and life you love.

Got a question for you today. Have you ever felt like you have a ton of potential inside,

but you’re not able to fully actualize it out into the world?  My next guest says that

the key to really unleashing your power, your voice, and your self respect lies in one simple

decision that you can make right now.

We are about to talk with one of my favorite authors of all time, Mr. Steven Pressfield,

about his new book called Turning Pro. I absolutely love it, I think that every human being on

the planet should read it, and let’s talk to him right now and learn why...

Alright everyone, welcome. I am here with, as I told you, the amazing author of Turning

Pro, Mr. Steven Pressfield. And as you’ll notice, my book cover is like all cranked

out. Steven, I’ve had this book at the beach, I can’t even tell you how many people have

stole it from me, there’s like highlights, there’s sand in this book.

Ah, great.

I absolutely love it. So I’ve built up this book which, again, no hype, everyone on the

planet should read this. Let’s talk about what turning pro really means. What does turning

pro mean to you?

The... there are a lot of us out there, including me in the past, who are amateurs, who are

living their lives as amateurs. And it’s somebody that wants to be a writer but only

dabbles once in awhile and, you know, puts a few words down. Somebody who wants to shoot

a film, somebody who wants to be a painter, somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur,

and doesn’t really get it going. And my... I think a lot of times when we try to ask

ourselves, “Well, what’s... what’s wrong? What’s happening that I... won’t let me

do this?” We can blame ourselves, you know, we think that there’s something wrong with

us or we’re sick or we have neurotic tendencies or whatever. My instinct about the whole thing

is to forget all that stuff and just look at it from the prism of are we a pro or are

we an amateur? And if we’re a professional, then we don't accept any excuses from ourselves.

You know? And when the day comes and when we wake up in the morning and we don't feel

like doing whatever it is we know we need to do, a professional gets up and does it.

You know, Kobe Bryant goes to the gym, Lebron James goes to the gym every... a pro does

what he has to do. Whereas an amateur will crap out along the way, you know, they’re

a weekend warrior, blah, blah, blah. So the whole point of the book, Turning Pro, is to

try to make... to encourage people to make that switch in their mind. It doesn't cost

any money, you don't have to buy any product, you don't have to take any course, nobody

gets rich off you or anything like that, you know?

Right, right.

You just change your mind from being... from being a pro to being an amateur. I’ll tell

you a little story that we haven’t even talked about, Marie. I had a woman friend

a few years ago who took up golf. And, you know, people get bitten by the golf bug and

they just go crazy. Right?

Yeah.

And she had been playing for about a month and she was absolutely terrible of course

as anybody would be. So she invited me to come out and play golf with her, and when

I showed up at the golf course she was decked out from head to toe. She had the beautiful

shoes, she had the beautiful visor, and she was terrible. It was terrible. And I said,

“What’s the story Kathy?” You know? And she said, “You know what Steve? I’ve

decided to think of myself as a pro.” She said, “I know I stink. I know I suck. I

know it’s gonna take me years. But I am gonna take this seriously. I’m gonna have

the right gear,” and she had got herself on a program of lessons, a program of practice,

you know, where she put in X number of hours a day, and she was practicing the way a pro

practices. In other words, not just doing the fun things, the glamorous things...

Right.

...but the boring stuff. You know? The 3 foot putts and things like that. And, of course,

within 9 months she was a good golfer. Now she’s a terrific golfer. But I remember

when she... when I first heard that from her I thought, “Wow, that is really a wild idea.”

And so that’s an example of just somebody who just put the mindset in and, “I’m

not gonna be a dingle at times. I’m not gonna be a dabbler. I may be no good, but

I’m gonna commit to this full time,” and she did. And that... so that’s what turning

pro is.

I love this idea, and I have to tell you, you know, you know I’m a huge fan of The

War of Art, I’m a huge fan of Do the Work as well. And we’ve done interviews in the

past, which we’ll put links below for all of you guys if this is your first time hearing

Steven and I talk together, and I remember being struck in The War of Art by the idea

of turning pro. And actually, I’ve taught and talked about it, always crediting you

of course and like pimping out your book right and left, because that... the singular concept

of turning pro, it’s magical. It really is magical and it informs everything that

you do. One of the things...

Let me interrupt you, Marie. I know we were talking about this before.

Yeah.

Did you have a moment of turning pro? And if so, what was it?

You know, I feel like much like you, which when you read the book you guys will know

this, there was probably several moments and then there was a period where I was like,

“I gotta do this.” You know? And it was like a training ground. And I think when I

first started out and I knew that coaching and personal development and business growth,

they were passions of mine and I knew I had a message to share but I wasn’t quite sure

how it was all gonna fit together. You know, I was bartending a lot, that’s how I earned

enough money to get my business going during the day. And I was writing my newsletters

but I thought they were crap, which I'm sure they probably were, but I was just putting

them out there and I feel like I was almost like... I was like a baby pro where I would

do the minimum work that I needed to do, but then I had so much fear and self doubt and,

you know, I was in my early 20s. And I would at the end of the night of bartending sometimes

totally drink too much and be out until like 3 or 4 in the morning. You know what I mean?

So it was like I would have these levels of little wins and then I think it almost...

there was like too much energy or I couldn't handle it or I wasn’t willing to just really

stay there and I would self sabotage a bit. And I think...

Well was there actual moments that you...

That I decided that this was it?

...suddenly decided?

You know, I feel like it was... I don’t remember like an exact moment, but I do remember

a specific period in my life and it was when I met my fiance Josh who I’m with today,

we’ve been together for almost 10 years. And there was something around that period

of meeting him when I really took ownership of my gifts and I stopped screwing around.

And it was about that time that while I never had like a problem with drinking, the partying

kind of went away.

Uh huh.

Do you know what I mean?

Exactly.

Like, doing those stupid things that just throw you off track, those things kind of

melted away. And that was the time when I, not coincidentally, started making more money,

started receiving, you know, some opportunities that never seemed to happen before. Things

started lining up when I feel like I met him, I owned my gifts, there was something that

kind of settled in myself. And while nothing started coming along easily, there was something

that changed in me and it was something about... again, it was around that partying idea of

not like just saying, “Oh well, you know, who cares? I’ll just stay out all night.”

Or... you know what I mean? “I don't need to get to that newsletter in the morning,

I can push it off to next week.” Like, I stopped doing those things.

I mean, in a way what you’re doing now, Marie, is sort of a form of partying, but

it’s kind of positive partying. You know?

That’s totally right.

So it’s not as though you went from A to Z, it’s just you sort of changed the metaphor

a little bit. You know? Where you made it direct instead of indirect.

Yeah, and I think it was also too, you know, you talk about this in the book a little bit

where, you know, you change how you treat your body, you change when you go to sleep,

you change when you wake up, you change just how you approach everything when you’re

a pro. And there’s this sense, for me in my experience, of just reverence and honoring

the fact that I'm here for a reason and I make a difference to other people and that

that’s important. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I can't just, you know, flitter that away. And so that...

Well there’s a story, we were talking about this earlier, in Turning Pro that I stole

from Rosanne Cash’s wonderful memoir called Composed, and it’s sort of her moment of

turning pro. And it takes a few minutes to tell the story, but I’m gonna tell it. It

was a dream that she had. And at this time, I think it was like the late 80s, and she

already was a success. In fact, she had an album out called King’s Record Shop that

had 4 number one songs off of it. And... but something didn’t feel right to her in her

life. Now one night she had a dream, and in the dream she was sitting... she was at a

party and she was sitting on a couch next to Linda Ronstadt who had alway been kind

of an idol of hers and she had always admired Heart Like a Wheel, the great records that

Linda Ronstadt did back in the 70s. And in between the two of them was an older man named

Art, very important, and Art was talking very animatedly to Linda. And Rosanne wanted to

kind of break into the conversation. She tried to, and Art just turned around to her in the

dream and gave her this withering look of disdain and non interest and just said, “We

don’t talk to dilettantes.” And Rosanne said she woke up... she woke up and she was

just shattered to the core and she realized that it was true. That even though she had

had these number one hits that she’d always thought of herself as a songwriter, but she’d

only written 4 songs on this album and they were not the big songs. So she said from that

day forward, just like you just were saying about how it changed when you wake up in the

morning...

Yes.

...she said she changed everything about her life. She got her singing teachers that she’d

never, you know, real technique teachers that she had never done before. She said she started

training like an athlete. She had began reading a much broader scope of all different kinds

of art. She began studying painting so she could see what a non verbal, non musical medium

was.

Yup.

And kind of the... and she... even her marriage broke up over this kind of thing, or at least

eventually.

Right.

And she just decided, “I have to... I’ve been an amateur. I may have had success, but

it doesn't feel good to me.” And so she’s kind of totally committed to songwriting and

learning and she felt, she said, like she went back to being very young, like a beginner.

Yes.

And that was where she wanted to be. And I forgot what the last line of the thing...

something like, “I traded the morphine sleep of success for the livewire world of the artist.”

So that was... that to me is like a great turning pro moment in a dream, didn't even

have to be, you know, like waking up drunk in a gutter somewhere or something.

Yeah.

It was just a dream, so...

I love that. That’s one of my favorite stories in the book and I think one of the other ones,

and I’d love to ask you about this, you know, you talk about the moment in New York

City for you when you were driving a cab and you’re in an apartment and you just couldn't

take it anymore and you had to write. And then what I loved, and you painted this picture

so beautifully, was like you wrote for a little while, and if I remember correctly it wasn't

like it was necessarily any good but you didn't care, you just actually had beat resistance

and you sat down and you wrote. And then you almost found yourself just like cleaning the

dishes, like, dirty dishes that were in there for like 10 days and you were whistling. It

was like something had broken through. You had broken through your resistance.

Yeah, that was kind of my sort of moment. It wasn’t as much fun as Roseanne's moment,

but that was preceded by my trying for years to write novels and always crapping out at

them on the one yard line. You know? And exploding my life, self sabotaging, and all that. And

I’d reached the point where the idea of sitting down at a typewriter was like just...

to me was like shooting myself in the head.

Right.

But this one particular night I just, like you were talking about partying, I just kinda

sat there and I thought, “Well, who can I call? Where can I go? What can I drink?

What can I smoke?” You know?

Right.

And finally I just said, “I just can’t do this.” And I sat down for 2 hours typing...

terrible, so I just threw it away. You know? But that wasn’t the point. It was just...

when I was finished, I actually felt ok and that was why when I was washing the dishes

after that I discovered I was whistling, which I never whistled. You know? I thought, “I

feel ok.” And that was... kinda told me I was gonna be ok from then on even if it