do it. But what happened was I never got the book. Deal with the writer that I had hired to do it. And so I figured well, the only way I'm ever going to do this book is I got to do it myself. So that's thus reading the 300 books.
Zoro:But here's and I'm not boasting, I'm just saying what's possible with faith and hard work is that eventually, I learned to write from my heart. I'm a very tender man. I grew up with a single mother who had a big heart, but I have depth and I have humor and I have a soft heart, and so I just wrote like I wrote and what happened was everyone who reads that book has been super moved by it. I'm talking about very big-time celebrities, to politicians, to the people who voted most inspirational and they would say man, your book made me want to do the impossible. Your book made me want to dream again. People in their 60s. Your book made me want to do the impossible. Or your book made me want to dream again. People in their 60s. Your book makes me want to not quit. Your book inspires me. Your book makes me want to be a better mother. It makes me want to work harder and I realized the only reason that happened is because I wrote with my own voice and my own style.
Zoro:I didn't think about God. I'm not as good as those other guys. I didn't go to literary school or writing school. I didn't think about god. I'm not as good as those other guys. Right, I didn't go to literary school or I didn't. You know writing school, I didn't do this, but I self-taught and I learned from people who edited it and they would tell me you need to do this, you need to do that, and I didn't. I was like, oh man, I don't even understand that, but I'd go back to the drawing board, so I don't worry about.
Zoro:I've never been competitive in that sense where, uh, like a lot, and I won't name them, but there's a lot of colleagues of mine that I know and some are legends, some are older than me and some are still super competitive and it's like, dude, you've already done enough. You don't like, you got nothing left. You played on 11 detroit, right? What do you care? Like, you know what I mean. Like you won, so what? Here's the thing about competition that I can't stand. It doesn't take any light away from you, from your gift or your skill or what you've accomplished, to shine the light on me when I'm doing something special.
Zoro:Like I follow a lot of people on Facebook and Instagram and other drummers and colleagues and when they do something cool, they post something. I'll go, dude, awesome, I'll click like and some of them will do that to me the humble ones, but there's other ones that I've known for 20, 30, 40 years. They cannot bring themselves to put their finger to hit the like button. It's just they can't do it because it it's like another famous Mark Twain quote. This really speaks to the human spirit. A couple of them he goes when an envious man hears the praise of another, he feels himself injured. Yeah, when an envious man hears the praise of another, he feels himself injured. So a person, even if they've accomplished a lot, if a person has that envy that everything has to always be on them and they hear the praise of another, they can't handle it. So that's the person who can't hit like or can't post something good about what you've done, even though you're able to do it for them.
Zoro:Because, see, at the end of the day, it's like and I shine the light on all the other if anybody younger than me, older than me, does something great, I said, dude, that was amazing. Like that doesn't make me less of a drummer, that's right. That doesn't make me less accomplished, that just makes me more loving and gracious and more affirming. But but so I don't think I don't look at competition like that. I go hey, god gave me my own to sing and my job in my life is to find my song, my own personal song, and sing it to the top of my lungs, because the way I write is going to touch people in a different way than the way the other writers write, and the way I drum is going to move somebody in a way. Maybe the other drummers did. We move different people with our. You know, some people like chocolate ice cream, some people like vanilla ice cream, some people like vanilla ice cream. One is not better than the other.
Zoro:So I, I and I always looked at it, uh, in a bold way, uh, when I would go audition for something, here's what I would do. I would, yeah, I would say, you know, like I would say to myself, hey, somebody's got to get the gig, that's right, why can't it be me? Like exactly believing in the possibility? And then I would have another thing, a prayer I would say. And I would say this I would say, god, you know, I want this gig more than anything. And I said, I'm not asking you to give me the gig, I'm asking you to give me your piece so that I could play the best that I can play. Because if I played my best and didn't get the gig, then that's all I could do.
Zoro:But sometimes you don't play your best because you're nervous and they don't hear you in the light that you're. When you're killing in your drum room by yourself, you sound amazing. It's the whole world was filming you. That's what I want to play like. So allow me to play my best. But also, you know the future God. I don't. So if this is not the best thing for my future, then take it away and open a door for me somewhere else, and I prayed that prayer many times.
Zoro:Sometimes I would get the gig. An example would be this Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I auditioned for that gig with a lot of other name drummers. He was an American pop icon. He's still alive, 90 years old, but he wasn't at the time, in the 90s, like the modern flavor of the month gig. There was a couple of modern flavor of the month gigs that I auditioned for just before that I thought I was going to get and then I didn't get and I was disappointed because they were like you know, one of them was going to be doing this like long tour and I was like bummed and I knew all the guys in the band. I'm like, how did I not get that gig? Then I didn't. But I prayed that prayer right. So here's, here's an example. So I I get the frankie valley in the four seasons gig, that other tour that I didn't get, that I thought was going to be the big thing, uh, cancel the tour before it even started. Uh, it was gonna be be like a two-year tour. The whole thing was canceled.
Zoro:I worked for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons for the next seven years, solid. I had a salary, I had a retirement plan, I had all these things. And I met my wife through somebody that I met on that gig and that completely changed my destiny. I wouldn't have the two children, I wouldn't have my amazing wife, renee. So sometimes there's fate and there's destiny and I just and I pray that so I don't go if I didn't get that gig.
Zoro:Whatever, I try to do the best I can, but not to the point where I'm hating the other guys that are also auditioning. Or if I seen like everybody's ship sailed past me in certain ways, like I would see a bunch of people do clinics way before me, I would see a bunch of people write their memoir books before me, I'd see a lot of people get gigs before me and I just always thought you know, well, god has my time, you know, if I don't quit. Here's the thing Failure is not permanent. Quitting is what makes it permanent. You know what I mean. Failure we all fail. I didn't get this, I didn't get the book deal. A hundred times I was rejected by agents and publishers and now I'm published by a major publisher who just published, like Robert Downey Jr's book and Kenny G's book and Whoopi Goldberg's book. I don't even belong in that league, but my memoir is twice as thick as theirs and twice as beautiful, because they loved the story and they loved the writing.
Zoro:My whole life is a David and Goliath story. It is against all odds, every single thing I'm fighting on the battlefield. It's Goliath and I'm just little old David, the shepherd boy, and somehow I've been able to slay the giants with faith, perseverance and just persistence, just chipping away, but also a willingness to go back and do the work. This is where a lot of people miss it is. They'll get the critique, you know, about your playing, about your speaking, your drumming. You're right, whatever your gig is right, but they won't go and do the work, and the work is hard.
Zoro:I just saw jerry seinfeld post something. Somebody was interviewing him and he said there is no such thing as writer's block. He goes there's no such thing as writer's block. He goes there's. I'm mediocre and I'm scared, but you've got to go. Okay, I'm mediocre and it's going to take a lot, a lot of work for this to be great, which just really said it all. I was like that is the damn truth. I had to go back and rewrite my memoir hundreds of times, hundreds of iterations of the proposal, hundreds and hundreds of hours. But I was willing to do that work because I was driven by that vision that I knew was going to help and touch and inspire people. And when Jerry said that, I was like that is true.
Zoro:So if one is willing to go back and perfect whatever their thing is, provided you have the gift for it to begin with, there is a difference between a dream and a delusion. A delusion is to think that you have a gift that you don't have and so you're just knocking on dead wood. If you have the gift, it can be developed to a really high level. But that is work. It doesn't automatically. I always say that every gift we have comes to us in the form of a seed. It is not fully mature Like an oak tree, starts off as an acorn, like a seed, but it has to be planted. It takes time and so, yes, we have the potential of greatness in us, with whatever giftings we have, and in the beginning you're better at it than the average person. That's why you're a drummer, because you have some rhythm. But to turn it into a massive oak tree is a process and it never starts off fully a mature plant.
Nick Petrella:So that's how it is starts off fully a mature plant, Right, Right. So that's that's how it is. So Z. Before we get to the final three questions, I do want to follow up on the longevity I had mentioned earlier in the podcast. You've had a lengthy and varied career and I see you just played shows with the dancer, the dancers, the Gardner brothers I think that's what it was. So what's the key to a long career as a musician?
Zoro:Doing a good job at everything you've done, treating every job as the most important job in the world, coming with your A game, always being easy to work with and keeping your chops up, keeping your skill up and to continuously grow. As a musician Like I, haven't stopped practicing. I know a lot of my colleagues that had big gigs at different times and then they would drift into other things and then they kind of stopped practicing altogether. Now I have a varied career in the sense that I am still a drummer, still drumming, but I loved writing, I love speaking and I love teaching and those efforts have taken a lot to develop those additional parts of my career, but I never forsake the drumming. You know what I mean. In other words, well, you'll see directors that now direct, that were actors, but they don't act anymore. You know I still. I still play because I feel, in a way, all I am is a steward of the gifts I've been given.
Zoro:There's a parable in the Bible and it's called the parable of the talents, and back in the old days talent was money. It wasn't like what we think of as a gift. And there's a story in the Bible about the parable of talents and the master goes and he gives everybody a certain amount of talents, which is money. And he goes to one he gave five talents. To another, he gave 10. To another, he gave a hundred. And then he comes back when you least expect it and asks the people what did you do with the talents that I gave you? Which is basically how did you invest what I gave you to start? And one guy goes oh, you were a strong taskmaster, so I was afraid, so I buried it in the ground. Here's your five talents back. The other guy he gave 10. He goes oh, I turned the 10 into 100. And the other guy he gave 100. He goes oh, I turned it to a million. And he goes to the one who did nothing with the talents. He goes you wicked servant, you knew I was a hard taskmaster and you didn't at least invest it. So it's really a parable that God gives you something that is not yours. You're just a steward of it. You're just a banker. Your job is to invest it and to have interest compound. So I looked at my drumming as one of my gifts. I don't want to let it go to the wayside. I want it to be better when I'm 62 than I was when I was 52. And that takes discipline, that takes work.
Zoro:The other key to longevity is we all is to be a good steward of your time. None of us, rich or poor, at any age, gets more than 24 hours a day to do life in. You've got to figure out how to manage those 24 hours. You have to sleep, you have to eat, you have time to work, and so I've learned to be a good manager and steward of the time.
Zoro:I've taken care of myself physically most of my life. I've never partied and I don't say this in any sort of prideful, arrogant way. This was just to me common sense wisdom. But I've never been drunk in my entire life and I've never been high in my entire life, and that was not for spiritual reasons, that was for practical reasons. I don't consider myself any better spiritually than somebody who's done those things, but I consider that I've gotten benefits out of not doing those things, meaning all that money that people spent on those things. I spent on buying books on how to write a memoir, or drum lessons or tools for my trade or going to conventions to learn speaker stuff. Whatever I made investments.
Zoro:You only have so much time and resource, right Time, talent and treasure. So I just go, hey, part of longevity is being wise enough to use your time judiciously and go, hey, I've got an hour only to practice, but I'm going to practice that hour. I've got an hour to read this book, to learn about this thing, and so, yeah, you've got to manage your time well and you've got to. And you only get one body to do your life in. You know that's it one body. So I've taken care of mine. I've always eaten, you know, fairly healthy, and I've been mindful of working out and exercising and staying lean so I can be strong, right, and these are choices. These aren't gifts, this isn't a talent, these are choices you make to go, hey. But it all goes back to the idea of stewardship.
Zoro:If I've been given this life, and maybe God's intention was that I make it to, I don't know, maybe 90. Frankie Valli just turned 90. Somebody else just turned the Dick Van Dyke's 100, or gonna be 100. You know, jimmy Carter was 100. Okay, so let's say God intended for me to make it to 100. I'm not saying he did, but let's just say. But let's just say, because I was an idiot and partied my life away. I died at 40. Well, there's 60 years. I was an idiot and partied my life away. I died at 40. Well, there's 60 years. I was supposed to be here to make a difference. You don't think in those 60 years a lot of lives would have changed because I was here? Go watch the movie. It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart.
Announcer:If he wasn't there all those other things wouldn't happen.
Zoro:So I'm going to check out one day for sure, but I don't want it to be early and stupid because of a lack of wisdom or a lack of discipline on my side. I want it to be hey, I lived the full life. I took care of what I was given, which is my life, which is my time, my wife, my children, my friends, the gifts I've been given, and I maximized it so that, yeah, you gave me 10 talents, but here's 100,000 back, god. Each one of them grew and each one of them did what they were supposed to do. And that's what governs me, because if you don't have something bigger in your life governing you, it's hard to make those daily decisions. Because you just go oh, that burger looks good.
Zoro:When I go to the airport and I see everybody else eating all the junky food, you think I don't want to eat it. You think I don't smell Annie Ann's pretzels and In-N-Out burger? Yes, occasionally I do, but I just go. No, I'm looking for the orange, the banana or some hard-boiled eggs. Because, discipline, you can't. Everybody wants what you have without doing what you did to get there. Like, we all want to look beautiful and look lean and ripped, but we're not willing to do what people did to get there. We all want to be a great drummer, but without doing the work to get there. So I just go, you know what, I'm just going to do the work, and then you feel better because the decisions that you make, fruit shows up from your life. Assets show up, profits show up, progress shows up, and then you go yeah, this stuff works. It's habits, just developing good habits that's part of longevity is developing good habits, and there also a lot of it is your attitude too, because in a career as long as I've been in the business whatever 42, 43 years there's ups and downs to everything. Right, there's been so many disappointments in my life. For all the victories I've had, for every gig I've got, for every speaking gig, for every book I've sold, there's been hundreds of people that rejected me and people only see your successes. I hung out with Denzel Washington and he said to me he goes. You know, everybody knows the movies that I did. No one knows the ones that I didn't do early on. You know, no, nobody. Nobody knows the rejection of the things you didn't get when you're a big celebrity. Right, they just, they just see, oh, he did this movie that way, but they didn't know. You tried out for that. I didn't know you didn't get that Right.
Zoro:So part of longevity is developing thick skin and learning to overcome rejection. Longevity is developing thick skin and learning to overcome rejection, learning to take some of it not as personal yeah, it's not that they don't like you. You just might not have been the right fit for the vibe of the band and then and then learning not to let any of it define you, and also learning to go. What can I learn from it? I can't change the way I look. For the most part, you know, like if they were looking for a girl drummer. I can't help you Right, I might by recommending some, but I can't be that. So you just go. But but was it something that I did playing wise? It wasn't up to par, or where could I grow from it.
Zoro:So rejection is an opportunity to refine the skill of the gift and then also to come to peace with yourselves. To go. I can't get everything. If we all knew which jobs we would get and wouldn't, we would only go after the ones we're going to get right. We would only fill out applications where we knew. But life is a walk of faith. You fill out a hundred applications and you get one job you know, and that's just what it is right. So you just go. Hey, I'm going to. So a lot of longevity is just your mind, man, just reading whatever you can, surrounding yourself, listening to podcasts like yours. So surround yourself with positive thinking, because it's really easy to get negative real quick when things aren't going your way, and it's really easy to get bitter, jaded and what's that word? Cynical? It's easy to get cynical. All those people, they did it, and it's easy to get that way. You've got to protect yourself, yeah.
Andy Heise:That's great, Zoro. We've reached the rapid-fire final three questions that we ask all of our interviewees, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an arts entrepreneur?
Zoro:It starts with vision. Create a vision Like where do you see yourself wanting to go? You can't go someplace without a vision. You know you have to have a vision and spend time thinking about what that is. Do more time on the front end thinking.
Zoro:Henry Ford had a quote. He said thinking is really really hard business, which explains why so few people engage in it. That's a good one, that's great. The hardest work in anything you do is the thinking through the process of it, like thinking what do I want to do and then thinking through what would it take to do that? Because once an architect has a blueprint for a building and has done all the work of thinking this is how it's going to go, man, the building goes up fast, but all the real work is in planning what it's going to be and what it's going to take right. So I would say that be willing, a willingness to do the hard work.
Zoro:Don't accept no for an answer. I mean, it may not be a direct path to get there, but everybody who succeeded, including Bill Gates and Paul Allen, they told me you know they started a different company before they started Microsoft. That didn't succeed. It was called Traptodata and they said, but if we didn't do that, we would have never done Microsoft. So don't accept failure as a permanent thing. There's nobody who, for the most part, has a straight line to success without any sort of it's. Just at least if you know where you're going. The road might take you here and there, but at least know you know where you're going. The road might take you here and there, but at least you know you're headed in that direction, right, right.
Zoro:And then you have to have an element of faith and belief in order for any of this to happen. So, however you want to define that, for me it was my personal relationship with Christ that enabled me to believe in myself because, according to the scriptures, he believes in me. There's a plan and purpose he has for my life. So that gave me the strength to believe against all the doubt, against the naysayers, against the rejection to go. No, god has a plan for my life. He gave me these visions and dreams. I've had them all my life. I've written them down. They're in my heart. He wrote them in my heart. I have to stick to that. Everything I've done are visions and dreams I've been given. So you're going to have to have faith and belief, that's what I would say.
Nick Petrella:What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Zoro:that's gonna that's gonna take like almost like uh litigation. You know, like quinchy jones used to tell me. You know he goes the united states is the only country that doesn't have an ambassador for the arts. He goes, you go to denmark, you go to all these other countries. They honor and respect the arts. There's an ambassador in the political system for the arts themselves to support the arts. We don't have that and we're one of the most artistic countries in the universe.
Zoro:A lot of the world copies, but we don't have in our government a section for the government put aside that honors the arts in the way that we should, and so I think that needs to happen at a judicial level to really because other countries, you know they can get money to start different projects because the government has money for things like that. We got to just invent stuff out of nowhere. You know, I mean there's a good side of that because it makes you very inventive, but on another side there's sometimes it's hard and you can't raise the money and you can't do whatever. So I think at some point, however, that works, there needs to be some move in government. We demand to be honored and respected as entrepreneurs and artistic people developing ideas and projects.
Zoro:I like this Elon Musk guy because he's a dreamer. You know what I mean. He's doing things that have never been done. That's part of the American spirit, but we need to do that also in the arts. You know we need a platform for that. We need funding for that. You know we need dreamers to go. Hey, there's ways to do this that aren't just like you've got to invent the wheel, Right? No-transcript.
Andy Heise:Last question what's the best artistic?
Zoro:or entrepreneurial advice anyone's given you Be yourself. Be yourself. You know, whatever you do chances are other people have thought of it like you guys are doing a podcast, right, lots of people have podcasts. I write books, lots of people write books. But I think learning to sing your song again back to like you got to do the things that you can do differently than other people and that's what sets you apart is like you got to do. You. If we're individuals, but we're doing it at the highest level.
Zoro:It's like comedians right, there's a lot of great comedians, right. You got Jerry Seinfeld, you got Jamie Foxx, you got Jim Gaffigan, sebastian Menescalco, you got hundreds of them. Man, they're all different. You're never going to create something that everyone is going to want. You're never going to write comedy that everyone's going to find funny, because what one guy finds funny, another guy goes he's totally stupid. You don't need everybody. You just need a small portion of the market to be successful, a very small portion. If you've got just a small amount of the population that thinks you're funny, that's enough to be successful, right. But because Jim Gaffigan just does him. You know what I mean and Jerry Gaffigan just does him. You know what I mean, and Jerry Seinfeld just does, jerry, he's got these astute, funny observations and that made him Jerry.
Zoro:You know when he does the bit about. You know, when you put your socks in the laundry and then only one comes out? Like where did it go? Is it hiding? Did it escape? Like you know what I mean. But it's just things we all think about. I did have two socks, but now I have one. Where the hell is it? So he just looked at things that are common, everyday, funny, and made them his thing.
Zoro:So finding your own voice in whatever you do, whether it's a product, whether it's an art, is really the key. It's like actors. I don't like, I'm not a fan of Nick Cage. The key it's like actors. I don't like, I'm not a fan of nick cage. You know what I mean, uh, you know, uh, but lots of people are and they go to his movies, right, uh? And so what one person likes, another person can't stand. Just be yourself. Yeah, that's, and you're going to appeal to enough people to to be successful. It's like like, why do we have wendy, burger King, in-n-out Shake Shack, five Guys, mcdonald's, jack in the Box? You take millions of people and they go. I hate Jack in the Box. Oh, I love Burger King. I hate McDonald's. I love Five Guys. More, I love In-N-Out. They're not making a burger that every single person likes Well it's a good place to end.
Nick Petrella:That's a good place to end. They're making a burger that some people like. That's a good place to end because you're making me hungry. Well, thanks so much for being with us. Z, it's great to hear your story and how you're not only achieving your goals, but you're helping other people to do the same. Thanks again for being with us.
Zoro:Hey, thank you guys for what you're doing and thanks for having the courage and the bravery to start a podcast amidst, you know, millions of other podcasts, right, but that's that's it. You guys are dreamers. You got and thank you for the honor and privilege of being interviewed and you're living the dream yourself. You know you're showing others how to do it by interviewing people, but you're living it by by. You started and you've got all these episodes already and I'm lucky I get to be on one of them. So thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you, Zoro.
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