DAVID MAURICE SHARP | The Thriving Artist

There's an old cliché about the "starving" artist that may have a basis in reality, but isn’t set in stone! My guest David Maurice Sharp joined me to discuss the tricky financial waters that come with following the artistic path. He's a financial educator that provides valuable advice for performing artists like actors, dancers, lighting gurus, costumers or stagehands on investing, saving and building a diversified and stable financial portfolio. While he writes specifically for artists who have fluctuating, uncertain and sometimes limited streams of income, he promotes an understanding of finances and the investment world that has lessons for anyone starting their financial education.

David was a founding member and initiated the formation of the Thriving Artists Investment Club, a limited partnership established by a small group of artist/friends to educate one another about investing and personal portfolio management. Through that, he also gained greater insight into how the artist can best be educated about their finances and investing. For more than a decade, David has been teaching investment workshops at HB Studio, an acting conservatory in New York City. This has provided him with the invaluable opportunity to hone his ideas for educating artists in regard to their finances, and to enjoy the success experienced by those who have implemented the ideas and techniques that he promotes.

In October 2014, David was named a “money hero” for his work in educating artists about their finances by Money magazine. He is the author of The Thriving Artist: Saving and Investing for Performers, Artists, and the Stage & Film Industries and a contributing author to A Life in Dance: A Practical Guide.

TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS AFTER THIS BRIEF MESSAGE

Portfolio tracker Sharesight tracks your trades, shows your true performance, and saves you time and money at tax time. Get 4 months free at this link.

Disclosure: The links provided are affiliate links. I will be paid a commission if you use this link to make a purchase. You will also usually receive a discount by using these links/coupon codes. I only recommend products and services that I use and trust myself or where I have interviewed and/or met the founders and have assured myself that they’re offering something of value.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Chloe (1s):
Shares For Beginners.

David (3s):
There's also this idea that I can't start investing until I understand everything there is to know about the investing world and what I always tell my artist is look as an actor, you would never say I'm never taking a role until I'm an expert actor and know everything there is to know about an acting, because if you did, you would never take a role, right? Because there's always more to learn. And there's also learning in doing

Phil (25s):
G'day and welcome back to Shares for Beginners, I'm Phil Muscatello. There's a cliche about the starving artist in the garret, creative individuals whose obsessions are sometimes at odds with financial wellbeing. To discuss this I'm joined today by David Maurice Sharp. Hello, David.

David (41s):
Hello, Phil. Great to be here.

Phil (42s):
Yeah. Lovely to meet you. David Maurice Sharp is the author of The Thriving Artist - Saving and Investing for Performers, Artists and the Stage and Film Industries. In 2014, he was named a money hero for his work in financial literacy for artists by Money Magazine, David, currently teachers at HB studio in New York city and frequently does workshops for Entertainment Community Fund, MusiCares Foundation, and the SAG-AFTR Foundation. I'm assuming that screen actors Guild just if we could go through that acronym. That's

David (1m 15s):
Correct. Yep, yep. Yeah. And the American film and television radio artists is the other part of it. Yeah. They just merged not too long ago.

Phil (1m 24s):
So tell us about your career in the arts before you became involved in financial literacy.

David (1m 29s):
Definitely. I moved to New York when I was just 18 to attend New York university. I majored in drama, so had mostly primarily acting background, but while I was there, I started working with choreographers and got very interested in dance. So ended up having career primarily in modern dance, working with really great American choreographers, like Ana Sokolo, Lucinda Childs, Rachel Lampert, Mimi Gerard, because the longevity of a dancer's career tends to be a bit brief. I was very fortunate. I got to dance until I was about 39, which is considered quite old for dancers, but I kind of transitioned then into doing more choreography and behind the scenes film work.

David (2m 11s):
So it was great. I still have some involvement in the arts, even though I'm not actively performing anymore.

Phil (2m 17s):
Do you still re retain any flexibility?

David (2m 19s):
Not like I had, certainly when I was dancing, but you know, it's, it's, I definitely noticed the aches and pains a little more too. You're very aware of your body from dancing that's for sure.

Phil (2m 32s):
So is, is money. This is the money question. Of course, is money more of a problem for creative people than normies.

David (2m 39s):
It is. And I, and I'm glad you used that term because I often in my classes talk about people who are non artists as either ordinary people or regular people. And it's not meant in any way to be, you know, a dis on them. It's, it's just that they have a very different lifestyle. And a lot of artists find themselves working primarily as gig workers, right. And they, and so because of, of that, their income tends to be fluctuating. So that presents its own set of problems, which is quite different than what people who are salaried and are getting some kind of retirement plan through their, the company that they work for for, you know, 30, 40 years. It just creates a very different set of difficulties and ones that, you know, I've found aren't primarily addressed by sort of the standard financial information.

David (3m 26s):
They're more geared towards the regular people.

Phil (3m 28s):
What was it like for you in your own personal financial journey? Was there an awakening for you when you realized you had to get your money shit together?

David (3m 35s):
The moment that I really sort of started finding my way into this other world of, of sort of financial literacy and investing was I was, I had been hired to do a production of Cabaret, the musical Cabaret, and which ran for, I think about 10, 11 weeks. And it was coming to an end and I was suddenly faced with the, you know, typical, okay. I have to find a way to make some money now because what, this is gonna, this gig's gonna end and I'm gonna be onto the next thing. It was still pretty early in my career. And I was struggling with the whole, like, not being a hundred percent sure of where the money was coming from and not liking that, that lack of stability and sort of thinking, I need to find a way to have a more stable lifestyle while I'm still pursuing the thing that I love to do while I can.

David (4m 18s):
So anyway, I was talking to a friend who recommended that I look into doing some temporary work. I ended up the first place they sent me was for an interview with a firm down on Wall Street. And the first question they said was, do you know anything about Wall Street or the stock markets? And I said, no, but I can learn. And of course the resume that they had for the interview was all about, you know, my performing. So the woman then said to me, okay, well, why don't you tell me about cabaret? What was that like, you know, doing cabaret. And we ended up talking about my dance career. So I left the interview thinking, okay, there's not a chance in the world that this is gonna, this is gonna happen. And by the time I got home, the agency called and said, they want you to start like as soon as you can. And, and it ended up that while I was there, I started specializing in an area of their business that they didn't really have anybody else doing.

David (5m 4s):
They gave me complete flexibility in what I did. They offered to hire me. I said, I can't, I've, I've gotta really dance while I can. And they said they would let me work 20 hours a week whenever I could fit it in. So I could go on tour. I could go to classes, I could do whatever I needed to do. And I learned about investing and the stock market and, and to a lesser extent, the bond market while I was there. And it was at that point that I started figuring out, okay, there's a way that we can use this to help with what I'm doing. Now. A lot of the time the focus is always on, okay. We put everything away for retirement. I can use some of that same logic for what I'm doing now, how do I use these assets to sort of help stabilize my income stream and, and my financial wellbeing while I'm still dancing and don't have consistent income.

David (5m 51s):
And then it kind of just took off from there.

Phil (5m 54s):
That's an incredibly fortuitous set of circumstances.

David (5m 58s):
It was. Yeah. But you know, I also, I always tell people cuz they say, oh wow, that was really lucky. And I said, you know, I'm a big believer in grabbing the opportunities when they come to you. Right. I could have just as easily said, I'm not gonna do this or I'm not gonna try to learn. I'm just gonna put in my time and, and go. And I, instead, I really try to say, okay, I have to do this because that's what it, what I need to do in order to keep dancing. So what, how can I mould this to make it work and, and not diminish from our artistic career? So I think it's really important to, for me, it's always been very important. And I think for everybody, it should be to take advantage of the things that come your way and, and not think that just because you're maybe coloring outside the lines, that that's not okay, that you're perfectly fine to do that.

David (6m 46s):
You know? And a lot of times great things come from that

Phil (6m 49s):
And better than waiting tables. Exactly what was the nature of the work

David (6m 52s):
They worked on primarily like annual meetings for corporations, but then they got involved in proxy fights, contested elections, tender offers, things like that. And that's the, the proxy fight area was, was where I started to specialize in because it was very high stakes. A lot of money was involved in it and they just didn't have anybody doing what I did. And interestingly, it came down to a lot of attention to detail, which is exactly what you have in the arts. Right? So, and they were being able to think about how to do things in a different way. And I, you know, if I had a dollar for every time I was in a meeting with them and they said, wow, that's a really creative idea. I was like, no kidding. That's what we're trained to do in the arts.

David (7m 33s):
You know, it really assisted me in finding my niche there and then becoming invaluable to them so that they had to then give me what I wanted.

Phil (7m 41s):
Choreographing a proxy fight.

David (7m 43s):
Exactly. Basically

Phil (7m 44s):
Just for listeners who don't understand what a proxy fight is. This is to do with the voting intentions of major shareholders in corporations, it will affect board decisions. Is that correct?

David (7m 53s):
Essentially with a proxy fight, it's it, you know, companies every year publicly traded companies have to have an annual meeting where they like the board of directors and certain other pieces of business. If there's a, a rival group of people that want to take control of a company, they can put their slate of nominees for the board up for election. And then the shareholders have to vote between the different slates. And depending on whichever group of directors get elected that's, who is in control of the company. So you could represent either the company and try to prevent dissident board members from taking their seat, or you could work for the dissidents and, and try to get their board members seated so that they can basically take over the company.

David (8m 34s):
In that way.

Phil (8m 34s):
I was interested to hear in another interview that you were on in a podcast, and you were talking about that you realized that many creative people considered money going into investments was kind of like an abyss that they didn't understand. Can you explain that thought for me please?

David (8m 53s):
Sure. Yeah. I, I, I found it in a lot of the classes that I teach that when students come into the class, they usually have this deer in the headlights look because it's something that we're not, you know, financial literacy, as you know, is not something that's really emphasized or taught. And there's this big fear of what it actually is and what it means to invest. I always liken it to this idea of throwing money into this dark abyss and just sort of keeping fingers crossed that something's gonna come back out of it. At some point, I like to tell people, instead of doing that, let's try to change the way we think about this, right? And let's start thinking of our investments as being our employees and they're gonna be working for us instead of like this scary, other that we don't really know what it is.

David (9m 39s):
They work for us. We don't have to listen to them complain. We don't have to feed them. They're just sort of chugging away 24 7. And in that way, you could sort of reduce the fear of what you're doing and it can incentivize you to sort of jump in and actually give it a try.

Phil (9m 59s):
Are there any other misconceptions that people arrive at your workshops with?

David (10m 4s):
A lot of them think I have to have a lot of money before I can start doing any of this. So there's no point to really even trying before I have that, nothing, especially these days, nothing could be further from the truth. And year after year, it's becoming increasingly easy to get involved in investing with very, very small amounts of money. And the great thing about doing that is number one, you create a web of investments and a wellbeing platform for yourself that will continue to build. And then when you do have an influx of cash, you know exactly what to do with it, right? Another reason is that you want to get your investments starting to work for you sooner rather than later.

David (10m 45s):
And importantly, there's also this idea that I can't start investing until I understand everything there is to know about the investing world. And what I always tell my artist is, look as an actor, you would never say I'm never taking a role until I'm an expert actor and know everything there is to know about acting. Because if you did, you would never take a role, right? Because there's always more to learn. And there's also learning in doing so by finding these ways of getting involved in investing in assets with very small amounts of money, you create the educational environment for yourself as well, so that you can learn so that you then are more confident in the next choices that you make. Those are what I call sort of the light bulb moments with the students, where they go, oh, wait a minute.

David (11m 28s):
I can actually do this. And it does actually make sense. And it's not something that I'm not gonna be able to understand.

Phil (11m 34s):
I've seen parallel situations because I'm dealing with a lot of marketing people in the finance industry. And they always tell me that they've, they've come into the industry. They had no idea about finance, but then they, they suddenly start learning about it and go, oh, it really isn't that hard.

David (11m 49s):
It's not, but it is like kind of learning another language, right? Where, and you, you just have to, if you know that, and you say, you know, you wouldn't expect to sit down and learn German after one lesson and be able to speak it fluently, right? Or some other language you need to, it's something that you just have to keep familiarizing yourself with the terminology and the ideas of it. But it's certainly nothing that is beyond the ability of anyone to learn. You just have to be given the pathway into it.

Phil (12m 15s):
So how can people start investing with small amounts of money?

David (12m 18s):
There's a lot of funds now, you know, it used to be that they had a, a large amount of money that you needed to do in order to get into a mutual mutual funds are probably one of the simplest ways to start getting investing. And just for clarity, a mutual fund is a collection of assets. I like to talk about it as a basket of assets that a financial overseer financial manager puts a lot of different things into, and you buy a piece of the basket. So you get exposure to everything that's in that basket of assets, which gives you instant diversification, which is great, cuz that reduces the risk that you're taking. Cuz you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. There are a lot of mutual funds now where you can get start buying shares. So the mutual fund for as little as a dollar at a time.

David (13m 1s):
So there it's very inexpensive to get involved in that. Exchange traded funds are another type of asset, similar to mutual funds in that it's a collection of assets that you're buying a piece of exchange traded funds or ETFs trade on the market, more like shares of stock, but where it used to be that you had to buy a number of shares and usually a bigger number because they charge fees for it. Most of the fees have gone away, especially for ETFs. So you can buy as little as one share at a time. A lot of the brokers are now also allowing you to buy fractional share. So you could put $5 into an ETF and just buy a fractional piece of the ETF or a fractional piece of a share.

David (13m 45s):
So there are a lot of options for getting into investing. There are also things called robo advisors, which set up funds where they, someone else is actually picking the portfolio for you based on some questions that you answer to determine how much risk you can take. And a lot of those you can just put in a little bit of money, like five, $10 a month, and then they'll do all the investing for you. We're very fortunate right now to have a lot of ways of getting exposure to different kinds of investment assets using as little as a dollar or, or $5 or $10.

Phil (14m 18s):
Can you share a, a case study of a student and the process that they went through?

David (14m 23s):
I can, yeah, I have, I, I obviously get a lot of range of, of people and certainly the earlier they start to better, but I did have one student who had had a very successful career and was continuing to have a successful career as a soap opera actress and doing some teaching, et cetera, cetera, but was in her late sixties and came to me and, and took some of my classes and then had a private consult with me and, and was like, I don't have really any money saved or any, anything. I think she had some IRAs that were invested in like certificates or deposit. It wasn't even in, in any kind of other asset, we worked to set up some mutual funds that she could get into to sort of establish some income producing assets for her, just to help supplement income kind of migrate out of these cash vehicles in these retirements so that you were getting more aggressive stocks and bonds and everything else.

David (15m 18s):
And she's now in her early seventies. So it's only been a few years, refers to herself as the mogul because she's obsessed with what she's doing. She's now researching individual stocks to buy pieces of and, and has done incredibly well for herself and can feel the security of knowing that she's created and continues to create this financial wellness plan. And every time she laments and says, oh, I wish I had done this, you know, 30 years ago when I was starting out. My response is always, yeah, would it, it would've been great, but you didn't. And you did it when you did and look at how well that served you.

David (15m 59s):
So don't spend a lot of time beating yourself up about what you didn't do in the past, but just look towards the future and what you're doing.

Phil (16m 7s):
And, and it's never too late to start then. Obviously

David (16m 10s):
It's never too late to start. It's never too late to start. And it's great to see that. It's great to see that at any age, there are, there are steps that you can take to build your financial wellness plan easily and affordably, without it being terrifying and the security and the confidence that it gives you, the empowerment that it gives you.

Phil (16m 32s):
Some artists have the opposite problem where they suddenly have a large amount of money. It's the same with athletes. I've talked to former athletes who are now in the financial space, very similar to this as well. And some people just blow it straight away. Are you seeing this as well with, with artists that suddenly that they come into great deals of money, but don't how to hang onto it.

David (16m 54s):
I do. Yeah. And that's, that kind of speaks to the whole heart of the feast or famine mentality, right? When you're, you're not working very much, you're, you're subsisting on what little you you are making. And when you suddenly get a huge influx, you spend it all because you think it's never going to end. And, and, and

Phil (17m 11s):
Artists, artists tend to be very friendly people and have got lots of poor friends as well. And they wanna go and take everyone out and shout them to restaurants and bars as well.

David (17m 20s):
Exactly, exactly. And, and celebrate the fact and, and, and you get, you know, you get tired of the sort of frugal I have to live on salty crackers mentality all the time. And so when you do have money coming in, it is nice to blow it. I'm not one of those scrooges that tells them don't ever spend a lot of money because I don't think, you know, as artists, you need to, to fill the creative well, right? So you do need to enjoy your life, but you do also have to be practical about it. What I've found is that once they start to build this sort of financial wellness plan with even the small amounts of money that they do, when they have a huge influx of money, like they get a film project or they get a TV series that they shoot for a while, or they're on Broadway for a, you know, a, a period of time, they don't tend to blow as much because they have things already in place.

David (18m 9s):
And they realize how valuable it is because they've been able to see the growth of these investments, even with small amounts. So they say, oh, well, okay. Yeah. I wanna go out to eat and I wanna take my friends out for this, but I'm gonna make sure that I allocate money towards there too, because I can see how much it's gonna help me in the long run. So again, I think the education by doing really helps get you away from that mentality a little bit. I also usually tell them, you know, try to try to figure out what I call your monthly, not, which is how much it takes to get you through any given month and pay yourself a paycheck of that amount of money. So regardless of whether you're making a lot of money or a small amount of money, you kind of trick yourself into being a salaried employee of yourself, right?

David (18m 56s):
So you're paying in and then you can treat yourself a little bit when you have that extra influx, but you really get into the habit of, this is how much money I need to spend every month. And if I can make more great, I can bank it. If I make less, I can borrow from what I've banked. So that, that kind of helps get away from that mentality as

Phil (19m 13s):
Well. Do you find artists have to be, how do they come to you? Are they, are they forced into it to send someone tell them that they should go and see you? Or it's purely voluntary? I'm assuming.

David (19m 24s):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them find their way to me through the, the classes that I do through community or entertainment, community fund, or HB studio, a lot of them realize that they need to, they need to address this. They're just fearful of doing it. A lot of the education that's out there also isn't geared towards artists. So it's not particularly helpful for them to go into because then, you know, what you're faced with is you have to first understand what they're talking about with just the financial literacy part of it. And then you have to figure out how to apply it to what you're doing. And they realize that I get it, cuz I've lived the life of an artist. I know what that's like. And, and I, you know, can help sort of bridge that gap for them.

David (20m 6s):
It was very interesting during the pandemic because obviously artists were, were sort of doubly hit because they most, most of the sources of creative work that they were doing shut down, but also their sort of subsistence jobs of waiting or, you know, doing things like that shut down or, or were depleted. So they were hit very hard. My expectation was that they were gonna be a lot of artists sort of sitting back and sort of, you know, whingeing about, oh, poor me, poor me. My classes exploded in, in attendance because they were like, well, as long as we can't really do anything, we might as well start education, educating ourselves on what to do when we can actually start working again.

David (20m 48s):
So I was very proud of the community for that, that they really took that time to educate themselves and, and say, okay, I have no excuses now that I don't have time, I can sit down and I can sort of figure out how this could,

Phil (21m 1s):
That's a real can-do attitude. And presumably if they started investing, you know, in early to mid 2020, they've done reasonably well as well.

David (21m 10s):
Exactly, exactly. It was a great time to jump into the market again, even with small amounts of money because the market was so low at that time,

Phil (21m 17s):
These lessons are obviously for ordinary people as well, not just for creative people. How would you suggest that people narrow down the choices as they approach their investments?

David (21m 29s):
I always find people can get very overwhelmed very easily because there's such a wide variety of things out there. Right? I like to sort of start narrowing the choices down by having people ask some, some very basic questions and then you just kind of keep narrowing the field down. So we start with, look at your financial wellbeing plan as having two silos. You have your later life or your retirement silo, and then you have your non-retirement, your regular, which one of those do you wanna think about what you should be investing in first? That's your first question. Once you know that start thinking about what co what do I want this particular investment to do, right?

David (22m 9s):
Do I want to have an investment that's generated income that I can potentially use? It's kind of like the goose that lays the golden egg. You know, you don't have to kill the goose to take the eggs that's investing for income, or you're investing for capital gains where you're just hoping that the asset will grow. But the only way you can take value out of it is to actually sell the asset. Then start thinking about how much risk you wanna take. Are you someone who likes to jump into the deep end of the pool? Or are you someone like me who takes a half an hour to wait into the water because you're freezing and you can't stand to just jump in. If you're, if you're more of a risk taker, you might wanna lean more towards stock type investments.

David (22m 52s):
If you are more, the I'm gonna take a half an hour to wait into the pool person. You might wanna look more towards bonds as you start building your portfolio and adding pieces to it. Then you're gonna start looking for holes and looking for exposure to other places. I also like to give the image of, you know, when you're thinking about your financial wellness plan, think of it as a big mosaic, and you're putting different pieces of tile in at different times, everyone's gonna have a different piece of tile that they need to put in at any given time artists in particular don't fit into the formulas that the financial advisors use for the ordinary people.

David (23m 32s):
Even to be honest, I don't think the ordinary people always fit into those formulas either, but I think artists really, really don't. So it's, it's up to you to sort of look at your own circumstances and think about what is the next best thing for me at this moment. And then just add that one little piece to the puzzle and then go back later and, and, and figure out the next one that you need to add as well. So by narrowing it down, you kind of get away from being feeling overwhelmed. And you also don't, you don't have to do everything at once. Just pick one thing to do to get you started again. You're gonna learn from doing that. And then you can always supplement it.

Phil (24m 9s):
Do you ever find that creative people let their creativity run wild when they start investing as

David (24m 14s):
Well? They can. Yes. There's always that danger. If they're like, I wanna go, you know, I, I only wanna do individual stocks and I'm not opposed to investing in individual stocks, but I would say, look, it, it can be very helpful to build a sort of boring core portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs that, that nobody ever said got really excited telling their friends, Hey, I own shares of X, Y, Z, large cap stock fund. You know, whereas if you say I have shares of McDonald's or I have shares of Coca-Cola there's, there's, it's much more exciting, but this, the, the kind of boring core things are what can allow you to, to do some of the more exciting creative things.

David (24m 55s):
Marijuana stocks are big right now. I always in literally every class I get asked about buying marijuana stocks here, or cryptocurrency is the other thing, which is an incredibly high risk peripheral investment. Or I don't even know if I would use the term investment, but it's a peripheral kind of asset. So I always say, you know, try to get the, the, the kind of boring under your belt. You know, like as a dancer, I had to do tondus and PAs all the time. And they were certainly not the most stimulating things to do. So try to yes. Express your creativity, but, but support it with the, the sort of boring core stuff.

Phil (25m 32s):
I, I get a feeling that the traditional financial services industry, you, you alluded to this a moment ago are starting to look at the niches they're nicheing down into different areas because they realize that the old model of, I guess, was glossy brochures with happy retirees running down the beach is not the answer anymore. That they've gotta be, they themselves have gotta become more creative in how they reach out to people. Are you finding that

David (25m 57s):
I am and I'm. And they also have, you know, to the point of that, it's easier to get in with smaller amounts of investing. They're realizing that, whereas before they might have targeted only high net worth individuals, there are advantages now to having a lot of clients that maybe aren't as high net worth, because that as an aggregate can also be a, a group that they're interested in supporting. The one sort of negative element of that, that I find is that in order to make it efficient for them, they tend to be automated and tend to be formulaic. And that doesn't always work. So what I usually say to people is, look, there's nothing wrong with going with a financial institution or a financial advisor, but understand that, that you are gonna have to be participatory in it.

David (26m 46s):
You can't just sit back and say, just do your thing, because especially for people in the arts or people who are freelance or people who don't fit into that box, you have to help them figure out what you need for your lifestyle. They don't understand it and their formula doesn't understand it. So try to be as participatory in it as you can, because there are, there is a lot of the computerization of everything, which doesn't speak to our individuality at all.

Phil (27m 13s):
I'm kind of imagining that these workshops are a lot of fun as well. Is that the case? They, they are, I mean, we're talking big personalities here.

David (27m 22s):
Yeah. I like to think of them as being really fun. Yes. Like I said, a lot of times when they begin, especially people that are, haven't been in any of my workshops before, there's this sort of deer in the headlight, I'm about to have a root canal without anesthesia kind of look on people's face. And then as it goes along, they start it, they realize, and I try to incorporate humor into it too, because I think that humor is an important tool for learning. Right? You have to kind of laugh at, we have to laugh at ourselves and we have to laugh at the situations and it can be fun, you know, it should be fun, but yes, then you start to hear the stories of what these people are doing and, and, and how they relate to it. And it's really fascinating how, how much fun it can be.

David (28m 5s):
I had one student who years and years ago was in some classes and then came back many years later. And she worked in production on for like Bloomberg television, just, you know, on the floor. I, I forget exactly what her job was. She was like an assistant stage manager or something like that assistant director. And she sort of overheard one of the cameramen one day talking about a stock that he was interested in or something. And she happened to go talk to him. And pretty soon they had a group of people and this crew comparing investments and talking about strategies and, and they, they, they created this whole dynamic, which was fantastic.

David (28m 46s):
So I always tell people, look, don't be afraid to talk to your peers about it. We have, there's this element of shame about financial information. You know, we're not supposed to talk about investing. We're not supposed to talk about finances. And I think that's rubbish. I mean, I think we should talk about it because, and, and, and embrace the fun of, of doing it and, and how empowered it can make you. And the more you share, the more ideas you get, and the more that you can kind of bring everybody into going along for the ride with

Phil (29m 17s):
You. Yes. Because I did imply that we're only talking about actors and musicians and those kind of creative people, but then there's all of the production people as well, that are in a very similar situation. They are creative people, but for them, it's a gig economy as well.

David (29m 31s):
Exactly, exactly. And you know, the customer, the costume people, the props people, I, I have spoken to the musicians unions to talk to them, cuz that's a whole different lifestyle as well, fine arts people, the, the painters and the crafts people out there. We're definitely seeing a shift in the work environment into more and more freelance type work, even in what would be considered traditional sort of ordinary jobs. You're starting to see more freelance work and more gig opportunities because people, I think wanna have more control over what they do. They don't want a company saying, okay, we, we own you for the next 40 years or whatever.

David (30m 14s):
That's just not the, the way. And it's, we're definitely shifting to that. So people do have to start thinking about how can I make that work and feel comfortable in that. And it's an exciting time because I think the more we're in, we feel in charge of what we're doing, the, the happier we are basically. Right.

Phil (30m 31s):
So David tell us how people can find out more about you. And especially if they're do starving artists in the Garrett.

David (30m 37s):
Absolutely. I have a website, davidmauricesharp.com. I keep that up to date with any speaking engagements that I have coming up. I have a book out, as you mentioned, the thriving artist, which published a few years ago, that they're welcome to pick up a copy of that that goes through de in, in detail, very basics of investing. It's like a primer for investing very short chapters because it's geared towards people that aren't gonna sit there and read of 40 page chapter on bonds. And I also have all my social media is also available on my website. I set out a monthly reminder monthly check in for people with some ideas. There's a form on my website. If you would like to be a part of that, you can just shoot me an email or send me fill out that form.

David (31m 19s):
And I'd be happy to add you to that list and drop in, in one of my classes, some of them, a lot of them like at entertainment, community fund, they're free to anybody in the performing arts from anywhere in the world. The great thing, the other great thing that happened in the pandemic is everything went online. So now anybody in the world can literally come in and listen to some of these classes. So there's a lot of opportunity, but yeah, my website would be a good place to start.

Phil (31m 41s):
Oh, well, we'll put all the links in the show notes and the episode notes and blog post as well. So people can find you easily just by a click of a button. David Maurice Sharp. Wonderful. Thank you very much for joining me today.

David (31m 51s):
Thank you.

Phil (31m 53s):
If you found this podcast helpful, please tell a friend, especially if it's someone who needs to start thinking about investing for their future, you'll be helping them and helping me to keep this show on the road.

Chloe (32m 3s):
Shares for beginners is for information and educational purposes, only it isn't financial advice and you shouldn't buy or sell any investments based on what you've heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not shares for beginners. This podcast doesn't replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs circumstances or current situation.

Phil (32m 21s):
And thank you for listening to my podcast.

Shares for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Shares for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation.