Creative Pep Talk
061 - Design Your Art Career
(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. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hello there, everybody. It's the creative pep talk podcast with your host, Andy J. Miller, that's me. This podcast is about commercial art. It's about making money and making awesome work. That's what I'm all about. That's what I'm, that's what I love on a deep, cellular level, and I've learned a thing or two about making a thriving career in the arts, and I wanna share them with other people. There are plenty, there are millions of ways to have a thriving, successful art career. I know about one path, and I think there might be some value in sharing what I've learned on that path so that you can apply it to yours. Your path will be different to mine, but there might be some things we could take from each other, and that's what this podcast is all about. Before I get into the zone, and we talk about what we're here to talk about, let me just get through a few little bits. Number one, you can find this podcast on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Illustrationage is the illustration resource online. There's some fantastic stuff over there. Go check that out. Thank you guys for supporting the podcast. You guys are awesome. 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I'm really, yeah, I'm very touched. Thank you guys, very nice. And also, if you are one of these people who really like to put your dollars into the things that you believe in, I have a Patreon where you can back the podcast a few bucks per episode. That's starting to build a little bit, which is fantastic, helps offset the costs of doing this podcast. If you wanna check that out, it's patreon.com/creativepeptalk. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/creativepeptalk. And you can go give a dollar or two bucks to support the podcast. Thank you very much. Let's get onto the show. Today, what I wanted to talk about is this idea of designing your art career. Now, designing this and designing that and design your life and design, whatever, that's become kind of cliche. It's become kind of a thing. But I'm talking about legitimately designing your art career. As I've been doing this podcast and I've been teaching at an art school locally, I teach a class on self-promotion for illustrators, I have started to realize that almost all of the things that I'm saying, all of the ways that I've approached my career have all been approached through the idea of the design process. You know, it's kind of like the scientific method in a lot of ways. But I realize that all the things that I suggest other people do and the way that they approach their art career, that it's really systematically at the core level, the design process. And you know what? There's a lot of takes. If you go research, there's a lot of nuances and differences in all the different ways that people say that the design process works. I kind of adapted my own version of that for today. But basically, I realize that the way that I approach the different seasons in my career is through the lens of the design process. And that if you approach your career this way, I think you can get a more objective, strategic outlook that actually yields stronger results that are not super random. One of the things that I try to fight in my students and in myself is this kind of nature of an artist to be meandering and all over the place and go from one thing to the next because I really do believe that if you wanna do something significant, if you really wanna make a splash, that you have to sincerely invest in something and little chunks in the same direction over time. If you wanna save up in a bank account, you gotta put little bits over time and then if you keep going, eventually you have some significant change in there. Same goes for losing weight. It's the same principles applied. And I think in your art career, often what I see creative people doing is investing in five million things. And the end result is not very significant. It's the Jack of All Trades Master of None scenario. And so I am always trying to come up with systems to help keep myself motivated, to stay on the path long enough to reap some benefits or at least really become familiar with the fact of whether I actually wanna be on this path or not. And so part of the design process approach to the career is based on that. Part of it is, I just think it's a fantastic way of solving problems and the biggest problem you have to solve is how do you make money making awesome work as an artist? It's a tough career to approach, but I think that the more systematic you can be in your approach, the more likely you're gonna yield some results that you're actually hoping for. So the idea for this podcast came from a conversation I had with a fellow illustrator on Twitter earlier this week. And we were talking about some different topics and themes from the podcast. And I think that I realized that I kept running into people asking me whether I thought that you should stick to one thing in illustration or whether you should diversify and always be growing. And I think that comes from the fact that I've done two separate episodes or a few episodes and I've said kind of both things. And I think that idea, because I felt like there's some confusion around what I meant by the fact that you should stick to one thing and you should really pour your time and energy into one thing. And then on the flip side, say that you should always be changing and growing and evolving sounds like they're conflicting. I think I actually did an episode about the fact that you should always change and always stay the same but always change or some weird combination of words, something like that. And just this idea that these two seemingly contrasting points actually really just work in unison. And I wanted to dive deeper into that, explain it to myself a little bit better and see what do I mean by these things? Because I can see that they kind of seem like contradictions and I knew that they weren't because they both are present in my career and they're both a big deal. But you don't wanna say doing one thing, pouring your time and energy into one thing. That's pretty vague actually. And I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that idea because doing one thing could mean having one style. It could mean having one niche. So one particular type of work that you do or it could be having one market. And actually one of the things I've seen is that there's actually benefit in doing one thing in one of those areas but also being able to change it up. So you might have my friend, Brandon Reich, he has the one thing market and the main bulk of his work is based on doing T-shirts for bands. And so that's one thing in the market. However, within that he has lots of different niches that he touches on. So he does hand lettering and logos and, you know, illustration and type and all these different things within that one market. He also has a lot of nuances to his style that kind of has a broad range. But I think there's value in the fact that there is some real clarity in one component of those things. You could also be someone who has a strict, really specific style that's that one thing that you're pouring time and energy into but then your market is actually all over the place. You actually market that style to a billion different places. And that style actually manifests across several different niches. So you end up taking that style to editorial illustration, you end up taking that style to logo design, you take it. And so there's a lot of nuance there, right? The main point of doing one thing well and like pouring into that is that you develop something that creates clarity where people know to go to you for that thing. It's really a marketing thing. It's really saying, you know, in music it might be that in style terms that you like to belt out songs like Crazy with a crazy voice that's all, that, you know, has an insane range. But the niche ranges from, you know, different styles of music, you know? And so I think really the one thing thing, the one thing thing is about having some kind of clarity for other people to understand where your strengths are. It's also about pouring significant amount of time and energy in one direction so that you can develop that, you know, that 10,000 hours idea where you put 10,000 hours in one thing so that you can master it. And so that can be almost anything but you need something that glues together your career. So there are elements where you can go all over the place and there are elements where you need to go really concentrated and you can kind of pick and choose those things. Which ones you wanna go crazy on and which ones you wanna be really stick to your guns on. Like, you know, there are designers that do book covers and every book looks totally different but they are doing just book covers. And so I think coming to terms with where you want to stick to your guns and where you wanna go crazy is a really important decision to make and it's an interesting thing to think about. Now on the other side, I think an art career is insanely competitive. Lots of people would like to have a thriving art career. And so I think really if you wanna think about it in long, in long game, the long term, you need to think about it like, how do I keep my work exciting and relevant and how do I make a career that in 10 years is as interesting as it is today? And I think a big major part of that is making sure that you never stop being hungry. Never stop your excitement for the craft. Never stop your evolving work. It needs to evolve over time. And in that conversation I had, we talked about how, you know, evolving dramatically piece to piece, you know, from one piece of work to the next, maybe isn't the best strategy. But what I try to do and what served me, I feel like pretty well, is every piece of work that I do, I try to make exciting by introducing one little small new element or one little small new challenge. And then over time, just like evolution, little, those little random mutations turn into new species every few years. Every few years, if you look back, you can see and you compare one piece to a piece I did four years ago, there's gonna be some pretty dramatic differences. But those dramatic differences kind of happen naturally over time. There was kind of a natural growth cycle. And so anyway, I wanted to talk about these ideas, these ideas of changing and these ideas of staying the same. And I realized that really what I wanted to say was that if this was a farming podcast and I did an episode on harvesting and I said harvesting is incredibly important. It's all about harvesting. It wouldn't mean that I couldn't also do an episode about planting seeds and being like planting seeds when it comes to farming, you really gotta plant seeds. You really gotta go deep into the seed planting, right? They wouldn't negate each other. They were different seasons. They're different seasons in the farming cycle. Now I'm not a farmer, I don't know a lot about farming. I did some really minor research just to make sure that I wasn't totally off base, but this idea applies. So there are elements and times in your career where it is all about planting seeds. It's about keeping your nose down and pouring time and energy into the soil. And then there's other times where you gotta harvest and they're very different things. And if you looked at those people and what their days looked like in those different seasons, they'd look dramatically different, but they'd still be the same career. And so in that same way, there are gonna be parts of, you know, on the podcast, I try to like simplify things to a degree so that you can talk about them. If you're gonna analyze and talk about something and try to whittle away and try to get to the core of an idea, you often have to oversimplify. And so you know how I'm saying that part of the time you need to be changing, part of the time you need to be staying the same, that can also be happening at the same time. So there are crops that you need to plant in winter and harvest in summer. And there are plants that you need to plant in summer and harvest in fall. And so there are certain parts of your career, especially the longer you go. And the guy I was talking to actually is kind of far in his career. And I think the further you go, if you wanna thrive, you're gonna have to have a pretty diverse career in some ways. Like my career is, there's a lot of components to it. There's the podcast, there's my personal work, there's my client work, there's my book projects. There's a lot of different arms, there's my teaching, there's all these different arms. And those things coming together creates this very diverse and well-rounded, kind of financial outlook and enjoyment and growth. And they all feed off of each other. You know, I think of it like, sometimes I think about it in terms of, if you're a band, you know, I think about Justin Vernon from Bonnevere. You don't have to like Bonnevere. It's not about that. It's just that he makes, that's his main project. And he pours like, it looks like he puts his biggest effort into that, making that thing something he's super obsessed with. But he also has these little side bands. And those side bands, he feels more in the open mode. He gets to experiment more, try different things, be less serious. And those decisions and those things that he's doing, yeah, they bring about different streams of income, but they also are helping him develop new ideas that he can bring back to his main project. And so I think a thriving art career looks fairly diverse in a lot of ways, but that takes lots of time and energy and that happens over years. And so a lot of the times what I'm saying, you need to really, really, really focus on one thing. I'm usually talking to people, either I'm just saying there's, that you need to do that in part of your career, or I'm saying that to people early on, because you really do need to focus on one thing at a time. But it doesn't mean that as you develop that career, like right now I'm in a season where I'm still massively planting seeds in one area, and I'm harvesting in a different area. And yeah, it gets kind of messy, but that's the way it really works. And that's the way that things start to get exciting and it actually starts to thrive. And so that's the preface. It's a long preface, but we got there. I wanna talk about designing your career now, okay? So designing your career, there's these distinct steps in the design process. And I've applied them to thinking about your career. And in the past I've talked about how your career is kind of like, it's important to have a vision for your career. And if you were standing on a hill and you looked out over the hills and you saw this giant tower, this is something I actually did, but I'm not gonna go into the story, there's this giant tower and it's miles and miles away. And that's your goal, that you would look at which road looks like it's going towards that goal and you would take that road. But that road might eventually veer off and you might have to take a new road to get to that tower. But eventually if you have that big vision out there in the future, that you can cobble together the right directions without a map and end up getting to where you wanna be. And so I think having a clear vision is really, really important. And the number one step, the number one is define the problem. The first step in the design process is defining the problem. And I actually think that this step is maybe the most brilliant. It's the most obvious, it's not rocket science that if you're gonna go solve something you should probably know what you're solving, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to get into the thick of solving something before you've actually been clear on what it is you're solving. And you can also be totally blown away by the fact that when you go do that, things get super messy and irrelevant and you end up spinning your wheels and wasting tons of time and flailing when if you would take the time and energy and not just over five minutes, but like give as much time and energy to this part of the process as you do any other part and get really clear about what the problem is. That thing often just in defining the problem, you know, half of the battle is solved. And so for me, that looked like discovering that this process that I'm trying to work out and defining my art career and what I want my, what I'm looking to do with this career. Honestly, a big epiphany was that what I really wanted was a commercial art career. The epiphany was I really, really wanted to perfectly balance making a good living while also being creatively fulfilled. And that's really obvious, but once I defined that, I could see what part of that balance was out of whack at any given time. And I could realize that basically it's a tightrope act. It's something that for my career, I wanna do as much of balancing those two things at any given time for as long as possible. And the more that I do that, over my career, the more successful I'll feel like I've been. And so if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a commercial artist to some degree. You wanna make money making awesome work, right? So here's what you gotta do on number one. You gotta look at the money part and you gotta be really clear. What kind of money are you trying to make in this next season of your career? Maybe it's you wanna develop your passive income streams, you wanna work on some big projects that you pour tons of time into and then you launch them and then you reap the benefits over time. Maybe like little drips of money over time. Like maybe you want to create books and publish books and then get the royalties over time or maybe you wanna create products, you wanna put tons of time into designing and creating products and then launch those and then slowly sell bets over time. Or maybe you wanna do lots of little projects. Maybe you've realized that in order for you to make a good living, you need to be making new stuff all the time. And so an editorial career, an editorial illustration career would be really beneficial to you 'cause you could constantly be doing new things every week and pouring little bits of energy into things and getting paid in those kind of chunks that are very directly related to the amount of time that you're putting in on a daily basis. But I think looking really clearly at defining how you want to make money. What you're defining, what do I want my income to be? What do I want my salary to be? And then working backwards from that. How do I make that happen? How do I do that in relationship to the work that I enjoy doing? And I think one of the things you do here is you meet halfway here. So maybe I wanna spend 99% of my time doing comics, doing that kind of narrative driven work, but I don't see how that living could make me the type of money that I wanna make in the long term. And so maybe I compromise a little bit on the work I wanna do and I do something else narrative. Maybe it's being a storyboard artist or maybe it's working in narrative illustration in a different capacity. But maybe I shift that a little bit towards an industry where I can actually make the living I wanna make. Or maybe it's that you don't wanna compromise at all on the work that you're doing. Maybe you wanna make comics 99% of the time and you know that you can't thrive on that. So part of your define the problem is I need to find a part time job in a different capacity that will pay for part of my living. And so whatever it is, I think it's important to get really clear on what those things look like. What do your days look like creatively that get you to that place of creative fulfillment and excitement on a daily basis? And what are those times where, or what are the parts, how do you make money? How do you balance these two things? And that's that getting really clear and defining that problem that's uniquely serving you 'cause you're gonna be really different to the way that I do it or to anybody else. That's the first step. - 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 AndyJPizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. - Number two, research. Research is incredibly important. I love this stage. And I have a few different things that you can do in different ways you can think about researching this next stage, this defining your career thing. It's going to result in some clear actionable things like a campaign over six months to two years where you're pouring into this one direction. If you pour time, energy, and art making in one direction over time, take one path, you really head down that path over six months to two years. That's how some significant results actually happen. And so this next step, research, here's some things that you can do. You know, you identified the problem, you probably started to come up with some ideas about which directions to take or which things you need to look into. You know, maybe you looked at doing comics versus making kids books and you want to research both and see how the money plays out in both areas. The first thing I suggest you do is go make a Pinterest account. If you don't already have one, I'm not paid to say that. I just like Pinterest. Go make some secret boards in these different topics and start pinning things from these different topics and start getting a broad view of these markets and industries that you're looking at. Or maybe even if you're not thinking about massively, dramatically changing your career or shifting it, maybe you just have a little interest in a different thing that you've been wanting to test out. Why don't you can use this process to go through that? So go create a pen board and go wild on that thing. I think one of the best ways to create a pen board for this stage when you're in that open mode and discovery mode is just do it in a visceral way where you're slowly going through and going down the rabbit hole that is Pinterest and just viscerally responding to these things that you're researching. You know, ask yourself when you're looking at these things, is there an actual emotion or real connection on a visceral level? Like I can actually feel the connection to this thing and when I can feel that connection, that's the thing I'm gonna pin. And when you're done, you can take an overview, you can see the patterns that are starting to arise and that's where you're gonna have some discovery. Another thing you can do for research is start to sniff out some, I like that word sniff. Sorry, you go check out possible mentors or keep your eyes peeled for possible mentors in these new fields. That's something that can take a lot of time and energy. It can, finding mentors, there's a certain serendipity to it that you can't force, but keeping your eyes peeled out for opportunities in the universe is the first step to that. So keep your eyes peeled for new mentors in this new direction. Another thing you can do is reach out to other artists and people working in the field and ask questions. Like if you can ask really simple direct questions, most people will get back to you by email. If you can make it short and sweet and clear and actually you do the work of figuring out what the important questions are before you reach out, that's a big deal to make it way more likely that someone will get back to you. Another thing you can do is understand the history and the psychology and the philosophy behind this section. I think it's really important to go, you know what's served me really well, anytime I'm trying to chart new territory is go to the library, go to the bookstore, go buy tons of books on the topic, read as much as you can, read tons of interviews, like go deep into this thing and understand it. You know, immerse yourself. If you look at the stand up comedians, the people that go on to have these thriving careers, they went through seasons early on, especially when they were going to the clubs, they were going on YouTube and they were systematically understanding the philosophy behind this. You have to speak the language. You have to know the signifiers. You have to know how to identify yourself as part of this crowd. The last thing is marketing. Or not just marketing, but look around to the different creative industries. Look around to just different industries in general and look how they're doing things that you can apply to this new place, right? So like one of the things that I have been thinking recently is marketing's changing in our industry and online and it ebbs and flows, right? So for a long time, it was like make something every day and put constant stuff out there, right? Until everybody was super tired of that and everybody was like, whoa, everybody, quit making stuff every day. It's too much stuff. And then you get people like Beyonce coming out of nowhere and dropping a full giant, well-formed album with tons of videos all at one second that you could binge into, right? And that made this giant impact and then things shifted in the marketing over there. And so I think it's important to research other industries and apply those new ideas to the old directions that other people have gone and that you'd like to tread. But this way you can do some new things in that. Okay, after you've researched, you're still in the open mode. You're still in the mode of it's okay to make mistakes. You're just having fun. You're enjoying the process. Number three is brainstorming. In the brainstorming phase and in the first three phases, you need to be in the open mode. The open mode, you know, I learned about it through John Kleece. He's done a lot of work on creativity. He's the guy from Monty Python. And in the open mode, you don't listen to the critics. You don't worry about how much time and energy you're pouring into this direction. You don't self edit. I say this a lot. You know, Michael Jordan, he couldn't get in the zone, right? If he had to ref the game at the same time, you can't create, you can't get in that open free zone if you're also editing yourself at the same time and worrying about whether what you're doing is good or right or true or worth time and energy. The only thing in the open mode that I think you really need to ask yourself is, are you having fun? If you're enjoying it, you're something's working in the open mode. It's like in your sketchbook, I've started a sketchbook recently where I was intentionally saying, I'm gonna only be in the open mode when I open the sketchbook. I'm not gonna be executing things. I'm just gonna be playing. And the only question I need to ask myself while I'm in that sketchbook is am I enjoying it? I'm not asking, does this look good? I'm asking, is this fun? And I think in these first three stages, it's really important to run off the fumes of enjoyment of saying, I loved making that pen board. I loved reading that book. I loved coming up with these ideas. And so if you're in the brainstorm mode, you need to talk like crazy about it, especially if that's your personality type, or write like crazy, or just get tons of the stuff that you put in by defining the problem and researching, you need to get all that stuff out somehow. One thing that's really good that I heard Seth Rogan's writing partner whose name's escaping me, but I heard him say this on Tim Ferriss' podcast, that whatever that stuff that's on your mind, whatever that is, you need to talk about it. Talk about it with as many people as you can. And one of the things that happens when you talk about it to as many people, you're putting that stuff out into the universe, you're putting those feelers out, and often those things come back to you. So don't worry about someone stealing your idea. People don't even have enough time to do their own ideas. And if they do steal your idea, they'll do it in their own way, and you can still do it. But you need to get out there and talk about it. Get on the phone, talk to the people that excite you creatively, that get you creatively, that you know give you that important, perfect feedback at the right time, and go talk to them about all these things that you're learning. And as you're doing that, you're gonna start running across just almost accidentally about ideas of how to break into these new areas or how to develop this thing in your career. And I suggest at this stage, you come up with four distinct ideas on how to chart this path. You know, one might be a personal project where you're doing something every day online or you're doing something every day in the real world. One might be building up to a gallery show. One might be writing a book. You know, these very, very distinct, very differently executed ideas and start developing these different possibilities, these different ways of approaching the same problem. And it's really important that they're really distinctly different, and it's really, really important that you come up with lots of different ideas, not just one. When you try to come up with one idea, that's the idea, you're not gonna be in the open mode because that idea has to be super good or you failed. Whereas if you purposely say, "I'm gonna come up with way more ideas than I need to," then A, you know that all of them don't have to be good, so you can have fun and enjoy it. And then, I forgot what B was gonna be. No, it doesn't matter. What matters is you need to approach this with, oh, I know what B was gonna be. B is gonna be, not only do you know that not all the ideas have to be good so you can have fun with it, but often if you have like, say you wanna come up with four ideas or 10 ideas, when you get stuck for coming up with that next one, there's a point where you say, "All right, I'm just gonna come up with terrible ideas." And often when you're coming up with terrible ideas, something interesting happens. When you go to make an ugly drawing, you're like, "I'm going to draw something really, really ugly "and you're just gonna have fun with it." Often in that, that's when you accidentally discover something interesting. And so, it's really important that you don't just go with your first idea. Your first idea is usually the worst idea. I just made that rhyme up. Okay, so you've brainstormed. The fourth thing that you do, you go, you actually create, you create some solutions. You choose a path, this is in the stage where if you're looking at that problem that you wanted to solve, that tower on the horizon, you go ahead and you pick a road. You commit to a road. This is when you start to go in the closed mode, the execution mode. You start editing these ideas. You start whittling down to, "I'm gonna choose this path." And I think at this stage, you need to move on from the open mode and you need to go into the closed mode and you need to make some real decisions and make some real commitments so that you can invest significantly over time because you can't just make all these hypothesis it and try to come up with an idea for a new direction and just put your toes in the water and say, "Yes or no." Right? Because just like if you're gonna lose weight, you can't go on a diet for a day, expect to lose 50 pounds and if it doesn't work, give up and try something new. You know, I love that proverb, the man who chases two rabbits catches zero rabbits, right? You can't take two roads at the same time. And you can't take one road, get cold feet, go back the other way, take a new road, get cold feet, go back to a different road. You'll end up in the same place. You'll end up never having gone anywhere. And so at this stage, you take one of those ideas, you pick one and you stick at it for six months to two years. You commit to some kind of long-term endeavor, some kind of long-term project in this direction and you stick at it long enough to gather enough data to make sense of it. You know, I like the analogy, Obama did on the Mark Meyron's podcast about how a democracy can only shift a few degrees at a time. You can't just do an about face. You can't do a 50 degree shift. You can't do 180. You have to just a few degrees every year, maybe a degree a year. And that's how you steer a ship. That's how you get a ship to change the course. And your career's really like that. Like you can't make dramatic giant, you know, if you need cash right now, doing that with art, it's not super easy, especially like really fixing your cash problem. Like, it's a lot easier to just get a job at that stage or just most of lawns or something, right? You're not gonna dramatically change your career overnight. It's just not gonna happen. It's those shifts happen a few degrees at a time. And so you need to, but you need to significantly pour into one direction, one road so that you can gather enough data to know if it's the right road to gather enough experience so you can actually do this as a pro. You need to pour time and energy into this one thing so that other people can get the clarity and know that this is something that you do. I've said this a billion times, it comes from Donald Miller, he's a writer. He said that people buy what they understand they don't buy the best product. It's totally true. And in order to get some clarity for other people about what it is you do, you need to pour into one direction. You need significant investment in one path. So pick a road, develop a plan, commit to a certain amount of time. You're gonna try to make it realistic. Don't make some commitment that you know you're never going to achieve. And then number five is gather feedback and analyze how that went, right? So after you've done the six month endeavor or two year thing, after that, it's time to actually stop and say, okay I committed to that road at the end of that road at the end of the road, like boys to men say it. I almost sung the song, I'm sorry, I almost sung into the road. Go check that out, sweet track. First big single for the boys. At the end of the road, you need to gather feedback and analyze. You need to think about how did other people respond? Were their financial incentives, like did opportunities arise around this path? How was the pay? Could I see realistically growing this arm big enough to actually make a significant difference financially for me? Is it too competitive? That it was too difficult to break in? Did I enjoy doing the work? Was it creatively fulfilling? Is it exciting? Is it a sustainable excitement that I get really excited at the beginning but I hated it by the time I finished it? Did I grow an excitement over time? Start analyzing all this stuff. Go take someone out for coffee that you know is willing to talk to you about this kind of thing and just pontificate about the finer points of how that went. How did that experiment go? You're basically looking around and you're comparing the tower where the tower is, that problem that you defined and that goal and that vision that you had and you're comparing that to where you ended up at the end of this road. And when you've decided how things fair, you go on to number six. And in six, you either stay the course, it was a success, you stay the course and you just do the next stage or you pivot, right? You know that Albert Einstein quote, doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. If you've been going the same path for five years in your style, your market, your niche and you're not happy at all with the results, you need to pivot. Pivoting is this idea that comes from the startup culture and it's this great thing, it's a cool thing about the internet, right? Is that back in the day you wanna start a business, you know pretty much you had to start some kind of brick and mortar business, there's gonna be a pretty big investment early on, you had to have a pretty clear business plan exactly what you wanted to do because you had to pour tons of time and money into the big overhead of starting a business. And what's cool about online and what's cool about making art is that for the most part, you can get away with pretty low overhead, you can write a book with almost no money, you can make paintings with almost no money if you do it economically. And the cool thing about that is is that you can take six months to two years and chart out a path, but you're still agile enough to after that significant investment where you can then take that thing that you started and shift a few degrees a different direction. And that's what this idea of pivoting is and that's why it's come out of nowhere and that's what in the startup industries, they talk about how Google started as a new way of organizing books at the library, right? A few years back, the popular design shop online was fab.com. That started as a dating service, but they made a significant pivot after they had, they chose a path, they significantly invested in that path, they got investors in that path, but as they gathered feedback and analyzed in step five, they realized that there was a different opportunity and that's okay. That's fine, that's actually, in my opinion, I think the reason why I found any success at all is pivoting over time. And I've always done that, I've always made a significant shift by creating a personal project, by doing self-generated work that I wasn't waiting on someone to give me permission to do. So I would get to the end of some project or season and I would realize that there was something about that balance that I was striking between thriving financially and being fulfilled creatively that wasn't working out properly. And I went back to stage one, I defined the problem a little bit differently. You know, I researched and brainstormed and I created a new path, went on that path, created a project, created some significant investment in it. And then when that was all said and done, I decided to either keep that arm going and growing or I decided to pivot into a new direction. And I think students often get all been out of shape about making this giant statement when they graduate, but you know, one idea that I ran into that I think is really good is for the most part, 99% of us, unless you're, you know, one of the top percent, 1% of our industry, you're in relative obscurity. Like, if you only have, even if you have a few thousand followers, I think even me at this stage of my career, I'm still in relative obscurity, right? Like these decisions I'm making, the decisions I'm making are basically unknown to the majority of people. And in that zone, there's so much room for reformation and reinvigorating and changing and pivoting. You know, no one's watching that closely at most stages in your career. And if you're lucky, one day, you'll get really, really, really known for that one thing and it'll be a lot harder to pivot at that stage, but at least you'll have made it, right? And so these shifts can be smaller, they could be big, you could be going from comics to kids books, you could go from logos to brand identity, you could go from brand identity to brand strategy, you could go deeper and more nuanced and do a niche. Like, usually the further you go into a niche, the more you know how much niche here it can get, how much deeper you can go into that. You know, sometimes you, there's a lot of people that end up in jobs that they didn't know existed at the beginning of their career 'cause as they dove deeper, they found those new opportunities and they got to pivot into different little sectors. I think a good question to ask yourself here is in terms of music, now I'm not gonna reference the bands that you like and know probably, but I'm gonna reference the ones I know and you can do this yourself and identify which hits you the strongest, right? So in the type of music I listen to, there's three bands that identify these different levels of pivots in my mind. So Beach House is an example of a band who when they pivot, so each album, I think each album kind of represents, when you do a new album, it kind of represents the full cycle of the design process, right? And that's that one significant investment, that road that they pick, that album that they make, and then they start all over again, right, with the next album. And that's why I think looking at music is so helpful in this pursuit. It's a great analogy. So Beach House is an example of someone who pivots really small each album, that each song from each previous album could go on to the next album, like there's not a giant pivot from album to album. Over time, yeah, you can see how they grow, just that really slow mutation creates evolution over time, but each album isn't dramatically different, right? The next one is the people that take everything from the last album, they bring it to the new album, but they also introduce a pretty big new component, like a new band member or a new instrument, or a new process, or a new, a really new topic, and that band for me is Modest Mouse. And this is the one I relate to the most, as I like that each album has a distinct flavor, but they all also have a really, there's some elements that tie everything together. Each album has these pretty strong ties, even though they all have a strong flavor in it of themselves. That's the camp that I fall into. I like my work to, you know, every five years I want my work to look pretty different. You know, if you compare this piece to a piece five years ago, pretty big difference, although there are some themes and there are some tastes and some interests that are remaining the same throughout. The last band, which I'm not a massive fan of, honestly, is Radiohead. I don't hate 'em, but it's not really my taste, but Radiohead is someone who's known for almost reinventing the wheel album to album, like really changing things up, pushing things, trying something totally new, taking a 180. But I think it's important to note that all of these bands have a strong voice throughout. So Radiohead, Tom York, he's got this way of singing and approaching songwriting that's pretty consistent throughout, even though there's a real reinvention each new album. And so maybe you need to think of bands that are reference points for you that mean something to you, but basically the different approaches are little tiny incremental changes over time, you know, a moderate change over time, or extreme changes from pivot to pivot, from project to project to investment to investment. And one of those is probably gonna, I'm guessing, is gonna ring true to you more than others, 'cause I think we all have taste, you know, when people review albums, they often fall into one of these camps and believe that you should either go crazy each album and totally reinvent, or they hate when bands reinvent, you know, usually people have a taste for this thing. And you can let that lead how you wanna develop a career. And, you know, I wanted to end on this note of, you know, as you develop a career, when you're 10 years into this, these simple ideas really do apply, but they're gonna apply in a much more complex way. Because I think in order to create a thriving art career, your career has to become somewhat complex. You know, your business has to grow to a level where you're harvesting and planting seeds and doing all these things simultaneously, you know, you're watering this area, but you're starting this area and you're harvesting this area, you need to be able to be doing all these same things at the same time in lots of different manners. Otherwise, I don't really think you can create a thriving business financially, but you can't do all of those things at the same time. At the early part of your career, you're just planting seeds. And when those seeds grow, you know, you can only spend time watering those seeds and then you can only spend time harvesting, but as you go along, you can start developing these different arms. And I really do think that at this stage of my career, I wouldn't be making the money I'm making now, I wouldn't be able to do the things I'm doing now if I was just doing one tiny little corner of art. And, you know, I feel like the result of doing these different arms over time really has helped me create something that has good cash flow, but then also ability to bring larger chunks in and the ability to create passive income and all these different avenues that combine together to make a more thriving overall picture creatively, like it's creatively fulfilling to be dipping in and out of all these different aspects and avenues, it's also financially rewarding. And so I think it's okay if you find yourself into a place 10 years in where things are pretty complex and sometimes you got a prune, but it's okay to find yourself there. And actually, I think it's one of the only ways. Well, I hope that thinking about systematically designing your career makes a difference for you. I hope that you get something out of it. I hope you heard something new that excites you. Thank you guys so much for all of the feedback. You guys are awesome. I love the excitement around the show. I've been doing this for about a year now and, you know, I'm definitely gonna do 100 episodes. That's my goal. I might keep going for the rest of my life, who knows? But thank you guys so much for the encouragement. It definitely keeps me excited about, keeps me peped up to keep you peped up. Thanks guys. And you can find the show on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk on iTunes or SoundCloud. You can go to my website. I have a new domain name, AndyJ.pizza. Type that into your web browser. It'll take you to my site. You can find my podcast there at the top. I just did a web refresh. My site looks all fancy and new. Got some new projects on there. I took some photos of my studio room yesterday and put those up. All kinds of new, fresh stuff going on. Go check that out, AndyJ.pizza. Thank you guys. Guys, this week, do whatever it takes. Stay excited. If you wanna be a thriving artist and you're not making piles of work, I'm having a hard time really believing that you really want to make tons of stuff. Do whatever it takes to get in vet zone, to get excited about making stuff. Because if you're real, I mean, it comes down to that. It's really that simple. Like, make tons of stuff. Stay excited about it. I will speak to you guys soon. Stay peped up. 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. - I'm Whit Msildine. The creator of this is actually happening. A podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Followed this is actually happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.