Creative Pep Talk
057 - Startup Your Art Up
(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. Oh, the holidays are here, you gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister Catherine, and her kids, Jetson, and Jetta, and Jeffrey, and Jacob, and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing, you gotta shop small, just it's a lot, but it doesn't have to be. Uncommon Goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chocked full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like the Stitch-a-Day advent calendar, and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me, that was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family 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) - Yo, hey everybody, it's me. I'm back, it's Andy J. Miller. Here to bring you another episode of the podcast, the creative pep talk. I'm ready to get you super excited about making stuff. And I'm kind of shouting, I'm so excited today. I have a show that is the culmination of lots and lots of the things I've been thinking about. I think it's going to get you excited about your art careers, which is what the show is about. It's for the commercial artist, the freelance commercial artist. If that's you, you and I are the same. We share that blood and I understand it. It's a struggle, but it's an important struggle, in my opinion, and I'm here to just say, it's gonna be good, keep moving, keep doing it. It's awesome. Let's do this together because it's worthwhile. And it's all I know how to do. So that's why I'm doing it. Before I get to this show, which I'm so excited about it, I had to say it two times. Before I get to that, I wanna say a few things. First of all, you know, you can hear this show at illustrationage.com. We love illustrationage. They just put out something a little bit controversial. They just posted a free list of art director contacts. So you can go check that out. I don't know how it's all gonna go down in the illustration world. This is kind of usually you have to pay for these things. So they're, you know what? They're out there trying to be the number one resource in illustration. And really, I don't know who can compete right now. So thank you illustrationage for syndicating the podcast, for being my biggest supporters. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. So go check that out. Another thing, not only does illustrationage support the podcast by putting it out there on its website and spreading the love, spreading the pep around the community. Financially, the supporters of the podcast are you, the listeners. And there are a lot of you who have stepped out on the Patreon, patreon.com/creativepeptalk. You went out there and you pledged a dollar per episode of the podcast or $2 or $5. And you guys mean everything to me. You are awesome. I am so grateful to have a financial incentive to spend this time. Makes me feel less guilty. Spending half a day a week, you know, recording my voice, planning notes, writing down things, spending money on SoundCloud and microphones and all that stuff. It makes me feel just a lot. It makes me sleep better at night knowing that, you know, there's a little financial cushion there for me to be spending this time, money, energy. And time is expensive. My time right now has been totally thin. And, you know, the Patreon, you guys make it so that I don't have to feel so guilty about doing this podcast because I love doing the podcast. I am, I could not be more passionate about helping people find a balance between art and money. It is something that is, on a cellular level, a passion of mine and you guys make it possible. So thank you so much. If you are able, if you're making enough money that you can spare four bucks a month, you know, I do about four podcasts a month, four bucks a month on the podcast, go to patreon.com/creativepeptalk and pledge dollar. If you wanna get twice the satisfaction, go ahead and pledge two dollars. That just doubles your pledge, but it's not a lot more on you. It's only, it goes from $4 to $8 a month. The $5 backers, you guys, I'm blown away by you guys. I'm so thankful for you and I put a, for the $5 backers, you actually get access to a back catalog of shorter, quick fire episodes that I do just for them up on Patreon. And today, I actually put up a new talk about programming your subconscious to meet your art goals. And it's some stuff I'm really interested in. So I hope you guys liked that and thank you so much. I hope that that is a blessing for you, $5 backers because I love you guys. Thank you so much. And if you can't spare a penny, but you love the show, would you go to iTunes and give me a review? It doesn't have to be really long or elaborate. It just has to be heartfelt. And when you review the show, that actually makes my show more popular and it means it's easier for other people to find it, which is awesome. And if it's helped you, then you can believe that it'll help other people. Don't be competitive. Let's share the pep, spread it. Let's love people. Let's help other people in this kind of hard journey of being a commercial artist. If you go give me a review on iTunes, that would mean the world to me. Thank you guys. Thank you so much for the support. I get notes every day on Twitter and Instagram and email about people reaching out, being thankful for the podcast and the things that we talk about here. And you know what? It makes my whole career so much more meaningful to know that I'm not just doing this for myself and for the people that are close to me, I'm doing it for all kinds of people and I'm getting to affect other people. And you guys are affecting me with your feedback and your love and your support. So thank you so much without further ado. Let's actually get to the good stuff on the show. 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. 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 to 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. (upbeat music) So I'm a big rhymer. I love to rhyme just generally. I did some indie rap when I was in college. I like rhymes. I don't know why. Just like the phonetic feeling of rhyming things. So today, I have a very goofy title for the episode. It's called "Start Up Your Art Up." And that's terrible. That's the worst title I've ever come up with. But you know what, whatever. That's the title, "Start Up Your Art Up." I'm trying to say that with a straight face. So, you know, obviously our culture has become obsessed with the idea of startups, right? We have a TV show about startups. We have a podcast called "Start Up." You know, we constantly are inundated with the glory of the startup life, right? And I'm probably sick of it. But as all of this has washed over me, you know, I've started to find some pretty strong connections between art careers and startups. And I feel like when you get the right words for things, when you can articulate something clearly and simply, it's so much easier to attain it. It's so much easier to have a clear vision in your mind. And when you have a clear vision, that's when things start to work. That's when you can actually be intentional about pursuing your goals. And that's how you get results. That's how, you know, you save money, right? You do it by financial planning. It doesn't just happen by winning the lottery. There are other ways to get money in the bank. And I think when you start thinking a little bit more like a business person about your art career, that's when things really start to pick up traction. And so part of that is understanding the concepts. And when you understand the concepts, you can apply them systematically to what you're doing. And you know, if you listen to the podcast, that I'm all about that. And so as I'm hearing all about these startups, you know, I listen to the Tim Ferriss podcast. It's a pretty good podcast. And he's in the startup world. He's an investor in that world. And he's constantly talking about it. Over the summer, I actually worked in house for a week in San Francisco in a large company that you know that I can't say. But it used to be a startup. And that startup culture is just very heavy over there. And so it's just kind of been a theme of my year and probably yours and it's been something on my mind. And I've noticed all these phrases and things that if applied to your art career might just give you some clarity. And if you can get some clarity, you can actually have a breakthrough if you're just trying to break into illustration or if you're trying, or you're just in a funk like maybe, maybe you got a lot of work. You got a lot of demand for what you're doing. But you would, you're not feeling it anymore. You're not feeling fulfilled. So maybe you want to reinvent it. You want to reinvent what you're doing. So if you're trying to break through or you're trying to reinvent, both of those situations are pretty tough and they're pretty hard to know where to start. And so I think when you start putting some language around it and you start getting some clarity of vision, then you can actually make some progress. And I think some of this terminology will actually might just actually help you do that. So number one is scratch your own itch. And this comes from Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss is a author and a blogger and a podcaster. And he's a strategist. He loves to come up with strategies and formulas and ways of codifying success. And I'm just like that. I have the same kind of yearning. I like to figure out formulas that you can apply to lots of different things and when in lots of different areas. And one of the things that he says a lot and it's something that I definitely believe in is when it comes into your practice, to your career, a good place to start is scratching your own itch, right? And so he's talking about he likes to invest in startups that solve problems that he actually has himself. So for instance, he needed car services and it was really annoying and hard to do. And so he invested in Uber. And so that was a problem he had and that's where he went to invest money. And okay, you're not investing money. But I think this is actually a really good concept when it comes to what direction should I go with my art? I think you should start with what gets you excited? You know, one of the best tests for me, whether I'm living in that excited zone about my work, is is there something that I could get up at 4 a.m., that I'd be willing to get out of bed at 4 a.m., before I actually start my day, that I would be excited to get up that early and trade some sleep to make something. And what would that thing be? What would I be willing to trade sleep to make? That's a good question. Oftentimes if I'm stuck or I'm in a rut, I'll ask myself that question. I literally will think, is there anything I could think to make tomorrow that I would be willing to get up at 4 a.m. to make? And if there's something you're willing to get out of bed that early and you really test it and you do it, that is a good sign that this is a direction that you should head. Another thing that I've noticed is like, when things start to get mucky in my career, or like, I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing, or maybe I've started a project and it's starting to get really convoluted, I'm not excited about it anymore, or I'm sick of my website, or I'm sick of my style, or whatever it is, there's this one clarifying question and we talked about it on the podcast before, but I think it's worth revisiting. And it's, what do you want to see out in the world? You know, when I started thinking about making picture books, I started, it's easy to go down that path and just get really mixed up and really confused and you start heading down a road and writing lots of stories and such, and eventually it just becomes a gray mess and you can't find a way out. But if you go back to this question, what book would I want to see on the shelf at my local bookstore that's not already there? What's missing? What would I go into that bookshop and think, if I saw a book on the shelf and think that is amazing, that, oh my gosh, I can't even believe this exists, make that book. So I think the first thing that I've noticed from the startup culture that I think applies to the art career is, scratch your own itch. All right, number two, create a POC, proof of concept. Okay, this terminology actually resonates better for me than side project, self-generated project, even branded content, whatever you want to call it, or self-generated content, whatever you want to call it, this work that you generate without anyone else asking you to make it, that work, I think maybe the best lens to use when thinking about starting some new projects or breaking into a new field or reinventing your work, I think maybe the best lens is the proof of concept. And the idea here is, if you think about Pixar, Pixar will make a short film. Usually those short films before their movies are little proof of concepts, it's a little test that says, hey, can we make people look more realistically? Well, let's do a little short film and try that out. Hey, could we make something that's a little bit more abstract story-wise? We'll make a little short film and we won't have to invest as much time and energy and resources into this test because it might not work out, it's a risk. And I think this to me is what self-generated projects are all about, is what DIY thing can you do? What thing can you do all on your own with your limited time and resources? What is the, they call it in the startup world, they call it the MVP, which is the minimally viable product. What's the product that you could create with the smallest amount of time and resources that would not minimally be passable, but be awesome, be excellent, be high enough standards that people would be excited about it? That's the thing that you pursue with your self-generated project. And the reason is, the proof-of-concept idea is, you take these limited time and resources and you invest them in this thing that you make all by yourself, and the reason you do it, the idea of the proof-of-concept is to prove that you've got what it takes, that you've got a good idea, that this thing is gonna have an audience and get a response and can make money. And it might just make it on a small scale because it's just a small investment. But the idea is, is that if you can get some traction and some energy, then you can sell it on to someone else who can take that small idea and make it much bigger. And that's the idea of the proof-of-concept. You know, for instance, I think it's hard for a publisher to take a risk on a new author. It's hard for an art director to take a risk on a new illustrator, on someone that hasn't been tested, someone they haven't worked with, even. And I think one of the things that helps is if you've got a good following. If you've got a lot of people, a lot of peers, you know, coming alongside you and saying, "Hey, I like what you're doing," you know? And if they can see that on social media and they can see that out in the world, it's gonna be easier for them to take a risk. And actually, this reminds me, if I go back to my San Francisco week, my little blip in San Francisco, I got to go out for some drinks with my friend, Eric Morinovich. And he took us to this nice little oyster bar and it was really nice inside. He knew the chef. It just had a really great atmosphere and I'd never tried oysters before, right? But in this circumstance, in this nice environment, it's presented well, I can trust the food, I can trust the chef because I've got this person, a friend of mine who's vouching. And I'm in an environment that I can trust because everything looks clean and nice and the atmosphere is good. And I think that the proof of concept idea, the idea of doing a side project, putting it out into the world and getting your peers and the industry to say this thing is legit, this thing is good and getting a great response and making some noise with it. Now you've proved that this thing can be financially viable and there can be an entity out there that can actually take a risk on you. And I think this is a perfect way to reinvent or break into a new area. It's a good way to even just test the water. And I suggest you would go out there, create a project or a product, make a specific commitment. Let's say you're gonna make a new thing every week on this same series for six months or let's say you're gonna make a new poster series and you're gonna make six posters before you give up. And then by the time you're done, you're gonna do, if it fails, let's say if it didn't get the response you were looking for, you didn't really gain any traction, it's not starting to snowball and it feels kinda like it failed. That brings me to number three, which is pivot. And so instead of just saying, all right, pack it in, pack it up, I'm done with the heart career, you take another lesson from the startup industry and it's called Pivoting. Look out there into the world and you'll see that all of these giant startups actually start as different companies, right? Like Google, their original idea was to create a new library cataloging system. Fab.com, which was a giant company a few years ago, they started as a dating site, turned into a designer items sales site, right? So Twitter, I think, started in a different incarnation as well. And I think the idea is that the cool thing about the minimum viable product, the cool thing about the internet, yeah, the internet can make it really easy to get distracted to where you try and all a billion different things and never significantly investing in anything long enough to get a return. Yeah, that's true. But the cool thing about the internet is that it makes it easier to actually be agile. It means that you can take a small investment, put something out there in the world, do some testing, do some analyzing, say, hey, that worked or hey, that didn't work. And then go back to the drawing board and say, hey, these three things work, these seven things didn't. How can we change them? How can we shift gears with our next product or our next project with what we learned by putting that last thing out there into the world? And so this is a great thing that you can apply to your own art career. And that's the kind of way I've seen it, is that I think it's important to have a vision, but I think it's pretty difficult, especially in today's climate where things change so quickly, I think it's pretty difficult to look out 10 years ahead of time and say, I'm gonna go do that thing. And I think it makes more sense to say, okay, over the next one to three years, I wanna start heading towards doing more editorial illustration in the intellectual market, right? And you can say, all right, I'm gonna start creating some minimal viable products, some investments, some small investments that are professional quality, but just small little bets in that direction and putting them out into the world and seeing how it goes. 'Cause the thing is, it might fail because you don't get a response or there's not enough excitement about the project, but it also might fail 'cause you just don't wanna do it. You thought it looked great on paper, but when you actually go do it, it wasn't fun, it wasn't enjoyable. You're actually not as passionate about it as you thought you were. And when you find yourself in that place, you find yourself hitting a brick wall, let's say a year into it, what's cool is you can just create a new product, a new project. You know, instead of, you know, taking a 180, or yeah, instead of taking a 180, you can think, I'm gonna shoot 50 degrees to the right. I didn't hit the mark this time, but if I shift gears a little bit, I can head in a new direction and maybe hit where I'm trying to go. So I think the pivot in the face of failure is actually a great lesson that you can take from these startups that you can apply to your art career. Now the last one is if that project goes well, if the product goes successfully, then you can go from that and you can go public like a startup or you can sell your product, you can have that big exit moment. Technically, you're not gonna actually exit 'cause it's still gonna be your career. But that thing, that book that you self-published, if you can find a distributor and you don't have to deal with, you know, thousands of books in your studio that you have to post out yourself, if you can find a distributor, someone that can actually do that better than you can do, all of a sudden you can scale what you're doing, just like a startup. And I think for me, I've been so attracted to this way of thinking because I think it's actually long-term thinking, it's actually, has that scalability factor that sometimes doing everything on your own doesn't have. You know, on the "Your Dreams, My Nightmares" podcast with Sam Weber, on the interview with Leah Gorin, I suggest you go check that out, it's fantastic. She's got great work and great ideas and she's got fresh ideas that I think she's brought to the industry. One of them being that she said, so she ran an Etsy, I think she still does, she sells products on there. A lot of them are handmade products, like she'll make some handmade ceramics that she paints. And she said she used to think of those as products where she was making something, she'd make 30 bowls that she'd paint and then sell those for money and that's how she'd pay her bills. And she still does that, but her mindset has shifted from that, that self-publishing mentality to this minimum viable product for the bigger distribution mentality, where she, when she makes a set of bowls, she's not just making a product, she's making a product line example that she could then sell to a larger company like Anthropology and they could go manufacture these things on a giant scale. And all of a sudden, she's taking this one person shop that has all these limitations of time and money, money energy? (laughs) Money energy, that's money and energy. All these, she's taking a little one person shop that has all these limitations of money and time and energy. And she's found a way to scale. And so I think this is a great way to take your work, your personal work or your personal products and scale them on a bigger level by doing the big sell, by going public like a startup, by publishing the work. And so if your minimum viable product is successful, if it starts picking up traction, if you start getting a bunch of new followers and people are talking about the projects, then you can actually go take that to the blogs or the magazines, the people that write about these things. You can start telling people about it and people will start telling people about it. And eventually you're gonna be able to tap into either indirectly or directly into a bigger distribution channel. And all of a sudden, that's when you start really gaining some traction on a bigger scale. And so in my own career, this is something I've done several times. So when I first started out, I wanted to get into working with my favorite musicians. So my college project was the indie rock coloring book. And when that started to get some attention from companies like pitchfork.com, then all of a sudden I started having some people contacting me about ways of actually making this thing happen on a larger scale on a way that can actually make money. I had invested some time and energy and a little bit of money in my own work. And that turned into someone coming alongside me that does something that I can't do on my own. And then one of the next phases I did was I wanted to get into making work for kids. And so I put what I had in the pot. I had an hour every day to make a new character and I made the NOD project. And I put a new character every weekday up on my blog. And so that I had dedication to spare. I had time to spare and I started plugging away at that. And that turned into work with Nickelodeon and some other magazines and things like that. When I wanted to do editorial work, when I wanted to start making editorial illustrations, nobody was throwing me articles. So I started writing my own articles. I did the minimum viable product there. I thought what could I write about on at least a close to professional level? And I thought I know a thing or two about creativity, started writing articles about that and illustrating my own articles until people started to pay me to make illustrations for their articles. And then recently I've been doing it with a podcast. I thought, you know what? I'd love to go speak at conferences, but nobody's inviting me to do that. Maybe I'll just speak at my own conference on my podcast 50 times. And at 50 episodes I got invited to do a conference. And so I've done this over and over and over. And it's really worked for me. And I love finding language to attach to these things because I think it makes it so much easier so you don't have to just throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. You don't have to do the trial and error thing. So you don't have to go right back to the drawing board every time you hit a roadblock. You don't have to start from scratch and start from that blank page. You have a bunch of tricks in your back pocket that say, hey, I'm hitting that point where I want to break into a new industry or I want to reinvent. You know, I want to strike up more demand in a certain area of my work or I want to break into something that's more creatively fulfilling. You don't have to say, all right, now I have to start from scratch and completely learn how to go into that new arena. You get to use these same tricks that the startups use and that you've used before previously in your career. And to me, that systematic approach is so much more valuable. It's so much easier to get some traction there. And so, I've learned that when I start itching, when I start feeling that thing like, hmm, the demands kind of seems like up ahead, the demands might start waning on this stuff that I've been doing or I can feel like an unrest. Like, hmm, this stuff is getting a little bit tired. This is getting a little bit boring. I start to try to be aware and take stock of those feelings and try not to ignore them. I think you can take those feelings and get distracted and get, you know, you can lose interest in your stuff, which isn't good. But I think if you're aware enough to start noticing when maybe you can sense up on the horizon, there's going to be some trouble, you can start planning and optimizing and start thinking about, what's the next stage going to look like? Maybe it's time for a pivot. Maybe it's time to take this thing that I've been keeping up on the side and sell it to somebody else, or at least partner with somebody else so that they can shoulder it and I can spend some of that time and energy differently. And I think it works even on bigger stages of your career. You know, I was thinking recently about how the freelance game live in, you know, job to job. I don't know, it kind of feels like when you're a pro athlete, you've only got so many years of your prime and it's tiring, right now. The projects I'm doing are keeping me up at night and they're hard on me in a lot of different ways. And it's not the lifestyle that I necessarily want to live my entire life. And so as I start noticing those types of things, I start thinking about what types of investments can I make right now so I can start building some of those minimally viable products so that I can start transitioning at the right moments. You know, Jim Kudal of Kudal Partners in Chicago, he said it's really important not to make goals for the person you are now. You know, don't make a five year plan that by the time you're there, you're such a different, 'cause you change a lot in five years. You're gonna change in five years. And so if you make goals that would satisfy you now and you're gonna reach those goals in five years, they're probably not gonna be satisfying you then. And so I think it's important to try to have some of the foresight and I think more than anything, it's not about predicting the future as it is, as much as it is, just noticing those inner cues that are saying this road you're heading down is fine for now or either isn't working now and thinking about how do I start investing differently in this moment so that later I can start reaping the benefits that I wanna see. Okay, so that's about all I've got today. I wanted to try a little bit quicker punchier podcast so you can reach out and tell me how you felt about that. This one's a little bit shorter, but I hope that it will pack to punch. I hope you got excited about the stuff that you are doing. I'm super excited about the podcast. My excitement level is soaring off the charts. I loved being in the studio with Brandon last week. We're gonna do an interview next week with a special guest. Super excited about that. The podcast is gaining reviews and places on the design charts on iTunes. That's amazing. I loved speaking at that conference two weeks ago. That was a blessing. It was super fun. I felt totally thrilled to be up there and sharing my heart about commercial art and why I'm so passionate about helping other people find success in these areas. I love doing that. I'm just super grateful to be in this zone right now. They're early on in my career. I definitely struggled with all kinds of different aspects of this art environment and I love the place that I'm at right now and so much of that is due to all you guys and all the encouragement you give me and all the sharing of the podcast. Thank you guys so much. If you don't hear from me for a little while, figure out everything that you've got to do to stay excited about making your stuff, staying refreshed, get some rest. Sometimes you got to not think about work for a minute. Sometimes you need to shut that art brain off and just enjoy life and play and refresh. Get a breather this weekend so you can come back next week peped up. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'll speak to you soon. (gentle 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'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. Follow This Is Actually Happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad-free by joining 1D+ in the Wondery app.