Did you graduate from something you love? Maybe you can find something that has enough common threads to it and see if you enjoy that more. Life is too short to just be focused on one thing. Try to do different things. It’s never too late to pursue something you’re passionate about. If you are working a day job, find time to work on your passions. The money can come later, all you need to think about is you. Learn how to multitask with your host, Stephen Jaye and his guest Linda Sue Shirkey. Linda is no stranger to dipping her toes into different fields. Right now she is the President of Production and Design, Inc. Learn how she went from photography to skating to interior design and more. Find something you love today and make the most out of it!
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Follow Your Passion; Don’t Get Tied Into Just One Thing With Linda Sue Shirkey
One piece of advice we commonly hear is to focus on one thing, do only one thing, and get good at it. That does work for a lot of people. I want to make sure I iterate to anyone in my audience reading that if anyone is focused on one thing and having a successful and life, I am truly happy for you. Unfortunately, this advice, like a lot of other common pieces of advice, doesn’t necessarily serve everyone well. There are a lot of people out there that are multifaceted and they will prefer to dip their toes or try out many different things and be in many different places throughout their lives. Our guest, Linda Sue Shirkey, has been doing this for several years. She has been trying out a lot of different things and, oftentimes, has been taking part in 2, 3, or even more endeavors at once. Linda Sue, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much for your time. Let’s start from the beginning. What were the first endeavors that you took part in?
In high school, I was on a fashion board that was an advisory board that a department store did for fashion for high school. During that time, a local man decided to start a magazine all published, edited, and written by high school students. They came into the fashion board one day and said, “Would anybody be interested in being the fashion editor?” I said, “I will.” I have no idea why but I did. I went to an interview and they selected me. I was the fashion editor of this magazine all put out by teenagers. I was fourteen at the time and I set up fashion shoots, hired the models, picked out the clothes, help find the locations, and wrote the pieces on the fashion. The magazine was called Tempo. It didn’t last long. We did it for less than a year.
When pursuing your dreams, relationships suffer more than anything else. Click To TweetThat reminds me of something that we’re starting to see commonly in the younger generation, teenagers that aren’t necessarily going about, going to school, living out their social lives. They are getting involved and trying to build things. I know a lot of teenagers are interested in building followers on many social media channels or starting their own businesses. They got interested in that. It seems like you were quite a bit ahead of your time. Was fashion something that you were specifically interested in from a young age or is it the writing and the editing that drew you in there?
I was always interested in fashion, interiors, and animals. I always wanted to either be a fashion designer, an interior designer, or a marine zoologist.
Where did you go from there? Eventually, you started pursuing multiple avenues and weren’t necessarily tied down to pick one job and do that one thing.
Throughout this whole time, I was also a competitive figure skater. I continued figure skating and then I got a scholarship then to college. My scholarship was University of Colorado. I wanted to pursue fashion design, interior design, or marine zoology and they didn’t have any of those. I thought, “I’ll do arts.” That was the closest. I got my Bachelor of Finance degree. In the process of that, they were starting a photography department. I ended up majoring in photography. My actual degree is Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design because of the photography within the design department. I worked in the photography field. That interested me because I had worked closely with the photographer in the magazine. I ended up getting my degree. When I graduated, I worked for him, the photographer that I met when I was fourteen. I graduated from college and I still work with him, which is awesome. I was coaching skating by that time. I kept coaching and I did the photography stuff part-time for him.
You coached skating for quite some time. You also continue to pursue photography and this went on beyond college when most people settle into one job. Were you ever conscious of this idea that you didn’t want to do one job like you saw so many other people doing? How did that feel? Was there pressure from other people that say, “You need to focus on this one thing?”
I didn’t have any pressure from anybody. My family was always supportive. My friends always said I was a free spirit. I was floating around and doing a bunch of different stuff. Later, when I started to design my first design business, my partner thought I should focus on only one thing. I was still coaching skating at that point. She was upset that I didn’t want to focus. I can’t. I knew it from the time I was a little kid. Skating was interesting because when you’re a skater, it takes so much time but you still have to go to school and you do whatever else you do in your life. A lot of skaters are piano players or something like that. Most skaters tend to be able to do a lot.
One of the things that can tend to be a little bit of a deterrent in people pursuing their passion on top of a full-time job or pursuing multiple things is how much of a time commitment some things can be. As you know, most of the most worthwhile things in life aren’t quick wins, aren’t something you snap your fingers or you fill out one form and you’re done. You have to work toward it. You have to build something. That’s time-consuming. Would you say that your experience early in life got you accustomed to the lifestyle of having multiple time-consuming endeavors and juggling them?
For sure.
What would you say to anyone reading that’s in a full-time job that they enjoy but they still want to pursue something, following some other passion they have, and how they can get to that point where you can orient your life in the way where you can be successful at both things?
First of all, go for it. Second, relationships suffer more than anything else. It’s hard to find somebody else that understands that. The other thing is time management, for sure. I tend to do things quickly. People have different ways of doing things. I tend to think and do things quickly. I don’t overthink. I tend to go with my gut. If I get an idea for a design, a fabric, color, or whatever, I don’t overthink it. I don’t keep going, “Maybe I could find something better.” It’s the old, beating the dead horse.
Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that you're going to be okay. Click To TweetPeople oftentimes will come up with ways of evaluating their lives and saying, “How am I wasting time? What’s a good use of my time? What’s a bad use of my time?” Nowadays, you hear scrolling through social media, you’ll hear the TV, you’ll hear all these things people say, “These things are a waste of time.” One of the things of all those things on the list that I struggle with a lot and I suspect a lot of people, especially people who have pursued advanced education struggle with is this idea of overthinking and becoming indecisive. That could end up wasting a lot of good time and missing out on a lot of good opportunities. I still have not bought any cryptocurrency because I’ve been overthinking it. Look at the opportunity I’ve missed.
They go over and over. At some point, do it. The old Nike thing, “Just Do It.”
Is there any specific advice or thought processes that someone who is struggling with overthinking things and not pulling the trigger?
Do it. You have to leap. You have to step off of the cliff and trust that you’re going to be okay. If you’re not, you climb back up and do it again. You have to be risk-tolerant. When I started my first interior design business, I was a single mother and I had $0.76 in the bank. I was like, “Let’s start a business.” I had no capital, nothing to do it with. Was it a struggle? Yes, it was a struggle. You have to be ready to struggle and for long hours. You have to realize if it’s your own business, it’s not something that you do and at night, you can put it to bed. I’ll think about something before I go to sleep at night or dream of the solution to a design problem or something and I’ll wake up with it in the morning. It isn’t a 9:00 to 5:00 job.
It’s interesting because I have read many things that have said, “Before quitting your job and starting a business on your own, you should have 12 to 18 months’ worth of finance ready to go.” I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have read that exact piece of advice. This story seems to fly right in the face of it.
For most people, that makes a lot of sense. It’s probably something you should do. I did not heed that advice. I trusted and I had faith that it would work out. I don’t want to tell people to do something irresponsible. I was a single mother. When I started the business, I still was teaching skating, so I still had some income but I was starting to step away from that. I did have my family. My parents were wonderful.
In the process of that whole thing, I also bought a house, which was fun. I sold my old house and bought a new house. I didn’t have enough money to get the mortgage and my parents wanted to co-sign for me because they co-signed on the first house. I said, “I’m going to do it by myself.” I was stubborn. I did finally find a lender but I paid a real major premium for it. It took me five weeks to get it reasonable but it’s almost paid off.
When you started your business with only $0.76, what was going through your head? Was there an amount of fear? Was there more excitement, more passion that’s fueling your desires?
The excitement and the passion. I started calling people that I knew and I said, “I’m starting this design business.” The name of our company was For Men Only. Our theory was we would focus on doing designs for bachelors. This was in 1986. It was a little ahead of its time back then. I called the bachelors that I knew and I called this one guy and he goes, “That sounds interesting. What are you going to do for an office?” I said, “I don’t know. We got to figure that out.” He said, “I have an empty office. If you want to come and use it, you’re welcome to it.” I said, “Okay.” I talked to my partner and we went and used his office. We officed with him for three years. We even moved to a new space with him. We didn’t pay rent. He let us use the office because he was paying anyway. There are things that work out sometimes if you trust.
It takes a little bit of trust. What I wonder also, is a component of it believing in yourself? Self-doubt could get in the way of someone taking the plunge even if they have those 12 to 18 months but they say, “I’m going to be investing a lot of time because it’s not 9:00 to 5:00, it’s 24/7.” Nothing is easy. It’s not like, “I went to this restaurant and it was a bad meal. I’ll move on and never go there again.” You’re putting a lot of time into it as well. You have to have some amount of self-trust.
I don’t have real traditional things. I’ve never had cable TV. I don’t pay for things that I don’t think that I’m going to use or don’t want. Why would I pay for 500 channels? They raised the price every month. I would rather travel. I love to travel. There are things like that. Do you need the latte every day? That’s one example people use. Do you need cable TV? Now there are options, Hulu and Roku. There are options now that didn’t exist back then. Do you need that stuff or do you just want it? Those are a lot of decisions that people that want to do something outside the box need to think about.
The phrase a lot of people use is keeping up with the Joneses and the idea of you’re doing things whether it be for appearance or out of defaulting, “Everyone else sets up their house like this. Everyone else has an open concept right now.” As opposed to taking a deep breath and saying, “Is this serving me? Is this what I want? Do I want to spend money on this?” That’s a frustration I had from a young age. When I was a teenager, for some reason, it was quite popular for people to buy jeans at a store at the mall that were already ripped. I would ask myself, “Why am I going to spend $50 on a pair of jeans that are already ripped? I’ll take something from Goodwill or take something old I have played softball in it or something.”
That’s exactly the thing. Eating out all the time. It’s expensive to eat out. I know some young people that are looking at their bank account and going, “We have all this money. Because of COVID, we haven’t been.” I said to them, “You do all that?” They go, “I guess so.” They got this big amount of money in their bank account and they couldn’t figure out where they’re going.
That reminds me of a discussion that I’ve been having with quite a few people because as soon as COVID hit, my first thought process was, “What’s the world going to look like after this is done?” I realized to myself that the restaurant industry might take a permanent 10% hit maybe or something like that. I say this knowing that the majority of people are thinking, “I want to go right back to 2019.” There are still a significant number of people who are looking and saying, “Look at these things I started doing during COVID. I learned to cook these eighteen new recipes or these nine different meals and I’m enjoying it.” There are going to be some amounts of permanent changes and people look at that like, “How is it that I saved $10,000 throughout 2020? What was I spending that $10,000 on and wasn’t making me happy?”
It’s been great for me and my business because I do a lot of kitchen and bath remodeling. People are like, “Now that I’m cooking a whole lot and the kitchen is terrible, I need to redo my kitchen. There are three of us trying to work on the dining room table on Zoom and I need a home office. This big, open room isn’t as cool as I thought it was when I couldn’t get away from my kid’s class on Zoom or my husband’s work.” It’s been interesting. We’ve had to rethink a lot of things. I don’t think it’ll ever be exactly like it was.
Tell us a bit about your business, how it started and what the focus is.
I get this company with this partner for about ten years. We broke up the partnership and I started my own business and it’s called Production & Design because I still do the film production work, although not as much as I used to. When I started in ‘96, that was maybe 1/3 of my business with that. Now it’s maybe 10% or 5%. I ended up doing a lot of kitchen and bath remodels. I always tend to have a kitchen, a bath, or something going all the time and then regular interior design, carpet choice, furniture, lighting, and things like that. It’s fun. When I quit coaching skating, now I teach yoga. I do my yoga and my interior design. I still can’t focus on one thing. It’s still not going to work. That’s one thing, too, that I like about design because it’s varied. Every project is different. I’m not in an office from 9:00 to 5:00. I knew from the time I was a little kid that there was no way I could go to an office from 9:00 to 5:00. It wasn’t going to happen.
You couldn’t do that. There’s a lot of jobs out there like that. Some of the most repetitive jobs are going to be going away soon with automation. Even within Production & Design, it seems like you get to work on a lot of different types of things and remodels or redesigns. Your background is in photography and you also loved marine zoology, marine life, or animals in general. How does that all factor in? Did you ever pursue the animal type of thing? Does that influence the way you run your business? Is that more like what you like to do when you go out in nature?
You have to leap... When I started my first interior design business, I was a single mother and I had like 76 cents to my name. Click To TweetThat part never happened. I feel fortunate that I know a lot of people that get degrees in college and never used anything even remotely related. After my Bachelor of Fine Arts, I did go back to school and got my Interior Design degree before I started the first interior design business. I feel fortunate that I’ve gotten to do my passion and what I always love. No two days are ever the same. I don’t like my days to always be the same. One day I’ll be at the design center for 2 or 3 hours with 3 or 4 different clients. I drive a lot, which also is cool because I love to drive. I listen to books on tape when I drive. I can’t do one thing at a time. I get to read while I’m driving. What could be better?
Is that one of the factors that have kept you going? We’re talking about 25 years. It’s 2021. You started Production & Design in 1996. Having that variety, is that what maintains your continued passion for the business?
Yes. I have not ever had a day that I don’t want to go to work. I love it.
There are a few people that say that.
For the most part, most of my clients have become friends. I have this wonderful project in France that a lot of them started as clients. It’s fun. I still like it. All my friends are retiring and they’re going, “When are you retiring?”
One thing that may be important to point out to my audience and anyone considering going for whatever their endeavor is that things take a little while to build up. It takes time, effort, and energy. Imagine this, you have 18 months to 2 years. It’s the amount of time you’re going to struggle. You’re going to be trying to gain traction, trying to build something. Eighteen months to two years in comparison to 25 years of having never said, “I do not want to go to work today,” having never dreaded it, having never had that Sunday night, “Monday’s coming. I’m getting depressed. I need to self-medicate.” Do whatever it is people do. Having never had to do that for 25 years makes those 18 months to 24 months you spend struggling and building seem relatively small in that picture.
I did my other design business ten years before that. I did interior designing for 30-some years. The other thing I would also suggest is that you remember not to always make it about yourself. Giving back is important and amazing. If you find something that you’re passionate about in terms of giving back, often, that will help your business. I’m in Rotary. I’m a Rotarian. My first clients all came from my Rotary Club. You’re encouraged to support each other though you don’t advertise your business. You also tend to look for people. When you’re doing business, look for people that have common values. If you are a person that enjoys service or wants to give back, find the animal shelter or whatever and tell them what you do in your job. If they can see your passion for your job as well as your passion for whatever service you’re doing, why wouldn’t they want to hire you? Why wouldn’t they want to have you in their life?
That’s a great thought. Back up a little bit in case anyone of my audience is not familiar. What is the Rotary Club?
Rotary is an international service organization. I’ve done projects in Nepal and China. I have friends all over the world. We do local projects. We’re doing some not-for-profit called Project Worthmore, which is a fabulous project. There are all sorts of wonderful local projects. I was a coordinator for 9HealthFair for ten years. They started not doing the shares anymore. Now they’re doing vaccination. I haven’t gotten involved with that mission part. There are lots of local things you can do and all the international stuff is a perk as far as I’m concerned.
If you’re looking out for it, there seems to be an unlimited opportunity for service or giving back. One of the things that come into my head is the idea that at any given time, if you’ve cared about something, start doing it. Usually, people are looking for either a community or money, for example, in the long run, we all need community and resources by which to live. Oftentimes, one of the things we do is we’re instantly thinking about how to monetize something. If you start doing what you care about, eventually the people, the money, and the livelihood will follow. That’s different than the standard way a lot of people looking at it. Especially in the standard job world, you look at it and you’re like, “I worked an hour and I get $50. I worked another hour and I get $50.” Whereas entrepreneurship in general, service idea in particular, is a different mindset in a way.
Never make it about yourself. Give back to the world. Click To TweetWhen you’re passionate about something and you devote the time to it, the money will follow. If you’re concentrated on the money as opposed to the service you’re providing, whether that’s design work or computer consulting or whatever, if you’re focused on, “How can I help this person? How can I be of service to this person?” The money is going to follow. I’m terrible at keeping track of my time. I charge by the hour. I also know that I’m good at providing service to my clients. I make myself concentrate on trying to keep better track of my time and monetizing what I’m doing. My focus is the service and then I’m like, “I got to keep better track of my time.” That’s an interesting thing but concentrating on monetizing, to me, is crass.
The interesting thing is that most businesses that people start, anyone that’s involved in putting together a start-up or putting a business idea, it seems like there’s always some aspect of service involved. Even if you’re a graphic designer, you’re still serving your customers, your clients. You’re giving them the graphic design. You’re designing their web page. It almost becomes impossible to completely divorce the idea of making money and the idea of service in that world.
Number one, don’t divorce them. Remember that they are married but they’re at least equal partnerships. If not, you’re giving 100% of yourself for service and then the money is married to that. You’re not trying 100% to make money and then the service is married to that. To me, you’re focusing on the service and then the money follows.
It reminds me of anyone that starts anything, including anyone that I’m interviewing on this show. You had an initial reason for it. The initial reason for it usually was not money because there are tons of things. If all you care about is money, there are plenty of jobs that you can do a quick Google search, “What job pays the highest number of dollars per hour?” Go to whatever Coursera course you need to go to get that degree. If all you care about is money, there’s a path out there.
The vast majority of people that even think about starting their own thing, starting a startup, or even if it’s just a side hustle have some service on their mind. They have some outcome, something they want to provide to humanity. One of the things it reminds me of is to not get trapped in the idea of trying to make money and metrics and to periodically take a deep breath and say, “This is why I wanted to do this. This is what I’m in it for, my intrinsic motivation.”
You always have to come back to, “Why are you doing this? What do you love?” Somebody asked me one time, “You’ve done many different things. Is there any common thread to them because they seem diverse?” The common thread is creating beauty. The beauty within someone in terms of yoga because you’re trying to tap into that beauty within you, spiritually, physically, and mentally. You’re creating beauty in your surroundings. Skating was performing beauty. Creating beauty would probably be. Anytime that I question or whatever, I always go back to, “Is it beautiful? Is it helping the environment be the most beautiful?” The motivation behind what you do is always important to keep coming back to that.
It reminds me of something I tell a lot of people. I say this having had multiple career coach and life coach people on this show. I feel like I’m stepping on their toes potentially when I say this. Whenever any friend reaches out to me and says, “I’m stuck. I’m in a tough place. I want to know what I should do.” One of the exercises I tell them to do is to think back to ten times in the recent past when they’ve entered a state of flow when you’re immersed in what you’re doing. Find the commonality amongst those ten events and they could often be different. Someone could be like, “I was coaching my kids’ soccer game and I was also leading an investment group.” You find out the commonality is something like, “I was helping people improve a key area of their lives and that’s my common thread.” There often are 1 to 3 common threads amongst what a lot of people do even in things that seem unrelated when you think about them in a more superficial sense.
One other thing I wanted to cover is the idea that popped in my head when you were talking about going out and finding service opportunities and volunteer opportunities coincide with what you’re talking about how you don’t love watching TV and you never had cable. You mentioned auditing our money, “Is this worth it?” The thing about Starbucks is if you get a latte every day, you spend over $1,000 by the end of the year just on that. Does the same thing apply to our time, an hour in service? Let’s you don’t make money and you don’t even develop connections but you probably are going to develop connections. Is it still more valuable than if the alternative was to sit and rewatch a rerun of an old TV show? Is there an aspect of that about how we use our time that we need to think about the same way we think about how we use our money?
For me, it is anyway. I’m not going to say I never watched TV. I love watching theories or whatever. I’ll do it for an hour or two on Saturday night or every night while we eat dinner. I know people that spend hours playing video games or Solitaire on their computers. If you do it to wind down for an hour or 45 minutes or something like that, then that’s a good use of your time to wind down and relax if that helps you relax, fine.
If it gets to a point where you’re spending 5 to 6 hours a day watching old television shows or playing video games, is that a good use of your time? If you could say, “I don’t have anything better I can be doing.” Fine, do it. If you’re also thinking, “I want to do this business. I want to start this. I want to learn to play the piano,” but you’re not because you’re doing other stuff that’s not that, then you need to question it.
I do want to iterate that I’m not trying to throw shade on any activity people do to unwind. We all need to unwind. We all need to rest. If watching a comedy show is the way you rest, go ahead and rest. At some point, you have to take stock in all the time. Before we wrap up, I want to give my audience a chance to get ahold of you if anyone reading is interested in Production & Design and/or your yoga practice.
When you devote your time into something your passionate about, the money will follow. Click To TweetYoga and Rotary, I’m happy to talk to people about any of the above.
The web page is ProductionAnDesign.com, is that correct?
Yes. My email is LindaSue@ProductionAnDesign.com.
Especially the home office is something that’s not going away that consensus around the post-pandemic world is that most people want a hybrid, a couple of days in and a couple of days out. They’re still going to want that space for their home office and all that other stuff. Linda Sue, thank you so much for taking your time, joining us, and sharing an amazing story that inspires anyone out there like myself as well, feels compelled to not drill down on one thing that needs to foster that multifaceted aspect of all of our lives.
Thank you. I had a good time.
Thank you to all those readers out there. I want to let you know to stay tuned for more episodes with more interesting people who went out there and took the risk, whether small or big. Sometimes the biggest risk is putting yourself out there. The first blog I hit submit, for example, that’s already a step. I will be featuring more guests who have come on here and taken that step in some area of their lives. Stay tuned for more.
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About Linda Sue Shirkey
Linda Sue Shirkey has pursued a variety of interests, from skating and skating coaching to photography, interior design and yoga instruction. She has been doing interior design for over three decades and still loves her business Production & Design, Inc.