Creative Pep Talk
077 - Rethinking Self Promotion
(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. Their attention is highly valuable. It's maybe the most valuable thing that they own, and that you are going to have to give your work as a gift, as a gift to them, to trade them. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, you're listening to the Creative Peptalk Podcast. This show is about commercial art, finding the balance between thriving financially, making good money, and being creatively fulfilled, making work that you're totally excited about. 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. Guys, here's the ask this week. If you are a big fan of the show, if you believe in the Peptalk, would you share this with your friends? Just a sincere share. Maybe you think there's someone who could get something out of it. Maybe you could send them a link to the show, or a specific episode that you think could help them, or share it with your network online somehow. If that is something that you think would help other people, please this week, would you go out of your way and just do a nice share. We really appreciate it. There's no bigger way to thank me and the show than sharing it with your friends. Thanks guys, here's the show. (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. 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) Have you ever thought about where dogs come from and I don't mean like the birds and the bees story? I mean, have you ever thought about how these animals evolved to be friendly with humans? So one theory that I find pretty fascinating is this idea that wolves evolved into dogs and it happened in a way where the ones that were genetically mutated to be more docile or friendly, you know, we're hanging around the garbage dump of the ancient humans and instead of attacking the humans, they were kind of sweet to them and that the ones that started to evolve to be cuter and more friendly actually started to be mutually beneficial with humans. And those animals were the ones that ended up being taken care of. And so if they were helpful in hunting and being protected, then the humans would take care of their needs. And it was actually easier to do those things than it was to fend for themselves or be aggressive. On a TV program recently, I saw this symbiosis between a crab and a sea urchin where the sea urchin actually sits on top of the crab and these two partner. So the crab moves the sea urchin around, so the sea urchin gets a lot more food and the sea urchin sits on top of the crab protecting the crab from predators. And I've always been fascinated and kind of obsessed with this idea of symbiosis, this mutuality between two animals. It just seems so highly evolved. How did this partnership kind of come to be? But obviously the ones that can figure it out that crack it seem to be almost invincible. They seem to be further along in the idea of evolution. They seem to be kicking butt, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And I love this idea, it's so much more interesting than the parasite. When it comes to symbiosis, there's mutuality, mutualism, and then there's being a parasite. And so there's these two different ways where these creatures can coexist. And it got me thinking about the way that business has been evolving recently. Actually, I think that business and the way that businesses advertise themselves is going through this giant shift, this major inflection point in the evolution of business and how it relates to people. I think for the longest time, the way that businesses have viewed their customers and their consumers is in this very parasitic way. Like I am going to steal your attention, your time. And then you're going to pay me for my product. And I think we have this view. And I think it's deeply embedded into our culture and who we are in us dirty commercial artists. You know, this idea that commercialism is just wrong. And I think a lot of it comes from this fact of businesses thinking in this parasite mindset. And I think it seeps into us as commercial artists where we think how do we go out there and manipulate people to pay us money so that we can eat. But I think the fact of the matter is if you look at that mentality, that kind of us versus them, it's not really that evolved and it's not going to get you where you want to go. Just take a look at wolves and dogs. You know, there are many, many species of wolves that are severely endangered. But look at dogs, they're running rampant. They're all over the place. We have too many dogs, right? And this mutualism versus this parasite thinking is a major key in successfully promoting your business. If you see your thing as I need to go out there and make people listen to me and make people buy from me, you're thinking like a parasite, you're thinking how do I take from them to gain from me? Instead of thinking, how can I trade my value for what they have that's valuable to me so that there's a mutual thing happening here that's beneficial for both of us? And I think if you can start shifting your self promotion and your business thinking towards that, you're going to see a lot more thriving because I think right now, we're having this giant shift in culture. And I think the biggest commodity right now is attention. Is our attention, we guard so staunchly and there are no businesses out there that can just come along and be parasites on us. There is no way a business can get your attention without you saying yes. You know, with on demand direct TV, you can skip commercials, you can fast forward them. You know, you can skip them. There's no, there's no just paying the highest dollar to disrupt your current state and force you to watch their ad. And I look at businesses that don't seem to understand this idea that you really have to trade value to get attention because their attention is incredibly valuable. Nothing is more in demand, right? And I look at businesses like McDonald's that just don't seem to get it. Like if you give me an ad that says, I don't care about your time, all I care about is this sale, I am going to hate your business. You know, I feel like McDonald's ads, they're just like, look how cool our stuff is and look at the beautiful people that love our stuff and you should buy our stuff. And all that they've just stolen 30 seconds from me and it's disrespecting me and it's being a parasite on me. Whereas if you flip it to the other side, like someone like Old Spice, they say, here's a free gift, a 30 second gift of some comedy to trade you for your attention. And so if in your own artistic practice, you find yourself thinking, like how can I go get these people that are gonna buy my stuff, either art directors or people that are gonna purchase your products and you're thinking like a parasite, you're thinking, how do I make them buy my stuff? Or how do I make them see my work? Then you're already thinking wrong and I think in this giant shift of the way that we view getting your word out there, you have to embrace this idea of mutualism. You have to embrace this shift and quit thinking that there's this way, that there's this technique where you can find the right way to email an art director and have a payoff. It's not about writing the perfect email. It's not about having the perfect postcard. Like these ideas, these are after thoughts. You know, I was thinking this week, I was getting worked up as you can tell, I'm kinda getting worked up right now about this. I was getting worked up about people asking the kind of wrong sorts of questions. Obviously it doesn't bother me. Ask me any question you want. It doesn't really bother me, but more just the mindset behind the question that the reason I'm doing this episode actually is I feel like this is ground that we've thought over on the podcast before, but I could just sense that it's not coming through. It's not making sense. So I thought, how can we tear apart this question of how do I promote my work and get to the right questions? Because I think we constantly circle back to these surface level questions of how do I write the perfect email, the perfect sales pitch? How do I do the perfect cold call? But really these questions are rooted in the wrong mindset to begin with. They're rooted in the old way of thinking about advertising, the old way of thinking about being a parasite on your consumers. And so I wanted to think, you know, I was thinking about when you watch these movies and they have the master and I realize that in this analogy, I'm the master and that makes me really uncomfortable. And I don't think I've mastered this at all, but I do think that there's a good analogy where, you know, people like Yoda, you have Luke Skywalker come along and he's asking a question and Yoda just refuses to answer the question he's asking and he gives him an answer to a different question. And I think one of the biggest problems is if you're asking the wrong questions. And so that's what this episode is about. It's about quit thinking like, how can I disrupt and steal the attention of the people that I want to buy from me? Instead thinking, how do I become so valuable that they're willing to trade me for their attention and money? And rethink the business thing from a parasite mind view to a mutualism mindset. And so we're gonna go through several points today of how we can shift that thinking and become incredibly valuable to the point of not being able to be ignored. So let's get started. So recently I've kind of realized that when Steve Martin hit the scene back in the 70s, that it was this giant, crazy explosion to the whole world of standup comedy. Like he was a game changer, which is not something I really realized before. But he really came on the scene and just totally blew everybody's minds, right? And there's this question that we've talked about on the podcast, but it hits at the heart of this next point. He would constantly be asked how to break into Hollywood and his answer was always be so good that they can't ignore you. And so the first thing I wanna talk about is better, not louder. So instead of asking yourself, how do I get louder? Ask yourself, how do I get better? One of the things I've realized is any marketing efforts that I've made, they all become much more like rolling a boulder down a hill, instead of up a hill, the better my work gets. The better my work gets, the more natural and easy all of the promotion becomes. And so I think sometimes we get so focused on how can I get my message out there? How can I just get my work in front as many eyeballs as possible? Instead of really putting the massive amount of our energy towards our work becoming better. You know, one of the things I see with like musicians, is you get these musicians that are just desperate for any marketing tactic. How do I get, you know, and I think one of the, this is what I think is behind this idea of how can I just get louder? Is that there are things out there in the industry that are not good, that are successful. And I think it causes us to believe that because we have something that's better than that, we just have to figure out how to be louder. But I think a lot of the time, those things that are not quality that are successful really are lottery winners. They're just happen to be at the right place at the right time. And it's not something that you can plan on. There's not a plan there. There's not a pattern that can be repeated. And I think one of the things that you get is, when you look at it that way, you're thinking, how can I get lucky? How can I just, you know, be in the right place at the right time? Instead of thinking, how can I stack the deck in my favor in such a way that I take control of my own destiny, my own creative destiny? Sometimes you see these musicians and they just think, you know, I've heard this junk out there on the radio. It's really, really bad. My stuff is definitely better than that. I just need to get louder. But you listen to the music and it's not undeniably good. You know, recently I came across this guy, Brian Copelman, he has a podcast called The Moment. It's really, really good where he interviews people from Hollywood. He's a screenwriter. He was the screenwriter of the movie Rounders. And he also created a new show called Billions. Anyway, he has this idea of being undeniably good. How can you be so good that nobody could really deny that you were good? And I think it got me thinking about commercial art in terms of music. And I think really if you wanna be in commercial art, then you wanna be a pop singer to a certain degree. Like you might be an arty pop singer. You might be like the indie side of the spectrum. But if you wanna thrive financially on your art, then you are asking to be a pop musician. And you can't be making work where the value of your art is really abstract. Like it's really hard to tell what the value is. No, a pop song has this obvious value, right? It's like, it has these obvious qualities of being catchy or interesting or, you know, accessible. And if you don't like those things, then having the goal of being a commercial artist is more like having the goal of winning the lottery. And you can do it in a lot of different ways. Like I'm sure there are pop musicians that you're into. But if you wanna be a commercial artist, I hate to break it to you. But to some degree, you gotta be writing pop music. You gotta be writing, and I say pop music, I mean the opposite of like experimental drone noise music. You know, stuff where it's like really hard to tell if there is this inherent value. And it got me thinking about, you know, a band like Vampire Weekend who went viral on the internet. And I thought back to their early songs. You know, I was thinking like, there was just no way that this band didn't become successful. You know, I think that if you want to be successful, you wanna promote your work, you want your work to catch on. The one thing that you really, really can control is how good your work is. I really do believe that it's not so much about talent. It's really about time spent at the table, working on your craft. And the more you do that, the more tricks up your sleeve, the stronger your work, the more undeniably good your work is. The less likely that there's really gonna be anything stopping you from being successful. And so what are the things that are keeping you from doing the work? What are the things? What are the fears? What are the distraction? You know, Stephen Pressfield in the book, The War of Art talks about this idea of the resistance. A really, really powerful mindset shift for me was really acknowledging the fact that there are forces and you can call them whatever you want. They can be really magical spiritual forces or they can just be everyday forces that are trying to stop you from doing the work. Like actually sitting down and putting in your 10,000 hours. You've probably heard that, right? I think it comes from Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about that, you know, a master of any field really needs to put in 10,000 hours. And so what's stopping you from sitting in doing the work and becoming undeniably good? Because your biggest promotional tool is having amazing work. Like what is it about your work that maybe is maybe not up to snuff? And just constantly focusing on the next part of the work that's maybe not firing at the highest quality and just constantly being ruthless about getting better in every area and getting feedback and improving every area that's not obviously fantastic. So the second thing I want to talk about is this idea of allowing the space for discovery. So we work in art, right? We're not mowing grass here, right? So there's a big factor of how people feel about what we're doing. And, you know, if you go to a restaurant and they're gonna sell you the special, like we've got lobster for special, that means that they have some lobster that's gonna go out of date really soon. Like it's gonna be, it's gonna go off soon. And so there's this level of suspicion that we have about people trying to sell us something or seeming too desperate. Like if something seems like a little bit desperate, all of a sudden it becomes kind of yucky. It kind of becomes off-putting. We're not interested anymore. And I think in the arts, it's never more true than this. Like have you ever been stopped in the street in a city and someone tried to sell you some music? Like you're instantly never, ever gonna listen to that music. You're going to hate it forever, right? Like if someone sent you a postcard in the mail saying, "Listen to our band camp," you'd be like, "I will never listen to this." Because there's some level of desperation that makes this smell funky to me. It's off. And I think it's so interesting that in our field that we go out of our way to directly sell our stuff to the clients that we wanna work for, right? And I think that there's, you know, I know that that's a practice that happens in our industry a lot. And I know there are people that swear by it. But for me personally, I just wanna say that, you know, 98% of the work that I do comes from people who have discovered my work organically. And I think we don't like that because we can't control that. You know, in that parasite mindset, I think it's, we have that desperation of, "Well then how do I get my food?" You know, and I get that. You wanna be able to control this. And I think putting, trying to become discoverable sounds like you're putting all of the power in someone else's hands. And I think it feels a little bit scary. But I think there are actually things that you can do to become discoverable. You can take control of your ability to be easily discovered. And I think one of the things you can do is have a real clarity in your work. And so, yes, identify that dream client. Really, really understand what makes that dream client tick. Understand the market they're in. You know, what general market is it editorial? Is it book covers? Is it, you know, logos? Whatever it is, become really clear about the market. And then become really clear about the niche. So the niche is the smaller part of the market that says this subset of the market is where my dream client sits. So if it was book covers, it's not just book covers, but it's edgy horror novels, right? And make work exactly tailored. Not kind of tailored, but exactly tailored to the market and the niche of your dream client. And you're increasing the discoverability, right? If you're making work exactly for the person buying it for you, then you're aligning yourself with the channels that they're interested in. You know, if you're a band like the other bands that this person likes, being in that general proximity just means that they're going to come across what you're doing. And we're gonna talk more about connecting with other people like-minded individuals and people in the market that help that happen even more so. But I think just getting your mindset away from forcing people or stealing people's time or making them look at your work versus allowing them to have the experience of discovering your work. And actually, the people that discover your work are gonna be so much better clients than the people that you tried to force yourself upon. - 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 gonna 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. - Ah! - 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 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. You have to go check it out yourself. Here's a 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 supports 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) (upbeat music) The third thing that I wanna talk about is this idea of right place, not in their face. Like the most important thing isn't that they can perfectly see your work exactly how you want them to, when you want them to. That's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that they see it within the right context. If you think about going to a show, right, going to a gig, if you think about it like the opening band, you're going to be a lot more receptive to the opening band because you know they were chosen for some either by the promoter or by the band themselves to be connected with the music that you're going to see. Like I know a lot of people that got into bands because they heard an opener at a show and I've gotten into a lot of bands from hearing an opener. You know, you're a lot more receptive because you know that this thing has been vetted, that someone had to give these people permission. There was some kind of marker that they had to surpass, right? Versus the band that sets up on the street corner in front of the gig, like that's just annoying to you. You're like, there's no real connection. There's nobody saying that this is relevant or worthwhile. And yeah, you might have heard that stuff while you were waiting in line and it might have been crystal clear. It might have been the perfect scenario for that band to play their music. And you might not, you know, even the sound might have been bad on the opener, but you're so much more receptive to the opener. So quit thinking about getting to the exact person at the exact time and showing them your work in the exact way that you want them to be and all of those things being important. Those are the wrong questions. The right questions are how do I get permission from the people that they respect so that they see my work in the right context? And so for me, this is all about being in the right places. Now, a lot of people have an aversion to networking. I just flip networking on its head completely. I don't think about it like, how do I weasel my way into the right groups of people? And I think about it like, how do I make friends? How do I make real connections with the people in the markets that I want to be a part of? Because if I'm the right type of person for these markets and niches, then I should connect with these people. We should have common ground. We should have affinity for each other to where I should be able to find friends in these places. And I think often we think because of the internet that geography and proximity and in real in-person connections have never been less important, but actually they've never been important. They just did the exact opposite because everybody thinks that you can just kind of throw up a portfolio online and be anywhere in the world and it doesn't really matter who you meet in person. No, that just meant that it's even more valuable to get that face time. And so one of the things that I push people that are really interested in pushing their creative career forward, one of the things that I'm always pushing is how do you get real face time with people in your market and niche? It doesn't have to look like moving to the big city, right? It can be that though. There is value in doing that, but it also can be just getting around the right types of people. Like how can you go to conferences? How can you hang out where the people that do what you want to do, hang out online and in real life? (upbeat music) So number four is avoid the bottleneck/think differently. So over this past weekend, my family and I were planning on going to the zoo but we ended up not going because we saw on Facebook that the lines were totally crazy. And actually we were thinking about not going anyway because A, we knew it was the weekend, B, we knew it was really warm, and then C, we knew that there was like a discount on ticket prices. And so all of those things led me to believe that this was going to be a seriously rammed zoo experience with everybody in the whole city thinking the exact same thing. And I think one of the things you've got to do in our industry is recognize when the thoughts that you're having, the urges that you're having about the clients that you want to work with or the type of work that you want to do, when those things are more of a product of the environment than they are a product of your own authentic interests, right? Like noticing when the things that you're wanting just happen to be exactly what everybody else wants. And when you're in that and you indulge in those types of behaviors, you end up in that bottleneck situation, right? Where there's a really small opening and everybody is trying to go towards the same thing. And when you recognize that you're in that situation just totally abandoning it and thinking, how do I do this in such a way that I go to where there's a big opening and no one's going to it currently, right? Like those are the situations you want to get to and it only happens from really thinking differently. And I think you can look at it like the hot dog contest, you know, Kobayashi. So Kobayashi is this person who came along with the hot dog eating contest and totally turned it on its head because he thought differently about it. You know, if I told you this is a hot dog eating contest, the one thing that's on your mind is, okay, how many hot dogs can I ram down my throat? How can I just brute force go crazy on these hot dogs? But Kobayashi didn't think like that, you know, and everybody in the game at the time was thinking, how do I just force more down? And he thought, how do I deconstruct the hot dog in such a way that it becomes easier to eat? Not how do I just eat faster and more. How do I make it easier? And I think thinking differently is such a massive deal in terms of your self-promotion. Finding those places in the industry where there's opportunity and there's no one around. You know, for my family, this is a big deal. I don't know why we have to think strategically about things. But my whole family, they're all crazy basketball fans. I'm not, I've said that before in the podcast, but we'll be at a pro basketball game at their favorite team and they'll leave 10 minutes early just to avoid the traffic, just to avoid the bottlenecks situation. Most people, most hardcore fans, they're gonna think about, okay, I'll just run faster after the game and get ahead of everybody else. But the fact of the matter is everybody in the arena is thinking that same thing. And so if everybody has the exact same strategy, it's impossible to get ahead because it's just brute force. And so in illustration, it might be, I'll just draw better. I'll just draw more realistically than anybody else. But the fact of the matter is if everybody is thinking, if that's the obvious strategy, then you're gonna come into this like race to the bottom, like how, like, and that's not a race you wanna get in because it's almost impossible to win. And so instead of thinking about the obvious strategies or the obvious clients, the things that everybody wants to do, instead of thinking that way, identify the interests that you have that are different, identify the dream clients that you don't know anybody else really, really want, and then shoot for that. (upbeat music) So I saw one of my students on Twitter talking about the fact that 80% of the new Disney movies are sequels or, you know, previously relating to something that's already existing, you know, an already existing fictional world. And how sad it is that, you know, everything's becoming derivative. And, you know, I think it's true. I do think that businesses are becoming more frugal about the way that they choose to hire creativity. And I think that there's, yeah, there are bad things about that, like things being rehashed a billion times. But I think the other flip side of this is that I think creativity has never been more of a meritocracy. It's never been about more about things just being good. And I think the fact of the matter is, the bad news is that winning the lottery is a lot less likely to happen. Like it's a lot less likely that, you know, someone just randomly takes a risk on your book idea. You know, it's a lot less likely that they're just gonna jump in and give you the Cinderella fairy godmother moment and change your life instantly. And that's kind of bad news, I guess. But the good news is creativity has never been more like earning a paycheck. Like if you do the work and you get really good and you can prove that you're good, people will give you opportunities. And in my career, it's never, I've never won the lottery. It's all been hard work bit by bit doing my thing and just slowly seeing a payoff. And the cool thing is that's something that you have control over. And so you can embrace it and you can empower yourself in that way. And so yes, businesses have never been less likely to take big creative risks, but there are ways to make it not a risk for them. And I think the biggest one, and this is my last point, is that social proof is everything, right? And so yeah, we all don't like the idea that the more followers you have on Twitter, the more likely people will hire you, right? Like there's something about that that we don't like because we think that followers is kind of an imperfect metric. And to a degree, it is. There are these people that happen to hit the lottery on social media and somehow that translates to a thriving creative career. And yeah, maybe that's not completely fair. But the fact of the matter is, if you are really, really good at what you do, if you are really, if your work is amazing and fantastic, people will start to follow you. And the more people that start to follow you, the more social proof you have. And so if you go to a publisher and you have a great platform for this thing that you wanna sell, like if I wanna sell a book about creative pep talk, the amount of people that listen to my podcast make it a way less risky endeavor to take a chance on me versus someone who comes along and says, "Hey, I wanna do a book about creativity." And they say, "Well, where's your audience?" "I don't have one yet. You're gonna give it to me." That's gonna make it really hard for them to take a chance. And so I think the good news is is that if you can make amazing stuff, people will get behind it. Maybe slowly, maybe it'll be a step at a time. But if you can show that there's an audience there, then you can really earn that paycheck. And I think a really good example recently is the Deadpool movie. Now I saw the Deadpool movie. And I didn't love it. I thought it was good critically, but I just don't have a taste for such darkness. I like happy rainbows, not death and destruction and celebrating the dark side of life. It's not my vibe, I can't get down with that really. But Deadpool was always my favorite as a kid just really because he had a cool costume and sweet weapons. But Deadpool had an explosive box office weekend. And actually, it was really, really hard for them to get Marvel to take a chance in the studios, to take a chance to make that movie. It took them a long time to earn that paycheck. But what actually did it was the social proof. They leaked the little test that they made and it exploded on the internet with support. And that alone is why they got the budget to make the movie. And so, if you can think about it like this, like Seth Godin, he's a brilliant marketer, he talks about the tell 10 people trick. So if you tell 10 people about your idea and nobody shares it with anybody else, if you go back to them in a week and say, "Hey, did you happen to share that idea with anybody?" If none of them shared it, you don't have something undeniably good on your hands. And so you need to go back to the drawing board and make the thing that you're working on better. Does it take more time? Yes, it takes more time than the random overnight success. But all of the power is in your ability to work and craft and get better. And so in the long run, this less risky thing is actually in your favor, if you're willing to be disciplined and work hard and just slowly grow your audience and your following and gain that social proof, so that businesses will be willing to take a chance on you. So really my call today is about asking better questions and changing self-promotion, really needing to evolve, really needing to have a paradigm shift in your mind about the way that you view getting the jobs that you want. If you're not getting the jobs you want, it's not about directly smashing it over the right person's head. And I think that mindset comes from an era of sales that is dead, it doesn't exist anymore. You can't force someone to give you their attention any longer. You really need to be respectful and you need to realize that their attention is highly valuable. It's maybe the most valuable thing that they own and that you are going to have to give your work as a gift, as a gift to them to trade them. It is worth your time to gain their attention. And so you've got to force yourself to think differently and ask better questions about how you get your work out there, not how do I manipulate someone into giving me their time, but how do I give them something so fantastic that they're willing to trade their time for it? (upbeat music) Thank you guys so much for listening to the podcast. I hope that this gives you some clarity and some strategy to go out there and make awesome stuff happen in your creative career. Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the Band Y for our theme music. Thanks to our proud syndicate illustration age. Thank you to the freemusicarchive.org and the band Anina for their song "Cosmage Slop." If you love this show, please would you think about going and telling someone who you think would get something from it? That is how the show grows and it means so much to me when I see someone heartfelt saying this show has done things for me and I'd love it to do things for other people, it means so much to me and that is the best way that you can pay me back or help out the show. It means so much as the best compliment you can give me is sharing it with other people. So thank you for listening. I really do believe that creativity is not some elusive magic. It's really about having motivation and dedication to continually work on the thing that you're doing and to do that, you've got to stay peped up. Thanks guys. I will speak to you all very soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hey y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately and if you wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself and when you're ready to launch use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. (upbeat music) - 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. You know, I love you, 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. (upbeat music)