Creative Pep Talk
055 - Don't Stop
(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. 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(upbeat music) (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. 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. Yo, yo, yo, hello everybody. It's me, Andy J. Miller, commercial artist, graphic illustrator, whatever term you prefer to use. I don't have time to make a whole podcast but I just felt like I had so much stuff on my mind and on my heart that I wanted to share that I thought, "I don't wanna leave you with nothing this week." But this is a free one, so Patreon backers, you don't have to pay for this one 'cause it's just gonna be short, sweet, just me sharing a few things that are on my mind and updating you about a few different things. So real quick, just a few updates. First of all, illustration age where you can find this podcast, or a sponsor, a syndicate, best friend of the podcast. There, Thomas James over there, he's putting together a really crazy giveaway with all kinds of people involved in all kinds of companies and it's gonna be fantastic. So go check out their Facebook page, illustration age because that's where he's gonna launch it and I think he's gonna launch it next week. So go check that out. Also, as an update on the Patreon, I do a Patreon for this podcast where you can give money per episode to give back to the podcast and it helps me offset costs like the SoundCloud, I have a pro account for that, which is a little expensive. I have bought new mics over the course of the 50 episodes and I spend a lot of time preparing for these projects, are these podcasts and delivering them. So thank you so much for backing that. You can go find it at patreon.com/creativepeptalk. A note on that is I actually closed the $10 backer tier this week because I'm teaching a self promotion class at the Columbus College of Art and Design and I've got too many projects on and I can't deliver the kind of reviews that I was trying to give those $10 backers. I just couldn't get to them. And so rather than just keep that open and not let it be excellent, I close that down. So I might end up eventually, if I can figure out a different way of doing my schedule and doing all the things I'm doing, then I might eventually open some kind of online thing where I get to interact with people one on one in a class scenario or something along those lines. But right now, I had to close that down because I'm just too busy. Another little note, go search me out, go download the app Periscope. It's an app for viewing live video and I'm gonna be doing some recording of myself doing the podcasts, doing similar things to the podcast on there. So go search me out. I think it's Andy_J_Miller.com or sorry, Andy_J_Miller. That's my username on Periscope, go find me, go follow me and it'll update you and notify you when I'm streaming live. If you love the podcast, that's a way to get it even more directly and I'm looking forward to doing that when I get a little bit extra time. So that's all for the notes. I just wanted to record a quick pep talk, a legitimate pep talk because there are so many things on my mind and on my heart about creativity as I'm dealing with students, as I'm preparing to speak at creative works, the conference next week in Memphis. I have all these things on my mind and I just feel the biggest thing that keeps coming back to me is this idea of not quitting. So I think sometimes we hear a lot about not quitting, like figure out what you wanna do and don't quit until you do it. Now I think that's actually not a very nuanced piece of advice and I think that there's some really brilliant stuff there that's totally true and accurate but it's missing some important pieces and actually my talk is gonna be a little bit about this at Creative Works next week but I'm not gonna go into all of it. I just wanted to pass this on. I do believe it's super important not to quit. I believe it's important to have an idea of the way that you want your life to look. So for me, I'm always searching for the perfect balance between being financially thriving and that demand, that money, that opportunity being for the work that I find creatively fulfilling at this current place in my life. And so that's what I'm always shooting for. That's my vision of what I want my life to be like and I have reasons why. I believe that I'm supposed to be doing creative work. I believe that when I'm creatively fulfilled, I'm a better parent and it's gonna affect my kids' lives in a great way and so there's deep rooted reasons why I believe that vision is important for my life and for other creative people's lives and that's why I do this podcast because I don't think our society is set up to make it easy to thrive financially making creative work that's fulfilling. I think terms like graphic design made it sound like it was gonna be easy and professional and creatively fulfilling, then we go out and get a job and all of a sudden we're not creatively fulfilled and something's not right, okay? And instead of quitting that job and going to be a barista or whatever, not that there's anything wrong with being a barista but instead of doing that and giving up completely, I think this piece of advice that says don't give up, keep pushing forward, keep learning, keep pushing. I think that's totally true about the broad scope of your vision of being creatively fulfilled and making a good living. I think that don't ever give up doing that and I think it's important to pick a road, pick a market and a niche and stick with it for a period of time and really dig deep into it and commit to it for a season of your life and when that season's over though, don't give up if it didn't work but you might have to shift gears. You might have to pivot the direction you were going. You can evaluate that season of commitment and say look, here's what was good about it, here was bad and here's what was creatively fulfilling, here's what wasn't. I suspect that the next road I need to take, the one that is maybe gonna lead to more opportunity and more creative fulfillment is this direction and so you're not giving up completely, you're not totally shifting gears from one career to the next but you're pivoting a little bit, you're moving a few degrees in towards a different direction. You know, I was talking with my friend this week, Will Johnston. He's actually the guy who got me into Modest Mouse which ended up pushing me into design and illustration so thank you Will. If you're listening, I know you're a big podcast guy and you were gonna check this out, so thank you Will and he reminded me of the Mark Marin podcast episode with Obama and Obama said that whatever you think about Obama, don't get hung up on that but Obama said something interesting. He said that a democracy or a government, you know, you can't do a 180 with a government. It just doesn't work that way. If it's like a giant ship, you can't just turn the ship around, you just have to go a few degrees towards the right direction, you know, every year and you can only do about a degree a year and I think if you look at your creative career like that instead of thinking, I'm either gonna make this thing happen and it's gonna look exactly how I want it to look or I'm going to do something else, I'm gonna go make coffee, I'm gonna go sweep floors and just totally let go of creativity and totally move on. Instead of thinking like that, I think it's a lot more important to think I'm gonna make a significant contribution to the direction that I think is the best right now and I'm gonna commit to that for a season or an amount of work, you know, and a project. I'm gonna commit that direction and when that direct, then when I've committed and that season's over, I'm gonna evaluate it and if I need to shift a few degrees over, I will and then I'll go the next path and the reason I think this is so important is that it's been true in my life and I've reaped the benefits of not giving up and keep pushing and keep tweaking and keep experimenting until I started to find a balance of the right amount of demand where I've got a lot of demand for the work that I wanna be doing. And I think early on I was concerned like, if I keep tweaking and I keep having all this strategy and I'm trying to find clarity in my direction, will this actually pay off? And I guess this episode of the podcast is me speaking to myself five years ago, 10 years ago and saying it's gonna work. Keep doing the hard thinking. Keep trying to find clarity. Keep adjusting little degrees every year because every time you do that, every time you identify a problem in your work and you solve it, you're one step closer to finding that balance. Now, right now, to be perfectly honest, I'm not imbalanced because actually this year has been crazy and the demand has been a bit nuts but I haven't been in that situation before. The past couple of years have been really good but this year, you know, I'm having to reevaluate what I'm doing because I'm having to turn stuff down and I don't say that lightly. You know, in the last episode, we talked with Draplin, we talked about being broke and we talked about, you know, not having the ability to choose what you're doing and that's a hard place to be in and I've been there so I don't say it lightly. I'm so grateful that I'm in a situation where the demand is a little bit out of a balance 'cause I haven't really been there before and so that's fantastic, I love it but I wanna look back and in the biggest thing I wanna do is I wanna look back and say, figure out instead of worrying about what you're capable of, instead of thinking, you know, sometimes we get so obsessed with being self-aware that we're so aware of what we're not and what we're not good at and only understanding where our strengths are today, that we underestimate how far we can actually get in a few years and we get so self-aware that we plot little goals and little dreams and I think what I wish I would have done is I spent so much time a few years ago worrying about whether I was cut out to do this or that and luckily enough I wanted it bad enough that I kept making little investments anyway. Now the further I went, the more comfortable I got making bigger investments 'cause I realized if I dedicate myself to the thing that I really, really desire, the thing that I really wanna do in my career, if I'm dedicated, that's actually more important than being talented and I wish that I could slap myself in the face from five years ago and be like, quit worrying about if this is the quote unquote right path, the exact right direction, concern yourself with, is this something that I have a significant desire that will equal a significant investment? Because if that's true, great things start happening when you have that, that's an equation that turns into great things. And so rather than worry about whether you're cut out for this or that or all that good stuff, spend a lot of time getting deeply familiar with what is it that I actually want to be doing? What is it that I think that there's gonna be a significant demand for if I get good at it and I'm going to be fulfilled creatively if I'm spending my time in that zone and just start mulling over that question. And so I'm gonna talk way more about this at CreativeWorks next week and if you're there, then you're gonna hear about it and that's gonna be fantastic if not, I'm sorry. But I hope that this is just in a little tiny podcast, a little encouraging pep talk for you guys because I didn't wanna leave you with nothing this week and I have all this stuff on my mind and on my heart that I wanted to share with you. And I really do believe that an unlived creative life within a person can do so much more damage, not just that person but to the people around them. And I think it's really important that you take this stuff seriously and that you do the best that you can. So thanks for listening to the podcast. Thank you guys for sharing the podcast, for the excitement about it. I wanna grow this thing. I feel like I'm not doing the best job of getting the word out and connecting. And I guess the best way of doing that is I need your guys's help. If you guys love this and it means something to you, I super appreciate when you reach out and tell me, but go tell other people that you think it's gonna benefit. That means so much to me. Thank you guys so much for listening. Thanks for all your encouragement. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for the reviews on iTunes. You guys are awesome. Next week I hope to have a full episode. I might not be able to, we'll see. But thanks guys, keep making stuff and keep staying excited about what you're doing so that you can make those significant investments in your future, in your creative work. Thanks guys, stay papped up. (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 want to check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you want to 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 who you love me. I call it the purple mantra. - Barney taught me how to be a man. - Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music)