Salt and light in the world of client service
Jordan Raynor sits down with Stefan Kunz, internationally acclaimed artist and hand letterer, to talk about how Stefan thinks about being open about his faith even when working with non-Christian clients at places like Apple and Coca-Cola, what Stefan’s routines are that enable him to consistently produce great art, and how Stefan’s “30 Days of Bible Lettering” challenge took off. This episode also includes a bonus conversation with Aundi Kolber, author of Try Softer.
Pre-order Jordan's new book, Master of One, and enter to win a European cruise for two, dinner with Jordan in Barcelona, and a private tour of the magnificent La Sagrada Familia: https://jordanraynor.com/trip
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey there, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. Hey, if you’re loving this podcast, you are not going to want to miss my next book, Master of One which you guys all know is going to release on January 21st. You could preorder the book today which is kind of weird, I don’t really preorder books, I’ll admit that, right? Maybe you don’t either but hey, listen, I’m giving you a great incentive to get your copy early, if you preorder the book and go to jordanraynor.com right now, you’re going to be entered to win a trip for two to Europe, you, the guest of your choice, you guys are going to go on a private tour of La Sagrada Familia, the world’s largest church which I write about master of one.
I’m going to then meet you in Barcelona, take you guys to dinner and then you and your friend are going to go by yourselves on a seven-night European cruise on Royal Caribbean cruise line, it’s going to be incredible trip to Italy and Spain and France. Go to jordanraynor.com right now to preorder the book and enter that sweepstakes.
Hey listen, today, I’m honored to have on this show a friend of mine named Stefan Kunz. He is a masterful artist known for his signature hand lettering style, this guy’s got more than half a million Instagram followers, I‘m sure a lot of you already follow this guy. He’s done work for some incredible clients like Apple, Coca Cola, Hillsong and others.
Stefan and I recently sat down and talked about how he’s thought about being open about his faith even when he’s working with non-Christians at clients like Apple and Coca Cola, we talked about his morning routines that keep him pumping out great work, great art and we talked about his wildly successful and popular 30 days of bible lettering project.
Which I’m sure a lot of you guys have seen on Instagram or heard of on YouVersion or somewhere else. Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with my friend, Stefan Kunz
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:54.8] JR: Stefan, thanks so much for joining me, how are you man?
[0:01:57.2] SK: Thank you. I’m really good, how are you?
[0:01:59.9] JR: I’m good, we’ve been trading WhatsApp messages for six months, trying to get on the phone together and now we’re finally here. It took a podcast.
[0:02:07.8] SK: That’s true, we never made it before but this time, face to face on a podcast call always works out.
[0:02:15.7] JR: Always works out. Hey, Stefan, you are the first European that I’m having a conversation with for public consumption here on the podcast. Our listeners know that I am giving away a trip to Europe as a part of the Master of One preorder sweepstakes, we’re giving away a trip to Europe, going to seven night European cruise and go to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s world famous church.
As our first European guest on the podcast, I have to ask, have you been to La Sagrada Familia before?
[0:02:47.7] SK: Well, I’ve only seen it from the outside, never gone inside because it’s always crowded.
[0:02:52.6] JR: Yeah, for those of you that don’t know, you guys have heard me talk about this as we’ve been promoting the book but La Sagrada Familia, this incredible church, you probably know Gaudi, this very famous architect built some of Barcelona’s most famous attractions.
But, for the last 12 years of his life dedicated himself to one project, truly a master of one, he built this church and was architecting La Sagrada Familia which has been under construction for a hundred years which boggles my mind. Even by like European standards, I feel like that’s unheard off, right? You guys don’t have construction projects that last a hundred years, right Stefan?
[0:03:28.6] SK: No, definitely not. Usually, our buildings takes a lot longer to build than any other places.
[0:03:35.8] JR: Stefan, for those and I know a lot of our audience here is familiar with your work, right? But for those that don’t know who you are, you meet somebody at a cocktail party, how do you describe what you do for a living?
[0:03:49.0] SK: I really take it very casual, I don’t want to give away too much in any conversation, I don’t want to show myself who I am like define that of me. I usually tell people I’m an artist and the next question I get is kind of like, can you make a living with that? Yeah, it’s pretty good.
[0:04:05.7] JR: Yeah, it’s a pretty good living. You do a lot of different things, right? You’re doing design work for big brands, you’re also doing these online courses where you’re teaching other people hand lettering, what really pays the bills for you? Because that is the question, right? How do artists make a career out of this? You’re making a good living doing this, what’s paying the bills?
[0:04:24.9] SK: It’s definitely different things, it’s a lot of client work that I do, that’s one big portion, the other portion is, actually a product to them selling. It’s a tool that helps people in lettering, it’s called like a letter builder and a grid builder and it’s been a fantastic tool to help people draw words easily, draw letters easily so it becomes really like following a line, like filling out a box, that kind of easy so that anyone could do it and help people make it easier to make more perfect, more consistent, more confident in what the do.
[0:04:59.9] JR: I love it. You describe yourself as an artist, right? You’ve really doubled down on this niche of artistry of hand lettering for those people who have no idea what in the world hand lettering is, how would you describe that? How is it different from calligraphy, what in the world is hand lettering?
[0:05:19.3] SK: We have kind like this three main topics, it’s calligraphy, typography and hand lettering. Calligraphy is kind of the drawing of the word in the same style like consistent and over again, it’s like pressure, sensitivity, it’s hand motion and muscle memory that’s involved like mastery of the hand and the tool.
The second one is typography which is kind of the mastery of the form of a shape of a letter so any font that you’ll use, any type that you’ll use for like Ariel, Helvetica, these popular Times New Roman, these are font designers that are typographers. They set in how the distance between each letter, how the letter’s built, how we can actually familiarize ourselves by making it easier to read.
And finally, the hand lettering artist is kind of the guy who is like a little bit loose, draws letters in its favorite way but for me, the importance is how to show people the beauty of a word, make it interesting to read so that when people see like a sign and advertisement.
A mural or something like, even – it can be a mural in a company’s building where it’s like, you come in and you see the vision of the company but it’s drawn so beautifully, it’s not just like a text on a wall that it’s like beautifully, masterfully done and people come in, they want to read it, they want to spend time in front of that wall and read through it because it’s just beautiful, because it’s presented nicely.
[0:06:45.3] JR: Yeah, that was a pretty good description of your work, the words you’re drawing, the way you’re lettering these words make, words come alive in a different way. I want to come back to this idea of mastery, how you pursued mastery of your craft in a minute but first, let’s talk about – I’m really interested in your story, we actually haven’t had a chance to really talk about that before.
You’re kind of living the artist’s dream, you found a way to earn a good income as an artist and doing that work full time. But you haven’t always been doing that. Talk us through the trajectory of your career and how you got to be doing the work you’re doing today?
[0:07:25.3] SK: Yeah, this basically the talk that I give is really create art, not excuses and it starts out with see, I showed them, kind of tell them about where I’m at, what I’ve been able to accomplish, it looks all great but that’s not point A to point B, it’s not a straight line, it’s not a straight curve.
Actually, before that, I was in banking, before that, I actually started out with –
[0:07:46.3] JR: Wait, time out. You can’t breeze past being a banker. You were a certified Swiss Banker?
[0:07:54.7] SK: I was a certified Swiss banker, yes.
[0:07:57.2] JR: By the way, that’s like a big deal, right?
[0:07:59.5] SK: If you appreciate money laundering or something like that. I’m not offering and I don’t know how to do it but it’s the stigma that people think like Swiss bankers know how to launder money and it’s just – I just want to make this clear, we don’t. But yeah.
[0:08:14.1] JR: Was that your first job?
[0:08:15.4] SK: That was actually – well, kind of small jobs here and there but this is what I did for three and a half years so yes, it was my first job.
[0:08:23.6] JR: Wow. Most people would look at that and kind of see banking as this like stark contrast to something creative like being an artist. Did you see those things as fundamentally opposed or did you see banking, did you approach your work as a banker creatively? How did you think about that?
[0:08:42.4] SK: Yeah, interestingly, yes, one of my mentors in the banking like while I was still learning the job, you always are with a mentor and he said, you approach everything different than anyone else here. You approach tasks creatively like you’ll think out of the box, you’ll think out of something and I do actually believe that no matter what job you’re doing, it’s creative, you’re solving problems.
As soon as you have to solve problems, you are thinking creative. Even if you’re working with cars like security or something, you have to solve problems and you have to make it safe and sound and so you have to come up with creative solution on how to solve these problems and that’s creativity.
[0:09:24.4] JR: I love that. All right, you’re a banker, what’s next?
[0:09:29.1] SK: The thing that was that before I became a banker, I was enrolled in art school in like a pre year thing just before you can actually study graphic design or any art form. I wanted to become a graphic designer at that point but somehow, during that art year, our teacher gave us a full week to create whatever we wanted and I’ve thought, this is amazing. I had the freedom, I can do whatever I want, I have a whole week which is usually longer than any other exercise he’s given us.
Somehow, I came back every day home and just like feeling exhausted and not creating anything because I was just like blocked, overthinking everything, just kind of striving to become this great thing or create this great thing and it’s what was holding me back all this time. At the end of that week, I really felt like I didn’t have what it takes so I did what every failed artist does. Again, I went into banking.
[0:10:23.1] JR: I love it, you’re in banking, what were the steps to getting to doing the work you’re doing now. Did you just start taking on freelance work on the side like how did that work?
[0:10:32.1] SK: Like I said, still was – I liked being creative, I was creative and I love drawing, I loved, I needed a creative output and that was kind of instilled in me and just that was natural to me. During my years in banking, I worked or helped out in a church, I built up a creative team and got like a lot of leadership in that area but since I was leading the creatives, I didn’t want to step into it and like do those jobs myself. I could have easily done it, maybe even everything better than everyone else. But at the same time, I knew like to help them go forward to help them be the best they can be.
I needed to step back and I still needed a creative outlets so I started this thing on Instagram and back in 2012, I saw like on my Instagram accounts saw no beauty in it and so I had to – I felt like I needed to either do it right or not do it at all and so from that point on, I’ve changed it and I went in and I started like doing this text, like photos with text and at the beginning was really simple and basic and boring and then it became this thing that you can see now.
[0:11:35.5] JR: Which has 500,000 followers. That’s a pretty wild trajectory from just 2012. All right, 500,000 or so Instagram followers, you built up this massive following of people who love your work. I remember – I think I stumbled across you when I was building up an Instagram following around Called to Create and I loved your work, I was obsessed with it from day one.
You’re unequivocally a masterful artist, right? You figured out how to pursue mastery of this craft and in particular, this particular style. What do masterful artists like yourself do that less masterful artists don’t do, right? How did you and how do you – I don’t think mastery as I mentioned in Master of One, I don’t think mastery is a destination, it’s something that we’re always continually striving for.
How do you practically pursue mastery of your craft?
[0:12:30.4] SK: It’s interesting because you would think that you have like this set goal, you're going into one direction, you’re feeling like this is what I want to reach. I’ve never had that with this part. I’ve never actually thought I would become a lettering artist. For me, this whole journey was always a one step at a time thing. I never knew which direction I went but you kind of like – I always had to add one more step and I describe my creative process in four steps like the first one being inspiration like get inspiration, find something that you really love and then two, copy and learn from it, creating something and three, create something from what you’ve learned and what you’ve been inspired by.
Because if you just have those two first step then you’re not actually advancing anything or you’re not – you’re just consuming but you’re not putting out anything. Then the last step and the last step is probably important and it doesn’t matter in any area you are but like always take one more step, always improve, always try something new and always take like one more step.
That one more step is so important because if you multiply those step into 10, 20, 40 steps, every time then you get into a burnout where you’re just like perfectionism and it will like, hold you back. But if you just take one more step, you always get further to your destination and that’s why I’m at where I’m at after like years and years, I feel like 2014 was kind of when it started, 2017 was when it really took off and now it’s 2019 and I feel like I’ve taken like thousands and thousands of steps and that’s why I’m at where I’m at. I feel like because it’s always like one more step and I always have this urge in me to always have this urge in me to always improve something, I’ll always keep trying out something new.
And this one more step is always – it can be a killer because when you’re doing a mural on a wall, you’re like, if something’s final. If you’re trying like one more step on this mural like – what if I try this like that? What if I use the splash and I do sometimes this? And then suddenly you realize like oops, that was one step too far but you’ve learned something, you’ve learned more from your mistakes than you learn actually from your successes.
[0:14:34.9] JR: Yeah, that’s really good and it reminds me a lot of what I wrote about in chapter eight of Master of One, right? Book’s not out yet but as you guys are hearing more about it, chapter eight is all about how do we become world class masters of our craft, right? Dr. Anders Ericsson from my alma-mater Florida State talks a lot about purposeful practice. It’s not just 10,000 hours of practice that makes us masterful, it’s purposeful practice, right?
One of the elements of purposeful practice is masters always raise the bar or in your vernacular, masters always take one more step, we’re never content, we’re never satisfied, we’re always raising the bar to get better and better at our craft. Hey, Stefan, speaking of the book, thank you for endorsing it. You’re very kind to endorse the book, your name is right there in the front of the book that’s about to be shipped out in a few weeks.
For those people that are listening that haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, you got an advanced copy way in advance. How would you describe the book to them?
[0:15:39.6] SK: For me, it was like reading through it and was an easy read, I think I told you like I read it in like two, three days like a couple of hours and like straight through it because it’s an easy read, it has a great flow in it.
The best part is like, I actually want to read it in more days, because the great thing about that book and I’m going to read it again is the motivation I had afterwards. Yes, actually, I want to double down, I want to give my best, I want to become the best that I can be. Become the best in the field if I can, whatever God allows me to do as well.
But the book is so great because it tells stories of other people who have done their best, who have tried to be excellent in whatever they do, that is what is so motivating and encouraging for myself and inspired me to actually go back. I’ve got this new office now here and coming back every morning and like trying to sit down, to actually start drawing and again, purposefully work on my craft, on expanding it because I know that the better I can be, the better I can represent who God is and get the opportunities to speak in front of people to share the story and t hat’s kind of what it’s all about.
[0:16:54.4] JR: I love that so much. I think a lot of people are going to pick up this book and realize that they haven’t found their “one thing” yet like the thing that they are going to really sink their teeth into and be a world-class master at. But I think, maybe the same number of people will have the experience that you had, right? They’ll pick up the book, they’ll read it and they’ll realize, hang on a second, I am doing the work that God created me to do.
My prayer is that the book will motivate them to double down as you say, on that one thing and show them a path to becoming more masterful at it, right? My prayer isn’t that everybody will read this book and change their vocation, right? My prayer is that, people will pick up the book, will understand the concepts and will just commit to master of something.
That very well could be the thing that they’re doing today. When I sent you the book, we were sending some messages on Whatsapp. By the way, you’re literally the only person on earth that I communicate with on Whatsapp. Stefan, my one European friend but I love it. I know if I have a notification, it’s from Stefan.
Stefan, you mentioned something a couple of minutes ago that I thought was really interesting, when you were at the bank, you had a mentor and you said, you always have a mentor at the bank. As you know at master of one, I talk a lot about the value of apprenticeships, right? A word that frankly, most Americans don’t use anymore. Is this concept of like thee mentor protégé relationship more common in Europe or is that like specific to banking?
[0:18:22.5] SK: No, it’s pretty common. Anywhere you would learn any profession, anywhere you don’t study your profession, it’s apprenticeship. Usually in Switzerland, any job you learn in three years like if you want to work on an insurance, you’ll have like this apprenticeship like three days on the job, two days at school where you just learn all the basics and during those three days where you’re on the job, you have someone who will take care of you who will answer your questions, who is responsible for teaching you what you need to know on the job.
That’s kind of the mentorship person, they’ll give you like feedback, they’ll give you like a grade at the end of the apprenticeship like it’s all – usually it’s between six months where you spend like in one team. If you’re a graphic designer, you’ll spend like three years on the same job, that’s kind of the – how it works here in Switzerland.
[0:19:13.8] JR: Yeah, here in the states, right? We would call that an internship essentially, right? It sounds like a pretty similar concept. Although, it sounds like it’s more structured and formal in Europe which I like. In the book, I talk about this value of you know, I think there’s two forms of apprenticeship if you will? Right? One is this like direct apprenticeship which is what you had at the bank.
You have somebody who you’re reporting to, who is giving you very specific and personal feedback on your performance. And then there’s this concept of indirect apprenticeships, right? We can’t find the right mentor so we submit ourselves to the wisdom of you know, masters via books or online courses, et cetera.
Do you find that that direct apprenticeship is more valuable than an indirect apprenticeship and if so, why?
[0:19:57.1] SK: For me, it hasn’t been the best approach. I kind of wish always to have someone to share about – but in most cases I’ve always learned more by myself like whatever I wanted to learn, I’ve learned on my own.
[0:20:10.4] JR: Yeah. We talked about kind of your path to mastering your one thing. I’m like really fascinated by people’s routines and their habits and kind of the things that they swear by that make them super productive. Let’s start here. Can you talk about what a typical work day looks like for you like walk us through, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what does your day look like?
[0:20:34.3] SK: A typical day and looks more now that I have one then I had before. It’s getting up at seven AM, have my coffee machine setup to on two and turn on just before that I end up and I’ll go, I’ll make a coffee and love latte art so before I even start with lettering, I did latte art and taught myself how to do it in over four months and so that’s a skill that I wanted to master and then I usually will read the Bible right now, I’m going though Romans 12, I like trying to read that same chapter over and over again.
As soon as I’m done with that, I’ll shower, I’ll pray, I’ll shower and then just get ready and go out the house, right into next door to the next building and to my office and now, I’ve set it up that I will start drawing and I read the book Atomic Habits and just interesting to see that places where you sit, where you are, like these connect you at different patters so I’ve set it up that I have a desk right behind me where I sit down and I only draw on this desk.
The first thing that I’m going to do in the morning is draw and make it a daily habit of drawing of practicing my drawing and just put out something like – create something before I actually start the day. As soon as I get done with that, I usually go into like emails, administrative work and then in the afternoon, either my assistant will come in or like every other day and I’ll have like either, work with her or for her and then finally like, either draw some more, finish some work that I have lined up and then in the evening, go out for dinner, do some exercise like right now, I’m training for a half marathon.
It’s a challenge to kind of like get ready for that, the run is in one and a half weeks or so. Yeah, it’s time but it’s also, I’ve been learning so much from running again, I’ve trained once before for one but this time it’s just getting back into this routine of doing long runs of spending a lot of time just with your thoughts and training your mind to actually overcome a lot of obstacles is a really good effective tool to also learn that into your job to sit down and be able to work deep and hard and finish that.
And then, in the evening, either I go back to work to finish some things up or I’ll go home or meet some friends in the evening.
[0:22:58.1] JR: How much sleep do you get?
[0:22:59.3] SK: I try really hard to go to bed before midnight around six, seven hours is at the moment the usual. I wear a FitBit tracker just so I know the actual number of sleep that I get.
[0:23:12.9] JR: Yeah, me too. I actually got a FitBit for a different reason, actually like one of my favorite little hacks. My audience may be laughing because maybe you guys all already do this but I wear a FitBit, I only wear it to bed so that it can wake me up silently so I don’t wake up my wife because I get up – yeah, it’s like a great little hack that my wife greatly appreciates, especially when I was getting up at 4:30 in the morning. My alarm used to go off and that was not a good time.
You talk about – you mentioned a habit that I personally have adopted and I think pretty much every like really high achiever I know has adopted. Which is this first thing in the day, not checking email and sitting down and doing deep work. But when you get to the office, the first thing you’re doing is sitting down and drawing, right? How long do you draw for that first block?
[0:24:06.5] SK: Really depends on how it’s going. I usually try to finish something so I won’t actually get up before I finished my first piece and that can be an hour if I do something longer like just happen to goes till noon but it rarely goes afternoon so four hours maybe, max? One to two hours, definitely.
[0:24:28.4] JR: Yeah. Interesting. You also mentioned something like I don’t do well at all but I’ve been thinking more and more about like, you have personal goals, right? That aren’t productive, you wanted to learn how to make latte art, right? Or you wanted to run a half marathon. Have you always been like that? Do you have – I’m assuming you have very concrete like professional goals, do you also have – he’s like personal goals one pretty regular basis that you want to tackle?
[0:24:58.7] SK: I try to think of something as I start doing these goals. Weirdly enough, I set them during, strangely during the year it was achieving a gold status on Star Alliance, getting frequent flyer status. That was a good goal to reach. Then this year it’s like all right, I want to visit three new countries that I’ve never visited before like every year, we visit three new countries so this year, I’ve already done that and I kind of like try to have these goals but very loose, it’s not like I want to achieve this, I want to achieve this.
Right now, one of the goals that I’m trying to set and it’s like, it takes some time because I know that when I commit to a goal, I want to do it. I’ll do pretty much everything. A challenge, if I accept a challenge, I’ll be relentless in making it happen.
My assistant will tell you a story about that, we did a step challenge like during a workweek and we were just both crazy, I didn’t know that she was also so competitive as I am but she was really doubling down and like, for the last half hour, the last half hour of those five days. I had to go run just before midnight, even though I already had done a long run during the day just to get ahead of her and be easy at night like I went for another run just before midnight and I just won by a thousand steps and we have like over 86,000 steps. It’s a bit insane.
[0:26:27.0] JR: That’s absurd.
[0:26:28.1] SK: One of the long goals that I’m trying to think about right now and it’s not set in stone yet but is like doing a marathon on every continent, that’s kind of like one that I feel like this is a lifetime achievement.
[0:26:39.5] JR: I love that goal, that’s a great goal. I mean, I will not be doing that but you do you and I’m all about that, that’s awesome. Let’s talk about your childhood a little bit. You grew up as a missionary kid, right? By the way, where were you?
[0:26:54.4] SK: I was born in Africa in Benin.
[0:26:57.3] JR: Yeah, interesting. You grew up seeing your parents do this work that we in the church would traditionally call “full-time ministry”, do you see your work today as ministry?
[0:27:11.7] SK: Well, yes and no. Yes, I would call myself a digital missionary. Because what my parents did was go to two places where there was no access, they actually spread the Word and share the gospel. What I’m doing is on social media is using the word of God and right now, I’m running a three days of Bible lettering challenge and been using that to share about like 30 verses in 30 days every day one. I’m totally behind on my own schedule right now but when we started out, it was kind of really like sharing this, sharing my thoughts and I got a book coming out in October.
Maybe it’s going to be aired by then. But it’s a book with like 60 versus with thoughts of my – that I’ve written on Instagram and kind of like reformulate rewritten, it’s kind of this thing where it’s giving people the inspiration, encouragement for their daily day or like a great coffee table book.
It’s hard because I’m actually running a business. I’m doing like what I do and do it really well but it’s funny because nowadays you can marry that together with like full time ministry as well. Even though I wouldn’t consider that but at the same time, I feel like yes, truly actually, you would consider anyone doing their job, well, in your book, describe as well. If you do your job well, if you are representing God in this way like you're representing god well, work is worship.
Doing that is actually being in full-time ministry. No matter what you do, where are you placed, this is your thing.
[0:28:42.5] JR: I could not agree more and you know, I think we get hung up a lot of times in the church and this idea that the only thing that’s ministry is sharing the gospel and words with people and of course, that is ministry, but we also minister two people when we love our neighbor as our self, you know?
You know, that was – when Jesus told us to love our neighbors as our self, that was a complete sentence. You love your clients as yourself, some pretty big brands. When you do exceptional work. By the way, you know. You have so many projects like 30 Days of Bible Lettering that are discipling people, that are getting people to engage with scripture on a deeper level.
I did want to talk about 30 Days Bible Lettering, this is super interesting to me but those in our audience that have no idea what this is, explain what 30 Days of Bible Lettering is and why you started it?
[0:29:30.7] SK: Something that helped me after this thing that I was stuck in like when our teacher gave us this exercise to do in one week like I was frustrated that I didn’t really come up with anything. What I do in my talk is talk about like – what changed, how did I go to the bank and then get back into arts, was really because I took this one challenge and there was the hundred day creative challenge.
This challenge like it changed everything. What I’ve learned like I’ve tried to formulate it afterwards. What did I actually learn from this challenge? And that was excuses are holding us back and that is why my talk is called Create Art Not Excuses is because excuses is what is holding us back to create more things. And after I finished this 100 day challenge I was done. I didn’t want to touch another challenge anymore for another month and then suddenly this urge became, “You know what? I did create so many things during this time. I was so productive.”
I felt great like it was a challenge and for me, I was thinking about doing this like what could be the next challenge. I didn’t want to embark on another 100 day challenge. So I want to make it something easier and I thought 30 days and talked about 30 Days of Bible Lettering challenge like 30 days of Bible verses because I knew I needed for the next challenge I needed to have something already prepared. I couldn’t start the challenge without any preparation.
And I talked about this in a workshop and then I talk to people and then during the Q&A people ask me what is something you’re next challenge and I talked about I might be doing this challenge and blah-blah-blah and then you use light words and then someone else asked me, “What are you most afraid of?” and I told them right now, if you hurt my – the words that I used it was slightly maybe, if possible if nothing comes in my way maybe I will do this like I am talking about the marathon as well.
And for me this was so interesting because back then I realized, you know what? I am afraid and at that time I just committed to that challenge on the way back from that workshop, I reached out to my five friends that I had met on Instagram and I asked them, “Hey I am planning on doing this, do you guys want to help?” and they were all like, “Yes, let’s do this” we compiled 30 Bible verses and I didn’t think that I would do this all by myself.
So I send it out on Instagram saying, “I am going to be doing this Bible lettering challenge starting fresh, who wants to join?” I don’t know, maybe two or 10 people would sign up but then over 500 people just instantly turn on the first day and they were crazy about this and it took off and we are on round eight now and three, four years in and back then it was just crazy because the second or third round I counted in the numbers of how many people do we reach.
There was an analytic tool that helped me do this and instead over two or three million people per day were being reached with those Bible verses that people were sharing and so that’s so phenomenal for me because I never thought that something that I would start somewhere in Switzerland, small city not big, it grew. I wasn’t as big as I am now but at that point, it was something huge and something amazing and what God allowed us to do is even translate those.
We had a YouVersion Bible reading plan at the same time and then we had the next round, we had 13 or 15 different languages translated into this reading planet we created and so, so many people were helping to make this even bigger and helping other people to use this. I couldn’t believe it myself and now it is still a big thing. We almost have 200,000 hashtags used on this 30 days of Bible lettering hashtag.
[0:33:22.5] JR: So Stefan, I never want to hear you doubt even for a second that your work is ministry. Let me just regurgitate what I just heard. So by the way, just to sum up what 30 Days of Bible Lettering is for the audience, this is super simple, right? Stefan and his friends say, “Hey, here is 30 Bible verses, over the next 30 days letter each one of them.” So draw this beautiful hand lettering art work and post it on Instagram. I mean that’s the whole thing, right Stefan?
I mean it is that simple, so you being a master of your craft had this massive audience, right? You get this idea of, “Hey, I am going to letter this verses, does anyone want to join me?” All these people share and now they are sharing scripture in their Instagram feeds with all of their followers and are reaching millions and millions of people, all because you had credibility as a masterful artists on your platform. So anybody who says mastering our work doesn’t matter eternally is crazy.
What awesome story, so follow up question for you personally, what do you get out of scripture? How was your interaction with scripture different when you are taking the time to letter a particular verse, when you are taking, I don’t know, an hour, 90 minutes to draw out a verse as oppose to just reading it in the scripture, how does your interaction with the scripture and the Lord differ in those two scenarios?
[0:34:46.9] SK: There are definitely two things. So one is you spent so much time on a verse, you spend time on every word. You think about how people should read it like what is important, what word do I want to scale up, what word do I want to make smaller, how can I improve the reading flow, what words are not necessarily important for the reader to see at first sight and how can I draw out the message of the verse? And so there is so many things that go into planning and writing and drawing something.
More than just it needs to look nice, it needs to be readable, legible and it needs to give the right impression right at the start. Do not be anxious, don’t put the weight on anxious even though it is an important word but do not be anxious. All of these words are important but there are some different versus that have this other feeling. The time you spend on each single word helps you take time as you think about what do these words represent, what do they mean and you linger longer on every single word.
Like slowing down Bible reading to hundreds of what you would spend time on. So that already helps you to think about it more to meditate really hard on it but then after a while also and I am just also completely honest, you turn off and you switch off and you just go into drawing mode and you just draw but the second part is when I post it on Instagram and I rarely just post it with, “Hey, this is the Bible verse, here is where it’s at” but I usually will think of a story.
Or try to think of a story to connect to that verse, share about my personal life, share about fears or things that people could help and I try to really connect with people and I know that a lot of my folks that follow me they’re not Christians. So the goal is also to translate the Bible verse into something that they can understand that they can take with them that can encourage them because I know that any verse that is when I start actually drawing verses in the first place was because I was thinking:
“You know, I know that words have a big impact and I want to make sure that whatever I write isn’t just something loose or something unimportant like, “not all of those who wander are lost” it is one of the famous quotes that nobody knows exactly what this means or what do I gain from knowing that quote? Nothing. So that is why Bible verses are something that I feel like you know, this is the only thing that I know is true that will hold the test of time and will always bring life.
And so I’ve had to make a big decision before I actually really quit my job and started dabbling into doing more professionally. Like a friend of mine he said and he was a Christian as well but he with good intentions told me, “You know what? You should think about taking off all of your Bible verses because you won’t probably get any jobs from big companies. You have a religious thing on your thing on your feed, this is not going to work with big companies because their image shouldn’t be connected to anything religious.”
And at that time, I honestly took the thought and I thought about should I do it or should I not do it and I got believe in school before and so going through that thing was for me I got bullied because I was a Christian because I was a missionary and maybe some other things but it always came down to like, “Oh you’re Swiss?” “No I am German” “But you were born in Switzerland?” “No, I was born in Africa” and “Oh so why were you born in Africa?” “My parents are missionaries.”
And I didn’t compromise back then because I feel like you know what? I am not going to compromise on who I am on my identity. I am not going to evade the question and so I wasn’t willing to do it back then or now as well with the verses and I decided to not compromise on sharing those verses because I felt like, “You know what? If people don’t want to hire me because I am a Christian they shouldn’t hire me but I don’t want to get jobs because I compromised on not showing that I am a Christian.”
And now that I get to go into these client meetings or to talk to these clients, they know that I am Christian. They know full well that I like and share Christian values. I will have an ad for a Gin brand, the next day and then the day after I’ll have a Bible verse on it and people like Christian only Christians will come back and actually ask me, “How can you deal with doing advertising for an alcohol brand?”
That is not fair that is another story but it is interesting to see that even though I have not compromised God has actually given me more opportunities that I probably wouldn’t have dreamed of or would ever thought possible to have like I got to have a billboard on Time Square with my name on it that people could actually look up on my Instagram and man, what greater possibility could you have than that?
[0:39:44.1] JR: It is incredible. Yeah this is so fascinating to me because you are a master of your craft first and foremost. Because you are primarily focused on the ministry of excellence, right? You are given these incredible client gigs and you have done work for Apple and Coca-Cola. It doesn’t really get bigger than some of these brands, right? And as somebody who has hired a lot of contract work, as somebody who’s run companies that aren’t overtly evangelical, I get it.
What do I care if you are a Christian? All I care about in that role as CEO or director of marketing or whoever is hiring you is finding the best artists, right? And so you are the best artists and then it gives you such influence to be able to just be salt and light inside of some of the biggest companies in the world. So man, I just want to encourage you that your work is tremendously important, all the work that you are doing whether you are posting Bible verses or doing work for Tag.
I saw you did this cool project for Tag and Manhattan, it’s super cool, all of that is important. So hey, this is something that I think a lot about, I want to get your take on it. I think all artists, whether they are designers or authors or entrepreneurs or artists, I know I felt this before, right? I think we have this deep desire to see our work outlive us, right? Somebody was asking me yesterday like why do you think we are so obsessed with books?
I think it is because it is one of the products that really never goes away. We are obsessed with this idea of immortality frankly. So assuming you have that same hope, you get the same hope to see your work live on beyond you, what is the legacy you want the work to leave? What do you hope that people gain from interacting with your work?
[0:41:33.4] SK: That is a good question. Right now, I think I am too young right now to think of legacy. I have grown up with the Instagram age where everything is immediate and instant and it goes up and it goes down right away. It will buried down in your feet somewhere along, those pieces don’t live forever. They are just there for the moment and for the second that they are up. It is definitely a thought that I have been thinking about more.
What is something? What can I create that will be around for longer that will be made for, for an eternity? And so that is why I feel like what will go through eternity or longer than I am around is me using the quotes, “create something today even if it sucks”, encouraging and inspiring people that people will remember more of the inspiration and the encouragement like if you have done the enneagram challenge like I am an eight, I am a challenger and I will always challenge other people.
Like try to get the best out of them and so for me, art right now is more of a way to communicate the message that I have and that I feel like, you know what? The only way I can challenge other people is by writing something on Instagram, by drawing it out and it is funny because a friend of mine, she said like, “Your art is only a way to actually communicate that message” it is like for her photography. She is a photographer. She used photography to express herself.
But it is not the medium that is important, it is more the message that is and so that’s why talking of longevity of eternity is definitely going to be more – the message than the art.
[0:43:20.1] JR: Yeah, interesting. All right so three final questions I like to ask everyone who joins me for these conversations. First, other than the Bible, what one book has most impacted your life? An impossible question by the way, I don’t think I could answer this but one book that has impacted your life?
[0:43:37.8] SK: Have you ever heard that Tim Ferriss like never ask that question?
[0:43:40.7] JR: No, I haven’t that’s really funny.
[0:43:44.2] SK: The reason why he said that and I read the reason why it is hard to ask that question is because it is harder to think about that than to say, “What are three books that you have gifted the most?” like make it easy so people can answer fast because they will know what they have gifted the most.
[0:44:01.6] JR: That is a great question. All right so which books have you gifted the most?
[0:44:04.2] SK: The Bible. Wrong answer, I have actually given all my books away and I love to give others to give is one of the two books that Bob Goff has made like Love Does and the other one.
[0:44:19.3] JR: Everybody Always.
[0:44:20.3] SK: Everybody Always. I think Everybody Always is probably the best book to give away to a friend because it has so many great stories of loving other people and it is not Christian-y or something. It is stories of him and he is just a phenomenal guy.
Donald Miller’s Story Brand book is amazing. It changes the way you think about using stories to communicate a message of your brand and third book, yeah I have gotten into the habit of reading at the early beginning of this year. Third book, you recommended that book to me. That was Excellent Wins by Horst Schulze.
[0:44:58.6] JR: Yeah, a great book. An amazing book.
[0:45:00.9] SK: I read it in one day.
[0:45:02.0] JR: Did you really?
[0:45:03.3] SK: I really did, Saturday I sat down and I read it and I am fascinated by how he built this company, absolutely amazing and the way that I tell everyone, I have been down in hotel, I have flown, I just got back, I had a great deal on the first class flight from and to, to Bogota and I realized what excellence in the hospitality industry means and how they deal with it like in my hotel room, it was great. I had a projector in the room but there was no way to connect it.
Because the person who was there before me, he stole the Chrome Cast and how the hotel dealt with it, they were like, “We don’t care” I just told them the morning, they were going away like yeah, cool. It is too bad for you the person before you stole it and I’m like, “I kind of want it” and finally I had to wait 40 minutes in a Ritz Carlton even though yes, the level is a lot higher but think about not giving your staff 2000 bucks to use on expenses but 50 bucks.
They could have bought a Chrome Cast in 10 minutes if they have the allowance for that but they didn’t. I had a bad experience and so yeah, I am not going back there.
[0:46:13.7] JR: I love Horst, you got to go and listen to the podcast episode that we produced with him it was a really great conversation. All right, second question, what one person would you most like to hear talk about the intersection of their faith and their work on this podcast?
[0:46:28.0] SK: It would be interesting actually hearing Justin Bieber in five years.
[0:46:33.1] JR: Yeah, Justin Bieber in five years. All right, so we will put a pin in that and come back to Justin in five years. That is a great interview, why do you say five years though?
[0:46:41.0] SK: I feel that he is at the beginning of his journey of being a Christian and it is so hard in that industry to actually do anything like Chance The Rapper is phenomenal in how he does things. I just saw that he was on the Ellen Show and he just said, “You know what? I am a believer” they talked about him giving away $1 million to two things and he just said, “You know what? Faith has always been a big thing, it is my faith in Jesus” and totally open in that conversation.
And so that was interesting but I feel like for Justin being one of the biggest top trending artists on Spotify and any other medium to actually allow God to impact his songs and his music impacting and now that he has to change everything around but how he will use that and how he will deal with things and I feel like he has already done an amazing transformation. I am so impressed by that always cheering for that and I am just curious how it is going to affect him and transforming him.
In the same way that like Selina Gomez or the Jonas Brothers, I was impressed. I saw the documentary on the Jonas Brothers, same thing pretty interesting.
[0:47:52.2] JR: Yeah that would be an interesting conversation for sure. All right, last question what one piece of advice would you give to somebody who is pursuing mastery of their one thing, right? So you are pursuing mastery of your craft as an artists, what one piece of advice would you give to somebody else who is pursuing mastery of their vocation?
[0:48:10.2] SK: Don’t let excuses get in your way. I really define that on six different excuses that we use all the time. It is perfection, it’s time, it’s our skills like we don’t have enough skills, we don’t have enough time, we cannot be perfect enough like we can imagine to make it perfect like our ideas are not original. We don’t have the right resources. There is always going to be an excuse that is going to stand in our way and every day, if it becomes a habit to allow these excuses like people say they are not creative.
But they come up with creative excuses of not to do anything. So that is why I tell people “create art not excuses” like create something and it doesn’t have to be perfect but this one this is all about coming up with one more piece, creating one more piece and it is not this one piece. I feel like Gaudi was right to do that at the end of his life to create this church but he created so many other pieces all during his life and he couldn’t have done the last piece.
And the question is like will your work be ever perfect? I don’t think so but the more you do the more you put out, we have tested it all along like if you take 100 photographs like a teacher told like students like 100 photographs or just one photograph, the teacher who or the students who took 100 were better photographers like their work was better than just the students who did just one photo.
[0:49:34.6] JR: So no excuses, I love that. Hey Stefan, I know I said a few minutes ago but I just want to commend you for the work that you are doing. Thank you for revealing the character of our exceptional creative God. Thank you for loving your 500,000 neighbors well through creating beautiful art and helping people see beauty in art and also in God’s Word. Man, thank you for loving your clients well. Thank you for loving these people, Apple, Coca-Cola and Tag and all of these big brands really well by doing really great work.
Your work matters, it is eternally significant. I am grateful for you. I am grateful for our friendship. Hey, if you want to learn more about Stefan, this truly world class masterful artists, you can find out about him, the 30 Days of Bible Lettering Challenge and his new book at stefankunz.com. Stefan, thanks so much for hanging out with me today, I appreciate it.
[0:50:32.9] SK: Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:50:34.6] JR: Hey before you go, I got one more shorter conversation for you that you are not going to want to miss. I recently sat down with the author of a book that I have added to my personal reading list. The author’s name is Aundi Kolber. The book is called Try Softer, kind of an interesting take. So heading into 2020 this idea of stop trying to do things harder, try softer. It is a different approach to anxiety and stress and constantly being in survival mode.
The book actually just released yesterday. I had an opportunity to get my hands on the advance copy that I started reading and I have really been enjoying. So I sat down with Aundi to ask for just a few questions about the book. Here is my conversation with Aundi Kolber.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:51:22.7] JR: Aundi, thanks so much for joining me.
[0:51:24.6] AK: Hey, thanks for having me.
[0:51:26.3] JR: Yes. So we are recording this in September but people are hearing this conversation right after the New Year and I wanted to make sure that this audience for this podcast of high achieving Christian professionals hear this. I think there is a lot of wisdom in your book. I know I am very excited to read Try Softer. I think it is such a counter-cultural message. So let us start here, what is this book about?
[0:51:51.9] AK: Yeah, there are so many things I could say but I think the underlying heart of it is Try Softer is really about changing our posture towards pain. Instead of the cultural norm of just trying harder or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and really encouraging folks to do something a little bit different, which is to try softer with hard things. The heart of it is about pain compassionate attention to our experience and our bodies and allowing that to influence what we do next.
You know so many of us have been taught to really white knuckle ourselves through pain and through hard and I use white knuckle really intentionally because what I am saying there is I am trying to delineate this from hard work. There is value like I really especially it sounds like for your listeners, you folks might be thinking, “Oh my gosh, who is this woman? What does she know about my life” and I totally get it partly because that was me and that’s been me.
That has been my journey. I am a survivor of trauma and part of the way that I learned to cope with hard things is really by saying like, “Well then I’ll just be the best” I don’t mean that in an arrogant way but to essentially say, “No matter how much pain I am in, no matter what is going on with me, it doesn’t matter. I am going to minimize it. I am going to numb it. I am going to push it down because what matters is that I look okay on the outside.
And so for me as a therapist what I have come to learn is that that is just brutal on our bodies. It is brutal on our souls and we just pay such a high price. And the thing is that it is such a paradox because we live in a culture in which it is praised and often times in our families, like especially if we grew up with a certain type of a family that might be really praised like, “Look how selfless you are, look at what a high achiever you are” and so we get this idea that that’s what is required to be loved.
And really I believe that God invites us into such a different way that Jesus came in a body, lived in a body and showed us what it meant to be truly human and that included emotions and experiences and connection with self and others and so Try Softer is really leaning into that message.
[0:54:20.4] JR: So what does trying softer look like?
[0:54:22.3] AK: So I really like to use that synonymously with compassionate attention because that is really the key to unlock what that looks like in every person’s life individually because I think of this like less of, “Hey, here is your five steps to trying softer” and it is a little bit more like, “I am going to teach you to fish so now you can go and you can catch the food that you need to live” and so compassionate attention requires awareness of self and others.
And that allows us then to say, like a great example might be for me as a person who’s had to come a long way in really connecting to my own internal experiences, I’ve had to learn to recognize when I am at my limits and when I am at my limits, my body is giving me information like I am irritable and I am exhausted and I have no patience for my kids and my heart is beating a 100 miles per hour. If I can have some compassion for my own experience I can say:
“Whoa, maybe I actually need to say no to the thing I have tonight” because even though that matters and I have given my word right now, I am on the edge of my sanity and my sanity matters more than meeting an external requirement. So like in that example that might be trying softer.
[0:55:55.2] JR: I think that is a big struggle for a lot of us. So who is this book for Aundi?
[0:55:59.5] AK: Oh how much time do we have? No, just kidding. No, I think this book is really for anyone who has found themselves trying harder in lots of different situations and finding it is not working. And so often times, this lines up with folks who are struggling with anxiety, depression and lots of ambiguous types of pain. I talk a lot about I come from what’s called a trauma informed perspective and what I mean by that is just having a holistic view of our bodies.
That our experiences are accumulated in our body and when we have unaddressed pain, those influence us in the here and now and our nervous system is constantly responding to the information that we are experience and when we ignore that, we often find ourselves really, really stuck and so I would say that this book is for folks who are like “I am stuck” like hard work really isn’t helpful right now like it is not getting me where I need to go.
[0:57:09.1] JR: So for our audience of Christians who care deeply about their faith but also care deeply about their work and are working hard to do good work not necessarily for their own fame and fortune but for the glory of God and good of others, what are they going to take away from this book?
[0:57:25.4] AK: Yeah, I love this question. I was thinking about this quote and you might have heard it from Saint Arrhenius and it is like, “The glory of God is man fully alive” and as I have written Try Softer, this has been a really important idea for me that there is a sense in which becoming who God has called us to be like with all the parts that we carry the amago day that we are sort of unwrapping our truest identity is a way that we glorify God.
And one of the really fascinating ideas is that from especially like a neuroscience perspective and there is a lot of faith integration, when we are connected to our own internal experience we actually have really the capacity to empathize and connect with others and to the extent that we are cut off from our own internal experience, we actually are cut off from the ability to empathize with others. So from a faith perspective it’s like, “Wow, how do we love our neighbor as our self if we honestly don’t know what is going on?”
Or even if we can’t have compassion for our own pain and so, Try Softer is really an invitation to not just observe ourselves but to observe ourselves with the compassion that God I believe already feels towards us. God is so compassionate and good that if we can sort of steward that to our own experience, wow, what would that be like if we are really embodying the kindness of the God who made us.
[0:59:08.4] JR: I love that. Well Aundi, I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on the book. The description itself was enough to add it to my reading list. So thanks for taking a few minutes to chat with us.
[0:59:18.9] AK: Absolutely, thanks for having me.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:59:22.6] JR: Again, the book is Try Softer. It released yesterday. You guys can pick up a copy wherever books are sold. Hey that’s it for today’s episode of the Call to Mastery. Remember, you can go pick up Master of One right now at jordanraynor.com and enter to win this incredible trip to Europe for you and a friend. Thanks for listening to the Call to Mastery. I’ll see you guys next week.
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