Living a meaningful and fulfilling life starts by doing the important work within yourself. Certified high-performance coach Erich Davis guides people down a profound journey of self-transformation and how to ignite your light with the Happy Human Project. In this conversation with Darrin Tulley, he breaks down his workshops focused on unlocking your authenticity and stepping outside your comfort zone. He explains how you can tap into your best self by opening yourself to others and building genuine, long-lasting connections. Erich also warns against the dangers of chasing perfection and stresses why failure is a requirement to achieving success.
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A Happy Human Transformation With Erich Davis
“We can all be happy humans when we’re allowed to see, be seen, and appreciate that light we all have inside,” says our guest, Erich Davis. I love listening to creative people and artists like Erich. There’s a refreshing way about him where he sees the world in a different way, with a different lens. It’s fascinating how he leverages this to inspire people like you to explore and become more curious, more creative, and more aware of yourself and your impact on your surroundings.
Erich does this in many capacities through his hands-on workshop experiences, art fabrication, high-performance coaching, and being a person who loves humans. Erich and his offerings are an avenue where people can explore, expand, and experience possibilities like never before. Enjoy the show, Live Your Possible.
Erich Davis, welcome to the show. It’s so nice to see you. How are you doing?
Good. Thanks for having me. I’m doing well. It’s a sunny day and not too humid out, so it’s great.
It’s nice. These summer days we’ve been having have been pretty wonderful. I’m excited to chat with you. I’m curious. Before we get started, what’s on your mind? What’s got your attention?
I’m a guy who juggles a lot of balls, so it depends moment-to-moment, which one is in my hand. There is a lot of stuff at work that is in play, both with building the coaching business and making stuff. I got some personal balls in the air that are always constant. There are some good and some bad. Mostly, I had a great day teaching. I taught a guy. He wants to learn how to make an epoxy river table, so I’m teaching him how to do that. It’s part of the blend between coaching and teaching. It’s pretty cool.
Is the person learning how to do that for fun?
Yeah. He wants to do it himself. He’s getting to the age where he wants to retire. He has been a school teacher forever. He’s like, “I need to have this hobby. I’ve been wanting to do this since it came out. You’d be the person to show me how to do it.” I was like, “You’re right.” Some of it we’re learning and experimenting on as we go. Some of it, I have experience with in terms of the material. Most of it is supposed to be fun and exploratory.
He’s learning about what his capabilities are. His mindset is changing every single time we get together about what’s possible to execute what is worth trying. He is diving in and giving it a shot. This is the funny part. He went from like, “I don’t know. I’ve never done this,” to like, “We could try this. We could try that.” It’s great to watch people open up. It was a good day for that.
That’s cool. The first time we met was at one of your workshops. I had a similar feeling. We got to break stuff. We got to bring things we didn’t want anymore. We had to create something random within a team environment and talk about uncomfortable things. Especially as leaders, and where we come from, we have to have a project plan. We’ve got to get it done just right. We can’t not know stuff. The next thing you know, we’re all laughing along the way. We’re learning from each other. We’re getting creative. We’re having a blast. The outcome was even more enjoyable at the end of the day because we didn’t expect anything, and something came out of nothing.
I appreciate the feedback on that. That was a little while ago. I had run that workshop once before. I always feel like when we’re getting people together who are used to being in boxes, cubicles sometimes, it’s great to let the dogs out a little bit and let everybody do whatever. The crazier, the better.
It’s easier to get past being uncomfortable when you do things that are usually extreme for you. I wouldn’t say dangerous extreme. We all have protective gear on. The whole point of some of the exercises, at least that one specifically, is to get people uncomfortable quickly, and then work them back into, “I can handle this.” Some of the adjustments along the way during that workshop were intentional to get people thrown off. I’m glad you guys had a good time. It was a success.
It is easier to get past the uncomfortable when you do things that are usually extreme to you. Share on XIt was expansive. I felt like a kid again. There’s so much around the element of play, discovery, and things that we lose along the way, which we’ve talked about in the past. One of the things that strikes a nerve with me a little bit, which is interesting with the way you’re saying to get uncomfortable, is that I used to have a leader in an organization I used to work with in Corporate America, and she’d walk around trying to get people uncomfortable. Our intention of how we get people uncomfortable to get people uncomfortable to grow, understanding the difference and the distinction of that is important.
One could be manipulative and messed up, and the other can work well to bring people together. That’s how I look at it.
I agree. I appreciate that. In hindsight, it was probably more to motivate and encourage us to step out of our comfort zones, although it didn’t feel right at the time because I don’t think it was properly communicated. In your workshops, you communicate, “We’re going to break some stuff. We’re going to get ourselves a little bit uncomfortable. We’re going to test some things out.”
From Art Fabrication To Coaching
You’re not going to be the expert. A lot of times, we feel like we need to be the expert to be seen, noticed, or feel like we’re valued. Tell us what you do because it’s fascinating. There are a lot of different avenues we can go down here. I’d love to know. Tell the group what you do. Tell the audience what’s going on.
Up until probably about a couple of years ago, I primarily did art fabrication and custom furniture. I was making crazy stuff for architects, designers, sometimes restaurants, and sometimes stuff that goes in museums. Art collectors buy the things. I got my name on it. It’s got the artist’s name on it. Somebody comes to me with an idea, like a rough sketch or sometimes a pencil drawing. I work with them on their creative intent and make it work. I don’t make things that fall apart. I make stuff that sucks. That’s what I used to like to say.
I would engineer from their design, and we would work together. If it’s an artist and their creative intent, we’d go back and forth on their decision-making process and say, “What do you think about these choices?” It was very much a collaborative thing. It was a collaboration with architects and designers. A lot of what they come through is a 2D drawing with specifications of, “It needs to be this tall. It needs to be this big of a round,” and all this little technical stuff. I’m like, “When you make it, it’s got all this stuff that has to happen to make it work. What are your choices? What do you want to see? What do you not want to see? What is your intent?”
Sometimes, I have to change the way that they think about it altogether or help them change the way that they think about what is possible altogether. In the tangible world, some things are not possible or not worth it in terms of time and money. I guess anything is possible, but how much time do you want me to spend on this? I’ve been doing that since 2007, all the way up, pretty much full-time, until about a couple of years ago when I started teaching more of the workshops.
In one of the workshops you went to, it was a few years ago when I started doing that. I started right around the middle of COVID. Getting people out of their homes was a priority. It worked great because I had a big open workshop. People would show up with their small groups, mostly little families. They would either come with their masks on. Everybody would be cool because everybody in that pod was good, and I was good. I wouldn’t let anybody in the room in the shop without being COVID safe.
That built into doing more and more stuff with smaller groups of people, teaching basic fabrication stuff, and welding skills. I teach people how to weld. I teach people how to blacksmith. We make marshmallow skewers for the kids out of stainless steel. That’s the biggest, most popular one because kids can do it, and a bunch of other little stuff.
I had done some workshop building with an organization that our friend, Brent, worked with, which is where the idea for the workshop that you and I did together came about. I started recycling that in addition to the one-on-one or the smaller group workshops in person. I’ve always had this urge to coach. I’ve always had the urge to officially be a coach, know the process, do the work, get people to move and change, and help people along.
I’ve been an advisory friend for a very long time. I’m the guy that somebody goes to when they need advice and how to work through things. I’ve been a dependable person for the people in my family and some of my friends who are close friends. In getting into those workshops and meeting people, these things always came up where I was helping them along and helping them to understand what they need to do to get over the unknown and the fear of “I’ve never done this before,” and all of that stuff. I found myself doing it naturally in that setting.
I went out and did my homework. I got some education in it. I’ve been studying coaching and how to be a good coach for a few years. I got certified. I’ve had a few clients. I’ll be honest. I’m not a seasoned veteran here, but the processes of working with artists, designers, and all these other people blend well into the same type of coaching process. What’s your vision? How do we get clear? What are the things that matter? What doesn’t matter? What do you keep? What do you get rid of?
How do we move forward to the best we can with what we have? What are our ambitions? How do we become the person to step forward into that and create the things that we want to create? Those things lined up. I’ve been coaching for about a year. I’m planning it a little bit more with the workshops that I teach. I want to build on that and host more of the in-person group stuff. That’s the short version of what I’ve been doing within the last few years.
Guiding People Towards Growth And Transformation
That’s great. I love how that comes together and what you’re doing. When you think about all of this, what animates you the most?
The people part, the connection, the meaning, how we bounce off of each other, what are the things we’re after either universally or individually, how I learn from the people I help and how they learn from me, and the growth process of becoming more of who you are, the better person. I know it sounds cliché. A lot of coaches use all that language and everything like that, but I love people. I love to see people do well. I love to cheer them on. I love to inspire folks to do better.
I have coached my kids’ Little League team since she was five years old because I love watching these kids get that huge boost of success when they make contact for the first time, for the love of God. They get a little older, and they’re hitting it over the fence. That progression and watching people continue to grow and get more and more capable does my heart good and lights me up. Watching other people light up lights me up.
That’s awesome. I’m so appreciative that you love people. You’re there for people to see them succeed. It’s not about your own success. You’re there to see them light up. You get your own fulfillment based on seeing how others can see their path or get that hit. I share that a lot with you as far as the belief and the feeling. It’s real. A lot of people discount what we’re talking about here. You’re taking responsibility for the lives that you impact, the lives you touch, and the lives that you light up. It’s pretty powerful. I appreciate you.
Thanks. I agree. What am I going to do? Keep complaining? Where’s the fun in that? There’s plenty of it going around, and I fall into that, but catch yourself every now and then and say, “That’s not right. How am I showing up?” I have plants all over the place. I like watching things grow. It’s the natural progression of being a creative person. A lot of that has a lot to do with it. I like to see things progress and get better.
Exploring The Happy Human Project
I love it. Talking about lighting people up, you shared with me a project about the Happy Human Project. You’ve got to tell us more about what you did there. What did you notice once you did that work?
There used to be an event in New Haven called Citywide Open Studios, where people from all over the state would bring their artwork. They would get their own space in New Haven to put together an event or to put together their stuff in a walkthrough gallery setting. Everybody has their own room. I believe it might have been 2022. I don’t remember.
I was watching the things that were going on in the media and how much people were becoming divided based on what they saw and what they consumed. It was the consumption of one side of the conversation or the other. It came down to, do you want to be the person putting out that message or that light, or do you want to be the person reflecting it back to the world? A lot of people were regurgitating what they saw on the news or their point of view from their specific side of what we’ll call the aisle of the political spectrum.
Originally, the Happy Man was about this dichotomy between which we want to be in terms of whether we are putting the light out there or we are going to keep bouncing it back. It evolved for me because I wanted it to represent more than just this conversation about media and consumption. I was also invited to have it represented at a different kind of event. I was like, “How does this become more inclusive? How do we get more going on with it?”
Originally, it lit up, glowed, and changed a little bit of color. I switched out the lights. The thing looks like a disco ball, and in the middle, I put this heartbeat. You could see the heart and heartbeat changing. It ended up at a pride event down in Bridgeport and stayed down there for a little while at the Arcade Mall. It represented something completely different to different people.
In the context of that space, it was more about how we all have this heart, no matter what color we are, what our preferences are, how we identify, and all of that stuff, or that conversation. It was more about the light and the heart that we all get to have experience with, regardless of those things that normally would divide people.
I love it. It resonates with me so deeply in so many ways in the work that we’re doing. We think about the light that’s in all of us. I had to switch my belief system to see that there is a light in all of us.
Yes, I was reading your book about that.
Thanks. You put in a distinction where I’ve had to learn even further of not just looking for differences, but understanding the distinction of difference. Meaning, it’s not about separating our differences. It’s about the and of our differences and the power of the light. Imagine if our light beams were together versus at each other and what power that could send to the world. If we’re at each other, we cancel each other out a bit versus up and out together, like the hands of the Happy Man.
It’s celebrating the difference as room to grow. It’s like, “That person knows something I don’t know. What can I learn about them or myself that makes me a better person?” Rather than being like, “You’re not like me. I hate you. Get out of my way,” you’re like, “That’s interesting. What’s different about that? How are they able to do a life that’s different from mine, and what can I take from that?” It’s amazing that so many different people exist on this planet. Everybody has made it this far, so we get to interact. It’s like, “Good for you.” Keep picking each other up.
Do you know Zach Bryan, the singer or artist?
Yes. I’ve heard of him.
He has a lyric about how someone planted sunflowers in his darkness to the point where it expanded him so much that he’s in the sky. It’s not the exact lyrics. Yet, the intention to me is that someone saw the good in him and planted light within the darkness to allow the light to expand. That’s what you’re saying. It starts with ourselves willing to believe in others and see what’s good in others to see where we can all expand, too, if you will.
Know it’s there. If we look at it from a quantum perspective, we’re all made of the same stuff. The fact that we have these conscious moments where we get to connect with each other, like you and I are doing, why would we waste that? I think that’s wasteful. I don’t see the need for anybody to diminish anyone else or feel as though like, “I’m up here. You’re down here,” or the other way around in any way.
I’m a human. You’re a human. We’re both like cosmic dust at this point. We’re lucky to have this experience where we can at least bounce off each other and make progress happen one way or the other. That’s how I would like to look at it. It makes it easier to love people when you know you share the same stuff. We’re all one thing here. We’re all moving forward, whether we like to admit it or not. We’re all in this soup together here. It’s easier to love people that way when you know that no matter what, you’re connected on some level.
We’re connected from a standpoint of mattering. We’re all unique based on our experiences and what we bring, like the colors that you talk about with the Happy Man Project, or how we experience things. It’s all different. We all have had millions of experiences from the day we were born to where we are. There’s nobody who can say we’re the same. If anybody thinks so, then you have to rethink that.
Think about the power of we’re here, to your point, which is bringing this thought up. How many interactions have you been in, and all of a sudden, we’re here at this point in time? That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. Where we are, how we got here. We’re talking about this amazing thing that we’re able to do, are capable of doing, and are able to shine a light on it.
It’s pretty incredible.
What It Takes To Open The Mind A Little Differently
We slowed down enough to have those conversations. We should do more of that. I appreciate the work you’re doing and bringing this to light in different ways. I want to talk about your workshops next. I want to understand your perspective as an artist. You call yourself a career creative. I’m curious about what that means.
How does this help you do your workshops? How do you help other humans open their minds a little bit differently? I know you talk about curiosity and a bunch of things that I love. You and I’ve talked about this whole skillset of being creative. Only 1% or 2% of adults know how to do that anymore. I’m curious about how you leverage your skillset to help us open up that door.
I don’t buy the stats that only 1% or 2% of people are creative. Everybody is.
I agree with that.
It’s just that not everybody understands or went to art school to use it the way I learned how to use it. Some people are engineers. They use their creativity to come up with and solve different problems in different ways. Scientists are super creative people in terms of exploring, being curious, and solving problems. Business people are super creative because they have to work.
Honestly, good business people and good business leaders have to be both creative and socially aware so that they can lead the people that they need to lead to create the things that their business is supposed to create and be organized in all of that to make it work. That’s where I fall short. I’m not a business person. I wish I were, but I’m not.
People short-sell themselves on creativity. It’s a low-hanging fruit for me because I learned how to cultivate it. I was always that kid who was always the oddball, looking off into outer space and imagining. I had this big, huge imagination. I was also never afraid to try things. In the creative world, from an artist’s perspective, and this is true of any endeavor that’s long-lasting, failure is baked into the process. You’re going to have to fail a thousand times before you get a mildly large success.
Failure is baked into the process. You have to fail a thousand times before you get even a mildly large success. Share on XYou look at athletics and professional sports. It’s all about the reps. It’s all about the misses. It’s all about, “What do I have to adjust?” It’s all about, “What do I have to do better next time to go where I need to go?” I have the added benefit of having been an athlete as well in college. I almost went professional at that. I had the mindset of constantly being like, “I’ve got to take a thousand swings today. I’ve got to do my workout. I’ve got to do all these things that get me ready for the next thing.”
From a creative person’s perspective, it’s about the attempt. It’s about trying it and saying, “I see that. I did this. Next. I’m going to do it again. Not quite there. Next.” From a fine artist’s perspective, it’s very non-linear. You’re feeling it a lot. It comes from how you feel. Your gestures from a painter are going to show up more organically than somebody developing a system for running a business.
Essentially, it’s a different process, but the same application. It’s like, “I have to ideate. I have to think about the things that I’d like to be different.” From a business perspective, it’s how they run an organization and how they navigate the people. What are the KPIs? What do I have to do to put things in place to make that different kind of brush?
I make those analogies well. That’s what helps me help people who aren’t artists like me. I draw lines between experiences because I’ve had a variety of different kinds of experiences. Also, ultimately, as an artist, I’m trying to communicate my idea and my ideals through the work. That’s the same as when I was making art or making fabrications for other people. I’m trying to do the best I can. That person is trying to do the best they can. We don’t use the same paintbrush, but ultimately, that’s what we’re both after.
Making those connections and analogies through the process of discovery, especially as a coach, and finding out what people want, who they want to be, and who they are inside, is awesome. That’s the fun stuff. Being a creative person allows me to open more doors. That’s what I try to teach other people. Don’t be afraid to open more doors. Don’t be afraid to try stuff and get a little messy. Don’t be afraid to not know and still move forward.
How To Stop Chasing Perfection
Open the door to possibilities, which is ironic to what we’re talking about. I don’t know about you. Do you have a critical eye? Do you have doubts? Do you judge? How do we get over that? We’ve been so programmed to get it right and be perfect to the degree of what we’re talking about as right or wrong since we were in grade school. Even now, you take a side to a degree. You and I both know possibilities are between 0 and 1. It’s not binary and so divisive as such. All the beauty lies in between. I’m curious. How do we get over that hump to allow for that? It’s not perfect. There’s failure. We’re growing from that. How can you help people think through that differently?
Everything is practice for the next thing. There is no end goal until the time runs out, usually for any project. If you give somebody a deadline, they’re going to work all the way up to that deadline, finished or not finished. What we get stuck on is being attached to it being perfect. We get stuck on expectations, not necessarily our own. A lot of the time, it’s about self-worth and needing to prove things to other people. People get hung up on feeling not good enough, like, “I can’t do that.”
Being attached to the idea of perfection or needing to succeed at something is like a cage. It’s the worst cage you could be in because it doesn’t allow you to think freely. You’re like, “What’s the right answer?” There is no right answer. I’m sorry. There’s not. There’s this way or that way, and then there are five other ways. Which one do you want to do? How you can be good at any one of those things is as much up to you as it is anybody else.
Rules in terms of perfection are only there for the people who want to keep things the same. I don’t think that there’s any way things are ever supposed to stay the same. There are rules for doing things to a certain point until somebody finds a better way, but they have to break the rules to make it better. Why? I understand standards, but those are also meant to be surpassed.
First of all, there is no perfection, but striving to get better is a better way to approach anything. It’s not going to be perfect. If I know that walking in, then I don’t have anything to lose. If I know I’m not going to be perfect on day one, I have nothing to lose. If I know I’m not going to be perfect on day 1,000, I have nothing to lose. I just want to keep getting better every day.
That’s how I approach things because I know that there’s just today. I can only do what I can do today. With the intent of having tomorrow be better, then I’m going to put as much as I can into that so that tomorrow’s better. I’m going to give it a shot, but I don’t know if it’s going to be better. You do the best you can in the moment so that you can go to sleep at night saying you tried. That’s it. The word perfect and striving for perfection, to me, leads to paralysis. I think that’s what makes people get freaked out because they think the path is narrow, and it’s not.
Ironically, it limits the path to your point of seeking that. In Corporate America, I’ve worked in it for 25-plus years, coaching a lot of people in the space. What I find interesting is that companies are striving for that perfect process, SOP, or what have you. To your point, if it’s not broken or if we’re not trying to break it, it’s never going to get to the place where it’s like, “Maybe we don’t need those steps or that process. We’re doing it, or we’re removing it altogether because it’s unnecessary.” That’s what’s ironic. We get it down to the point where it’s so good that we’re not even seeing how it could be gone or how it could be done in a different manner. I find that interesting as well.
Process and being perfect about process is a short road to nowhere. If we’re going to perfect a process, someone else is already innovating beyond that process. What’s the end? How are we doing the best that we possibly can? How do we make people better at their efforts and work together toward an ultimate outcome?
Sometimes, certain processes are necessary. How do you innovate if you’re only worried about perfecting the process? That part, I don’t understand. I’ve never understood that whole idea of process being the driver outside of profitability. If you look at a company like Apple, its job is to break the rules. That’s what they always look for. They look to break the rules. They look to be the best. They look to go beyond what the last person did. There’s a process in that, but there’s hunger to do the best.
Who would have thought the digital camera would be your phone? What I appreciate about what you’re sharing, too, is that as we think about anything, we’re giving that space where we can inspect it, explore it, and be hands-on with it. Otherwise, if we’re not doing that, then we can’t improve it, expand it, and change it. You’re setting the mindset for us to think, “I’m going to start my day. It’s going to be better. It’s going to be great.”
How Erich Conducts His Workshops
If we’re not having those conversations, like, “ I’m grateful for these things, so they pop up during my day,” if we’re not doing those things, then we’re not going to appreciate it. We’re not going to be able to expand as much as we could. We’re not going to achieve what is possible, those things that you’re talking about. You do the same thing in your workshops. I would love to dive a little bit more into how you set this up.
It is setting the conditions for people to understand that failure is normal and that we’re going to grow from this, we’re going to be humbled, and we’re going to be vulnerable. Setting the proper mindset, regardless of who you are and your title, is setting the conditions so we can succeed. It is setting the space and the conditions. That’s where discoveries happen. If we don’t do that, then we’re like, “I’m the boss, I’m supposed to have the answers.” I’d love for you to set up how you do a workshop. How do you set it up? What are the goals of that? What are you seeing people come out of these experiences?
Typically, the way I run a workshop is I tell people who I am, what I do, that I like doing this, and that I’m happy that they’re there because it makes my day. Their being there is part of what I enjoy. That’s what I set up. It’s like, “I’m happy you’re here.” That alone starts people being like, “Good.” I’m not in a weird place where I feel like I’m being expected or threatened. I’m trying to be welcoming to begin with.
Before I even start, I let them know that usually, it’s a skill that I’m teaching when I’m doing a workshop. The ones with people and their families are the ones I have the most familiarity with. Let’s say I’m going to make marshmallow skewers with kids and their families. The first thing I tell them is, “I have been doing this for a long time. You are going to suck at this the first few attempts, and that’s okay. That’s why we’re here. That’s part of the process.
It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be way easier for you to watch me do it than it is for you to do it. The expectations are that you’re going to fail, but you’re also going to try again. You’re going to try again and get better at it because I’m here to help you get better at it. I’m here to help you notice the things you need to do to get better at it.” Failure is immediately part of the process. I set it up like, “You’re going to screw up in any process, and that is okay because if you don’t, you are not learning anything. If you’re not screwing up, you’ve got no opportunity to ask a question, ‘How can I do that differently?’” That is the basis of starting the workshop.
I get people to the point where you can tell when somebody is more timid than another person. My job as a teacher and as a coach is to get them past being timid, get them to be self-reliant, and get them to be moving on their own, exploring on their own, and trying things on their own because they feel comfortable, like, “I don’t have to be afraid of this anymore. I have to do the thing, keep trying to work on the stuff, and get better at it.” That’s how I teach. That’s how I coach. That’s how I parent. It’s like, “Get the fear out of the way, and let’s go.” It’s fun. It’s like, “Look what I did here.”
People can begin to celebrate their own accomplishments, and then you have momentum. Once you get that, it’s like, “Great. Now, what else could you do?” They don’t think at all that it’s a problem to try something different. That’s the game. It’s getting people to open up and be like, “I could do whatever the heck I want now because I know I couldn’t do this before. Maybe I tried something else that I didn’t think I could do before. Maybe I tried to go after that thing that I’m interested in, but I’m afraid of it because I don’t know what it takes.” That’s it.
Especially with the workshops, I don’t want them to become expert blacksmiths. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to get you started. I’m here to get you to believe in yourself. I’m here to get you to try new things. If you want more instruction, I’ll teach you more stuff, but mostly, I want you to get more curious on your own so that you want to develop the aptitude, the skill, the habits, the routines, and the mindset. All of that stuff from teaching to coaching blends because it’s how I get people to become interested in their own progress. That’s it.
It allows us to take a moment to be self-reflective. You’re seeing yourself grow. You’re seeing yourself being like, “I can’t do this.” Honestly, we don’t do enough of that. You know, we’re so reactive to things that have happened in the world, such as emails and projects. We have to problem-solve something that someone did or something customers are complaining about. We’re not self-reflective on, “Do I own this? How do I get better?” I appreciate the fact that we’re going through this in these workshops.
With my experience in the workshop, I have to tell you that we did this exercise in the beginning. We were building something with pencils and some other things. I’ve got to be honest. It was an individual exercise. I was feeling insecure. I felt like, “Mine’s not as tall as Scott’s. Mine’s not as broad. Mine’s going to fall down.” I started to get uncomfortable because I didn’t want to be judged. I had some self-doubt. This is real human stuff. This is a simple little exercise you’re having us experience to allow ourselves to get a little uncomfortable, to be honest. It goes right back to that again.
The Beauty Of Working With Other People
When we started to move and shift into teams, that was amazing because we would bounce ideas off each other. We were inclusive. We were working together expansively. We got more creative as far as, “What happens if we do this or we do that?” I loved that. It didn’t matter who we were working with. It didn’t matter if someone was the CEO of a company or me. I wasn’t the CEO of a company at the time. We were just human beings learning together. We were breaking stuff together and putting stuff together. Is that pretty normal when you think about how I was feeling insecure working at this individually at first?
That’s what happens. We become siloed. The part we get stuck on is in our own heads. In all of the workshops, we get stuck in our own heads when we’re doing this thing by ourselves. The minute we have somebody else there to bounce something off of, that’s why I love coaching so much, because it’s literally that. You’re in the room helping someone figure something out. That’s it. Once you have that other person and that collectiveness, it becomes a we situation. That’s the part where we are all connected that I love so much.
If we’re not around other people learning, we’re missing out on the opportunity to get better because someone else is going to see it one way, and someone else is going to see it another way. We’re going to blend those things and come to a common ground or an even better solution. If we can’t communicate as people and we’re not open to communicating as people, especially in Corporate America where there’s so much competition for jobs and status in the company, and internal want-to-kill-each-other type of stuff, which I hated, and we’re not fostering that openness to discover together, it makes it hard to make progress.
This is the thing that I think is the biggest problem with mental health issues. Many people are alone. What are we doing? Watching social media of all the amazing people doing other stuff while I’m just sitting here scrolling on my thing. How wouldn’t people feel terrible about themselves? Part of the workshop thing is doing the thing and having the experience, but the other part is doing it with people and in person. That matters. That’s why I set them up. I won’t have a workshop with one person. I won’t do it. I’ll teach them, which is fine, but it’s not worth it. You want to take that with the person you came with so that you can have it resonate later.
Coming together as people and making that happen on a regular basis in real life, not just virtually, is super missing. It’s missing because we’re all afraid of each other. We’re all afraid of what other people are going to say. You said you felt judged because you spend a lot of time in your silo, thinking, “I don’t know.” When we’re around other people, we’re comparing ourselves. It’s like, “I got to stop doing that.” Be comfortable with being around other people again. I spend a lot of time by myself. That’s why I love people so much. It’s because when I get around them, I get to be alive again. I’m like, “People, let’s bounce off each other. How are we doing?”
The Happy Man. I’ll expand on this a little bit more. In the workshop, I remember that as we were going through things, at first, I was timid and felt judged. You said something about play and having fun. I was having a blast. I felt like I was set free. I could use a hammer and break a record. I could break whatever it is. You helped me use one of the tools to break up a bike. We had a lot of fun playing with the tools. All this stuff is going back to being a kid again. I didn’t have the answers yet. You gave us a deadline to create something, which I thought was also pretty cool because it wasn’t going to be perfect. It was going to be whatever it is we created.
Also, the bonds that we made with the team I was with. I didn’t know these people ever until afterwards, but we were hugging at the end. We all contributed to something. It wasn’t a leader saying, “Go make this. Go do it,” and then being like, “I don’t feel like I contributed to anything.” We all contributed our ideas. We built it together. There are so many lessons to be learned in how we lead and manage in the workplace based on this workshop alone. What do you think?
The other part was that you had to agree on how you were going to present it together, too. You justify the criteria and how you solved it. We have to tell a story about what this meant as we made it. I love that workshop. That’s such a good workshop.
I’ll make a plug. If you’re tuning in and you’re a leader, and you have a leadership team or management group, this is something that would be phenomenal to bring into this workshop because you’re going to have people at all different levels, different skill levels, different titles, and what have you. All that goes away. We are all starting from step one. We are all vulnerable. We’re all willing to grow together. It’s humbling.
I would suggest that, in addition to going to this workshop, you try something you’ve never done before. Try something that’s going to humble you because that’s going to allow you to experience, “I’m not that good at it, but I can get better.” For example, I took guitar lessons. I’m still not that good yet. I tried it with my daughter. We took lessons, and I got a little better. I’m still not that great yet. What I appreciate now is music more than ever. When I listen to music or watch a guitarist play, I am in awe.
It’s because you have had that experience a little bit.
The Work Of A Certified High-Performance Coach
I appreciate it more. I’m eager to learn more. Help me translate this to coaching. In helping people get better, I could see all the correlations here. I know you have a different perspective and a different approach. You’re certified in a unique way. Tell us a little bit about that, then we’re going to dive into how you got here because I want to learn a little bit more about how you tick and how you got to this moment.
The type of coaching that I’m certified in is a certified high-performance coach from a guy by the name of Brendon Burchard. He’s probably one of the world’s best high-performance coaches year over year for a long period of time. I went there because I’ve experienced what it means to be close to the professional athlete level. Going through a lot of his content and his curriculum, I was like, “This is for me. This feels like I align with the way that this guy thinks.”
A lot of people could benefit from that same mentality, not necessarily the extremities of, “I’m going to be a professional athlete. I’m going to be the best in the world at something.” If you don’t shoot high, you’re not going to get far. You have to have a grander vision for where you want to go. I aligned with that. A lot of what I enjoy about the curriculum and the approach, in general, is that it’s super practical.
I don’t need to know about someone’s past, their trauma, or the things that are emotionally weighing them down to get them to make progress. What we’re after is future-building. We’re looking to where we want to go and creating the conditions within ourselves and around us in our environment, our relationships, our finances, or whatever. Pay attention to these different parts of your life, get clarity, and raise your energy level.
Courage is one of the big things. Build courage to do the thing, whatever it is. Become the person who gets to live the life of your dreams, in short. For me, having tried a lot of different things and also as a creative person, I find the discovery process the most interesting, learning where a person is, and then also getting them to come out as who they really are. What do you really want? What do you really align with?
Get them to tell the difference between what they want and what they think people want them to want. I’ve done that. It’s your life. Having that authenticity part show up is where the breakthroughs for me have started to happen, where people are like, “I don’t want that thing that somebody else wants me to do. I hate it. It’s miserable.”
As an artist, that discovery process of connecting with being who you are, I get a lot out of that. It takes a lot of courage to step into that level of being who you are and not be worried about what other people think. That has been my superpower of late. I don’t care what people think about me too much. It does me well in some places, and it doesn’t do me well in others. Wherever it doesn’t do me well, those aren’t my people anyway.
As a coach, beyond that discovery part, it’s the decision-making part. I’m there to help people remind themselves of who they are. I’m like, “Let’s remind you of who you are, and let’s start making decisions towards who you want to be. What’s that bigger version of who you are and what you want to be?” We make decisions that are in line with that. It is getting down to what matters, what doesn’t matter, what works, and what doesn’t work.
Get rid of the stuff that’s in the way, that’s a distraction, or that’s comfortable, which makes it hard for you to get to the point where you want to go. The higher performance part is the discomfort of letting go of the comfort of the things that allow you to stay at the plateau and not get a trajectory. That part is where people start freezing up, resisting, going back to old habits, and things like that. It’s like, “You agreed this is where you want to go. Let’s go there.”
Also, you have to challenge people along the way. As an athlete and a baseball coach for my kid, it blends. It comes naturally. It’s accountability, like, “You said this, but you’re doing that. I got to tell you that’s what you’re doing. I want the best for you, so what are we going to do differently next time?” Ask those types of questions and walk people through the day-to-day accountability part.
It is then making sure that they’re setting themselves up to not need me anymore, which is the routines, the habits, and the things that they do day-to-day to support becoming that different version of themselves. It is so they can answer their own questions eventually. I don’t want lifelong clients as a coach because I would be a failure as a coach.
Also, the goal is to get people to become better, not to be a crutch. I want to be a coach, not a crutch. That’s super important to know going into it. Would I like to keep the revenue? Yes. I would love to keep somebody on for a long time, but as a person who loves people, if people aren’t themselves and they need me to be themselves, then what the heck am I doing? That’s no good. That’s codependence. I want people to be independent, creative, and authentic themselves so that they can call me five years from now and say, “Thanks. That was awesome. Look at my life now.” I don’t want them on the phone every week once we get to a certain point. To me, that’s the game. Get people to become better people.
That’s beautiful. The discovery elements, the willingness to do, and the space to create it and seek it out, I love it. It’s interesting, the correlation with the workshops, the hands-on. You’ve got to go out and experience. It’s all experiential. What I’m hearing you also share is that you’re going through a discovery of what people want to become. I love that you’re also saying not somebody else, but a bigger version of yourself. I’m like, “Amen.” I love that.
How do we expand that? How do we go after that? You’re going to slip a little bit. You’re going to fail. You’re going to fall down. You’re there to encourage them and also hold them accountable. I don’t think we accept that as much either. That’s the importance of having a coach who’s encouraging and is there temporarily. I love that until we put these rituals in place that allow us to thrive and check back in. I appreciate the model. The correlation of the way you’re thinking through as an artist, a career creative, and what you’re doing is directly aligned. I don’t know. That’s what I’m recognizing at the moment.
It feels that way to me. That’s why I was excited about getting certified. I was like, “I’m going to launch this thing. I got to have a 2.0 of my life here.” There’s a lot going on that I want to be different, and putting the energy into myself as well. I learn something new every time I coach somebody about myself. That’s the benefit. I get better at being me and better at being a coach because I see the way people are. I’m like, “How can I help this type of person? How can I help that type of person?” That’s wanting to get better.
That’s the mindset that I’m trying to get people to think. It’s like, “How am I going to keep getting better?” Keep asking the question, “What can I do better next time?” and not have that be a punishment. Have that be exciting, like, “I did this. I lost. It sucked. What can I do better next time? Now I have an opportunity. I learned something. Let’s do it again.”
I have this quote on my fridge that I wrote. I don’t know if it’s worth sharing, but ultimately, it says, “Problems are underrated and failure is underrated because if you don’t have those things, how are you going to learn and get better?” You should be like, “Awesome. I figured that out because I failed. Now, I’m going to do the next time faster because I got through steps three, four, and five differently. I’ll be more efficient next time.”
Problems and failures are underrated. If you do not have those things, you will never learn and get better. Share on XThat’s why it’s called high performance. You’re always building. It could be considered a Type A way, but more like, “I’m excited to get better at this. I’m excited about where it can go. I’m excited about how to create.” It’s more of a generative and building process than it is a shaming for not being perfect process. Who the heck wants that?
I value all that. I align with that. I sync up with that. There are some people who are accepting of who they are. They’re not trying to expand or experience what we’re talking about fully, and that’s okay, too. I caution folks not to give up. Don’t rely on it is what it is. You are worthy. You are able to go through what we’re talking about.
Unlocking And Nurturing Your Version 2.0
If you’re willing to do the work, you’re going to see change. You’re going to see change if you stick with it, learn from the mistakes, learn from the process, and have faith in it. You talk about version 2.0, so I got to ask. What do you mean? What does 1.0 look like? What are some of those moments that maybe influenced who you are and shaped you into who you are? It could be light-up moments, maybe childhood memories, or maybe things that you’ve had to deeply reflect on to get to 2.0.
The number might be wrong. Maybe it’s 3 or 4, but the 2.0 is in reflection in terms of the type of creative career that I’ve had of making things and being a tangible maker. This, to me, is more of a spiritual journey of becoming who I am here to be and inspiring people to do the same thing. I don’t know if 2.0 is the right number, but it’s the moniker for how I want to live the next half of my life. Hopefully, I’m only half. I might be pushing a little bit more into 60%. I’ve got to watch out. It’s more of how I want to move forward and how I want to keep living forward.
A lot of the desire to get to that 2.0, 4.0, or whatever the heck it is is recognizing that for a very long time, I was climbing the wrong ladder and trying to execute on somebody else’s expectations. I was putting myself through a lot of pain, suffering, and struggle, and not realizing that I was miserable while I was doing it. I didn’t have the tools and the framework to understand that what I was doing was destroying me.
I was in corporate marketing after I got out of college for a few years. It got to the point where I was doing marketing for PepsiCo. I was doing all these national promotions as a graphic designer and art director. I was building all these campaigns and doing the whole traveling to the place, hanging out at the event, and checking out this and that. I got to meet Tony Hawk. I got to meet the Foo Fighters. I got to take pictures with the baseball players and all these guys. It was cool, but ultimately, I had to get out because I realized I was selling sugared water to diabetes candidates. I was like, “I can’t. I’m not going to do this with the ability that I have.”
Right around my mid-twenties, I bailed on the corporate marketing graphic design track, and then I freelanced because I wanted to make my own art. I got my own studio, and I started doing my own paintings, making my own sculpture, and freelancing enough to keep paying the bills and having that space. I’ve never not had a studio since then, maybe half of one year between then and now, or maybe a total of two. The idea was that I was going to be my own creative person.
Ultimately, I decided I wanted to be my own artist, but the person I was with expected me to be more responsible. Rather than go back to corporate and rather than try to become this gallery person or gallery artist where I’m making my own art, trying to sell, and having that track of being that type of artist, I decided I was going to use my creative abilities and make art for other people.
I did that and went that way because I thought I needed a career that fulfilled the expectations and the bills, all while making sure that I’m doing the right thing. I believed that, but all the while, I wanted to share what I believed, say what I wanted to say as a creative person, and inspire people to wake up in the world. That has always been a thing that I had on the back burner.
For the longest time, I put that down, trying to make the career thing, entrepreneurship, or owning my own business thing work, and I wasn’t happy with it. I would have wins here and there, but as I told you at the beginning, I’m not a business person. I did the best I could with what I had, but ultimately, I was miserable. I found myself distracting myself. I found myself doing things that I didn’t want to do for money again. I found myself compromising how I would like to be in a lot of ways, just to cope with the dissatisfaction of what I was up to.
Sadly, with the relationship itself, I was not happy, but I still tried to do the right thing. I’m stubborn. I stayed in that relationship for a very long time. It took getting out of that relationship and having a not-so-good divorce that made me realize that I was on somebody else’s train. I took what I could out of it, like the interactions with people, the collaboration with the artists, and the collaboration with designers.
I was trying to do the best I could with what my abilities were, but at the end of the day, I was making stuff. Some of it was rewarding, but a lot of it was just a means to an end, and not a meaningful means to an end. Once I realized that, I still had that fire in my belly to show up, say my thing, and have an impact. I then got reconnected with the idea of becoming a coach. That’s when things started to shape up for me.
I appreciate you sharing that. I’m sorry you went through it. To your point earlier, sometimes, we go through those dark times or hours, where we’re doing things that are soul-sucking. It makes you stop and think, once we have those moments where something happens. It’s either a trigger, an a-ha, or what have you.
Sometimes, the pain makes us get back on track, or at least you showed us that we can get back on track. You went through your own coaching model. I don’t know if you recognize that for yourself. You determined different ways of doing these things. You took steps forward to do it. You set the rituals and habits that you want to live, thrive, and light up the world. You let yourself be seen by you, be your bigger self, and be that Happy Man in the back.
You’re right. I appreciate you saying that. Thanks for acknowledging that.
Erich’s Tip On Living Your Possible
I appreciate you. That’s awesome. There are many messages there. It’s beautiful. I’m curious. I love this question for my guests about live your possible. What would you say to people to live it and love their possible? What does it mean to you? What would you suggest people start doing on their journey?
To start, be honest with yourself about who you are and what you want. Be honest with yourself, because if you’re not, you’re living someone else’s possible. It’s not always easy. I did it. I built comfort around falling in line and making sure that I was doing the right thing according to somebody else’s expectations. You can’t have your unique possible without being your unique self. Without a doubt, the only way you’re going to get to the possible that’s right for you is to honor who you are, try to make that person the best version of you, and be proud and love that person the best you can. That’s step one.
You cannot have your unique possible without being your unique self. Share on XAfter that, the possible also becomes being honest with yourself about what your preferences are. What do you really want? How does the best version of yourself want to live? Ask yourself, “Do I want to be working from 9:00 to 5:00 and punching a clock all the time, or do I want to have some real meaning and connect with people? Do I have this vision of living on a tropical island where I write books?” I don’t know what that is.
Also, be honest about the fact that you’ve made mistakes, and it’s okay. You have to get over that, learn from it, and keep moving forward. From a creative person’s perspective, and this is just me and how I like to approach things, dream big and start pointing yourself in that direction. It doesn’t matter. It’s like, “I’m not a spring chicken. I’m starting over.”
Dream big. Don’t be ashamed to do so because it is possible if you’re aligned with who you are and you’re pointing yourself in the direction of where you want to go. Make it awesome, and start going. Surround yourself with the people who are going to help you, support you, and cheer you on as good enough. Surround yourself with people who want to see the best for you. If you don’t have those people, it’s hard to fly solo to someplace amazing. Living your possible shouldn’t be an empty boat. You’ve got to fill it with the right people, and you’ve got to be in the right pond.
Get In Touch With Erich
That’s great. How do we get a hold of you so we can not be alone in discovering and identifying how we can live our possible and set that direction so we can find our True North and go forward? I would love for people to know how they can book a workshop with your teams and get some coaching time with you to start to discover and go down these paths.
They can go to WorkWorkshop.com. That’s my website where you can sign up for a workshop or a coaching program. I give free consultation for the first go round and see if we’re a fit. Like everything, I leave it open and collaborative. People come to me with different ideas. We work out what’s best for you and what’s best for your team or your group. We work out how we can collaborate in a way that’s going to get everybody the best benefit and the greatest experience out of the whole thing. Go to WorkWorkshop.com. You can email me at Erich@WorkWorkshop.com if you want to shoot me a note. No problem.
Any final comments before we close out?
What you’re doing is amazing, bringing this idea of living your possible and having that be your message. We’ve connected on the same throughline that we want people to do well. We’re legitimately trying to make the world a better place. I’m appreciative to be connected with you. I feel like there’s more for our potential in the future. I appreciate being on your call. I look forward to hopefully getting together outside of this and having a good time. Maybe we can check out the river here one day.
We have to experience another workshop too. We’ve got to get a group together. I appreciate your comments there. We both love humans. We want to see the best for every single one of us who are willing to do some of the work, because it doesn’t just happen. I love you. I appreciate you, and I appreciate you sharing your story, what you’re doing, and how you’re showing people how to light up like the Happy Man project. You’re doing it in real life every day. Thank you for being you.
Thanks. I love you too. Thank you.
Important Links
- WorkWorkshop
- WorkWorkshop on Facebook
- Erich Davis on LinkedIn
- Erich@WorkWorkshop.com
- The Happy Human
- The Happy Human on YouTube
About Erich Davis
Erich Davis is a Certified High Performance Coach, workshop facilitator and art fabricator whose career has always been focussed on bringing his clients’ best vision forward.
As a Certified High Performance Coaching his coaching style blends creativity with pragmatism by creating and implementing proven strategies, habits and mindsets that build on his client’s unique strengths and intrinsic motivations to help them become more alive, more fulfilled, more connected and more effective versions of themselves.
As the lead facilitator of his company WorkWorkshop, Erich hosts in-person group workshops that inspire participants to go beyond their comfort zone to show them what they are capable of when they have the courage to step into the unknown. He also designs and facilitates professional development workshops weaving his Certified High Performance Coaching curricula into unique team building events that build trust, develop creative problem solving skills and increase overall effectiveness in teams.
For the past 18 years, has owned and operated E J Davis Aesthetics LLC where he has designed and built artwork and custom furniture that can be seen in museums, galleries, private collections and public spaces all across the country.
