We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lucas Deon Spivey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lucas Deon below.

Alright, Lucas thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today.  Before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Most people know me as the dude who constantly travels the US in vintage trucks and trailers. People find out I’m visiting and ask me “Where are you from?” I just don’t have an answer. I’ve been to all 50 states and I’ve been a resident of 7 states.

I’ve struggled to find this thing called “home”. Nothing felt authentic. So instead I thought, “What if I had four homes on wheels, and America was my backyard?”

I say this sincerely that I haven’t met anyone who’s seen as much of America as I have. Most tourists hit the big cities. Most truckers stay on the interstates. Most hikers hit the popular areas. Even presidential candidates have certain criteria for a campaign stop. Every person seems to hit up their favorite spots, certain institutions. I’m all over the place. I intentionally seek out what I don’t understand. And I hang with all kinds of folks. This means I’ll wake up in a trailer park, be at a rooftop penthouse for brunch, an afternoon hike in the wilderness, and at night I’m at a grimey basement show with mattresses lining the walls.

I follow my nose. I say yes to complete strangers. They seem to find me. Probably because of my conspicuously painted trucks and trailers and my cute dog helps.

When I graduated high school my parents told me they couldn’t help me pay for college, but they gave me a tent, a sleeping bag, an air mattress, and a map. That map is filled with highlighted routes and penciled notes. When I get bored, I pull it out and look at where I’ve never been. Those areas are getting fewer and fewer, and my trips through those new areas are filled with folks I met elsewhere who happen to be there now. It’s a beautiful feeling.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have a really hard time asking for help. It comes from all the abuse and neglect I survived as a kid. Somehow my little kid brain determined, “No one cares. You can’t count on anyone.” I suppose that’s why being an artist, a business owner, a teacher and a traveler has been so therapeutic. All those facets of my identity propel me to develop deep, trusting relationships where I feel I can be vulnerable.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Covid sucked for me. It was truly the worst time in my adult life.

I’d just spent 4 years lining up a documentary tour of the US. I have keynotes at conferences, festivals, college campuses, city parks, co-working spaces, and they all had to be scheduled carefully, different contractors had to be hired in each location for each week.

I’d poured myself emotionally and financially into that tour. Let me put it plainly… I got a divorce in order to do that tour. I spent a ton of money fixing up my ambulance and camper AND I’d just bought another truck and trailer and fixed them up too.

All my sponsors were supposed to send me deposit checks on March 15. They all emailed me at the end of February to say, “There’s this thing called Covid and we might need to wait”. They never ended up sending the checks and I lost $35,000 in a week. Then all my students began struggling, which meant they couldn’t afford the cohorts I was running. On top of that I had a pitch going for a traveling exhibition across middle America, and that got mothballed. All the marketing we’d spent a year developing for these in person events was useless.

All my irons in the fire went cold in one week and I was left holding the bag. So I pivoted hard. I gave up my docu-tour and traveling exhibition. I went all in on the online cohorts and online curriculum. We printed textbooks and ran online events. We expanded to 12 countries. I offered scholarships and work study to students who were struggling. Financially it was a wash, and I took on business debt, but I stayed afloat.

When I think of “success”, I think of that John Wooden quote. “Success is the peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable”. I’ll never know what life would have been if Covid hadn’t happened – if I got to do that tour I worked years to line up – but I know I did my best and that experience of loving myself through hardship will be invaluable in life.

Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

“How do you make a living while making art?” I dedicated 7 years of my life to answering that question, and I can finally share the magic formula.

Back in 2016, I was applying for a PhD In cultural entrepreneurship. Turns out neither art schools nor business schools believed there was such a field. So after getting rejected by everyone, I decided to become a cultural entrepreneur myself. I built a fleet of recording studios inside vintage trucks and camper trailers. I traveled the US and thousands of self employed creatives – whether poets, artists, filmmakers, dancers, comedians, game designers, architects, fashion designers, anyone who found a full time gig in their passion. And simultaneously I had to make this passion a full time gig. My goal was to break even for 5-7 years… the financial equivalent of a PhD.

I learned as I went, taking advice from the people I interviewed. And literally everyone doubted me. My mentors, my friends, my family, my wife at the time, even my cat and dog seemed to roll their eyes at me. The worst moments were the times when I doubted myself.

But I did it. 6 months after getting rejected by Harvard for a PhD, they cut me a $10,000 sponsorship check for the “Culture Hustlers” podcast series. That was the first sign that I had alignment with the universe. Now after 7 years I’m sitting on an entire year-long curriculum on cultural entrepreneurship. It’s called “Get Lost” and “Get Found, and includes 2 textbooks, 36 lesson videos, 30 podcasts, 15 docu-shorts, and 40 photo essays.

The whole curriculum all centers on that question: “How do you make a living while making art?” And I promised you the magic formula. Well… every formula has variables that you have to solve for, and this formula has twelve.

1. Who are you?
2. What’s your dream, and what matters to you?
3. Who matters to you?
4. What’s in your way?
5. What’s never been done before?
6. How do you describe something truly new?
7. Where do you connect?
8. How do you ask for your needs?
9. What are your creative ingredients, and what’s your recipe?
10. What actions matter most?
11. What’s the art of pricing?
12. What’s your role in the world?

I didn’t say it would be easy. But the good news is there are no wrong answers. However, there are two rules. (1) You have to be honest, and (2) you have to keep asking these questions for the rest of your life.

No business model is ever finished, and no artist ever reaches their potential. That’s the point. You have to keep adapting. You’re not supposed to be “bullet proof”, the point is that whenever you get knocked down, one of these 12 questions will help you get back up. As long as you’re honest and you stay in the game, you’ll get better over time. You’re never done exploring, so you might as well enjoy the journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: lucasspivey.com
• Instagram: @lucasspivey
• Facebook: facebook.com/lucasdeonspivey
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasspivey/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lucasspivey