On Capitalizing On Your Differences + Making Your Own Rules With Negin Singh

Today’s guest is Negin Singh, the Founder and Artistic Director of cARTel: Collaborative Arts LA, and currently the Director of Inspiration (real title) for top Augmented Reality developer DAQRI. She’s been featured on the White House Blog, spoken for the big-wigs at places like NASA, and was named one of the top 30 Indian Entrepreneurs under 30 by India Current Magazine.

If you’ve ever wanted to create something in your life – whether it’s theater, a business, a product, whatever – you KNOW how many hoops there are to jump through and how often it is that the good stuff never gets out into the world simply because people don’t have the resources or funds to let their extraordinary talent or vision live. As you’ll hear from Negin, cARTel was formed to solve that problem and take away those barriers that usually end up preventing really fantastic art from every even happening. They’ve put on critically acclaimed concerts, film festivals, circus and theater events, live radio shows, spoken word performances, art installations…most of which have been held in unexpected places like parks, vintage stories, pool parties, living rooms, and pretty much any place that’s anything BUT traditional.

Back to DAQRI - if you're anything like me, you read the words "Augmented Reality" and thought...what? Basically, as Negin taught me, AR is where technology meets the “real world.” Think Google Glass and projects like that. The fact that Negin is the leader when it comes to creating such literally life-changing, visionary projects absolutely blows my mind.

Negin is actually a friend of mine from college. I’ve had the honor of watching her grow and flourish for the last decade and completely shift the way others think about what it means to CREATE. What's more, is that every step of the way, she's championed other artists, other woman, and even when we were competing for the same roles, she never let me forget what a joy it was just to be "it it" together.

In this episode, we talk about body image and fitness experiments, Negin’s tweendom in Dubai (and her most embarrassing childhood memory), capitalizing on what makes you different, recognizing your privilege, and how she turned her frustration with the system she was supposed to prescribe to into a movement so big that their annual music festival got called out by a certain “-chella” festival ;)

We also talk about not fitting in, not following rules, and about how you really don’t have to have a degree or background in something in order to succeed at it.

If you’re a creative of ANY type, you’ve ever felt different, or you’ve ever wondered how you’re going to get your message out into the world, I think you're going to really resonate with Episode 003.