Creative Pep Talk
081 - Stay Inspired with Brandon Rike
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300 and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. It's actually, I think, more dangerous than it sounds. If you're starting to lose your motivation or excitement. - Exactly, it's very dangerous. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, you're listening to the Creative PEP Talk Podcast. This show is about commercial art, making a living, making great art. I'm your host, Andy J. Miller, illustration age is our proud syndicate. You can find this show at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk on SoundCloud and iTunes. (upbeat music) So, this show has kind of taken over my life in pretty much only good ways. I love doing the show sincerely, and it comes from a real place, a real passion to help creative people thrive. For the, to help people, help creative people find the right way to communicate their value to the world that maybe doesn't understand it or see it. And I believe those things, you know, this week, I had a message from a guy actually from my home state, and they were just telling me their story and how the podcast has helped them. And, you know, that's not necessarily a super unusual thing. It happens pretty often, you know? And I, but I was telling my wife about it because it just struck me for some reason. And as I was telling her about the story, I actually genuinely started crying. And I'm not a shameful crier. I can cry with the best of them. I love a good cry. I kid you not. But I, I started crying and I realized that, you know, I knew that this stuff was important to me. I knew helping creative people was a big deal to me. But I'm not sure I knew it was on such a cellular level. And that was just a good reminder that I know that we're not, you know, performing brain surgery or whatever. But I do think that this is important. I believe that creative people, giving their value, you know, contributing to our world is incredibly important for the world. And also for the creative person. Being creatively fulfilled and thriving financially as a person in the world is something that I am dedicated to helping others doing. And, you know, I was reminded of that this week. I was reminded that this is not a joke for me, even though I get really silly about it. I genuinely am deeply driven to help creative people thrive in a world that's maybe not set up for them to succeed. And so thank you guys for sharing the podcast. Thanks for all the notes that you send me and encouragement. It is really genuinely touching. So that's a serious note to start the podcast. Let's talk about what we're gonna do today. (upbeat music) Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly. We talk a lot on this show about the idea of how creative research shows that playing with the problem is essential to innovation. Now, when I think of play, I don't think of documents and email. So if your team is often working remote, you need something more dynamic and collaborative. I think that Miro's mind maps and flow charts where team members can edit and play in real time has a lot more capacity for innovation and playing with the problem than traditional ways of collaborating over the internet. Whether you work in innovation, product design, engineering, UX, agile or IT, bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary innovation workspace and be faster from idea to outcome. Go to Miro.com to find out how that's M-I-R-O.com. (upbeat music) I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. And I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro. And that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. Today on the show, we're gonna talk to Brandon Reich. Brandon actually recently started a podcast called The Graphic Sound. He has been putting his heart and soul into that thing. The production values are just insane. It sounds beautiful. He's really being honest and on there and it's starting to really get some momentum. I suggest you go check it out. If you like the creative PEPTALK, you might like the graphic sound. I think it's got some similarities, but it's got its own flavor. If you're a designer, especially, it's kind of more leaning that direction. Brandon is definitely cooler in a more obvious way than I am. It's kind of just kind of leans that way, but a place to start would be episode 10. He released it today. It's an interview with me, a long form interview where we touch on a lot of things that I kind of maybe allude to or mention on a podcast, but we go way deeper into kind of my life story, why I do what I do, all that good stuff. And I had a blast chatting with Brandon. So go check that out. That's episode 10. You could also check out the episode where he interviews Jesse Bryan. That interview is fantastic and they talk about branding and kind of knowing yourself as an artist. I loved that episode, really, really good stuff. I think that there's some amazing things happening over on that podcast and it's just gonna get better and better. Brandon is an awesome guy and we've become really good friends over this past year and I can't wait to see how we continue to collaborate. Today's episode, however, today we're talking about staying peped up, staying inspired, staying motivated. We don't just talk about doing that. We don't just talk about why it's important. We talk about how you can actively do that, stay inspired for the long game in a sustainable way. And so that's what we get into today. I hope you really, really enjoy it. Here it is. (upbeat music) Yeah, so I came up with this topic about staying peped up, staying motivated, staying inspired because A, you know, actually where it came from was I think the first time that we met up, you asked me why peped up, why they're called peped up. - Why the title peped up? - Yeah, and I hadn't really thought about it. It was more like an intuitive thing, just in that it fits me, it fits everything, you know, fit the topic and everything, but I hadn't really given it a lot of thought. - Yeah. - Of, you know, is it important to stay peped up? Like, is it important to feel motivated, inspired and all that good stuff? And so, and then also I'd kind of, when we first met up, which was how long ago? Less than a year? - Yeah, I'd say less than a year. I think probably like summer of 2015, or I think it was probably summer spring or summer of 2015. - And you were feeling kind of burnout. - Always. - Yeah. - Throughout the, if you're talking to me about 2015, 14, 13, fully burnout, three years of full on burnout. - Yep. - And so that, so this topic has been something that we've talked a lot about, how are you reinvigorating what you're doing and why that's important, how it affects the work and, you know, all that good stuff and got me thinking about how important it is to emotionally be engaged with what you're doing to a degree. And are you a Seinfeld fan? - Of course, yeah. - Okay, so yeah, we've talked about that. - Yeah. - I thought about the episode where Kramer is test driving a car, and they're like trying to push it like as far as they possibly can, or E, just to see where it goes, you know? And I started thinking about that, and I'm guessing you're the type of person that keeps a full tank. - You mean keeps a full tank of enthusiasm? - No, I mean in your car, literally. - I don't, let me, oh yeah, of course. Yeah, I'll go, I'll go a quarter of a tank, go fill it up. I won't let it get to you. - I mean, the lights come on sometimes. But as a designer, you know, how far will this thing go? I'm like, there is no choice. The car must continue going. If there's no gas, then there's got to be fumes. And if there's no fumes, then I'm gonna have to Fred Flintstone that thing, 'cause it must keep going. I have to hit the deadlines, you know, if we're using the metaphor for our creative career. So in that scenario of, let's see how far this thing goes, I will have my eyes all red and twitching and whatever. - Yes. - And still get the work done. - Yeah, and, but that's not ideal obviously. - That's really interesting. And yeah, I have done that so many times and I wanna talk about what keeps you, not maybe feeling motivated even, but dedicated to the wire. You know, maybe you don't feel like it, but you're going, you're running on fumes, you're pushing it to the end, you get to the deadline. How do you keep yourself pushing to that degree? But before we go there, you know, I was starting, I looked around for like some stories about, I don't know, funny stories about people running out of gas and actually I never fill up my gas until it's totally delights on and everything. - Yeah, maybe you have no choice. - I'm really stupid about that. And so I think there's been lots of times where I've almost ran out of gas. And actually, as I was like looking for stories online for people that had run out of gas, there's like page after page on Google of person dies 'cause they ran out of gas and someone hit 'em on the side of the road, someone beat, someone got beat because they were stranded 'cause they ran out of gas, you know, like literally, page after page of news stories of people getting harmed because they ran out of gas. And I thought the thing about feeling motivated and psyched and when you start feeling, I'm not maybe super into the work that I'm doing today. Okay, you might feel that way that that point. You might have a quarter tank, but you don't know when that thing's gonna run out and you don't know what situation you're gonna be in. You might be in a place where there's no jobs coming in and you have no motivation. So it's actually, I think, more dangerous than it sounds. If you're starting to lose your motivation, your excitement about what you're doing. Exactly, it's very dangerous, you know, I think on a recent, on one of my episodes, I did a conversation with Jesse Bryan. In that conversation, it was, I can't let this thing go off the tracks. As far as my career goes, I have to do whatever I can so that I'm not in the scenario where I'm filling up my gas tank on the side of the road. It might get hit by a car or get beat up or whatever. I am very, I think there's a big picture, there's a big picture motivation that I have as far as. I've created this career on my own. I got really lucky, meaning the work has continued to come in, but there's always the foreboding feeling of, yeah, but it could end any day. Yes. Well, it could, but man, you've been doing this for like, let's see, oh two, I started. So that, what is that, 14 years, you know? That'll only get you so far that kind of motivation. 'Cause at some point, it's like, this is your life now, so now you need some new kind of feeling. Right, so if I've been holding this on going for 14 years, I can either say, well, then it's gonna always go, or if I've been doing it for 14 years means, well, I have to take action in some way so that it continues, or that I have to take action in some way so that I get another phase of this career. There's been phases, if I look back over the past 14 years, there have been phases, the first phase was, I wasn't even doing it full time. Second phase was, I was challenging myself. Third phase was, can I make plenty of money? I guess I should say, plenty meaning, could I make enough money that I don't have to worry about if I'm gonna get a smaller, large drink. And then after that, it was, is there a huge business that I'm gonna build out of this, you know? When I start becoming more of an adult, is there an opportunity to build a business? Can I go from surviving to thriving? And which version of thriving do I wanna live? And if we, you know how I like to just push the metaphor and analogy as far as possible, there's a danger to when you find yourself on cruise control and like you said, you know, early on, you have that motivation of like, I either, I just need to break in, or I just need to gain momentum. And then once you have momentum, you have it of, I just need to keep the momentum going. And but at some point, if you're just, you know, on cruise control and you're letting the tank run low, and that's kinda where you found yourself, I think. - Yeah. - But before, so that's kinda the premise of the show. I wanna talk about how do you stay excited about what you're doing? If you're not excited about it on a regular basis, what are some action things that you can do to kind of reinvigorate things we've both learned about staying excited and staying motivated about the work you're doing? Before we do that though, I wanted to just talk about your show, 'cause you haven't been on this show since you started your own podcast. - Right. - And I just listened to that Jesse Bryan interview and it's fantastic. - Episode six. - Yes. - With Jesse Bryan, I think. - Oh, it's so good. There's like, that's the kind of shop talk that I like to hear. He talks a lot about Seth Godin, who's like one of my all-time favorites. And it's awesome. And I think what's really interesting about our conversations is I'm a super goofy, more expressive, you know, I don't know, sloppy. There's all kinds of work. - And I used to have a hardcore band. - Yeah, and you used to have a hardcore, I'm in all black right now. - We could just totally, yeah, we could totally sum it up with, I grew up listening to love songs, R&B, and you grew up in a hardcore band. - Listening to nine inch nails. - It's nine inch nails are boys to men, yeah. - No, man, I listened to boys to men and bell-bipped to go and color me bad and all that stuff too, I was. - And I listened to some, there was like, I had a, the season from going from R&B to indie music, I spent a few, I don't know, it was like six months in the emo phase. - Oh yeah. - I had a, like. - Now which version is emo? We gotta understand this, like. - The bad version. - Emo is not black hair hanging over your eyes with lip rings, there's an emo that precedes that emo when we're talking about bands like Sunny Day Real Estate. - I'm the way of that and that stuff's fantastic. - And Jawbreaker and all that stuff, so. - Even early modest mouse I think was pretty emo. - So there is a phase of emo that still to me is extremely reputable. - Very credible. - I really respect, but. - And I got into it, I got into that after the fact, but that wasn't where I was at the time. - Emo used to be about shouting and then it became about whining and then it became about dying your hair black and it became about wearing pants that were way too tight for you and that sort of thing. - I'm talking about the used and dashboard. - Yeah, no, well, see now dashboard, dashboard has old records that came out on filler. - Well, they have, you know, they had their foot in both camps in a lot of ways, yeah. They were kind of like the, anyway, I didn't spend much time there, thank goodness. But anyway, so. - No, we're talking about number one, the differences between you and I and I think what, you know, the reason that we are, we can say that we're different today. Something happened in my life where I felt like the best art that I made was usually inspired by anger or rather dark emotion. And I know that sounds really creepy. Sounds like Harry Potter, Dark Arts, Slytherin or something. But what I mean is that I was able to express myself better with a band when I was screaming. And in that world of screaming, in that world of hardcore or whatever, I found more honesty with skulls and black and that whole thing and that just made more sense to me and I enjoyed that more. But sure, like I can appreciate, you know, yo gabba gabba or something like I love, you know, I love that sort of thing. - And I think, you know, I think everybody can be multi-dimensional. I can, you know, I have definitely parts of me that enjoy all kinds of different facets, but that's probably not my core being. And it's really fantastic. And one of the things that I think we've been discussing, we knew that our podcast would be dramatically different in tone and content and all that stuff. And it's been really interesting. - But the core of what it is is so similar. - Yes, and I think we have similar passion for shop talk and self-reflection and art and design and illustration, but it's been really great to have to kind of understand the differences in our niche. And I think one of the things that came out of it for me was that I realized, although I think creative folks across the spectrum could enjoy both of our podcasts, you were really pushing me on. I think you're an illustrator, you know, your core audience is probably illustrators and yours is maybe more design. And just as an aside, I thought this was kind of fascinating. I realized that my core drive is to give form to formless things. Like I love anything that's abstract that feels important to me. I love making it less abstract for other people. And the funniest thing, and that comes across in like the analogies I do on the show. So I say, oh, here's this maybe complex concept or theoretical concept. Here's this little stupid story that'll help you hold onto it a little bit better. And I realized what they call that in terms of when you're doing speaking, it's called illustration. I'll give you an illustration. And then I realized that that description that I'd come up with, like this is my purpose. It's this giving form to formless things just realized it's being an illustrator. - Yeah, you illustrate, yeah. - So that's so, so weird. And so-- - You make pictures. - I make pictures of things. And sometimes they're verbal and sometimes they're visual, but that's literally my number one passion. And so it's been really fascinating to see the two sides of a similar coin. And it's really, you're just getting started and you're learning all kinds of things. Are you enjoying the process? - Yes, I'm enjoying the feedback. The process is actually pretty tough because I edit it all completely on my own. And then I send it to a guy to get mixed and mastered just so it sounds a little bit better and all the levels are in line. But the editing of this whole thing, and I care about the music, I care about, you know, backing music that maybe you don't necessarily notice, but you feel. - Yeah. - And I care about the moments when someone says something poignant and making sure that I can, you know, draw attention to that or give it its moment. So, you know, this last episode I just released with Ryan Clark, I probably put about seven or eight hours in the editing and just because, well, this is kind of refreshing for me because the driving force is, I just wanna make it awesome. And I'm not looking at the clock 'cause I'm not getting paid a dime for anything. I'm not looking at the clock. I just know that I wanna create a really good product. So, as a designer, I've gotten so far from that type of motivation, simply because-- - That energy is kind of absent and actually one of the things that I'm sorry to cut you off and we'll kind of circle back there, but I just wanted to note that, you know, my podcast is all about thriving financially and creative fulfillment. And one of the things that from watching you and seeing my own career is that you have to be in tune with how your creative fulfillment's doing, the gas tank of that. - Right. - And I think one of the things that's really hard to embrace is that the thing that you're pumped about now might help you thrive financially later, but the stuff that's making you thrive financially right now, you might not be too pumped about. - Right. - So, it's a cyclical kind of thing that you have to develop. - And you have to get it done. You have to get it done and so you have to figure out what's the engine that can run that gets all the work done. - Yep. - And after you've run that engine for so long, you know, you take a minute to sit back and be like, "Wait, am I even passionate about this?" Like the driving force behind this used to be passion and excitement and now the driving force is deadline and, you know, not dropping the ball or something or pleasing the client or, you know, for me, a big-- - Life, meaningful thing. - Right, a big driving force is, Brandon, don't let you have momentum. Don't let the momentum die and for me, momentum means being in really good relationships with my clients, making sure, you know, just being the number one guy for my clients, I want my clients to think that, man, Brandon's awesome, it's great working with Brandon and I want to continue to cultivate that relationship so that they continue saying, "Working with Brandon Reich is awesome." I love working with Brandon Reich, he makes it so easy. As long as I'm continuing to do that, then they're happy, but my stress now is in, I have to keep that up so I can't say no to this or I can't argue on this thing that, this direction they gave me that I don't think makes sense. So I'm constantly trying to not break the ice with some of these relationships and if that becomes the focus or the motivating factor above me being passionate and excited about making cool stuff, then, you know, my passion and my, you know, my passion kind of dies, my frustration level kind of raises and that's a frustrating spot to be in. So taking actionable steps, which you mentioned before, taking actionable steps to something like this is, for those times where you are very frustrated, I think it's helpful to take a step back, sit down, take a breath, be like, okay, I'm extremely frustrated right now and deconstruct what it is exactly that's frustrating you. - One of the things, one of the action steps that I wanted to go through is inner work. Like taking time, whether it's a vacation that you have to, you know, do, or whether it's just an afternoon walk, setting aside time to put the phone down, put the work aside and do the inner work of what's going on, find the right questions that poke at the visceral response, the real tug on the cord, you're saying there's something there and I need to pull that string and let it unravel, see the full thing until you get to the bottom of it. And yeah, I think inner work is one of the biggest things to do when you start noticing that, you know, your tank's kind of running empty. One of the things that I'm noticing though, is that with this creative fulfillment and thriving financially thing that balance, I think in terms of like what happens is the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? And so what feels meaningful early on is like paying your bills. Like, and there's meaning in that. Once you've done that for a while though, the meaning is kind of gone. Well, a young person's goal is to add credibility to the thing they do every day and to feel like they're being a real adult and to please mom and dad and say mom and dad, I'm making 30 grand a year or 40 grand if it, whatever it is that you felt like was your qualifying thing. First, let me get to that. And if I can get to that, then mom and dad are gonna know that I'm doing something with my life. I can feel like a real adult. Maybe I can go ahead and get that new apartment. Maybe I can get the car. Maybe I can get the house, whatever it is, you have to first establish the fact that you are a real adult that makes money and has a job. You just have to establish the fact you indeed have a job. And if 30 grand is that number, if 20 grand is that number to say that you have a job, that's all you care about at first. And you'll do anything. You'll bend over backwards. And I would advise young creatives who are trying to get to that point, don't like, you don't need to fight for any of your rights right now. You just have to make money. - I don't care business and don't-- - Don't care business and make money. - And I've seen people come in, especially, you didn't go to art school. I didn't go to art school. And I found that one of the things, one of the, I'm, by the way, I always have to say this 'cause I teach at an art school. I'm a big art school fan. I know some of the best people in the industry are graduates of art school. But one of the things I see in students that I think is a by-product is, there's all this intellectual talk about what's good, what's bad and all that. And so you leave with a chip on your shoulder. - Right. - And you say, I'm not doing that crap. - And you leave thinking that you have taste. - Yes, exactly, and that ends up biting in the butt when at the beginning, it's time to get your head down, take what's given to you, make it work, and have that kind of blue collar mentality to get it going. - Yeah, it's like congratulations. You think you have taste, but you have to learn how to work. - Yes, totally. - And if you're lazy-- - Yeah, you need to learn how to work. - You need to learn how to work. - Yes, that's totally accurate. - If you're lazy with taste, who cares? - Yep, and so I think the way that I look at it, in terms of your desire, your desire is fueled by the meaning of the work that you're doing, right? And early on, something smaller, more, you know, I don't know, tangible might motivate you like buying a car or whatever it is. But at some point, you're gonna have to up the scenario, up the ante, and the way I looked at it was, have you ever been in like a shop, let's say, and there was a sale, and you thought, yeah, I'm gonna get this thing, and then you go up and you see the line is like out the door. - Yeah. - And that instantly tells you, do I care about this thing? - Yeah, you get a chance, you get a beat to really question your motives. - Like, I am not gonna stand here for 25 minutes for this shirt, I don't give a damn about the shirt. And so that's a really clarifying thing. And I thought about it in terms of we're gonna go back to the car thing, if you're gonna get off the exit, 'cause you wanna pick up a Starbucks, but there's a giant line out the exit, you're not going, you're gonna pass it, you're gonna move on. - Right. - But if your destination is, you're seeing your wife for the first time, 'cause you've been deployed for the past three years, you're gonna wait as long as it shakes. - You're gonna jump over those cars, you're gonna knock everybody in line now. - It doesn't matter if you run out of gas, you're gonna walk, you know. - But it's what you truly want. - And I think the thing about the creative career, especially doing it on your own, is that the roadblocks that you're gonna hit are so massive sometimes, like pulling all nighters and working hard and hustling, all that stuff. It can be so difficult to create this career that you want that if it's not tied to a deep desire, if it's just getting a Starbucks, you're gonna give up. - Right. - And so one of the things that, one of the actionable things is can you do the inner work of saying what is a desire that's gonna get me up at a bed in the morning? What's a desire that I can be sure about? Because I think the other thing that happens is, when you're confused about what you really want, you are apathetic. - Yeah. - And you're not gonna be disciplined. - Yeah. - And you're not gonna be, you know, overdoing each job to please the customer and all that, because you don't really know what the purpose of it all is. - Right. - And so it was interesting to watch you go through that, it was like, all right, money's not an issue, and clients aren't an issue. Now, what's a deeper felt desire that I can tap into that's gonna motivate me? - And that question was, am I actually enjoying this work? - Yes. - And my answer to, okay, so, you know, like we said, I got to the point where I was making a living doing graphic design. I even got to the point where I was making a really good living doing graphic design. I got to the point where I stopped doing stuff I didn't wanna do like websites or collateral or whatever. I realized that I just really liked doing graphic t-shirts and logos. And if I could only do graphic t-shirts and logos, then that was cool. And so one step for me was get rid of all the stuff I don't wanna do. - Yes. - Well, I keep narrowing it down as my career goes further. So now at this point in my career, there are bands like 30 seconds to Mars or 21 pilots or Ellie Golding or Parramore or, you know, nine inch nails or whoever. There's bands like that that I get totally amped up about designing for. - Yep. - But then there's like eventees. - Yeah. - For some music festival with a bunch of bands and tour dates on the back. - And drawing guitars. - Yeah. And all that sort of stuff and I'm looking at it, I'm like, wait, I hate doing eventees. I hate it. And I can look at the beginning of the day. So what did you say at first? Like the moment, what was your word for? The moment when you kind of get yourself centered? Sort of like taking a walk or whatever? - Take in the inner work. - Inner work, there you go. So my inner work is I'm on, I'm in the midst of a 266 day streak of doing 15 minutes of meditation in the morning. And I know as soon as I say the word meditation, things get hippy. This is me with an app on my phone, noise canceling headphones. - What is that? - Sitting still for 15 minutes. The app is called Calm, C-A-L-M. And for 15 minutes, I sit still. And so my morning routine is shower, breakfast, meditate, and then work. So the meditate time is the time of the day and the morning I'm sitting out on my porch, even when it's really cold out, I'm sitting on my porch. And I am clear, I am empty. I am only optimistic about what I'm gonna do that day. And if there's something that I'm dreading, I can get myself to be optimistic about it. I can find something in there that I can get excited about doing. Maybe there's something about this eventy that I can get excited about doing. Maybe there's this new technique that I've been wanting to try or something like that. Maybe there's something in there somewhere that I can get motivated to do. But through this inner work that I've done for the past 266 days, I have totally understood I've been able to sit there and deconstruct, "Okay, Brandon, you're bummed about the day. You're not looking forward to what you're gonna be working on today. Why is that?" And I just recently realized it's because I was designing, it sounds so silly to say eventees, but I was designing for something that had no real aesthetic. And a music festival doesn't have an opinion. - It doesn't have a soul. - It doesn't have a soul, it's nothing. It is just a compilation of a bunch of other stuff. No one is gonna say their favorite record is some compilation. If you say that your favorite record is, "Oh, so and so is greatest hits." Like, "Oh man, you just don't get it." So no one's favorite record is the greatest hits. Your favorite record is that moment in time where that band was going through that thing, the Third Eye Blind self-titled record where you know there's continuity between all that, he had something to say, there was something there. So in the same way, I wanna get on board when a band like 30 seconds to Mars or 21 pilots or 9 inch nails or whoever paramore stands for something. And I want to deconstruct what they stand for. I wanna believe the same religion as them so that all the art that I create for them is totally on brand, totally on vibe, and I can knock it out of the park form. Fallout Boy is another one where I've been able to just dig into their vibe, dig into their aesthetic and knock it out of the park over and over again. And those are the times when I can get immersed in the work. Those are the times when I'm just grinding, I don't even wanna say grinding. I'm enjoying myself through that work in the clock spinning. I don't even know what time it is. - Well, the thing about that is, is that when you're excited about what you do, this is something that I heard from Freakonomics. You know about Freakonomics? - Yeah. - Yeah. And they're looking at studies on a large scale about who really succeeds. And I know that the do-it-you-love thing has been tore apart every which way, but the fact of the matter is, they saw that enjoying the work that you're doing is the best competitive advantage that you can have, because if you're working but it feels like fun, you are going to kill the competition. If the competition doesn't feel that way, you're going to massively outdo them every time. - Well, here you go. This is what I've been realizing lately. Work ethic is a myth. I can get up in my office and get totally excited about the Fall Out Boy project that I'm working on right now, and just start totally vibing with it and all that stuff. If you look at me from an outside perspective, you'd be like, "Man, he has such a good work ethic." I'm not working hard. - Totally. - I'm just digging into this. - You're having a good time. - I'm having a blast. - Yeah. - It looks like I'm working hard. That's your perception. - Yeah. - What you can't see is that that dude is so excited about the stuff that he's making right now. That's why he's working until 4 a.m. That's why I'm doing it. It's not because, I mean, I don't know, you know, work ethic is a myth even for blue collar jobs because that guy doesn't love digging a ditch. That guy loves providing for his family. So, the motivation for him is providing for his family. The motivation for me is doing something awesome for Paramore. The motivation for me is totally understanding the brand and provoking an emotion with the stuff that I make. And when you start getting stuff that's kind of arbitrary, like an eventee or some print collateral for just to get information across that really doesn't have any brand or conviction or feeling, well, now at this point in my career, that's the stuff I'm trying to weed out. If there's not a story, if there's not emotion behind what I'm doing and what I'm working on, if I can't grasp on to some type of emotion and get on board with them and get fired up about something, then I am not going to enjoy that project. And if I can-- - You're not gonna be able to give it your own. - Right, and if I can give myself the choice, do you wanna do stuff that you enjoy or do stuff that it just pays the bills? Well, I'm finally at a point in my career where I think I can cut out the stuff that I don't enjoy and still pay the bills with the stuff I'm passionate about alone and let's say that's 85% stuff I'm passionate about. That's a pretty great ratio. - And I think just in terms of the inner work being your pit stop for gas or whatever it is, stopping, the thing about that is that I find so fascinating is that a lot of this work that you're talking about, while you are feeling super burnout, you are doing a lot of that stuff. - Kind of. - But when, but you are doing a lot of stuff with these bands that you do really wanna work with. - Yeah, yeah. - But because of the burnout, everything was tainted and without doing the inner work, you couldn't even pick apart what do I actually, what am I actually trying to do? What would actually be a good scenario? Everything was tainted. - There's a point in your career where you can get to say that this stuff is a cancer and I need to weed it out so that I continue to enjoy what I do. But this is terrible advice for someone who's just starting. - Totally, absolutely. - If you're just starting, do everything you possibly can. You don't know what you're good at yet. You don't know what-- - You don't even know what you like. - Right, you don't know what you like. - You don't even know. - There was a time when I was so excited to build a website for somebody and then one day I was like, "There is nothing I hate more than building a website. "I am never gonna do this again and I haven't done it again." So I think that a lot of the advice, and this goes from my podcast and your podcast, there are stages at which this advice is perfect and there are stages in your career at which this advice doesn't apply. - Totally. - So like we said, the young designer, grind, do everything you can. You need to learn how to work. And once you work over years and years and years, you're gonna look back and realize that you create a portfolio. Maybe it was just two or three things a year that you really like that you wanna put in your portfolio. But through that work, you had a portfolio. So don't necessarily think that, you know, start out, "Oh, I'm only doing portfolio pieces." - Get out of here. - Yeah, that's not gonna happen. And the other thing I wanna know is that although people just starting out are in the same situation as you, they can still extract the principle that tapping into the desire, the thing that you're really, really need and want at this moment and making that really apparent at the forefront by doing inner work will help you to stay motivated and disciplined on a daily basis. Keep coming back to the mill, keep putting in time because you know that thing that you want, this is the stuff you have to do to get there. And I think it's even, if you wanna push a little bit further, something interesting is as we were, so if you take a moment out, we went to a conference last October, that was part of the inner work time where you were working through a lot of this different stuff. - Right. - And one of the things that's really interesting is as you felt that sense of purpose by tapping into that deeper desire, the rest of the work becomes a little bit more bearable at the same time. - Yeah, because the way that it's easy for me to make the rest of the work bearable is for me to zoom out and know that I'm an artist for a living. - Yeah. - And if there's a few projects and a few eventties or whatever that I gotta do to get through it, it's okay because it's still at the end of the day, I'm an artist for a living. If I could go back to 17 years old and watch some, you know, there's even a video when I redesign the death to stock photo logo. - Yeah. - It's a video of this guy who has a home office, an all white home office, and he sits there and he sketches things on paper and then he creates graphics on the computer. And that's freaking me. - Yes, yes. - That's a video of me. But, and I know enough to zoom out and say, Brandon, look, you are the guy that you used to look up to. Like, you are a guy, an artist for a living, 33 year old guy making a living, doing art all day, every day from my home, I'm pretty happy, you know? - Yes. - And that is the, I don't wanna say last resort, but that's always the thing where, listen, no matter how bad your day's going, zoom out. - There's a gratitude. - Yeah, there's so much gratitude in that. And going back to, you know, the difference between a blue collar worker and a guy, you know, a person who's creative for a living, creatives should be excited because someday, if you're not there yet, you get to have a job that is driven by your excitement and driven by, you know, it's the same thing as when you were four years old and you were in the corner building Legos and you just wanted to get that castle done. Your mom told you dinner was ready, but you just wanted to finish that castle. That same thing happens as an adult doing creative work. It's like, you know, my wife tells me dinner's ready or my wife says family feuds on at seven o'clock. Well, I'm grinding through this thing and I cannot wait until it's finished and I am so excited about seeing this finished product and I just got to do this, this, this and this and it's all done. And that passion and that intensity and that motor is totally driven by excitement. And that motor is so much better than the motor that says, oh, I just got to get this done. - Duty, having to do this project. - I'm doing this thing just 'cause I have to do it. That'll only take you so far. - Yep, and you have to, and you visualize that art director that you hate because they're making you work late on whatever, or they don't know the time zone difference or something like that. - Yes. - And I hate that that is bad energy. - Yeah, totally. - And it happens, definitely happens a few times a week. - Totally. - That's normal, but when that energy comes in, it's like this is not the stuff that I want to be driven by. - That's not the place where you want to work from. - Right, if you let me dig into this project, I'm going to be driven by the kid, you know, trying to build the castle out of Legos. You know, and just wants to play with Legos all night. I just want to play around on my computer all night. - Yep, totally. (upbeat music) - Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians, and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're going to chat through our new Journey of the True fan series, exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. It's holiday shopping time, y'all. It's time to freak out. Not because uncommon goods is here to make it easy. Listen, all I did was click the for her section on this site and I instantly saw five things that I could get Sophie. Don't tell her, but I'm thinking either of the National Park sweaters, the tea advent calendar. There's also just below that little bubble tea kit for my oldest. And then I saw one of these, you know, the retro little viewfinder orange real viewer things, but you can make it your own photos. Okay, it might not make sense. Just you have to go check it out yourself. Here's the thing, I have seriously never seen so many good options for gifts online in one place and unlike lots of other convenient options, shopping, uncommon goods actually support small businesses. To get 15% off your next gift, go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. (upbeat music) And so the next kind of thing I'm gonna talk about is this idea. So you have this desire to do something and then I think it has to be matched with a hope that you believe it can actually happen. This next stage, the thing that you're working towards, it can't just be something so abstract or so far away in the distance that you don't have hope. And so the thing that I, the kind of parable of this is back when medical testing and scientific experiments were a little more brutal and this thing was happening. There was a study that was done where they were drowning rats and that's dire but the point is pretty interesting. They would take street rats that had no human interaction. - I mean like splinter or it's not as big as splinter. - I'm at Aladdin, that was good, no. - You got it, or a rat or two. - Those kind of street rats. But then they would take a street rat that had no human interaction, put him in like a glass jar with water and they would die really quickly, like minutes. They would like surge around, try to see if there's any way out and then they would die. And they would take a rat that had tons of interaction with humans, humans had helped it, put it in and out of the cage, you know, all kinds of interaction and those rats would go hours because they knew at any time, somebody might just reach in and pull me out. - There's a possibility. - There's a hope. And then they would do a test where they would take a street rat and they would put it in there and then they would take it out and they would put it in there and they would take it out. And so all the while building this hope and those rats could go for days. So it went from minutes of sustainability to days. - The simple fact that they knew it was possible allowed them to keep going. - Yes, and that's one of the things that I think kills artists early on or having that thing that you really wanna do next, if it's not tangible in some way, you're not gonna put in the time on a regular basis to actually make it happen. - Yeah. - Yeah. And so I think there's lots of ways of making that kind of diving deeper into this idea of something becoming tangible, right? And so out of the past couple of years, there've been a lot of different things that I've wanted to do and they kind of just sat on the back shelf. The best way I think to enable that hope, there's a few different action things that you can do. One of the things, one of the best, if you're like far away from the goal and you really have no idea of how to make it a reality, I think the number one thing you can do is get in proximity with the people that already do that. - Yeah. - There's nothing that changes your perspective, like being close proximity with people that have done what you wanna do. If you look at, I remember this story so well, Ed Norton talks about how his nanny as a kid was on Broadway, she was like an understudy, but she was on Broadway. And to him and his mind, it just brings down that veil of like, oh, that's the thing that makes it happen. - Yeah. - Yes. And that alone can give you hope, right? - Right. - The other thing that I think you can do is, when you've done that inner work, maybe the thing you wanna do is something you've had a taste of already. - Yeah. - And you lean into that. And for you, I think that it kind of looked like that. - Yeah, for me, it was, hey, you know how you're designing T-shirts for your band. Maybe you could design those T-shirts for other people's bands. - Yeah. (laughs) - And recently, even more, you kind of have some kind of relation to the lead singer of "21 Pilots," right? - Yeah, he's my cousin's husband. - Right, and so-- - Cousin-in-law husband. - You were in that area where you could do a lot of work for the band. You got to touch almost every visual aspect of what they were doing. - Yeah. - And so that was kind of like a luck thing to a degree. Obviously, you're super good. - Well, it's actually interesting. Well, real quick, it's interesting because I was designing for them before they were even together. Before he was even part of my family. So I-- - Oh, really? - Yeah, so I already designed for his band and through their record label in Los Angeles, so here he is in Columbus. He has a band and the people handle the art for his band are in Los Angeles, and they're asking me to design stuff. - That is really nice. - So from Columbus to Los Angeles to Columbus. - And I just wanted to say, I didn't mean to diminish it in any way. I just met sometimes in your career. Like the Nickelodeon thing happened for me where I met someone and it kind of rolled into a bunch of different things. - Well, being able to know him personally meant that he trusted me and he knew that he trusted my taste, he trusted all that stuff. And like he had the opportunity, I can just let this guy do whatever he wants to do. - But there's a degree of writing that wave. So for me, the Nickelodeon thing kind of unraveled organically without me really thinking, I want to go into the kids market and do this kind of thing. And that it was, okay, that thing's kind of happening. I like that. Let's think about how do I use this thing? How do I use that opportunity to fill me with hope that this is a direction that I could actually go into? And for you, it looked like that experience was fantastic of having your hand on everything, being able to really feel the soul of the band. - Yes, yeah, I see where you're going. So that gave me the opportunity that it was more fun for me to dig in deep with one band. So to kind of simplify it, I want to stop doing a ton of stuff, or I want to stop doing a few things for a ton of clients and I want to start doing a ton of things for a few clients. Meaning I would rather take one band and dig in really deep with them and really understand each other on a deep level and understand where they want to go. Because with 21 pilots, for example, me and the lead singer have had maybe one and a half emails about design and I've created hundreds of things for that band. So we trusted early and we started believing the same religion, religion and air quotes, if you're understanding what I'm saying. We were believing the same religion early on. So if we can all establish this religion, establish this Bible, then it's going to be easy to make decisions years from now because we all know that we believe the same thing and we have the same value. So when it comes to a brand, that's where you want to get, you want to get to the point where you all are on the same level with what you believe. Anyway, this has now become the thing that excites me. So it was refreshing to me to get even to a new level in my career where this was now an opportunity and I wanted to put more focus on a career that operated like this. As opposed to the career style I had previously where I was like, if anybody wants any type of graphic T design done, no matter who you are, then yeah, I'll do it. If it's for a soccer team, if it's for a resort, if it's for a band, if it's for an event, whatever it is, I'll do it. I'm the graphic T guy. When I started realizing inside the realm of graphic T's, there was something even more specific that I wanted to do. And I think that over the course of a career, a designer should know that at the beginning do every single thing you're capable of. And over time, you must be patient, don't, you can't, I think one of the things that happens to people that kind of burn out early on is that they discriminate. And the jobs come in in all shapes and sizes. And I think one of the things about being 20 years old is you don't know yourself and you don't know much about the industry. The industry, by the time you're in your prime, the industry will have changed so much. You might find your passion as a thing that didn't exist when you were 20. - Right. And when you're 20 years old, you are insanely impatient. - Yes. - And if I come here and tell as a 33 year old and I go and tell a 20 year old person, I started when I was 19. And I'm still trying to get where I want to be. And sure, I make a good living. I have a cool career, like I have a cool portfolio. All that stuff, I'm happy with my career. But there is no, you know, and I've been through this concept a lot lately and been dealing with it. But there is no top of the mountain. There's just that realization that, okay, I'm an artist for a living now. This is the life, I'm living the life I want to live. Can the career improve? Sure, but yes, I'm living the life I want to live. That's huge. - And when the desire dies and you're at the top of the mountain, you're not motivated anymore. - Right. The top of the mountain is tricky. It's part of what, yeah, it's part of what keeps you going. So just to recap that idea, as you're doing the inner work and you're looking for, what are the core desires that are gonna push me forward, propel me, not just so I feel excited every day, but when you don't feel excited, that it brings you back to the table, makes you disciplined. One of the things to think about is, not just out of all the possibilities in the world that I could do, what are some of the things that I've already tasted that I'd like to taste more of? - Right. - Yeah, that can be a beneficial thing because that is something you can build upon in terms of hope because because you've done that, if you've never done that 21 pilots thing, you might not even know if it's a possibility. - Right, I didn't know that creating a full brand experience was possible just because in the band merchandise industry, everything is so all a cart and everything is very competitive. So I'm up against a bunch of other guys for every single thing that I do. And these guys are my friends, but we all know that we are totally battling each other. We all know that we are competitors and it's cut throat. So in that way, you kind of get whatever you can. You get whatever jabs or whatever metaphor you wanna use. You get whatever you can get in there because it's the idea of having complete 100% control. Just that's not how everything is set up. It's not set up that way. It's set up to source art from as many artists as possible to narrow it down to something. Well, what if there's an artist that can really hone in on the brand and what if we can take that brand and make something really cohesive with it? This is now my passion because I can't say that I really enjoy branding projects with like restaurants and businesses, like typical branding projects because there's not the emotion is every band comes equipped with a certain level of emotion behind it. You know, some more than others, but you know that a band has emotion behind it. They're screaming what they're singing there. Or they're, you know, from a Dell to my chemical romance to Slipknot, whatever, there's emotion there. So when you get a business, sort of like, is there any emotion here at all? - Yeah, obviously there are other people that totally can tap into that and enjoy that, but it can feel like you're fabricating an emotion. With bands, it's right there on their sleeve. And it's easier to do it. And, you know, I enjoy that type of work more than I enjoy branding a company. Now, could I brand a company? Sure, of course, I've done that plenty of times before, but for me at this point in my career, I'm like we said, I'm tapping into the little tiny things that are motivating me to keep doing it. And man, when I get on board with the vibe that someone's going for and when I convert to that religion, that's the motivator that makes building legos in the corner, that motivator. - And I wanna think about that being peped up less like necessarily a feeling and more like when that desire and the hope is kind of spinning and they kind of feed off of each other and you're sat at that exit and your cars run out of gas and there's a giant line, you're gonna get out of your car, you're gonna run until your shoes fall off. And that's the kind of pep that I'm talking about because driving financially with a creative career that you're excited about is a significant achievement. - A significant achievement. - And you are going to find these brick walls and you're only gonna get through them when you're deeply tapped into these desires and you're hopeful that the work that you're putting in day after day after day is going to add up into something that you really want. - Yeah. - And so that's kind of the bigger picture. - You know, like there's art directors or people who request work will come in and ask me, "Hey, can you design this, this, this and this?" And what I don't get a chance to say to them, which I wanna say, but I have to maintain these relationships is, no, I don't wanna do that because that does not sound fun. And I'm only at a stage in my career now where I can say stuff like that. Well, I wish I could say stuff like that. I may find some other excuse to turn the project down instead of just telling them that's fun because if you tell anybody, you don't wanna do, I don't wanna do the thing you're gonna pay me for because it doesn't sound fun. - Sounds extremely privileged. - It sounded great as privilege. - Yeah, it's privileged and it's spoiled and all this stuff. But the reason that I would even think that way is because I'm starting, you know, I treat my career like this, I protect this thing. And if anybody's trying to mess with it, everybody, I protect my soul. If anybody's trying to kill my soul, it's like a rabid wolf, like, no, get your hands off this because I'm operating on passion. I'm excited about what I'm doing. It's like bursting a bubble. You watch a four year old kid run around and be happy, having a great day, let's say this four year old kid's been through some stuff, but he's having a great day today and somebody comes in here and bursts his bubble. Like, I won't let anybody burst that bubble because I have this career and it's driven by passion and it's driven by excitement. So if there's any ounce, any sliver of excitement that's driving me, I can't let somebody kill this. And this is an idealistic thought, I know that because the reality is that somebody kills it every single day. But I know now that this passion, as abstract as it is, is a worthy thing to maintain because that is the best motor I can possibly use when I'm trying to get through a day. - And this is the argument, the argument that we're making is this core passion, this core desire, this energy, this motivation, when you realize that this is the thing perpetuating the whole thing, you do need, you do know, I need to protect this thing, you need to make sure that I'm doing the inner work, that I'm finding the hope, that I'm getting in around people that are helping me be hopeful about this. And then, I think the way, the place I wanna end is stepping back from like, all right, these greater topics of desire and hope and all that and saying on a daily basis, what are the things that keep you going? And so, this again starts with inner work of like, I'm gonna step back and I'm gonna observe, when do I feel excited about what I'm doing? When do I feel inspired about things? And then quit doing those like an amateur or do 'em like a pro, do 'em like systematically because you need to be tapping into this day after day after day. And so, for both of us, we both have a form of quiet time where there's prayer, meditation, whatever. In the morning, we're getting familiar with, going back to the desire, going back to why am I doing this today? How can I, or if it's something I really, all my play, I really don't wanna do, like my taxes. We gotta do taxes, right? - Yeah. - I frickin' hate taxes, but I know there's a, this is the only way I get to do this thing on my own. So, I go back to that core desire, so I'm gonna build up my energy and just say, look, it's better than having a job, having to deal with your taxes. And so, I'm doing that, I'm stepping back from it. And so, on a daily basis, what's the routine, what's the morning routine that gets you into the place to do your best work? What are the podcasts, what are the books, what are the things that you need to keep revisiting because they refuel that feeling? - Yeah, and I think, like I said, I do, every day, I guess the actionable steps that I would tell creatives is every day, think about the thing you're excited about, focus on that, allow yourself to get excited as possible about that. Like, you get to do that one thing today, remember it, yes, I can't wait to do that. And then think about the thing that you hate to do the most and break it down to its simplest form or what is it that makes you mad? Is it just that our director's personality? And if it's just that our director's personality, then that's something kind of small that you're probably big enough to overlook. I mean, you could be the smaller person and get really frustrated and dislike them or something, or maybe just give them a little bit of grace and know that maybe they're having a hard day or maybe they're stressed themselves. Whatever you gotta do to minimize that thing that's making you mad down as little as you can. And really, it's like, you know, for me with event stuff, am I just mad about typing out tour dates? Just type out the tour dates. Don't overthink it. Yeah, no one wants to type out tour dates, but if you gotta type out tour dates, put them in the back of some t-shirt because it was requested. You don't have to get mad at the entire operation. You don't have to get mad at the entire establishment. It's just about typing tour dates. - You don't have to eliminate the feeling. You can feel the feeling and just go through it anyway. - Deconstruct it and minimize it. That's what I do. Everything that makes me mad, I deconstruct it and I minimize it. I'm not saying that I don't get mad all the time. I do get mad. I do get frustrated with these people, but what I'm honing in on is the fact that I enjoy doing that and I don't enjoy doing that. And that simple thing is always going to be the motivator for where your career can go. If there's something, I know that I'm still gonna do the things I dislike doing now, but I know where I wanna get to, maybe by the time I'm 40 or something, is not doing too much of that stuff I really dislike doing. But I'll do it. I'm gonna grind the way I've grinded my entire career and that's okay because if I'm worried about the grind, if I'm worried about just pushing through stuff without thinking about it, I then know I get to zoom out and realize that I indeed am an artist for a living. I'm doing what I wanted to do since I could remember what an occupation was. - And you're describing one of the last things I wanna say in terms of actionable step is something that you keep doing to get that sense of gratitude and that sense of hope and progress is stopping often and looking back five years ago, 10 years ago and saying, look at how far I've come. And let's get some perspective on that junky thing that's on your list today. It is nothing compared to the job you had 10 years ago that killed your soul, right? And so that's another thing that you can actionably do and then think, well, just imagine, let your imagination run wild of, where can you be in 10 years? - Right. - And so I think that's the full spectrum for me. I think that there's a lot of stuff to go at there about keeping that motivation, seeing it as sacred. - Yeah. - And I don't think it's a replacement for discipline and I wanted to get into that of like, there's a degree where discipline can kill your soul to the point of you don't wanna live. Like I don't wanna get up and keep doing this crappy work day after day after day. That's a discipline that you don't want. You want a discipline that's tied to a deeper desire, something that is gonna push you into the future. And the last thing I wanted to say, something that was really powerful for me was the activity of right down one thing that if you accomplished in the next five years, you could say those five years were a win. They were a total win. It is so hard to find something to write down that you can ascribe that kind of value. But when you get it, that can push you for years. Say, if I do this thing, I know that I can say those five years were worth it. - Yeah, it's funny you said because, you know, with the portfolio that I've built up and the band roster that I've built up, the question a lot of people ask me is, is there any band that you wanna design for that you haven't got a chance to yet? And if you asked me that four or five years ago, I would have said, yes, death cab for cutie. I still haven't got to design for it. And about two or three years ago, I designed a bunch of stuff for death cab for cutie. I still designed a bunch of stuff for death cab for cutie. So looking back, knowing that, well, Brandon, what else is there? You've got nine inch nails, you got death cab for cutie. You know, I, you know, one of my favorite bands when I was little was Green Day, I designed a bunch of stuff for Green. Like, I've been able to design all that stuff. So I am able to look back and be like, I've reached those benchmarks. And, you know, some of the stuff I'm doing now with bands like 30 seconds to Mars or 21 Pilots being able to dig in much deeper, that is this, that gets to use all of my skills and all of my areas of expertise or whatever you wanna call it. But, you know, having a band myself, I was able to dig in a lot deeper. And I know a little bit more about how bands wanna be perceived and how bands perceive themselves and stuff. And if I can get a chance to design a little bit more than their T-shirts, then that's a really cool experience for me. So I get to look back on those projects and I get to look back on a portfolio or a client list that just blows my mind. And I mean, I could be a spoiled brat about it and whine about it now. But if I can just take a step back and look and or, you know, another thing, another device, you know, talking about actionable steps, another device is you have to use, you know, eight, nine, 10, 15 year old version of yourself. Yes. They have to sit on your shoulder and you have to tell them every now and then what you get to do for a living. Yes. Because from their perspective, no matter what stress you think you went about that day, it is so minimal because their jaw is still on the floor because you just told them you're an artist for a living. You get to be creative for a living. You know how you color all day? You get to do that as an adult. And if you're not focusing on that, you are a spoiled brat. Totally. And a lot of us creatives, the more and more we talk about creative block and all that stuff, we are spoiled brats and we have to realize how blessed we are to get to do this stuff and how abnormal of a job this is. And I think us being in the Midwest, we understand that this is not what a job is. Totally. You know, there's no sweat. There's no like exhaustion. Like our legs don't hurt after this work. It's just we're just training our brain that I think that comes with not everybody that's in the Midwest, but I definitely feel it like I'm on a daily basis. I recognize the privilege and the blessing that is, the stuff that I get to do on a regular basis. Yeah, and the elitist perspective is one where everybody's just has these white colored jobs and animus have ever known us know how to swing a hammer or anything like that. Yeah. So that's the type of mentality that you got to get yourself out of. It's extremely motivating to me to think, if I could go back even to 10 year old Andy who is worried about his future because he knows he's not going to fit into the regular culture. He's not going to just succeed on the regular path and say, hey, man, things that you draw are going to be on Nickelodeon. Yeah. I know for a fact that it would have rocked my world and that knowing that looking back that far, you know, 20 years ago to think, man, in 20 years, just imagine, just let just let the positive imagination say, not the negative anxiety of like, oh, hell, the things that are going to happen in the next 10 years. So yeah, that is a massively motivating factor. I used to have all these old skateboard catalogs and they were full, they were CCS catalogs and they were just full of graphic T-shirts. Yes. And I would just sit and stare at them forever. And I was so intrigued by how every single one had a different story, every single one had a different vibe. And I wanted all of them, but, you know, my family couldn't afford any of them. So it was just like, I would just dream about it. And I can just imagine some, you know, somebody coming to, you know, me coming to me from the future and saying, you get to do that for a living. See you later. You can be like, oh my gosh, thank God. And so I actually do believe it. The physical act of stopping. And I have a piece of paper that I carry in my wallet. I kid you not. Yeah. This is the thing that I want to do. And writing that was so difficult. And it took me months to think, if there's one thing, what would it be? And honestly, nothing has motivated me like that action. I kid you not. I'm not saying it for the sake of the podcast. There's something about the clarity there. And it came from something I talk about all the time, which is this book called "Think and Grow Rich." And his whole thing is he interviewed tons of millionaires back in the day. And the thing that he found was with these entrepreneurs, the people that were ultimately extremely successful, where they had this deep clarity of a one burning desire. They knew exactly the thing that they wanted to do. There's a thing that happens in your subconscious when you start dwelling on this same thing, where your body goes into autopilot of, "I'm going to make this happen with it." Whether I feel like it, whether I question it, whether I'm not sure anymore. There's just a part of you that says, "I have to do this thing." And it means that you wait in line, you go through the stuff. It doesn't matter if you're tired, that there's something so powerful about that. Yeah, there is no choice. There's no choice anymore. And it's a beautiful thing because it changes you. And it breaks off the weak parts of you that say, "I don't want to get up early in the morning on this deadline. "I don't want to stay up all night. "I don't want to put in more time. "I don't want to take the draft and throw it out "and redo it all over again." But there's this thing that says, "Yeah, but that's the thing you want to do." Yeah, it is. You're like, "Oh!" I just had an episode, episode five, where the title was obsessed. Did we say the name of your podcast? Oh, I don't think so. Am I going to do that? My podcast is called The Graphic Sound. You can find it on iTunes. I'm going to give it an intro with it too. Thegraphicssound.com, it's not hard to find. My name's Brandon Reich and it's The Graphic Sound. Anyway, episode five is called Obsessed. And I had a basic concept of throw away all those Pinterest quotes. Throw away the do what you love, love what you do, all that stuff, because we don't know what it means. Like, erase all that and just remind yourself that you love doing this stuff. And it's a very simple thing. Like, this thing that's driving you nuts, this thing that's keeping you up all hours of the night, you love doing it, you've arrived. You're here doing it for a living. Someone's going to pay you to draw pictures. And, you know, there's an obsession that we have that is probably a stronger driving force than any deadline, than any expectation that, you know, somebody has on you. I think if we can reconnect with our basic obsession to create art or whatever it is we're creating, or create music or create movies, whatever creatives listen to this, if we can get back to that basic obsession for why we do what we do, and that's such a better motivator than all the other stuff, you're gonna, if you can continue staying in touch with what you love doing, then I think you can have a career. But if you're gonna be in touch with how much money you think you need to make, or how whatever taste level you think you have, or whatever you think you're entitled to, I don't think you're gonna make it as a creative, or at least as a freelance creative, or whatever approach you're gonna take. This passion, this obsession, and this positivity, and this excitement is the best of all motivators. You will continue doing it just on a obsession alone. - Yep, and that's it. And that, I think that that, we've looked at it from all these different angles. I think it's, for me, I'm actually working on, I'm working on this body of work. I don't know if it's gonna turn into an online class. I don't know if it's gonna turn into a book. I don't know where it's gonna go, but it's about its practices to fuel that inner work, to find that sense of deep desire. And my dad had pointed it out to me recently, and he said, I was telling him about this product, this thing that I'm working on that I don't wanna talk too much about. And I said, I know this thing is so powerful, and he said, the thing about it is, is that as you did all of this work, it ignited this desire in you that changed Andy as a person. He went from a regular person who was fine doing the bare minimum, clocked out, whatever, to this person that was lit on fire and would do whatever it took to make this thing work. And if you can find the inner work, and hopefully as the podcast continues, and as I develop these different processes, I can help people kind of do some of that inner work, but there's nothing like tapping into that desire. - Here's a metaphor. I used to work at a mall when I was really young, like a teenager, and I worked at Journeys, the shoe store. Well, okay, let's take Christmas, right? The mall is crazy. And if you're gonna get from one end of the mall to the other, it's gonna take forever, 'cause there's people walking around all over the place, 'cause all those people are out there in the middle of the mall where they should be, and that's the only place they have to go. - Well, I was an employee of the mall, and I could go out the back door. And if I went out the back door, there was an empty hallway that went the entire length of the mall, and I could get to my car that's on the other side as fast as I could possibly go. No problem. At some point, I realized that I had that for life, and I look at all these other people who hate their job, all these people who their job was based on some expectation that they had growing up, or just whatever job you could get, or this is the job that my grandpa had, and then this is the job my dad had, so I guess it's the job I have, this is the same factory I'll work in. All these people view occupation as something we kind of just fall in line and do. - To do the masses in the middle of the mall. - Right. - And clogged up during the day and day out there. - And maybe the good thing is that that's gonna end at five o'clock every day, and that five o'clock every day, you'll go and look at other areas of your life. But for whatever reason, I get to go through this back door where I get to enjoy what I do. And same way as you, there was this shift that happened around 26, 27 years old, or something where I'm just sort of like, oh, I got a golden ticket. I got this back door, and I've got to do everything I can to protect it. This isn't, this is something that is rare, this is something I have to protect. And if I'm realizing that I enjoy what I do for a living, that is the differentiator in this scenario where all those people that are inside the mall are mad because people are in their way all the time are mad 'cause they can't get where they wanna be. And all this stuff, well, here I am skipping through the back hall as fast as I can go, and nothing is in my way. I've got that in life where I get to, I get to do what I'm best at for a living. I get to do what I'm most excited about doing for a living. And that's where this violent protection of this passion comes from where I'm like, and this is why it gets as dark for me to say, I will not let you kill my soul because I tried so hard to maintain this soul and I found this back door and I know I am so lucky that my soul gets to stay relatively intact. And that's why now at 27 or whatever age it is, whenever that shift happens, that's when you start getting into the motivational type of stuff or the stuff that kind of fills you on a spiritual level. And that's where we're at now. So at age 33, I care much more about the thing that's gonna maintain my excitement than I do the thing that's gonna teach me how to use Adobe Illustrator. - That's why you gotta be careful. You notice, wait a second, I'm all of a sudden I'm surrounded by a crowd and I'm in the middle of the mall and you've lost that powerful thing that's underneath all of this. And that's what this episode's about. How do you find, how do you tap into that thing that gives you the power to push past everybody else? And I hope that I think that we've unearthed some things. It's even helpful for me to like hash all this out. So thanks, man, I really appreciate it. - Yeah, man, I hope they can find something in here 'cause there's some good stuff. I think driven by, I know we just tried to end, but-- - No, dude, go ahead. - False departure. I think being driven by passion and not driven by necessity is where we wanna get to. - It's the unfair advantage. - It's the unfair advantage. - Just like the back hallways of the mall, the unfair advantage that if you can find how to enjoy this stuff, there's no competition. - Right, and I think that it's worth the effort to be driven by passion at some point. At the beginning, be driven by necessity. Do whatever you gotta do to make it work. But the goal is someday I'm gonna do, someday 85% of the stuff that I do, I'm gonna be super passionate about. And I think that's a good place to get to. Thanks, man. - Yeah, man, my pleasure, great time. - Thanks. (upbeat music) - Oh, man, that was such a good episode. I had a blast talking to my brother Brandon Reich. Don't forget to go check out his interview with me on the graphic sound episode 10. Go check out his podcast and go love and support that dude. Thanks, man, I super appreciate it. What a good episode. Thank you guys so much for listening to the Creative Pep Talk podcast. I hope this episode helps you find clarity and strategy for your creative career. Thank you to Yoni Wolf and his band Y for our theme music. Thanks to our proud syndicate illustration age, you can find this show on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Thank you to my man, Nate Utesh. He is one of my favorite people. I love that guy. He let us use his music, his band's music, Metabari. That music is super good, really good work stuff. Getting the flow, not a lot of lyrics and singing. It's just kind of like good jamming music to be making your work. Go check it out. Thank you, Nate. Thank you to all the listeners I couldn't appreciate you guys. More guys, you've got to stay peped up. What a weird note and let me try that again. Guys, come on. Stay peped up. Do whatever it takes. I don't know what these energies are that I'm channeling right now, but let me try that one more time. Stay peped up. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] I did consider Barney a friend, and he's still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. I love who you love me. I call it the purple mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man. Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcast. From Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey's soulful and humorous picture book to New York Times best-selling author Kristen Hannah's "The Women," Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books is an author interview podcast, unlike any other. In 30 minutes or less, each episode of this chart-topping and webby award-winning show dives deep beneath the cover, fostering friendship and camaraderie, support and curiosity, connection and compassion. Hosted by me, Zibi Owens, author, bookstore owner, and head of what the LA Times called "The Zibiverse," Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books has something for everyone, whether you're a mom like me or simply a busy reader. So don't miss out. Follow Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. New episodes are released every weekday, bringing books to life. (upbeat music) (gentle music)