Hustle Club

For years, my intention as an artist was to “delight my fans while being myself.” A chance encounter at Burning Man changed it in an instant.

Deep in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, I was face to face with a 45-foot tall aluminum cube enclosing two tetrahedrons, with symbology from various world religions and other spiritual references delicately lasercut into its massive metal beams.

I walked around it, crawled under it, laid on the ground directly beneath its central suspended shape. Its overwhelming beauty stunned me. I was awed. After some time had passed, I stood up to leave. “Have you seen this yet?” I called out to a random guy who was slowly biking in our direction. “This sculpture is blowing my mind!”

“That was our intention,” he replied. By sheer coincidence, I’d summoned Mathew Rosenblatt, a member of the team who’d created it.1

My jaw dropped as I processed his words. “To blow people’s minds” was his intention?!

In a blink, it was mine.

Shepherding the marvels of my imagination across the threshold of my mind and into the hands of my friends and fans brings me tremendous joy. Few things make me happier than watching people’s eyes light up when, for example, I pull out a tin of hand-trimmed Carrettes™2 and pass them around.

I see interventions like this as sacred to my responsibility as an artist: I serve humanity by expanding our understanding of what is possible in this world. It’s an especially important role given that, as a Washingtonian, I’m only a few ripples away from world leaders. Many of these decision makers default to violent solutions every day, justifying their actions by arguing that they “have no choice” beyond what has always been done.

Blow their minds, I say.

I can’t help but feel I’m barely touching my potential, though. While my “new ideas” list continues to grow (this week alone I invented a new puzzle, a new furniture concept, and a new kind of dice), my reach remains small. I don’t mean to sound trite, but revenue is a classic metric for impact, and inventorhood has barely made me a thousandaire.

This is why this year, I’ve changed my intention once again.

For 2026, I intend to make money.

It’s a counterintuitive move for me, this shifting of energies from creating to selling. I’m battling discomfort, distraction, and fear. Even looking at the words on my screen makes me twitch a little!

Still, don’t you think Carrettes could be a staple at garden parties and weddings everywhere if caterers carried them?

Don’t you think 100 times as many people would celebrate neurodiversity with a game of BrainSpin if they knew it existed in the first place?

Don’t you think any one of my “cute” little thinkpieces could be a blockbuster if I put some sellin’ into it?!

Yeah, me too (I’m lookin’ at you, Placebeaus™3).

Enter: Hustle Club.

To shift into gear, I’ve begun hosting short weekly meetings for myself and a half dozen other entrepreneurial friends. Each of us is there because we have a new initiative we’re trying to launch. Each of us knows that its success will rise and fall based on our willingness to sell it. Each of us is nervous about putting ourselves out there.

Hustle Club is my answer to combatting the fear. It’s the consistent drumbeat I need. And in true BrainSpin Method style, it’s collaborative, sharing perspectives with others as we all suss it out.

Here’s our standard Thursday agenda.

1. Hustle Report: Celebrate yourself for your hustle since last week. Did you make phone calls? Did you submit proposals? Did you send invoices?

2. Focus: Identify which of your projects is going to benefit from the hustle today. Keep it tight, one thing at a time.

3. Commit: Define the hustle you’ll make happen before the next meeting.

It’s not complicated. Yet, by pushing myself to do these things, I know I’ll be able to delight even more fans by being myself.

These efforts will help me blow more people’s minds so they don’t default to the way things always have been done.

What’s more, making money will enable me to keep making art in the first place.

I recognize the hustle as essential to becoming the Frankie I intend to be. “Selling is the most important skill as an entrepreneur,” agrees businessman Robert Kiyosaki, whose book Rich Dad Poor Dad has sold more than 40 million copies. “I’m a bestselling author, not a bestwriting author.”

How about you? Have you ever kicked ass as a salesperson? I’d love to hear your thoughts. If there’s a book on sales that you’d recommend, please share it in the comments.

Or, having read this far, are you feeling like Hustle Club is exactly what YOU need if you’re going to truly soar as an innovator?

Write me back (better yet, pick up the phone & call me 😉), and let’s do this.