Hey, one more thing before you go. How do we balance passion with purpose without burning out? How can we get cultural awareness and personal transformation and use that to fuel sustainable success? Stay tuned Today we'll explore these questions and more when we have a conversation with Cliff Beach. He's an author, a recording artist, an entrepreneur, and the host of Diva Grooves. I'm your host, Michael Herst. Welcome to one more thing before you go. Today we're joined by Cliff Beach. He's an acclaimed recording artist, radio host and VP of digital and operations. An entrepreneur and a professional speaker, Cliff is the author of the side Hustle and Flow trilogy, including 10 principles to living your best life and Shape Up A and the forthcoming the Daily Grind. He also hosts the Deeper Grooves podcast and deeper grooves on 88.5 FM where he explores the intersection of music, culture and creativity. His journey spans music, tech and personal transformation, reversing type 2 diabetes, losing 50 pounds, and achieving long term sobriety. Congratulations on that. He's been featured in Authority magazine, Voyager LA and Canvas Rebel and recognizes the 2025 Anthem Awards nominee and top five finalists for the Obsidian Awards. Black Tech Executive of the Year. Today we're going to uncover how Cliff turned hustle into intention and how his story can inspire us to live with balance and purpose. Welcome to the show, Cliff.

Thank you, Michael. So excited to be here and chatting.

Today what a journey your life has been on.

Yeah, I tell everyone it's a non linear journey and I don't think I could have curated it exactly that way except by just saying yes to a bunch of different things. I think sometimes people think it seems unfocused, but to me I see a through line through through all of them.

I agree with you. Sometimes life puts us in the direction we're supposed to go and we hadn't seen it until it's there.

Yeah, I think that makes it interesting. If we knew all the things, it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be a movie unfolding in front of us.

Exactly, exactly. Life is Life is a movie. It's a nice way to put that. Life is a journey. Life is a movie. Well, I like to start at the beginning, so can you share like your origin story, where did you come from and how that journey shaped who you are today?

Oh my gosh, when you say it like that, I think of Marvel. I wish I was bit by a radioactive spider or something interesting like that. But yeah, you know, I tell everyone I'm kind of my mom's only child and miracle child. When I was born, I Was born super premature. So I was born at 28 weeks. I weighed 2 pounds, went down to about a pound and a half. And so I incubated for about 3, 4 months before coming home from the hospital. So unlike other babies, there are no photos of me, like, you know, right at birth, I didn't have anything until I came home. But yeah, you know, I think when you kind of grow up knowing that you're appreciative of life, one more thing, you know, I think of legacy and things like that. And, and, and so, you know, there is a finality to that. I'm appreciative of every day, you know, because I. There are. You know, I'm just cognizant that there were some babies that didn't make it out of the hospital at the same time as me. So I'm very appreciative of all the. The love I had at home. I grew up in a family of ministers, like kind of Baptist ministers, and into church. And so I grew up with a lot of church music, a lot of gospel, a lot of joy, a lot of jubilation, a lot of volunteerism. Did a ton of, like, work with the homeless. And we were always having people come and stay with us for a variety of reasons. So it was good. It was good to be able to kind of see that kind of collectivist atmosphere. And then in school, I got to study a lot of different kind of choral music, Allstate choirs. I came from the Washington d. Oh, Washington D.C. maryland area. So go Blue Craps and Old Bay and all the things. And then I went to conservatory in Boston at Berkeley College of Music. And that's when I got to learn about all the different types of music genres, etc, and, you know, if you've ever seen the movie Whiplash, it's very much like that in terms of conservatory, very stringent practicing all the time, but it was great. I really think that iron sharpens iron. And so being around all those great musicians really helped me to. Then to push to Los Angeles. So after being in Boston and D.C. and tired of cold weather, I flew to LA and been now in LA for almost 25 years now as a working musician. I've worked in the corporate world as well, which is kind of how side Hustle and the Flow came to be. But yeah, that whole journey was like, I wanted to be a great singer and then a great songwriter and a great pianist. And then from there that led me to radio and TV and film and. And all these things. But I had no IDEA, you know, 25 years ago, any of those were on the. The precipice. But I did learn that entrepreneurship, I think is one of the most important things that I tell everyone. It's like Berkeley taught me a lot about music, a lot about the music business, but it did not teach me I am a business. And so you're a solopreneur. You have to shamelessly promote what you do and, and put it into the marketplace. I believe there was Jim Rohn, he said we are all equal as souls, but we are not all equal in the marketplace. And so, yeah, unfortunately that is, that is kind of part of the, the course to be able to do that. So I just try to explain to people like you, you ink how you brand yourself. Especially now in the world of social media and stuff, it's just really important to be able to embrace and you may have some uncomfortability with it, but you, you have to get out there. You have to be known. So it's a part of the artist way.

I agree with that. What? Yeah. You and I have something in common. I was born three months premature and I spent the same time in the hospital as you did. My parents brought me home in a shoebox pretty much because I was that tiny and, and way back when I was born, we won't say exactly when way back then, it was the same thing. There was, you know, very, very few that came home like that. So. Well done, brother. Well done.

Yes. And I'm glad you mentioned the shoebox because I just told someone. I was like, yeah, I was right after the shoebox period. They had no idea what I was talking about, but I was like, that's what they did.

That's what they. Yeah, exactly. That's what they did. It was pretty slick. That's cool. What inspired you to write the side Hustle and Flow trilogy?

Well, I've always been a voracious reader. You know, in school they would bring the bookmobile around and I would have all these stickers and get my mom to buy me all kinds of things. She said that when I was a kid, normally you are read a bedtime story, but I wanted to read and read her a bedtime story. So very young I started doing that and I used to listen to AM radio and get very upset by, by pund talking about all types of political things in D.C. as a kid. So I was a very kind of weird kid. But as I grew up and to adulthood and started learning that school really teaches you kind of like a launching pad of how to Think and how to learn, but not all the things that you're going to learn in a lifetime. Being a lifetime learner, I wanted to be able to read a lot of books on self improvement, personal development. And so I got into a lot of great authors like Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins. And. And so as I started absorbing all this content, I was like, I really want to be able to kind of condense all this information into kind of my own journey, my own book. So in 2014, I started interviewing people for a book at the time that was called the Art of Awesome, which I never ended up doing, but I was basically trying to answer this question. Why is one person's path so great and so fulfilling and another person's isn't? And then I was like, okay, I'm an imposter. I'm a musician. I never wrote a book. So I shelved it six years. And then, lo and behold, 2020 comes and the pandemic happens. And so all these musicians are like, well, what do we do while we're just twiddling our thumbs waiting for the world to reopen so we can go tour and do a bunch of stuff? And so I was like, well, why don't I start a podcast? And why don't I start writing a book? So I took this book writing course by Scribe Media and learned how to kind of organize my thoughts, and eventually From Full to Fulfill was the working title. And it became Side Hustle and Flow because I realized I was like, oh, my gosh. My whole has been two parallel tracks. How do I work something outside of music to sustain myself, which was digital marketing. And then how do I have this track of music? And so they sometimes intersect, sometimes they don't, but they're always constantly, concurrently, in tandem going. And I did that because I wanted people to really understand that whether you do it a lot of the time or some of the time is still better than none of the time. When I was learning music, people said, well, if you don't do music full time, then you're not really serious. And I didn't think that that was great because I thought it wouldn't really give options since only 1% of the working musicians actually have a level of sustainability that they can live on that. So I wanted people to be able to understand that that's not true, that you can write whatever you want, whenever you want and fit it in. You know, I met someone when we were all kind of looking for work, and they were like, I really Love the salsa dance. And I was like, well, are you salsa dancing now? And they were like, no, because I'm looking for work and this and that. And I was like, if you know what you love to do, if you're passionate about it, you should do it as much as humanly possible. Whether you make money or not, you should do it. Because what happens is that you raise a whole society and generations of people who have very unfulfilled, joyless lives, because, again, someone has told them that you can't do it all the time, so do it another time. But all or nothing mentality really, in this case, does not work. Believe me. If you can only work on writing, you know, an hour a day, you know, by the end of the year, you'll still have a book. But if you don't do that hour a day because you couldn't do eight hours a day, then. Then nothing gets done. And, you know, we won't always get that book or that movie or that song or whatever it is unless you do it. You know, the universe is giving you that gift, and so we need you to do that. And also, people need creative outlets. They need a way to express themselves. So my biggest thing now, as I continue through the book series, is telling people that you are created by a creator to create however you believe that to be. I believe everyone is born creative. And we actually know from the work of Sir Ken Robinson, when he studied the educational systems, that kindergarteners, when they come into school, they're all excited. Do you want to sing? Do you want to dance? Everyone lights up, everyone raises their hands because they're all sponges, and they haven't learned about shame and gatekeeping and things like that. And then by the time you get to 12th grade, you get less than, you know, 5% that will raise their hand and want to do that, because they don't want to be weird, they don't want to stick out. But the world needs. It needs more weirdos, because that's like the best parts of life are the creative things. That's why song and dance have. Have been passed down generationally and orally, you know, since the. The cavemen and beyond. Because it's something in our DNA that. That really connects us, as you say, as a universal language. And so I think that people need to do it, and I don't think that they'll have to do it all the time or want to do it all the time, but even some of the time is better than no time at all.

I agree with that. Those Are profound words. Profound words. Cliff. I. I thank you for sharing that with us because I think that a lot of us do. I mean, everybody has. Can resonate with music. No matter what level you are, where you're at in life, you can resonate with music. It could be a song reminds you of someone or something or somewhere you've been. The lyrics can tell your story and you say, hey, I. I went through that. And dance. Dance is the same thing. Dance gives you a release. It gives you opportunity just to, like you said, be weird. It doesn't matter what you look like when, and it really doesn't matter what other people think of you. Enjoy the journey with music and with dance is what I appreciate about it. You can enjoy it within yourself, your soul. So those are profoundly agreed. Agreed.

For sure.

So how do you think your early experiences in music, as you were saying, do you think that influenced your entrepreneurship, your philosophy on the hustle and balance perspective all around? That's what it sounds like, what you kind of just spoke about.

Yeah, I think music is a great way to be able to explain those ideas. Because I've heard a joke that's not about the notes I play, it's about the notes I don't play. So the music and the rest, that is the hustle and the flow, the balance, the yin and yang. And nature has that throughout that. You know, when you see water flowing, then you know that it's good.

Right.

But if it's not flowing, it's stagnant, it's brackets. That's not good. And so what you learn, I think, as a musician, is the adaptability and how you're able to like, organize the chaos because there's so many people doing so many intricate things, but you're still like having a dialogue. It's not like a bunch of monologues. It's a. It's a conversation. And so for years, you know, I've done public speaking with Toastmasters, and it was only until recently I realized that, like, effective communication is not being able to just speak. Well, that's one component of it. But really effective communication is the symbiotic relationship between. I can be. I can talk and I can be understood. Right. If your audience can't understand what you're saying, then then it has not been effective. And so I think the beauty of coming from the music world is that you approach everything with a curiosity and a creative lens. Again, everyone's created to create. It allows you to creatively problem solve. Because ideally, what happens in music right there's this whole great thing where I was taking a master class from Herbie Hancock on masterclass.com and he was playing with Miles Davis very young, and he was like, I played the wrong note. And he was like, well, Miles just moved so that it made it right. Right. So in music, like there are no right or wrong notes. Like you're trying a bunch of things, seeing what sticks. Some things do, some things don't. But the relationship of us together is that we can change or elevate or adjust our vibration so that even something seemingly wrong can become right in the right thing. In the same way with music, you'll see when it comes to dissonance, that if I have one note that's really close to another and they rub together, it may clash. But if I spread them out with perspective, right. A second becomes a ninth and then that's beautiful. So it's just like there isn't really a right or wrong way. I tell people all the time, like.

Okay, what a profound. What I mean, some amazing words of wisdom that you just shared with me. Early experiences in music entrepreneurship influence your philosophy and Hustle and Flow and how that kind of should reflect upon everybody that's out here that's trying to embrace this.

Yeah, well, I think the, the main thing about Hustle and Flow and what you embrace, I call it the Hollywood Shuffle, but you can do it in any city that you're in. But ideally, I think that we are all, in a way, multi hyphenates. Right. And the song Three Times a Lady, Lionel Richie is writing about his mom and he says it's because she's a wife and a mother and a sister. We are onions. We are layers of multiple different things. And so I think when you look at the universe, when you talk about abundance and having this kind of limitless potential and getting rid of all the self limiting beliefs, what sihas on Flow allowed me to be able to do is say that whether I do a lot of the time or a little bit of the time, sometime is better than no time at all. And so it allowed me to be able to see that the universe is constantly expanding. And as you start to study music, you'll see with all the notes and why it's lasted for so many centuries and generations through oral tradition and to now is because it has limitless potential. And it's amazing at the infinite possibilities that are out there because you only have the 12 notes and yet so much music is done, even if you're using the same harmonic chord structure. So Much is able to get done. So really, it's just allowing people to understand. I studied Japanese culture. I've studied what's called ikigai, and understanding, like purpose and passion, how that comes together. So what am I good at? What does the world need to, you know, get from me? What do I love to do, you know, and what.

What.

What am I passionate about? They allow you to be able to. To have longevity and to live longer. And so my main thing is like teaching people that were created by a creator to create, but more importantly, that you can do it at any level, any social, economic status, any time in your life. Because we're. We're sold this bill of good, that if you don't do it all the time, then then you should do it none of the time. And that's not true. We really should have people who are doing in their life to have little bursts of joy into their routines and to be able to have consistent consistency. Because consistency builds the habit, right? So these books I have flow, the trilogy is all about how you cultivate certain character traits, characteristics, and how you also build a consistent habit. What I call underwhelming yourself. Because ideally, you know, people overwhelm themselves and they'll quit. You know, a lot of things are very daunting. I was just working on a house project with someone, and it's a big house. And so whenever you do that, I was like, like, you know, if you focus on all, you know, eight rooms at once, that becomes very overwhelming. You have to say, okay, we're just going to focus on the living room. We're just going to focus on this square of the room to get that in order. And then we'll work our way and fan out from there so there isn't really a right or wrong way. I did a lot of research as a research assistant, and I would always ask my professor, like, how do I learn how to do the right questions? How do I ask the right questions? And she was like, no, what you learn is how to ask questions. And then from the data, you can ascertain if it was right. Because people want to, you know, kind of believe we have a crystal ball, that we just know, like, always what to do. But ultimately, what I've learned is that you just have to fail forward, fail fast, fail often. Because you look at someone like Thomas Edison making light bulb, 10,000 experiments. Because it took not only those 10,000 experiments, but all the inventors at the time, thousands and thousands of experiments to eventually make that happen. And so someone asked that and they said, well, how do you live with, you know, having 9,999 failures? He said, no, correction. I did not fail any of those times. I learned what wasn't working and did something different. And that's what the scientific method is, and that's what life is. It's trial and error. There's nobody who makes it to the top who is not bruised and beat up by learning. Right. But the reason why people write these books and have podcasts like yours is because we can learn from thought leaders and other people. We don't have the lifespan to be able to make all those mistakes.

Right.

I can enjoy lots of mushrooms without dying from one. That's going to kill me because someone has already gone through that process. So I don't need to reinvent the wheel in that way, but I do need to get out there and try other things to leave those success clues for the future generations.

Ikigai. I love ikigai. I practice ikigai as well. My family and I do. I know some of the other things that, if you don't mind me interjecting with this, that I know about you is you also deal with qigong and tai chi, which I appreciate as well. From a healing perspective. It allows us the mind, body, soul, connection. And I think that's all important. We need to sometimes take a breath and realize that there's more to life than 9 to 5. There's more to life than, like you said, you have to. Everything is a learning step, even the failures. Bruce Lee said that. Bruce Lee said every. What you think is a failure is only a stepping stone to success. Because every time you fail, you either learn what to do or what not to do.

Agreed. Yeah. I just saw a clip of him with Muhammad Ali being interviewed, and the person said, bruce Lee, what do you think about failure? And Bruce Lee says, failure is the teacher. And Muhammad Ali chimes in and says, and I never miss class.

Exactly. That's cool. Brilliant. I have to look for that clip. I'm a fan of both. That's pretty slick in today's lifestyle. I mean, in your own personal experience. And we know that everybody, usually it's a nine to five, everybody. You get up, you get breakfast, you go to work, you have your coffee, you work eight hours, you bust your butt. You don't think of joy, you think of work. And then when you come home, you have dinner, maybe watch a little tv, go back to bed, you get up, you do it again in the morning, and it's kind of a repetition. It gets boring. It gets monotonous. It gets, like, perpetually monotonous, where we always have to try to think of what we're going to do to step outside that. What was your turning point when you realized that you needed to shift from overwork to working with intention? Because I think we all need to work with intention. And I know that you talk about that on your podcast. You've talked about it. To intention and purpose.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, growing up in the. The Christian perspective, we say we work unto God. Jim Brown says it best. I think he says, you know, when you just have to wake up to pay those damn bills and go work those damn people. That's not compelling. That's not a powerful. What Simon Sinek says, a powerful why to. To get up in the morning. And so sometimes you do have jobs that are. That are less fulfilling, but you think about it in a way of like, but when I make the money from there, what am I able to do with that? What am I able to. To impact and to spark joy into my own life? It wasn't until, you know, Marie Kondo came through the whole house and said, grab it, and said, does that spark joy? Nobody was thinking about joy to that level. But it's great analogy because, you know, it's like what you're holding on to or what you're letting go of or are powerful things. So when you talk about qigong and tai chi, I didn't realize for years that your organs, your cells, they have memory, and what they do is they absorb all of these feelings. You go through a trauma, et cetera. Your liver absorbs anger.

Why?

Because the liver is this part of the body that says, if I have something, I don't know where it will go, I'll take it. I will absorb that and take it on. That's why, you know, people, when they end up with fatty liver, it's like, well, because the body didn't know what to do with the fat in your bloodstream. And so delivery says, I'll take it. But your organs are not supposed to have any, you know, fat in them to that level. So. But the beauty of having that kind of psychosomatic approach with talk therapy and qigong and tai chi is that that breath work allows you to say it's okay to let it go. Like when you work with veterans, right, and you have someone who's lost a limb and they create this kind of mirror box because they were, like, clenching their fists when their arm is blown off. And now their Mind is like still holding this fist with this limb that doesn't longer, doesn't exist anymore. The shadow box and the, the mirror box allows them to see with their, them that they still have the reflection so they can finally open their hand and let it go. Well, that's what qigong allows you to do. It allows you to realize, oh my gosh, I've been holding these things that are, that are holding me back. If someone has wronged me, hurt me, good or bad, whatever, 20 years ago, and I'm still carrying it forward, that person has moved on, found their own joy. I'm drinking now a poison, hoping that they die. That's only killing me. I have to let it go. And so it's crazy because everything makes sense logically. But like, as emotional feeling creatures, we do hold on to things, you know, things that we don't even now consciously remember are bothering us. And so it was nice to be able to, to study a lot of Eastern philosophy and holistic approaches because I think they, they were very beneficial for me to kind of see, okay, we can take a breath. Because, you know, when you're going through something difficult, you're stressed at work, you don't realize those moments of holding your breath, but everyone does it naturally. So, you know, one time I went to get my ear pierced and the person was like, just breathe. Because it's like, it was like that one moment to get the thing through, I just stopped breathing. And I hadn't realized it. Like, I would have eventually started breathing again. But it's a deeper breath, but it's also like letting go. And now, you know, Mel Robbins this year, she had an amazing book called the Let Them Theory. If someone wrongs you and they show you who they really are, let them, let them go. Like you're trying to control the uncontrollables, and that's going to be difficult.

That's brilliant. Again, I think that I kind of learned the same thing when I was studying qigong. I was introduced to qigong. I practiced martial arts when I was on the job in my old profession. I did it prior to being a police officer as well. And I had brought that into my job with it. And it also helped me to relax, it helped me to unwind, it helped me not to turn. There's so many first responders, whether they be firefighter, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, paramedics. You carry so much with you during the, during the day that sometimes it's hard to let go. And that's why they usually turn to Alcohol or they turn to, you know, other issues that are detrimental. From that perspective, I luckily was taught at a very early age to carry for respect your body, respect what you have to let go, respect what you have to keep. And I've had to do just like anybody else has had to do. I've had to learn that myself or be reminded myself, because I sat in a wheelchair for four years being resentful and angry and really pissed off because of my situation and how I was placed there, why I was placed there. I was in service of others and this is my reward was my attitude. And it took me a reminder from my kids and from my wife to opened my eyes up again, saying, look, you know you can do this, and I know you can do this. If you think about it and if you relax and if you let go of the anger and the resentment and the bitterness of the whole situation, it allows you to move forward, it allows you to make progress. And that's when I really embraced qigong and from. I started with tai chi and I moved into qigong from kung fu master, from here in the local area. From here. Who said, move from tai chi to qigong? This is what qigong can do for you. And I haven't looked back. It's a brilliant opportunity to be able to understand breath work. And they're holding the breath like you talk about. It allows us to recognize when we're doing that and not hold that in. So, yeah, brilliant. Amazing. Are those the core principles of side hustle and flow and what, like how listeners can apply that today, or does it go deeper?

It does. Well, it starts with mindset and it takes you through, like different steps of really setting goals, really being goal oriented, because if you aim for nothing, you'll hit it every time. And so it allows people to be able to organize, to structure. You know, just like when you're writing a book, you have an outline. What is the outline for your life? And I tell people, even though I do say, underwhelm yourself in a long time horizon, I say, no, you should, you should have the biggest, hairy as scariest goal possible, because if you get halfway there, you're going to be further than what you would have done if you go to too short. And so the principles really kind of walk you through like a way, but it does not say it's the only way, because everyone's path is going to be different. And I wouldn't know that. I can just show you, like, what I've done. But even if I wanted to go, I Couldn't go back and do the last 20 years and I couldn't do the same thing. The 20 years going forward, they'll be slightly different. But the, the basic principles of it is like, okay, how do we create metrics? How do we show is it being successful or not? And when we want to make pivots and changes, those all kind of breadcrumbs go throughout the book. So the side has on flow and then shape up is really about, oh my gosh, if I had hustled on my health harder earlier, how much further.

Could I have gone?

And I think it, it's, it's a lesson for all of us that we sometimes have to just take a breath and pause and reflect and then understand that we have the ability within ourselves to achieve something. We just have to recognize that we're in control. How do you balance for, for those of us that are trying to balance that, that life, as we were talking about, you kind of going to have a balance, the yin and the yang. How do you think we should balance passion projects and professional responsibilities without burnout? I know you said that even if you're writing a book, an hour a day is better than not doing it at all. You mentioned some tidbits like that. But I also know that burnout from one end to the other, whether it's creatively or professionally or trying to balance those. How can we maybe balance those?

Yeah, you know, it's an interesting thing, Michael. For years I would always talk about work life balance. And then what I realized is someone said it's actually work life integration. It's how those things go together. And so essentially, if you ever study deep work versus shallow work, it's about kind of putting all of the building an ecosystem around you, whether it's like on the self care realm, whether it's in the work realm, it's about setting yourself up for success and how you're able to do that. And no two people are going to be alike because everyone is kind of wired differently and things like that. But the beauty of it is that it allows you to be able to figure out how you can weave in and out of things. Because when people talk about multitasking as human beings, we actually do not multitask. We become adept at being able to switch quickly between tasks, but it's actually all individualized tasks. We actually don't do. Well when you're trying to do two or three tasks at a time. In the same way I tell people you should never have more than three major goals throughout the wheel of life in different sectors. Because if you have more than three, you don't have any right. They'll start to conflict out. When I studied some of the Buddhist principles of Pima Chedron, she had this great analogy of like life is a bull of frogs and that you're trying to get frogs into this bowl and if you're able to luckily have two or three that hop in there and they stay in there at the same time, that's as good as gonna get because eventually a frog's gonna hop out, there's gonna be some uncontrollable something that you can't think of. It's gonna fly off and you just have to let it because it'll just infuriate you to be able to do that. Especially when we do. A lot of things that happen have to do with working with other people. People management and working with people adds a lot of friction. But also teams that have a lot of synergy, people that work together end up doing better than doing it alone. That's why the African proverb or adage says, you know, you can go faster alone, you can go farther together. It's true. And so ideally it's about integrating those systems, how you, you know, you build that right. Now I will say this. If you have some type of job that is just soul sucking like you just is something that you don't love, that you just completely hate, you have to write the prescription for your life and get out of it, which is one of the things that you have to let go. Doesn't mean that you, you didn't love it for a time, doesn't mean you're gonna love it forever. But you kind of have to ask self reflection questions. I learned this because Lissa Rankin, when she did her book Mind Over Medicine, she was a doctor and she had all these illnesses as a doctor knowing western medicine and essentially she realized that her job was too stressful, she had to quit. And many people will, will not make that determination because people will say, oh, that's too hard. But life is hard no matter what you do. It's about picking and choosing the hard that you want at any particular time. Because life never gets any easier. You just have to constantly and never end improve. I have never had anything happen to me that was just completely easy. Like it just took no effort. You know, anything that's worth having a worthy idea is going to take time, it's going to take resources, it's going to take energy. So when it comes to burnout, it's really about having the awareness to listen to yourself. Because what happens is that people have this cup, right? Let's say it's like a teacup, and then you have your saucer underneath. The abundance is like you're pouring the tea out into the cup, it overflows into the saucer, right? Anything that lands abundant over the saucer, you can give away, but your cup. Cup has to always stay full. Burnout is when you've now given all the way to the cup that's depleted, plus the saucer, plus the teapot, plus now you're borrowing from somebody else's teapot. Essentially. That's what burnout is. And the sad thing is that as human beings, we are taught to desensitize ourselves. We are taught to ignore the systems of our body and energy that sometimes we could be burned out for years and we don't have. We're not using that verbiage, we're not using that terminology, but it can happen because you have to rest, you have to reset, you have to recharge because you have to be able to reflect. And the only way to do that is to take a rest. And the same with music. Like, you don't know until, like, the song has to end. The. The vibrations have to. To be silent, to be able to understand, like, you know, the difference. The beauty of comparison is that you can only know what's good and not good when you have two things to compare it to. If I just have one thing, I say that's good. Well, compared to what?

Yeah, exactly. And I like the way that you use the teak effort analogy and especially the overuse. If you overfill it, you use all of that, you lose what's in the saucer, and then you kind of borrow somebody else's. I mean, it's a brilliant way to kind of, kind of reflect upon itself. Am I doing that? If I am doing that, then I think I need to pause and take a breath and reevaluate. We all should do that as individuals, because sometimes we're presented with things that we don't really expect. And, you know, that always throws a wrench in life. And once it throws a wrench in life, you know, we can manage it or we can let it overcome us.

Yes. And the crazy thing is that you have good intentions behind all those things. Like, you give and you give because it feels good and you want to be helpful and people need you. But it doesn't mean that every thing that wants to take should. You know, you can enable people in Some ways or sometimes you just. You don't have it to give in that season of life. And I found this a lot with church and volunteering sometimes, you know, people love that you volunteer and you'll say yes to lots of things, and they'll say, oh, my gosh, I don't have the time for that, energy for that, or, this is not the season of that for me. And so there's a power of no or not yet or not now or not ever. And it doesn't. It doesn't make you, you know, now the bad person. It just means that you are, you know, when you're in an airplane, they say, put your mask on first. For that reason, you become a liability. If you burn out and drop now, you're not going to be able to help anybody or yourself. And so it doesn't mean that, you know, you do what you can when you can, but as a human being, you're going to have a finite amount of resources and time and energy. And you do owe it to yourself to sometimes say, this is not a today thing.

I like that. Owe it to yourself. Because I think that we should all think about ourselves from that perspective on a regular basis. That we mean something, we count, and that we as individuals count, that we should respect ourselves, our mind, our body and our soul. So, yeah, I know you talk about a lot of. I mean, you talk. Let's talk about hosting Deeper Grooves. I know you hosted both as a podcast and on 88.5 FM. The podcast gives you kind of a platform to share ideas. How's that shaped your perspective on culture and creativity and where you stand in this life today, especially from a musician's perspective, a creative perspective, and as a human being. That's a deep question, isn't it?

No, it is. And that's why we go deep. Yeah, I just wanted to, like the Actors Studio. I wanted to interview musicians and find out their journey, but also, just how did you do it? Like people who have won Grammys, wow, that's like the pinnacle of success. How do you do that? And everybody's journey was different, but at the end of the day, I think most people said, I just want people to see I was a good person and I really tried and I really took it the distance. And if you look at any musician worth their salt, you'll see that they're practicing and doing something and pushing the envelope up till death, essentially, because they really believe they can constantly improve and they know that they're going to leave behind this legacy of music. And catalog and things they've done that the future generations will be able to listen to and understand and grow into over time. But people do it because they love it. People do it because they're passionate. They do it because they would essentially do it for free, because they have to get the music out of them or they'll go crazy, essentially. And so being a musician, two musicians doing it on a peer level really allowed me to show that, you know, there are people who won Grammys and people who want nothing but. But they're all, like, on this wavelength and vibration of trying to. To do the best they can with what they have. And I've seen people who have made amazing music in their bedroom with very little equipment, and people who have been at the top, you know, studios where the Beatles record or whatever, and, you know, everything in between. But ultimately, it's like real musicians respect all musicians of any level and caliber. I was just at a concert last night for a youth orchestra, and, you know, I was hearing a lot of screechy violins or whatever, but it's like those are the building blocks of success. Those are the kids that are going to come up and carry on this legacy of music that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years. And we want more of that. We want it to be able to continue. And it is, you know, arts programs and stuff in school get cut. So we really want to have these free resources, the library and other ways of getting content out to the generation. Because, you know, I thought that now with AI, kids would want to utilize that. But someone said it very well. They said, why would you make AI to create. I want AI to go work so I could create. And so it's true. People still have a part of them that wants to create. I even meet younger kids now. They're like, I don't like AI. I want to make my own painting. I want to do my own music. And I think that's great. I think it's a beautiful thing that we still have a hunger inside us to be like, I want to put my stamp and my idea, my X Factor and my snowflake DNA out into the zeitgeist, into the lexicon of what is to come. And I think, you know, if we didn't have that, now that we don't have as many gatekeepers with the record label and stuff, we democratize a lot of things so that YouTube and Spotify, you know, for good or bad, people can just log into stuff and get it and pull it down and listen to it. But I do think that there is, you know, the old school ways of having to actually physically go to a concert or physically go to a record store and support those shops is still important because I think sometimes if you go and spend your own money and dollars and support, you invest in a different way. And I think that's why I tell people, you know, you can either spend your time or invest your time. If you invest your time, then you have an roi. You have something to look back to and be like, okay, that was time well spent. If you just spend the time, you know, it's just like a dribble account where like, things are going everywhere. You don't, you're not tracking it, you don't know if it was good or not. But I think, you know, there's a mixture of both. There's just so much noise, there's so much distraction. I think that's one of the hardest things for people in the next generations is to realize that, like, your attention is jockeyed by so many things. Waking up in the morning, looking outside, you see so many billboards, so many marketing messages, so many apps that are pinging you notifications, social media, etc. And so it really takes a strong person to say, okay, I need to kind of unplug from the matrix, listen to the choir inner voice inside me, because that's going to be what really drives you or really motivates you. We know that intrinsic motivation is the strongest of all. And so, yeah, you're going to have a lot of people who kind of, for lack of a better word, become sheep, you know, because it's easier to follow and float than to kind of, you know, pave your own way. The, the coolest paths are the ones that you're going to have to get a shovel and dig and, and forge it. Then people can follow you.

And I think, unfortunately, with the today's, like you say, instant, everybody wants instant gratification. Everybody's looking for instant. Whatever they're looking for, it has to be instantaneous. Whether it's the news or whether it's music or whether it's latest trends or whether anything in cultural society and culture, we want it instantaneously now because they've grown up this way, where I remember having to race through work to try to get done in time to get home to watch something on TV that we were watching, a show where we didn't have the ability to even record the show. So it was like you either get done and you get done in time to go See it or you miss out and everybody's talking about it tomorrow, and you don't get to talk about it nowadays. It is such a. Even with podcasting, you and I both know you have, like, 10 seconds to catch somebody's attention. If not, then they swipe and they move and they swipe and they go on, and they go on. How do you think from a. From an influencer perspective? I think in culture, society, and culture, we have, and I say we as a whole have created an environment for influence to try to jump into. I want to be an influencer. I want to be an influencer. I want to be an influencer. But I find, at least in some of my conversations, that that want to be an influencer doesn't necessarily come from a creative perspective. It comes from a monetary perspective. How do you think we. We should try to, I guess, separate that or. Or let people know that you could be an influencer from a creative perspective?

Yeah, I think that's a great way of thinking about it. So, yeah, I mean, the term gets used a lot. You see, people actually put that at their title, I'm an influencer. And you might. You might have a lot of fans, you may have a lot of followers, but ideally, as an artist or just anyone being a kind of spokesperson, it's like one you have to live. You have to live a life where you have experience. So if you have done nothing except, you know, being influential, to be influential, but you have nothing to say and nothing to talk about, then I think that's problematic. I think that's. That's, you know, we praise the youth and we should applaud the effort. But ultimately, I want to see a lifetime of experience. If you are giving relationship advice and you have not been married for decades, I don't want to hear, you know, I don't need. I don't want theories. I don't want, you know, what could happen. I want tactical. I've lived it. I don't. I don't like the way she squeezes the toothpaste. I don't like the way she rolls the toilet paper. But I've learned to deal with. That's the real thing, you know, because, you know, when you've had aging parents and people who have gone through illnesses, cancer, disabilities, that's the staying power. Right? And you don't see, you know, with relationships, that type of commitment, you know, you had to apprentice years ago, if you wanted to be a blacksmith. You worked under a person, they died, you took over the business. That took 20 years you didn't say, man, let me be an influencer, tell you about being a blacksmith. I never smited a sword, never lit a fire, nothing that would not have worked. And so we need more of when you were talking about like the instantaneous gratification. Well, we need to understand nature, right? You plant a seed, you don't pick up the tomato right the next moment. You know, it takes time having to drive home and watch that show it built delayed gratification as the model. So people who are able to, to believe in delayed gratification, they have the staying power, they have the stick to it of this because perseverance, real perseverance, is pushing past the point where the feeling has left you. Like if you, you said you were in a wheelchair for years. To be able to before you're in a wheelchair and then still get up and do that, that's a perseverance. You know, the first, you know, Edison, 10,000 experiments, someone quit after one or 10 or 100, you know, you're not going to make it because there's no way you want to be just getting head against the wall day after day after day. But the Wright brothers are getting a man on the moon or any of those impossible tasks, they happen from someone who's like, you know what? We're going to do it and we're going to do it until it's done. And there's this thing where like George Washington, someone there at the Delaware, and they're just like, burn the boat. If you burn all the boats, there's no going back. You're going to have to fight it out and make it to the other side. There is no back. Nintendo Mario Brothers, the very first one, there is no back. You can only go forward. The castle is over there, so is the princess, and keep it moving. And so perseverance really allows you to stick to it when you've built delayed gratification. And sadly, it's something that now you have to choose to cultivate because society does not champion any way. It's like, have it your way, have it now. Yeah, yeah.

Unfortunately, that's unfortunate, in my opinion. It's very unfortunate. I think that, you know, we need to kind of respect the process as well, especially from a creative perspective. How do you think culture awareness shaped the way you connect with your audience and your teams across music, tech and broadcasting? I mean, it's allowed me. Look, as a police officer, I love my job. I really, I was a good cop. I was a sergeant. I had a team of guys I Ran DUI task force. I was an investigative officer. I was a traffic cop. Okay. I mean, I ran the gamut. I protected. I was on protection details for two presidents of the United States and the Prime Minister of Japan. I've caught two of America's most wanted.

Wow.

I loved my career. I loved being a cop. It was a great thing. I used to walkabouts. I'd park my car and I'd walk the neighborhood. I'd walk. Walk the shops downtown, walk in and talk to people. Sit down on a bench, talk to people walking by, see how their day was going. Community policing type atmosphere. I love doing that. Okay. I had to redefine my purpose and change my perspective on life from those. The perseverance you're talking about. If I hadn't learned what I learned as a cop, to persevere, to push through, to not be afraid, to stand tall, I may not be out of that wheelchair when I had done. And I think that's a testament to perseverance with regard to anybody that's faced with any kind of an obstacle or something in their way. So I kind of got off track there with the whole question. But the. I think from a society and culture perspective, it allowed me the opportunity to have conversations with people all over the world that I never would have had as a police officer in the city. I had conversations, you know what I mean? But not like this. So, you know, how does that work for you?

No. Yeah. I mean, I believe the technology has allowed us to be able to reach out to the whole world. I've had remixes and worked with engineers that are in completely different geographic locations that I never met, and albums that were made completely with bands that I never saw because we were able to. To do that. And that's why I tell people that you should embrace the technology. Like people who are like, oh, I don't like AI. I don't want to embrace. I mean, use it as a tool. Because all the tools are amoral, right? They're not good, they're not bad. They wouldn't. You make them to be. And I. The same way I tell people, you know, if I pick up a rock and I use it to make food and. And help people, that's great. If I use it and I. To kill someone, then the rock hasn't done it. It was the person behind it, the intent behind it. So I think we can definitely tell that all industries who don't embrace the technology, they end up dying. You know, there's a reason that Blockbuster could have been Netflix, but they didn't want to do that. The record companies could have created Apple Music and Spotify, but they didn't. Kodak in the 70s had a digital camera. They said, no, we are in film. They're no longer around as much, you know, so all those things just allow you to understand, like you can be in the dark and you can light a match or curse the darkness. The people who end up embracing the technology, embracing the social media to be the early adopters and building the traction there, they do move the needle forward. But ultimately, I think you still, I think you have that integration or balance that, you know, analog and digital work together. I think as a musician for sure, you should be working on your craft. You should be working on your craft offline in a sandbox where people don't see you because that takes time. You don't pick up an instrument day one, and you're just like wildly proficient. Even if you're a savant, you still need the life experience to be able to have something to say. That's why my first album in 2013 is called who the Funk Is Cliff Beach. It was really me asking and answering, who am I as an artist? I had done many years of music and conservatory and playing, but who am I and what do I want to say? And what do I want the world to remember that one more thing before we go. What do I want my legacy to be? And that's why I asked every musician on deeper groups, what do you want your legacy to be? Because when you zoom out, you think about the footnote of the annals of history. What is going to be left behind, Very small, you know, what kind of impact do you want to do? And so I think the more people that you help, you know, I think you being a police officer is a great thing and making those pivots, I think you've learned that even seeing the worst of humanity, you must believe in the goodness of humanity because you wouldn't do it otherwise. And so not only to be a good person, but still to look out into your community, walk that beat and say, you know what? I believe people are inherently good. And most of the people around here do mean as well. And I'm just here to police, you know, the ones that maybe get off track. But. But I think as we reform that system, obviously real rehab, rehabilitation, really getting into the human psyche of like, if we had more people self governing, if we had more people who had self awareness, if we had more resources to help people get actual education and learn to think for Themselves and have more passion, purpose filled lives, then yeah, I think we'd have less recidivism and less crime and stuff like that. And they already show that. They show. And societies that treat even their criminals very humane, they end up having less recidivism. So I think ultimately man wants to, and I mean man, mankind, women, everyone in between. I think they, you know, they want to self actualize, they want to climb and sometimes they just don't know how. And you know, when you look at the game, shoots and ladders, some people, you know, have immediate trajectory, some people, you know, they struggle a long time, but whatever moves you up the board is, is the main thing. You know, some people get it very quickly, some people don't. You know, some people are faster, some people are prettier, some people are skinnier, whatever it is, but it doesn't mean that whatever you're kind of the card that you're dealt. You can't make the best of what you can do. And ultimately you, you owe it to yourself. You owe it to yourself to do it because you will do it differently than any other person because we're all unique and we need, we need you to do it when it cultivates in you. That's what people forget, is that it's not about winning the award, it's about who you become by the doing. The side hustle and flow is the doing and the being and how they relate to each other.

Which is brilliant. It's brilliant. The whole aspect of what you just spoke about. I think that we as human beings should recognize that we are who we are and we should be proud of who we are no matter what. You should be proud of who you are because you are part of humanity from life in general and that you should embrace that and kind of move that forward. You yourself, I know we're running short on time here, so I do want to touch upon a couple of things in regard to what you just said, actually. You have personal journey of reversing type 2 diabetes, you lost £50 and you have long term sobriety. And you know, from a personal perspective, I want to say congratulations and kudos for achieving those, especially the long term sobriety. I'm a group of two alcoholic parents and there's a long history of alcohol within my family and I know that it's a very hard thing to do and it is also a very admirable thing when you choose long term sobriety. So first and foremost, well done on those. You don't know me up until like now, but I'm proud of you for what you've achieved in that regard. How is that? How has those influenced your creativity and your productivity in regard to those kind of achievements and where you stand?

It's so funny. I just had a jazz gig this last weekend, and I have, have been working with these two musicians for years. So people knew me. You know, it's like A, D, B, C, you know, before drinking, after drinking. And so my Trombonis is my horn arranger. He was like, I remember playing a gig maybe 15 years ago. He was like, you just had a.

Song that wouldn't end.

Like, somehow we just kept losing it. I could not land that plane because I was drinking so much. Like, I just had no awareness. Like we had started it, we had ended it where we were. And so musically for me, especially vocally, but even with keyboards and other stuff, I just feel like I'm like laser focused sharp because I have full awareness of exactly what's happening. Good, bad, ugly, everything between. Like, I, I don't have this kind of hazy view of what's happening. I know exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it. And, and that mental clarity has been amazing on the bandstand. But also I can definitely see like, the people working with me, they respect what I've done in that regard, but also they, you know, they'll follow a leader into anywhere knowing that this person clearly has the vision and will carry it through. And, and like I said, it doesn't mean that I, you know, doing no drinking years, I still was productive and got things done. But, you know, I realized that like, this was no longer serving me. And, and no one, no one told me this was the choice to make. I made it for myself. Because, yes, I had some family history of it, but it was really, for me, all about transcendence. You know, once they told me that I had health issues, it was kind of understood. They were like, you know, as they told you, it's like, well, you just live with it now. This is your new normal. And I was like, I don't know if that's true. There's got to be something that you can do. Because what I didn't want, especially with diabetes and stuff like that, I've had have family members who had their limbs cut off and things like that and went blind. And I didn't want it to come. I did not want to be like, well, grandpa had it, so this is just my fate and I'll just, I'll just eat cake and and wait for them to cut my foot off. I was like, no, no, there has to be a better way. There has to be other options. Doesn't mean that I knew. I mean, I felt like it could be reversible, but it was like, even if it was only somewhat reverse, first of all, it's like still what you're doing to your body and that you only get one body, and it's not disembodied. You know, mind, body, soul, they are integrated together. It's not like one works on the other. Like they. They're. They're in tandem. So I just wanted people to realize, especially of different ethnicities and different ages, that you can still make better choices with new information and do something else. And, yeah, I don't. I will also say this. Learning new coping skills and having to feel your feelings as a musician who feels a lot, it's probably one of the hardest things to do. Like, there's a reason that you go to numb, because it's hard to have to be like, what do I do with these feelings? But. But to be able to get that out musically. Luckily I had outlets. And so doing the podcast during the radio show, doing books, books, different mediums, scripts, as we talked about, whatever it is, it allows you, doesn't mean that they're all going to become blockbusters or be amazing. They may just never get anywhere. But the point of, like, writing it out, regurgitating it out allows you. And even, even now, with talk therapy and stuff going to people, talking about your feelings, communicating is very difficult. You know, people are like, well, why am I afraid to show you who I am? I really am. That's all I got. That's all I have. If you reject that, then that's whatever, but. But that's okay. Like, all you got is all you got, and that's fine. And that's enough. There's this societal problem that we have of. It makes you feel like you're not enough. Like, you don't have to do anything. You know, you don't have to. You don't have to be the best of the best in every aspect of everything. And you won't be, but it's okay. Just being a human being and being on this rock together, sharing this experience together is fine. And, you know, people do what they do to get through the night. And numbing can help you, but it's a band aid, right? It will not get to the. The bottom of what is bothering you. And at some point in life, either you implode or Explode or something if you don't get to the root of it. And even though feeling the feelings in the short term kind of sucks, and the long term, you're better off for it because you've now learned how to effectively communicate your feelings and to. To have boundaries and to safeguard yourself and. And to do other things and realize, like, okay, there are things that I need to let go. There are things that did or didn't happen, but ultimately, I cannot be a victim and a victor. I have to choose my heart. What do I want to be? And so sobriety and 12 step and all that stuff, and also the emotional relationship to food. I didn't realize growing up that when I went through something difficult, had a bad day in school, and someone's like, oh, have a cookie, have a Twinkie, have this. That it ingrained in me this Pavlovian dog response that I could emotionally eat when I felt bad or. And drinking and emotional eating to me were from the same.

Same thing.

The same box.

Yep, same thing. It sounds like you did. And kudos again for that. My wife is five and a half years sober now, which we're very, very proud of her for.

Very proud.

How did. It sounds to me like you took your failures and your setbacks and it kind of shaped your resilience and your outlook today, which obviously what you just spoke about, it gave you a very positive approach to life and allows you to enjoy your creative aspects in such a way that you can share them freely, understanding that each step is a process. Each. Each step is a learning step. And your successes and your failures are nothing but experiences that we can carry forward in life.

Yeah. And you know what I realized is that most people are rooting for you. Yeah, there's trolls and bad people, but for the most part, people, like, people want to see that. And, and you don't get, like, this judgment that you think you're going to get by putting it out there. It actually humanizes you and makes people feel more connected to you because they know that you're a very transparent person and that you do have to get to a point where you're like, well, you know what? It is what it is. And I just don't care what people think because I. I can't erase my mistakes. I can't pretend that they didn't happen and I can't cover them up because there's no learning opportunity there. Like, you know, if Edison didn't learn in all those experiments to eventually get there, then. Then it would be for not. But you know, it's like, you want to be able to. To learn and. And unfortunately, you know, pain is one of the best teachers, but it's a catalyst to help you move if you can get past the point of complaining, right? So Les Brown, he has great analogy where there's this dog sitting on the nail, and he goes by this old man. He's like, your dog just keeps yelping and yelping and yelping. What's up with the dog? He was like, he's sitting on a nail. He's like, well, why doesn't he, you know, do anything? And they're like, it only hurts him enough to complain, but not enough to get up and do anything about it. And that's most of life. Most of people are like, you know, you have to. You have to put yourself to the pain. Tony Robbins says, you have to make the pain in your mind so extreme that you want to take immediate, massive action, because you will, but you have to do it immediately, right? Five seconds into whatever it is you want to do. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You have to get up and do it if you want to go work out. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Put the shoes on. You're out the door. Because if you don't, your mind will immediately distract you or give you many reasons not to do it. But you only need one compelling reason that you're going to be better off by doing it. And then just do it and do it when you don't have the feeling. I do not wait for the feeling. There's me. Every record, I have a point where I'm like, why did I take this on? It's too much of a project. I've done enough. You have to push past that point because there's always a point where you're like, this sucks. I don't want to do. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort. I could do anything else. You know, people forget. When I was studying business, we have these things about marginal utility and substitute goods. And you talk about, like, oh, what's the substitute to a Coke water? Like, the substitute to doing something is doing nothing. Like, that's always a good idea. And so you have to be able to realize that, like, there's going to be a point where you're like, why did I do this? But you're like, oh, because I'm gonna be better by doing it. But you. But you gotta push past the feeling. There's going to be some times where you don't feel like Doing it and you have to do it anyway or you're going to be afraid to do something and you're gonna have to do it anyway. That's like most of the time it's like people think that, oh, you're just a fearless person. That's not a human thing. Fear is a natural response. You will be afraid, but you have to do it scared. You have to feel the fear and do it anyway. Because once you push past that point, all the growth happens, you know, outside of your comfort zone.

I agree. It's a choice. You have to make a choice. You can move forward or you can sit back and wallow. Does that mean all my physical reel bills I went through, I've had eight operations through every one of them. That's the message that kept resonating with me was you have to make a choice to make that, take that step forward. You have to make a choice to get up off the bed, you have to make a choice to walk out the door. You have to make a choice whether or not you're going to walk your daughter down the aisle. And that's what motivated me from that perspective. And they kept telling me, you have to make a choice. And your choices, you can either accept and wallow in what you, you can't see me pointing, but wallow in this or you can make a choice and the choice is going to be betterment of you and those around you. And so yeah, it's a perfect thing. This is one more thing before you go. So words of wisdom. How do you want your work, whether in writing music or broadcasting, to inspire the next generation of creatives and entrepreneurs?

I just want people to remember we're all just a kid from somewhere. Most self made millionaires are people who are successful. They came from nothing. Right? We all, we all started as babies. We get slapped on the butt and we have to get out there. And so what I want people to remember is to look at me not because of all the things I did, but just the proof that one person with sheer will energy putting themselves out there can forge a path. And you can do it as well. And you can do it at any age, any gender, any status. But today's the day that you get off. Someday I'll and actually do the thing and you're gonna fail and you're gonna fail fast and forward and all your face, but you're gonna get up again over and over and over again. And you know, I would tell anybody who's trying to recover from alcohol or anything else if you get off the wagon, you get back off on. You get back on immediately. It's not about how many times you fall. It's about how many times you get up. We fall down, but we get back up. And that's how we learn to walk right as babies, we never once think that we can't do it and we just need to carry that childlike curiosity forward through all the things. And you can be creative in any sector of life, any aspect of business or work or industry. Everyone can benefit from a creative mind and remembering that you have limitless potential. And I will leave you with the words of Charles Schultz by way of Snoopy. Do you no one can say you did you wrong.

Brilliant words of wisdom, Cliff. Brilliant words of wisdom. And you, you, Snoopy. My wife's gonna love that. Let's tell people how we can get a hold of you and the the book and your podcast and everything about you and how you can help help them.

Awesome. Well, you can check out the books on we're all fine books are sold. S Hustle and Flow or Shape up my Deeper Groove podcast which is on all streaming platforms as well as Deeper Groove radio Show on the SoCal sound.org you can always reach out to me on social media at Cliff Beach Music or email me cliffside hustle.net and also check out our blog five articles for free every week@flow.net as well. So I look forward to hearing from you. If you need personal coaching or just words of wisdom, feel free to reach out to me. I will always give my best to be able to help you any way I can because teamwork makes the dream work and we're all on this rock together.

Outstanding. And I'll make sure those things are in the show notes as well so anybody can just click it and follow you right to where they need to go. So once again, Cliff, thank you very much for being part of humanity. Thank you for being on the thank show show and thank you for being here.

Thank you Michael, and thank you for all your great work and continued success in everything that you do, everyone you touch, everyone you talk to. We benefit and learn and continue to learn together.

I'm grateful for that. I will move on. I will take those steps for our listeners. Check out the side Hustle and Flow trilogy and follow Cliff's work across music tech and his Deeper Groove platform. That's it for today's journey. If something sparked your curiosity or moved you, share it. Subscribe and stay connected. You can find us on Apple, Spotify or your favorite listening platform and you can head over to YouTube and watch the full episode version. Remember, you're not just listening, you're part of this story. So until next time, keep seeking, keep growing, and never stop asking. Have a great day, have a great week, and thank you for being one more thing before you go Community.

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