Creative Pep Talk
048 - Relationships
(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) Hey, you're listening to the Creative PEP Talk podcast with me, graphic illustrator, Andy J. Miller. This show is about finding clarity and strategy so that you can maximize your creative career. You can find this show on iTunes, or on my site, Andy-J, hyphen miller.com/podcast, or on the illustration website, illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Without further ado, let's get down to business. (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 AndyJPizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Yo, hey everybody, it's me, Andy J. Miller, the graphic illustrator who runs the Creative PEP Talk podcast. I've had a busy week, I've been doing all kinds of things, but I've found some time to plan a new podcast. I have some new thoughts and information and I think this is gonna be a good one. Before we jump right in, I've got two things. One, we're gonna do another Baron Fig, it's the last Baron Fig contest and we're gonna do the iTunes review thing again. So, and this time actually, we're just gonna do it so that from this, when I release this podcast, anybody that reviews after that time will be entered to win. It is the 23rd of July, 2015. That's when this is coming out. If you review after that, until next week in my next podcast, you will be entered to win one of the hardback Baron Fig confidant sketchbooks and this is the biggest prize yet. Plus a three pack of the apprentice. These are like pocket sketchbooks and that one has the dot grid on it. Go to iTunes and review the podcast. Either take a screenshot or a note and send me an email and say this was my review and that will enter you to win. Go review the podcast on iTunes. Okay, thanks Baron Fig, you guys are awesome. Thanks for sponsoring the podcast. The next thing I wanna tell you about is the Patreon. Thanks for all the backers this week. You guys have been back in the Patreon and helping get the word out about that. I super appreciate it. I did another extra peppy talk this week and posted it there for the $5 plus backers. Hope you guys are enjoying those. Thanks for all the backing on the Patreon. If you're a big fan of the podcast, the next level is backing the Patreon, even at a dollar and actually I'm gonna expand a bunch of things on the Patreon, there's gonna be more options and all kinds of stuff going on. I'm gonna try to get more material out there. I'm also gonna be writing, converting my blog writing to exclusive content for the Patreon and just create more of a community there where the members can also post things and we can have discussions and it can just be kind of like the membership area for creative pep talk and the people that are like more hardcore about this kind of pursuit. So thank you, go check that out. It's patreon.com/creativepeptalk. I super appreciate that. Thank you, if you're a big fan, go back the podcast. Thanks. Okay, today, what we're talking about is actually, let me pause right there. Give me a second. Let me just tell you, I wanna tell you a little story. Yesterday, I woke up and sometimes, I usually wake up at like seven. Sometimes I plan to get up a little bit earlier because I've realized that I'm more switched on early morning than I am late night. And so if I'm like struggling to hit a deadline instead of staying up all night, I'll just get up really early, sometimes even like four o'clock in the morning. My brain just works better in the morning and I've noticed that in a more productive. So that's what I do. Yesterday, I was in that kind of zone. I got up at five 30 and I was working on a few bits and pieces and it was just one of those mornings, just one of those days where you want to replicate this day like over and over you, like it's the perfect day. You can just feel everything feels right. I found a new album to listen to that was like putting me in the zone. I had my windows open in my studio room and it just felt like heaven. I just felt super amazing. And when the kids got up and my wife got up, we decided to just like have our morning coffee. It was just that early morning kind of sunrise feeling and there wasn't any humidity. And we took a little walk to the end of the road. There's a playground there. We took our three children. There's children all over the place here, down to the park. And we just let them play and we just sat and chat. That sounded like it was some kind of weird rhyme thing. We did the old sat and chat, if you know what I mean. I don't know, we were sitting and we were just, you know, talking and so Don is my oldest. She's six and Hugo's is my second oldest who's three and that day he just kind of picked up how to swing on his own in a big kid swing. He calls him the happy swings because the swings look like smiles. And he learned how to swing yesterday. And I just remember thinking that Don, you know, was maybe like four or five till she really tried that. And my wife and I were just sat talking and we're just thinking about how crazy it is that, you know, each sibling learns so much faster and grows so much more quickly than the previous one. And, you know, I think if you're familiar with kids, you know this concept that like the younger siblings want to catch up to the older ones so bad that they develop way quicker. And even to the point where my third kid, Alice, she's four months old and she's already clapping. She's already learning to clap. And if you go look at developmental studies on kids, that's supposed to happen around nine months. And if you know things about babies, you know from four months to nine months, there's a crazy change that happens. Even every month they're dramatically different from the month before. And so at four months, she's already learned to clap because she's seen her brother and sister clap and she wants to do that. And she's already rolled over, which is another thing that's really early. And you just get the sense that like being around other people and people that you want to be like is such a game changer. And today's episode is about relationships. You know, I think we, I think that one of the things that happens is like we think that relationships within work and career are these kind of, we kind of see it in this like manipulative way. Like what can we get out of other people? And I think really that's, it goes back to what your view of the world is. If your view of the world is selfish and self-serving and scarcity, then yeah, relationships at the workplace are purely self-serving and they're manipulative and they're trying to get other people to use the other people to get what you want. And I think if your worldview is that direction, then this podcast episode is probably not gonna be that helpful. But on the other side, I think if your worldview is that, you know, that life is about love, life is about other people, then even your goals and your work should be about loving people. You know, I feel like what my calling is when it comes to illustration and art and storytelling and the podcast, is that it's all an extension of, you know, the bottom purpose is to love other people, help other people flourish. All of it goes back to relationships. And so that's the core of this. And I think if you flip it and you think that it's all about getting what you want and relationships are the second kind of thing that you look at, then you're missing the point because the core, this episode isn't about how you utilize relationships for your own competitive advantage. It's about rooting your views and your, what you're trying to accomplish in this idea that relationships are number one before anything else, even before yourself. And I think if you shift, if you make that shift, there are some really awesome things that can happen. And that's kind of what this is about today. All right. So, if you find yourself, I think we all have found ourselves either here or we are here, where you need a big break where you're stuck and you need to break through. Whether you're at the beginning and you've never had a breakthrough and you look outside of design and illustration and the creative industries and you think it just looks completely impossible to break in and I have no idea. I've tried everything. I've tried to break through it. I can't figure it out. I don't know how to get in there, either if you're in that place or you're in the place of you've already broke through one industry but you're bored now. Now you want to do something else. You know, I think if you look at this idea of flow, which is supposed to be where like a lot of our joy comes from is like getting in the zone, doing work where we're like really good at the work, but we're also challenged. Like if you're not challenged anymore in the place where you broke in previously, you're going to lose the joy. You've got to have some kind of level of challenge. So whether you've never broke in or you want to break into something new, I think that it can be incredibly difficult to break into anything significant. Anything that's hard, anything that people want, you know, that's advantageous, the more people that want it, the harder it is to break through the noise, the harder it is to break into something. And I think doing art for a living is one of those things. So we know it's hard, right? Seth Godin has a book, it's called The Dip. I haven't read the book, all right, but I've heard him talk on it many, many times. I've researched, I've read little, you know, articles and papers about it. I get the general idea. The idea is that anything worth pursuing has a natural moat around it, like a castle, like a medieval castle. Anything worth pursuing has these barriers to keep people out so that everybody doesn't rush in and do it. For instance, if you look at med school, there's a class, I think it's biochemistry. And it's this make or break baptism by fire that most people don't get through. It's a class that's so incredibly hard that only the best of the best, the people that want it the most get through to the other side. And you can't be a doctor without this class. Why do they do that? Why does this exist? Well, it's natural selection. It's the way of weeding the people out that aren't up for the task or that don't want it. And I think you can look at it in kind of two different ways. You can look at it in this like practical way, in this way that it's like, well, there's only so many spots in this journey. And it's important that we keep the people out who don't really deserve it or don't really want it bad enough. Or you can see it as like a spiritual cosmic universe thing that says that these barriers are for people to keep people out who this really isn't their path. So either way you want to look at it, we have these giant barriers in the way of doing anything significant. And I think doing art as a career, thriving financially, making creative work that's fulfilling, that is significant. And there are giant moats keeping people out of that. And at the gate, you have these gatekeepers, the people that say who gets to come in and who doesn't. And it can be incredibly frustrating when you're out there. When you see the gatekeepers and they just won't give you the time of day, you can't get through, the art director won't return your emails, the editor doesn't care about your book. Like in that situation, it can be incredibly difficult and disheartening to be in this place where you know there are these giant boundaries, or these social constructs that keep you out. It's like you need experience for the job, but you can't get the experience without getting the job. That kind of situation, it just drives you insane, right? Now I've been in this situation several times now in my career, and I haven't found success every time, but I have made some key breakthroughs. Early on when I first graduated, it was just getting illustration commissions. And then it went into kind of getting more until I kid's illustration. And I also spent some time trying to like break into editorial illustration, and I had some success within that. But I can feel, you know, I've been in that place where you're desperate to break into this thing. You want it, you understand where the mo is, you know where the gatekeepers are, you know who you have to like break through, and you try and you try and you're spinning your wheels and you're in gridlock and you can't move the needle, and it just seems completely impossible. And I think in that moment, you know, I was recently on a plane. I bought the movie pass because I was fed up and I was in the middle seat. I couldn't fall asleep. And there was no good movies on. I watched the Avengers. Now, when I grew up, I was a crazy superhero nut. I'm not as much so anymore, I'm sorry to say. And the Avengers was okay, I don't know. Good things and bad things. But in that movie, there's a point where all the superheroes are at a party and they're all trying to lift Thor's hammer. And if you lift Thor's hammer, you get to be like the God of whatever. I don't know, I don't know anything about it. I don't know the real details. But if you lift his hammer, you get to be king or something over his people and all the superheroes are trying to do it, right? And it's impossible, like it can't be done. So I think that often when we're trying to break into these areas, it can feel like trying to lift Thor's hammer. Like no matter what you do, no matter which angle you do, the only thing, I think we just end up thinking, well, you're either chosen or you're not. You're either Thor, you're not. There's nothing you can do about it. Either I could lift this hammer or I can't. And so you go to try and you can't so you're like, whatever, I give up. But I don't think that it's actually like this. I don't think it's Thor's hammer. I think it's more like the airplane test from eighth grade that I had in. I think it was called technology class, which is very vague and we didn't do a lot of technology. And the teacher was funny, but we had this challenge and it was to make a paper airplane, develop one, try everything we could to get a paper airplane to go an X amount of distance. And we could take this paper and we could do anything with it, we couldn't add anything to it. And we, it was all, it was, you know, just folding techniques and all that. And we had to get this distance and it was really far. And we tried so many different things. We couldn't figure it out. And so the best we thought was, you know, whoever gets the airplane the furthest will win. But it's impossible to get to this goal that he's given us. So we're all building our airplanes and I don't know, we spent like a week on this or something. This class was kind of one of those blow off classes, but we developed, we did everything we could. Some people went home and they researched and they figured out the world's best airplanes. They went online and tried to figure that out. Day of the big race. We stand at the line. We're all put, we're throwing those airplanes out. You know, the overachiever kid whose parents do the projects for them, he won. You know, they found out, technically, what the best airplane in the world is. He beat everybody, but he didn't get the goal. He didn't make it to the goal. And at the end of it, the teacher said, all right, I'm gonna show you the winning plane. I have the winning plane. He took out a sheet of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and then hurled it past the finish line. And he won. And it was a lesson in thinking differently, right? And I think this is more like what breaking into a new thing is. This is more like what it is to find, to make ground in the creative industry. I think it's, these moats are supposed to look impossible. They're supposed to look like Thor's hammer. They're really like a crumpled up ball of paper that you can launch past the finish line. If you just can get some perspective, right? 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 Jerfrey, and Jaggab, and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing. You gotta shop small, it 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 chock 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. So I think it's less like Thor's hammer. It's more like this crumpled up ball of paper. It's about thinking differently. So every time I think about talking about relationships, I have this feeling like, I don't know, like it's gonna be misconstrued, which you're gonna take this podcast and say, it's not about, you know, oh, you're just talking about, you're just talking about using people to get what you want. And I think that, again, I think that goes back to that scarcity mindset. And it reminds me of the, on Friends, the Joey versus Phoebe, where they're talking about, is there any altruistic act? Is there anything you can do that's really purely unselfish? And I think, I don't know, I don't know if there is, but I would rather live in a world where everybody was trying to help each other at, to benefit themselves rather than everybody was trying to steal from each other to benefit themselves. So I think you need a paradigm shift to say, let's step away from trying to manipulate people and trying to use people and shift into knowing that it is about people. The art is about people. The career is about people. And when you focus on other people, you get that perspective change. So I've got three different points that I wanted to make about this. Three different things that I think are ways of viewing your relationships within your work that are game changers. Number one, help others. This is a Zig Ziglar quote. I've talked about it before. He's this motivational guy from, I don't know, the 80s or something, but he had a lot of wisdom that applies to all kinds of things. Zig Ziglar said that to get what you want, you just have to help enough people get what they want. And I think that it's not just a pithy platitude, like it's actually the law of reciprocity. And the law of reciprocity says that when you help somebody, they don't just want to help you back. They want to outdo how you helped them, right? And so instead of going out into the world and going out into the market and being cutthroat and thinking, how can I, you know, smash the other guy so I can get ahead? I think your view should shift to how do I push other people ahead? How do I go out of my way to give other people a leg up? You know, I think about liking things on social media, right? One of the things that really aggravates me or just think, this is kind of ridiculous, is how we view likes like they're going to run out. You know, like, or acting like, when we like something, we're really putting this seal of approval on there. Like, we've endorsed this post by liking it. I don't know. I guess I just feel like we're a bit stingy with our likes. And I think part of me just says, you know what? Go encourage somebody with your likes. Go encourage someone you know who's trying to get their art off the ground or trying a new thing. You don't have to think it's the best thing in the world. Yeah, I think if you like it, you should sincerely like it. Let's not get in authentic here. This is an important game we're talking about. But just encourage people. Don't be stingy with your social media love. Share that new project. Share that new website. Help other people, you know, so many people out there when they have a new website or they have new work on their site. Other people don't share it because they think, well, it's competition, you know. You know, I don't want to put them out there. I'm going for the same jobs. My attitude has been in it and it's part of my worldview. There is more than enough work out there. And if you push someone ahead, they're going to get the jobs for them. And if you have that attitude of helping others, I believe maybe in a mystical way, but in a practical way, it comes back to you. So I think changing your attitude from this thing being this fierce competition and pushing other people forward. Put someone else forward for a job. Send a compliment to somebody. Just send an email and say, hey, that thing you did, I loved it. I thought it was awesome. Share someone else's work as a side note. You know, I want to be driven by love and I don't want to be driven by fear. I'll tell you what I find to be kind of sad. I think it's driven by fear, this idea that as you become established, you know, if you were obsessed with illustration and design or whatever, as you become established, you have to basically lose your passion for those things. Like so many people out there say, well, I don't really look at what's going on in my field anymore. And I just think, and they say because they don't want to copy or whatever. And I think it's out of fear. It's like out of fear that they're going to do something and someone's going to call them out or whatever. And I just think that's not like you're, so you were obsessed with this thing and then once you start to like get into it, you have to let go of it. I just think that that's the wrong attitude. It's not my attitude. So I think the first one is go out of your way to help others. And that's going to build relationships. And I really do believe that relationships are what it's all about. And also when you have that at the core, that is the thing that breaks through these moats, these dips, these gates. Number two is osmosis. I go back to my kids. You know, my kids spend all this time together. And that's why the younger siblings learn faster than the older sibling did. And my older sibling is super smart, way smarter than me. But she developed way slower than the other two. And the bottom, and the youngest one is developing like crazy, just purely osmosis. You know, they say you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. You know, when I go, I told you last week, I went to San Francisco. You know, every time I'm on one of these trips and I'm seeing things from a distance. I'm seeing my problems from a distance. I look so small and I get home and I feel like I can break through a bunch of different things that were really frustrating me. And I think it comes from every, you know, when I travel, I'm always going and spending time with creative people that have a totally different perspective, have a totally different set of issues. And just by soaking in that, all of a sudden, my mind shifts. And I see answers that I never saw before. I love traveling for that reason. And every time I do, I get that sense of like empowerment, you know. It reminds me of the whole mile runners thing. You know, it's this idea that for so long, the record of how fast a mile can be run will be set. And scientists will say that's physically as quickly as human beings can run a mile. And then someone comes along, breaks all the records, and then all of a sudden everybody can magically break the records. Right? It's a mental shift. It's a mental block. And it happens by being around other people that have, that have already broken through. So what does this look like? I think it looks like sending emails to people that are in the zone that you want to be in that have figured out the answers to the problems that you have. It's finding which people in your industry are closest to the industry that you're a part of in the city near you and going and ask them if you can go buy them a coffee. Just soak it up. Go get around those people. The third one, the third and final point is collaborate. Go Megazord. If you go back to my earlier episodes, the production's not that good. But there's still some good stuff in there. There's an episode on collaboration. Go check out that episode on collaboration. I talk, I go in more detail about why I think collaboration is such a big deal. But collaboration has been one of the biggest things in my career that's helped me break through all kinds of barriers I couldn't have done on my own. And I think part of the reason is, it's like power rangers turning Megazord all the things coming together into some giant thing that can tackle different things that can't tackle on its own. It's kind of like that, but I think also it's this idea that one plus one equals three in collaboration. So you don't just get a double breakthrough. You don't get it just a double results from your collaboration. See, because I think what happens is you take this network of your own, you take the network of someone else and the strengths of your own and the strengths of someone else and when you put them together, instead of that just being smashing those two things together, now you've got yours, theirs and this new entity that is both of you. And all of a sudden that thing goes into places and creates new networks and new fans and new breakthroughs that neither of you can do on your own. And I am so obsessed with collaboration. I don't get to do it enough actually. And I've had some really amazing experiences with collaborations and basically making stuff with friends. You know, some of the best stuff in the world is made by just a few friends getting together and making something. So who's a friend of yours that you really respect what they do and they respect what you do and it's different? Go together, go make something. So whatever it is, pinpoint that, what is that area of frustration that you just cannot figure out how to push past. Whatever that thing is, I suggest smashing it with relations. Instead of trying to get a leg up on the other guy, give the guy a leg up. Book a conference, go meet people, go get some face to face time with these people. Go spend time with the people doing what you want to do. Nothing is more valuable. Nothing can, you know, I'm working on something right now. And where I started and then where I am now, the person I'm working with can't believe how fast I've grown and I believe that it is from intentionally seeking out those relationships of people that have already figured it out. And I don't even know exactly what it is I've learned in some ways. Some ways I do and some ways I don't. But just go send that email. Go take that person out to coffee. Go figure out how to get in places where the people that know the answers that you need to know or know how to do things that you need to know. Go find out how to be around them, be near them, collaborate with them. Because nothing is going to impact your career more than relationships. You know, sometimes I think back to high school. So at the end of high school, my parents, my dad got transferred to the UK. And at the time I was living in Columbus, Indiana. And I had the option of going to a community college there or go to the UK. Why was I going to go to a community college? Well, I got pretty good grades. But the truth is I just didn't like school. I hated school, actually. I just hated tasks. I hate things that feel like meaningless little tasks. I'm really good at projects. And so I think back to like what would have happened if I would have stayed and went to community college instead of going to the UK. And there were lots of reasons why I might have done that. You know, I didn't want to live with my parents anymore. In 2018, if I moved to England, I still live with my parents. There were all kinds of things that like, you know, it wasn't an easy decision. But I'm really glad that I took the risk of going to the UK. Because I can see the way that my life would play out and who, you know, who knows. But I can see how much smaller of a life I would have had if I wouldn't have gone. And you know what? The school I went to had some really good teachers and some real merit. But it's not the most brilliant school in the world by any stretch of the imagination. But the reason why I'm moving to the UK was such a big deal for me, other than just kind of shifting my paradigm and opening my perspective. And other than that, it was the people, you know, I had a few teachers that were real practitioners that really knew what they were doing. You know, it was being so close to Manchester and London and getting to know the people there. It was the three buddies of mine in school that were totally switched on, that knew things that I didn't know. And we constantly were pushing each other into higher places. And because of all those things in the practitioners I got to meet by living closer to the city, it was the people, it was the relationships. It was those experiences that got me to go into freelance illustration. And I completely owe my career to that move into the people that I met and became friends with and collaborated with in that time. And so it's so easy for me to look back and think, you know, all of that would have been gone. I wouldn't have been out there meeting these people and going and having these relationships. And it really depresses me to think about what I would have missed, like what is at stake by not finding these relationships. And there really are big things at stake. On the other hand, I think about it like this. The people that understand the principle of relationships, the people that understand how important it is to get next to the people that figured it out. Those people always go on to big things. Recently I was watching Jimmy Fallon with Judd Apatow, Funny Man. Creator of movies of like knocked up and he was involved in freaks and geeks. And you know, he's definitely just a really interesting guy, funny guy. And he did a book recently. And in the book he interviews comedians, friends of his. But on Jimmy Fallon, they told a story, I thought it was super interesting. And they said that when Judd Apatow was like 15, he kind of weaseled his way into interviewing a bunch of comics backstage. People like Jay Leno and Seinfeld. And he did so by saying he was interviewing for a newspaper, which was true, but it was a high school newspaper. And so he goes behind stage and he's interviewing all these people and you just get the sense that like just being around those people. Seeing other people, real flesh and blood people that have the thing that you want is a game changer. It totally shifts your perspective. It changes everything. There's no way I could have got my firstborn to clap at four months. It had been impossible. I could have spent all the time in the world doing that. But because Alice has two peers that can do all kinds of amazing, crazy, hilarious things that she can't do, she's just doing it. She just by just by soaking it up. I listened to an interview with Ed Norton on Fresh Air and he talks about Edward Norton, you know, the guys from Fight Club, all kinds of things. He said that his nanny was on Broadway. And he thinks that just knowing someone from an early age that was making a break in the entertainment industry just meant that it opened his perspective like people do that. And you know, I think about when I lived in the Midwest and I didn't know anybody that really made a career out of illustration, doing the work that I was interested in. It seemed like a complete mystery, a complete pipe dream. But going and being around people that have done it, it opens your brain in a way that is mystical to me. It is almost just spiritual. So who are the people that you need to start those relationships with? Who are the people that you need to be stewarding those relationships you've already been given? Who's that person you need to call up? How do you need to shift your mind not into how can I use people to get what I want? But shift it to, it's all about people. This is about people. Your work is about loving people, being four people, pro people. And if you can make that shift, I think everything starts to make more sense. And there's a lot on the line. You know, shout out to my buddy Andrew Nier. He's not as much of a social media guy as me. He doesn't like the internet that much. And I'm always singing his praises because he's absolutely brilliant. He's such a brilliant creative. He's a guy in Cincinnati. He's the guy I do the Color Me Blank Show. He developed those giant markers that we color the mural with. Go check his workout. Andrew Nier. Andrew N-E-Y-E-R.com. One of my best friends. Love that guy. Meeting him a few years ago when we started doing that project. Just totally, it's an example of a relationship that totally changed my mind. And I remember driving back from Cincinnati after our first show. And just kind of being euphoric about, "I got a new friend now." I'm just kidding. It was a little bit like that. But just feeling euphoric about like, he had such a different perspective to me. And I had a different perspective to him. And there was a lot of things that I had solved that I helped him solve. And a lot of things that he saw differently and helped me solve. And I remember going back and just that, that threshness of figure of just like the lightness of a perspective change. He's been a close friend of mine ever since. And he's been so instrumental in me rising above a bunch of my problems creatively and professionally. And hopefully I've done something the same for him. And I've had a lot of friends like that. And I think it's so important to shift your perspective towards relationships. It's game changer. That's all I have. That's all she wrote. I don't know. I don't know if that's a phrase or something. I like it though. So go check this out on Patreon, patreon.com/creativepeptalk. Go back the podcast. Honestly, the people that have backed the podcast, now that I've got that up and running and it's starting to get a little traction, that's making it so much easier to make this a priority. And I just want you to know, in this season, I'm lucky enough to be like working my butt off. I've got lots of projects going on. And I'm tired. I've got three kids. I'm getting up early. I'm working my butt off while I'm at work and while I'm at home. And I'm trying to make this thing happen. I love doing the podcast and it's you, Patreon patrons that are totally making it happen because I just don't know. If this was just a thing that was taking me time away from my family and my personal projects and my work and I couldn't really justify it financially, it'd be hard to do. It'd be hard to make time for it. So you guys are making it happen. Thank you so much for doing that. Thanks for the iTunes reviews. You guys are the people that have done that. That means that you're helping the podcast grow. I really appreciate it. You give it a higher rating in iTunes. Thank you so much. Go do a review. Send me the review. Send me a screenshot or a reference to it and you'll be in the contest to win a Baron Figg sketchbook. One thing about contests that you might not know is that not that many people really go for contests. Like that's a thing. You know, I have a friend. She wins tons of radio contests. Why? Because she knows that not that many people enter because they think they're not going to win. So go check it out. You might just win. Get a nice new sketchbook. It'll be fun. Thank you guys for all the support, all the love. You know, I've got, I think this is episode 48. On episode 50, I've got a little special treat. I'm excited to share a little revamp in a more than one way. And I'm excited about all that stuff. I can't wait to share it with you. I'm trying to figure out like online education stuff. I'm thinking I'm just going to build out the Patreon to be a little bit more robust, have a few extra options in there for more like mentorship type things. Just know that I'm working on that. I'm going to try to get that to coincide with episode 50. I'm kind of seeing episode one to 50 as like the beta of creative pep talk. And then after that, push into the things that I've learned in the way that it's developed in the structure that I take with making the show. I think that's about all I have to say. Thanks for your time, energy, your support, your love, your sharing. I'm glad you guys liked the business time episode last week. I had lots of people try them in about that. I hope this has been tons of help for you and until next week, signing off with my very serious catchphrase, stay peped up. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] 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. I'm Whit Missaldine, 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 Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.