WEBVTT
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You can't rely on anybody else to come save you.
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You can't rely on anybody else to open up the door and give you an opportunity.
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You oftentimes have to ask for those opportunities, which, I'll be honest, is one of the things that I struggle with, because I always hear my mom's voice in my ear saying Sarah, that is inappropriate.
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It is disrespectful.
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You should not do that.
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Whereas, in reality, there's oftentimes a way to broach things respectfully whilst still putting yourself out there, and so you know you have to make your own opportunities, you have to go out and network.
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Hello and welcome to another edition of For the Love of Creatives podcast.
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I am your host, dwight, joined by the other Connections and Community, guy Maddox, and today our featured guest is Sarah Sparky Bauman.
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Welcome, sarah.
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Hello guys, thank you so much for having me on.
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It's so great to have you here.
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I've been looking forward to this.
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Me too, especially after I got to see you guys.
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Uh, you know a little bit.
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It was nice to finally get this going.
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Yeah, I was really delighted that we just met you guys at Matthew's Halloween party.
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That was a lot of fun.
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I got to have a little more conversation with him than I did you.
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A lot of going on and a lot of noise, but it was still a lovely meeting.
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Yes, definitely.
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Well, you've seen me at a few events now and how ADD I get, so the struggle is real.
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But now I'm seated, there's one line of focus.
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You've got my full attention.
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I will be entirely present.
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You know, if you have a squirrel moment, we can reel you back in.
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I am the queen of squirrel moments.
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I will tell you that much.
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Well, let's direct our focus to making sure that we give you a proper introduction to our listeners.
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And you have an incredible story, but what is the way that you would encapsulate it?
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My story or a little bit about me.
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Just a little bit about you, to start.
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So my name is Sarah Bauman.
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As you guys mentioned, I've been an artist at heart my entire life.
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My DNA is all artists, from my mom's side, from my dad's side.
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It's just kind of naturally ingrained within me.
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I instead got a degree in occupational therapy, which is healthcare, and as of about 2021, 2022, I transitioned entirely out of healthcare and entirely into art, whereas prior to I was doing both part-time, I'm sorry, one full-time, one part-time and this has become my entire passion, you know, not just being an artist, but also being an artist who tries to champion good and does well for the community, but also, hopefully, inspires others to try and figure out ways to turn their passions into their daily lives as well.
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So that's a little bit about me in a nutshell.
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And there's so many different directions that can go, and that's fabulous, it's beautiful.
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First of all, I want to acknowledge that, for anyone listening, you have shown that it is possible.
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You, you can.
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You can do that thing.
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That is what it is that drives you and have it be your, your primary driver, the primary thing that gets you out of bed in the morning and that sustains you and feeds your family and allows you to give back.
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Yes, and I will say too, you know, there is no shame, no qualms at all with, you know, maintaining your passion, whatever it is.
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You know, say you're an artist or whatever, and also maintaining something that that gives you like fiscal security on the side as well.
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There is absolutely no qualms with that.
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I just saw a friend of ours, minji, speak at the Aloft Hotel about a week ago, and one of the things that she was actually kind of telling people is don't quit your full-time job when you are wanting to transition to being an artist.
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And I don't disagree with that at all.
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I actually completely agree with it, because sometimes that fiscal pressure of having to bring in that income is very, very overwhelming and can oftentimes become so burdensome that you burn out.
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So, yes, you can absolutely bring your passion into your full-time career.
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That's totally doable with enough knowledge and work and so on, but there's also nothing wrong with maintaining a career.
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That's a little bit more.
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You know, expected what, what's to be coming.
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You know, I think we have a tendency, as human beings to think in terms of either or, and it really can be an.
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And, you know, we recently interviewed a gentleman who shared with us that he he had determined he wanted two passions, two purposes, that he didn't want to just pick one.
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And he has a full-time job with a corporation that he absolutely loves, and then he is an actor and not, you know, like the actor that you know waits tables.
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He really has jobs, he's actively acting and passionate about that and doesn't sound like he would want to give either one of them up.
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And I thought that was really cool, because we don't think in terms of and.
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Yes, yeah, no 100%, and I do think you see that more often than not, especially nowadays, I think people that are like millennial and lower have a tendency to operate multiple careers at one time, as opposed to the generations above us, which had a tendency to kind of silo into one career.
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I think now it's very natural to have like two, three jobs at one point in time.
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And don't get me wrong, I love science, I love health care, I love helping people, I love healthcare, I love helping people.
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I was just incredibly upset by and no longer believing had everything to do with the fact that I felt like a lot of the health care systems were not appropriately managing the way that patients should be cared for and or health care health care practitioners.
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So I have a love and passion for both things, both art and science, and I would probably still be pursuing both, you know, had it not been the health care system that we're currently, you know, within.
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You did what you had to do to take care of yourself.
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I applaud that.
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I want to comment on something you said a minute ago.
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You know the previous generations having you know one thing that they did I'm a boomer.
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You know One thing that they did I'm a boomer, you know, and I had a 40-year career as a hairdresser and makeup artist, but throughout most of that career I had a variety of different side hustles that I did.
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There was always a side hustle because I just wanted that extra challenge and stimulation and variety.
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You know, I wanted something that broke up the monotony of doing the same thing all day, every day.
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Right yeah.
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I think I was maybe an exception, because I don't think a lot of boomers are like that.
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Yeah, yeah, well, I think that's very true.
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I think that there's always going to be exceptions, Right?
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I think that you're also going to find that there's a lot of people that are within my age group and younger who prefer to just have one career, just have one stable career and not have any side hustles or anything, an or or.
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It can be an and and sort of situation.
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But I think nowadays, you know, for at least us younger populations, I think industry has significantly changed, whereas once you know, many moons ago, a lot of companies, they wanted to hold on to their employees, right, they wanted to have loyal employees and maintain them for as long as possible.
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They wanted to have loyal employees and maintain them for as long as possible.
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And I think that that has significantly evolved over the last probably two decades or so, where you're seeing more and more layoffs and more and more turn and burn of employees because a lot of industries are recognizing that they can get rid of a sect of employees and hire in a new sect of employees for even less pay than what they were paying the previous cohort, and I think that's been a massive catalyst, not only for so many of us younger people wanting to now have multiple side hustles, but also for fewer and fewer people really having trust in corporations and industries, in particular, working for them.
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It's kind of sad.
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People have become disposable.
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People have become disposable, those decisions right, which is interesting, especially in the age of AI, because we're going to be seeing more and more focus in a lot of these corporations and industries on efficiency and less on human care, which is something that I think will be intriguing to watch play out over the next several years.
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But my assumption is that probably more and more people my age and younger are going to be seeking out entrepreneurial roles as opposed to roles within corporations.
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As a result of that.
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I concur.
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Yeah, I think there's definitely going to be a flavor of there being the AI only version of things that are cheap and fast and readily available, and there's also going to be that branch of any services that's going to come from allowing AI and a human to collaborate to elevate things.
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Absolutely, and I think it's funny that you say that, because you know now, a lot of times, whenever you get onto a website and you need assistance, there's an AI chatbot right, and a lot of times you'll utilize that AI chatbot and you are thinking to yourself and I will say this kind of on my husband's behalf who's might I say, like the biggest proponent of AI?
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He's an AI guru, but even he is like this is garbage by comparison to an actual human being.
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And I think that one of the things that we the pendulum has a tendency to swing very far to the right and then, opposingly, very far to the left, whereas oftentimes what we find is that the best outcomes happen in the middle.
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And whenever I say that, what I mean is right now, we have a lot of brand new AI rollout and I think that the pendulum is swinging hard to the right, where we're trying to replace a lot of human jobs with AI, when in reality, I think probably the middle of utilizing humans with the efficiency of AI is going to be where we find our sweet spot, and it's going to take a little while for, I think, both humans, corporations, people from all walks of life to kind of figure that out and recognize that that's going to be where our sweet spot is.
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Definitely.
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Go ahead Dwight.
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Go ahead, dwight.
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We had a real-world experience of getting to see the worst way that AI and automation could impact just a normal everyday experience.
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We ordered something from Amazon and it was like a dental device or something and the way that it worked out.
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You know, I'm filling in the blanks with what I think happened at the warehouse, but a machine thought that it packed the ordered item into the package and it got loaded into a truck and it was delivered at Amazon speed to the front door.
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Well, the thing is, something happened to where that handoff of the machine putting the item in the package didn't actually happen.
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So we got an empty package that was placed on our doorstep.
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That was placed on our doorstep and then we had to engage with the AI help to go through.
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You know you only have the option that they expect.
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Oh, so you want to return this?
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Item.
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It's like, well, no, it was delivered, but it didn't actually happen.
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So after several rounds of going with the bot, I finally was able to chat with a human and explain like none of the all the options you have are not exactly what's happening.
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We just want what we ordered.
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We don't want to return the empty envelope.
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We just want you to send what we actually paid for in the first place.
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It's so funny.
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That's literally exact same thing has happened to me too, so I completely understand what you guys experienced.
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Yeah, I love AI, but I think I'm using it a lot.
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But I think that you have to use it very intentionally.
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It can't replace us.
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It can't do all the things I don't want it to do.
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I don't want it to replace me.
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I don't want it to write all my stuff.
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Right.
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But I do think it's great, for I write my stuff and then I run it by you know, my little partner AI and say you know, what am I missing here?
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What could be a little better?
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Right, right, and it's little tweaks that really do improve my writing, but it's still like my writing.
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Right, right, and I will counter that by saying I think that it absolutely could replace us.
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The only thing is is going to be the expectation of quality, right?
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So I think that you know, similarly to the way that healthcare has degraded over the last two decades because we've just started kind of accepting this poorer and poorer quality, we could see the same thing as a result of, you know, just AI.
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And I will also say, like it's getting very good, like you can, actually your voice, your human voice, within chat GPT, so that it writes like you and it talks like you.
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But I think that there's got to be that kind of like ethical question as an individual of like is that what you necessarily want to put out?
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Do you want to find yourself in a place where you feel like?
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You know you can't necessarily write a paragraph comfortably without having, like your checks and balances of chat GPT, but I do think that you know it has a high probability to replace us.
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Even myself, as a former occupational therapist doing a lot of manual labor, I think eventually we'll probably see replacements in that regard too.
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But the question is going to be quality, empathy, you know, so on and so forth.
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Where is that going to be there as well or not?
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I don't know.
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I think the saving grace is, you know, for me, I like to tell stories, I love to tell stories, and everything I write I include some type of a personal story in, and GPT can't do that.
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Yes, yeah it can't tell my stories.
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Exactly.
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It can't access your memories right.
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It can't access the way that you're contemplating empathy or expressing emotion and so on and so forth.
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That's not necessarily a capability just yet, but who knows, seeing like these shows, like Black Mirror and Severance and things like that, that really kind of make you like okay, like I feel like there's a high probability that one of these days we get chips implanted in our brains and next thing, you know, like all of our memories are accessible via chat, gpt and like it's.
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You know, who knows?
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I don't know where things are going, but the here and now is, yes, I agree with you, it can't necessarily replicate that human aesthetic.
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No, I think it's interesting you bring up Black Mirror because I think in a lot of ways you're something of an architect of the future with your community.
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The women in weapons, I mean it's huge.
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What is the drive for that and what's your vision for that community?
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yeah, I mean.
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So.
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Women and weapons originally started as predominantly a quote-unquote NFT project, right, but really one of the biggest focuses was community.
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At the time that women and weapons launch was right, kind of towards the end of the COVID bubble, right, like everybody was stuck within their homes, the predominant way of you conversing with one another and socializing was via the internet, and one of the things we found was that we were able to really build community kind of around this artwork and around this rhetoric of what Women and Weapons is, which Women and Weapons for those who don't know was a set of artworks that I created that was set in the mid-century era, that was meant to portray women as strong and powerful and kind of flip the rhetoric that we're used to seeing in the mid-century of women, you know, kind of being subpar and lesser than on its head.
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And so we were able to build a really wonderful community of individuals from all around the globe that you know.
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A lot of them became, you know, such good friends.
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They were attending each other's weddings from like opposite sides of the earth.
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Some of my best friends have now come from that community, people that you know.
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I don't know that I ever would have run across prior to all of this have come from that community, and it's one of the ways that we're able to keep in touch.
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But we also have a similar, I guess, set of interests.
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Right, because what Women in Weapons stands for is something that is similar to what we all stand for, and you know, it's not just about staying in contact and also, you know, keeping up with my artwork and what I do day to day, but it's also about giving back to the world.
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So one of the things that we were able to do with Women in Weapons was donate over $170,000 to the Malala Fund, which, if anybody's unfamiliar with the Malala Fund, it's created by Malala herself and if you don't know her story, I recommend looking it up.
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But basically, what they do is they go to underserved areas and, from a grassroots level, they work on changing the system for women and girls to gain opportunities to education, because a lot of statistics have shown that the more education a girl gets in underserved areas, the less likely they are to become child brides, to become abused, and the more opportunities they have for freedoms and independence.
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So it's become a community for good, a community for friendship, a community for keeping up with my artwork.
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You know myself as an artist, um, and so much more.
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So it's been, it's been really great.
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But, like you said, it utilizes technologies that were kind of on the brink, because I'm a big believer of early adoption.
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But ethical early adoption, um, I think that there's always asymmetrical upside in that regard.
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How long have you had that community, Sarah?
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Early adoption I think that there's always asymmetrical upside in that regard.
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How long have you had that community, Sarah?
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Since October of 2021.
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And how big is it now?
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It depends on, I guess, what number you're looking at.
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Technically it's about a community of 10,000 people, but if you look at the numbers, like on social media, we have about over one hundred fifty thousand individuals that are following all of our social accounts.
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So it just kind of depends on which numbers you're looking at.
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Wow, that sounds amazing.
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Yeah, yeah, it's been.
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It's been really really wonderful and you founded that.
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You founded that yes, myself and my husband, uh, my husband jake uh, we both founded women and weapons.
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Um, it was just something that I felt like I don't know.
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I guess the story that I wanted to tell a little bit about you know the way women were once perceived and still, in a lot of instances, are perceived.
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I just I wanted to create rhetoric around you know the opposing viewpoint of that and that's become a really amazing community of a lot of dads who have daughters, who really want to see their daughters become strong, independent women and they want them to kind of see this sort of a community, this sort of artwork and so on and so forth, and feel empowered.
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It's a big community of women who want to be empowered.
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It's a big community of people from all walks of life who just want to do good around the world.
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So that has been, you know, some of our primary focuses.
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But, yeah, we've championed the Malala Fund, we've championed up and coming artists, we've championed the 1000 Dreams Fund, breast Cancer Research Foundation and so many other organizations, not just, you know, through philanthropy, but also through awareness and so on.
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Wow, that is totally impressive.
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Thank you, I appreciate it.
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I'm kind of like, wow, I mean, you know, because we're working to build community and you're there, you know you've got something that really is having a positive impact in the world, which is our dream.
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It's what we spend all day, every day, working on, and so it's such an inspiration to hear your story and, I don't know, I might need to pick your brains.
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Yeah, no, you know what I will tell you right now?
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That building community is difficult.
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It's not an easy thing to do, especially now that, I will say, the COVID bubble was significantly different in regards to community building, because so many people were seeking out community via this one vector that was the internet.
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Right Now that our COVID era has kind of ended, people are a little bit more scattered than they once were, and so building community is a little bit more difficult now.
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But I've come to find that one of the things that people really value is authenticity, like what's behind your head, and transparency and just like a general good human type of connection.
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And so even here and around Dallas I'm sure both of you have seen that there's a lot of different, like dinner clubs and like art clubs and so on and so forth, because people naturally do want to participate in community.
00:22:42.913 --> 00:22:46.000
But it is something that's hard to build.
00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:56.097
It's something that's hard to like, maintain kind of like a loyal base, of which I don't necessarily think that you should expect a loyal base, because I think people should be able to ebb and flow and flex as they please.
00:22:56.097 --> 00:23:00.530
But yeah, it's hard, it's not an easy thing to do, for sure.
00:23:01.512 --> 00:23:04.219
I think that you called out something and you're right.
00:23:04.219 --> 00:23:22.438
In the Dallas area there is a lot available socially, but I've lived here for 35 years and I've been in and out of a lot of that and there is a significant amount of it that is very superficial.
00:23:22.438 --> 00:23:23.038
Yeah.
00:23:23.038 --> 00:23:25.252
I don't experience the authenticity.
00:23:25.252 --> 00:23:26.790
I don't experience the realness.
00:23:26.790 --> 00:23:40.035
It's very, very plastic and very put on and as much as authenticity is a draw and a turn on, that part of it is a massive turnoff for me.
00:23:40.965 --> 00:23:43.271
Well, I feel honestly the exact same way.
00:23:44.535 --> 00:24:09.837
I will take the group of kooky, weird misfits over the group of like hot socialites any day, any day, and that's kind of the group that I've found myself in here in Dallas is I tend to hang out with, like the kind of quirky, weird artist group of humans, as opposed to, you know, the opposite group, and it's because I don't.
00:24:10.005 --> 00:24:29.346
I don't care about what the perception is, I care about like having an authentic, like emotional connection with individuals and we're in some of the loneliest times I think we've ever been in, right, because everybody's into their phones, so sucked into their computer or their iPad, whatever, whatever it might be.
00:24:29.346 --> 00:24:30.210
We're so separate.
00:24:30.210 --> 00:24:30.530
Now.
00:24:30.530 --> 00:24:32.417
Everybody's working 24 seven.
00:24:32.417 --> 00:24:36.329
So a lot of people are seeking out that community and I think it.
00:24:36.329 --> 00:24:43.692
It is going to take for a lot of people a lot of bopping around to figure out where you fit right, like where your, where your comfort level is.
00:24:43.692 --> 00:24:52.227
But once you start finding where that community is and you start drawing in more and more people that are alike you, it grows and grows and grows and gets bigger and better.
00:24:53.189 --> 00:24:55.253
Well, I think in the oh, go ahead, dwight.
00:24:55.954 --> 00:25:06.569
I was just going to say that you you hit on something that is a recurring theme that we see, and that's many creative people feel isolated in their journey yeah what structures?
00:25:06.569 --> 00:25:10.877
Weird well, yeah, yeah, well, and nothing's more.
00:25:10.877 --> 00:25:22.696
Nothing makes you feel weirder than how you kind of mentally put a spotlight on yourself yes, yes, 100, yeah I think that's what draws us to the creative community.
00:25:22.805 --> 00:25:34.577
In the last couple of years, our not just anything that might be about business, but our personal lives have become so engaged and entwined in the creative community.
00:25:34.577 --> 00:25:54.481
Here that I mean, like everybody, pretty much that we socialize with is some form of creativity, and when we're together socially, a huge part of the conversation centers around our creative experience and how it has impacted our own lives.
00:25:54.481 --> 00:26:02.759
And we certainly embrace the weirdness, you know, the individuality, the quirkiness.
00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:03.945
Yes.
00:26:04.086 --> 00:26:06.532
Yes, it's what makes it so interesting.
00:26:06.532 --> 00:26:10.890
I don't you know so much more interesting than a room full of people wearing the designer labels.
00:26:11.772 --> 00:26:21.516
Well, not only that, but like also being in a room full of people who want to learn more about you as opposed to telling you about themselves.
00:26:21.516 --> 00:26:51.510
Right, and I think that's where a lot of that loss of like true heart to heart connection happens is that there's a lot of and let me tell y'all, I have I've been within like kind of the entertainment space and everything, and it's tough because a lot of people they want to talk about themselves, they want to climb the ladder, and I just feel like it's very difficult to make any sort of like heart to heart connection whenever you're doing that.
00:26:51.510 --> 00:27:03.836
It's better, from my viewpoint, to be friends with people who are the type of humans that want to learn more about you and also want to speak about you in a room full of opportunities when you're not there.
00:27:06.185 --> 00:27:11.214
I mean, you're describing the purpose behind this podcast.
00:27:11.214 --> 00:27:19.894
We do this because it gives us an opportunity to get to know somebody, so many people's real story Oftentimes.
00:27:19.894 --> 00:27:22.116
Oftentimes, it's the untold story.
00:27:22.116 --> 00:27:31.641
I'm amazed at how many guests have said you know, wow, I've never really said my story out loud like this.
00:27:31.641 --> 00:27:45.678
And how many of them have described, you know, the connecting of the dots or the shift that occurred within them because of the opportunity to share their story openly and authentically.
00:27:46.484 --> 00:27:58.548
Yeah Well, you guys are also very easy to talk to and you come across as very nonjudgmental individuals, and I think that naturally allows people to kind of divulge more than what they would usually divulge to others.
00:27:58.548 --> 00:28:09.300
So that's something that I think you should give kudos to yourselves about is that you do have this natural presence of like comfort and trust and non-judgmental air about you.
00:28:09.300 --> 00:28:12.871
So, that's your flowers.
00:28:13.571 --> 00:28:18.380
Oh that means a lot and you really hit on something.
00:28:18.380 --> 00:28:41.212
One of the things that we strive to get groups that we bring together whenever we're having one of our in real life events, we hit really hard on getting people to leave outside a lot of the things that have protected them, a lot of the scripts that they carry for how it is that they must present themselves.
00:28:41.212 --> 00:28:44.381
You know, men are taught that they carry for how it is that they must present themselves.
00:28:44.381 --> 00:28:49.134
Men are taught that they have to be bold, they have to do things to make themselves look really cool.
00:28:49.134 --> 00:28:49.736
Right.
00:28:50.184 --> 00:29:12.269
And when women have been conditioned to try to make people feel better and make themselves small, and so we try to create a space where we tell people to imagine that they're back on the playground, they're in the sandbox and they don't have all the trappings of what they, what it is that makes it so that they have their story, that they tell the world.
00:29:12.269 --> 00:29:13.009
Right.
00:29:13.351 --> 00:29:16.637
And they just want to go and be good people.
00:29:16.637 --> 00:29:19.910
And we want to leave out any judgment.
00:29:19.910 --> 00:29:31.238
We want to leave out any of the things that make it so that we're measuring other people and we want to try to amplify our curiosity.
00:29:31.238 --> 00:29:50.141
We want to go in with extreme openness and be ready for the magic that happens, because it's that vulnerability that invites people to connect in the ways that are well, the ways that we need.
