We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex Soto. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.
Alex , we are so happy that our community is going to have a chance to learn more about you, your story and hopefully even take in some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way. Let’s start with self-care – what do you do for self-care and has it had any impact on your effectiveness?
“When the man is right, the world is right.”
There was a parable of a man working at the desk his home office. His child enters, interrupting his work flow, and implores his father to play catch with him outside.
The father, thinking himself clever, grabs a nearby magazine, and tears out a page with a picture of the planet earth. He ripped up the page into a bunch of tiny pieces and tells his son, “Put this back together like a puzzle. When you’re done, we can play outside.”
He expected the task to take an hour, and was floored when his son returned the completed picture only 5 minutes later.
“How did you do that so fast?” the father asked.
The son shrugged, “I don’t know what the world looks like, but on the backside of the picture was a picture of a man- and I know what a person looks like. So I focused instead of piecing together the picture of the person because if the man is right, then the world will be right.”
I couldn’t tell you when exactly I first heard this parable- but I can tell you where I was in life.
I was working with a sales organization, putting in 80-hour weeks during the summers and 60-hour weeks during the fall & spring.
This made achieving any sort of “work-life balance” difficult.
Since implementing this lesson, I began to ask myself, “am I doing this job in a way that can be done for the rest of my life?”
Am I taking care of me first? Because THAT’S how I prevented myself from burning out.
Am I waking up to go to work? Or am I waking up to read, journal, write, run, THEN go to work?”
Learning to set boundaries and being intentional about making timing for me has been instrumental to my professional success, and I strongly believe that I will carry myself better as a professional for making sure I invest my time in the things that give me balance.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I co-own an art solutions company and currently work closely with artists in Nashville, TN & Birmingham, AL While representing the art of local artists, local businesses hire us to supply their locations with art to lease. This allows to to provide a residual income to our artists while increasing their exposure.
Ultimately, our goal is provide a means of income and exposure for artists in an attempt to put an end to the “starving artist” trope; all while adding value to the locations we partner with as well.
Currently, our focus is with 2D Artists and painters.
Our vision is to one day expand our business to include representing writers as well.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Resilience: “A winner is just a loser who tried one more time.”
Even though “sales” and “business” aren’t the words that readily come to mind when working with artists, but there is a lot of tie-in.
If you can learn to bounce back after your failures and learn to respond to defeat with an optimistic attitude; that will only help in life- regardless of the venture.
Giving myself the same grace as I’d give a friend.
I used to hold myself to such impossible standards. No success was ever good enough, and ever failure was fatal.
To veer from this head space, I started to think to myself “If John were to experience this failure, would I think any less of him?”
The answer’s always no.
People love and appreciate you for reasons that go beyond whatever you’re currently in your head about. Doing my best to understand that has been helpful in my journey towards figuring out how to love myself more.
Listening.
Making sure that others are heard is key.
Ultimately, people will want to spend time with those who make them feel good, heard, and valued. Knowing how to effectively listen is crucial to getting to that point.
For anyone working on improving their listening skills, I’d encourage waiting 3 seconds after the person you’re speaking with’s last sentence.
Let them continue to expand and talk, because there are plenty of times that you have may have accidentally “cut someone off” just because there was a brief silence that just “needed” to be filled.”
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
The 5th Agreement by Don Miguel Ruiz.
The book really taught me to question myself in a constructive way. Why are my “:truths” my “truths”?
I used to say the word “should” & “shouldn’t” a lot before reading this book.
I should be doing this.
This shouldn’t be doing that.
That shouldn’t be there.
There are no ‘should’s in life. Things are simply as they are. My emotions are what make me fee like they’re “right” or “wrong”.
It’s been a key book in my journey toward inner piece and acceptance.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twothree_leggeddogs/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TwoThreeLeggedDogs
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/two-three-legged-dogs-llc/
