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Creative Pep Talk
047 - It's Business Time
(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-Miller.com/podcast, or on the illustration website, illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Without further ado, let's get down to business. Our business. 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 been a while. I had to take a week off. I got the privilege of going to San Francisco to work on a top secret illustration project. I always feel totally ridiculous when my drawings are top secret. Like I can't tell you about what I've been drawing. It's very important and very secret. It's just funny. It just seems like something my kid would do, you know? Like you can't look at my drawings. They're top secret. I always feel ridiculous. But nevertheless, I can't tell you what I was doing in San Francisco for a week. It was a challenge, but there was some really awesome things that came out of it. And I'm glad to be back with my family at home. I got to meet some people out there. That was really fun. I went to check out Chronicle Books headquarters and meet some people there that I've been working with. And then got to meet Eric Morinovich. That was really fantastic. He's been like a longtime internet buddy. He took us out for some really nice food. Thanks, Eric. That was a blast. It was super fun to meet you. Made some all kinds of new friends, too much to tell you about, really. But I have been storing up all kinds of passion and energy, ready to do a new podcast. You know, I've been off for a while and I've stored up all these thoughts and all this energy. And I feel refreshed to bring you a new episode of the Creative Peptalk Podcast. So behind the scenes, I have a lot of things going on, a lot of ideas for the podcast. In fact, I have an online course that I'm developing. It's kind of about this episode and it's about business. It's like a business course or business school for artists. It's going to be like a seven part, kind of like seven week course. It's going to be about $300, $500. And I'm doing it online. And so if that's something that sounds interesting to you, give me an email. I've been putting feelers out, talking to people, but I've come up with this idea recently. Actually, while I was in San Francisco, I was working with another illustrator who was a little bit younger than me, kind of fresh out of grad school or undergrad. And I was just, I found myself being kind of negative, which I never like, about having a career in the arts. And I know that I feel really positive about that and excited about that and enthusiastic and optimistic about having careers in the arts and very encouraging. But I found myself kind of being negative. And I, you know, I went back to that conversation later and I kind of said, "Look, I know it seemed like I was being negative, but I realized what I was trying to say was that there's so many people out there that want to make a living doing art. So they want to be commercial artists. They want to get paid for what they do. And they don't think about the fact that a commercial artist is as much a business person as they are an artist. And there's so much wrong that happens when we don't take the business side seriously. And actually when I was in school and when I was younger, I thought business is not interesting to me. And it's not something I want to do or be a part of. And the equivalent of business in my mind was like being an accountant, like math. And now as I'm a little bit older and I've taken a big interest into business, I realize that I am actually 50% a business person, 50% an artist. And the funny thing is I have the parents to prove it. It's funny enough. I've talked about my parents on the podcast before. My dad's kind of a mentor of mine. My mom, on the other hand, kind of split when I was really young. I didn't have a lot of interaction with her as a kid. I still don't, actually. And the funny thing is, is that my dad is an executive businessman in a Fortune 500 company, doing these crazy business things. And sadly, my mom is kind of a picture of a tragic artist. She's super talented in art. She'd written and sketched out kids' books and she just never made anything happen. She didn't have that business component. She had a bunch of other things going on too. But it's funny because I am very much both of them. I have got those two components, the artist and the business person. And I love both. I don't find any conflict. So many artists have a conflict there. And my suggestion is, if you have a conflict with getting paid to do your art, just do art as a hobby and spend your days doing some other job. Some other thing that doesn't feel like a compromise to you. But I'm guessing, if you listen to this podcast, that you wanna make money on art and you might even specifically wanna make money as a freelancer, something that's been on my mind about this podcast is that it's probably directed mostly towards freelance commercial artists or people that want to be freelance commercial artists that make money on their own, be their own boss. That is a passion of mine. I've always wanted to be out on my own, making money, creating fulfilling work. And so this podcast, I've realized that it's all about helping people thrive financially while making fulfilling creative work. And if that's you, you're listening to the right podcast. You know what, I've learned so many lessons. I've grown my salary. I've overcome so many challenges. I've created demand for my work out there. I still have challenges. They're still, I don't have everything sorted, but I feel like I might as well get what I know out there while I'm still working through it, while it's still relevant. So no, I don't have it all figured out, that's for sure. I still have my own challenges, but I've made some really big strides, tangible strides in my career. And so I'm out there. I'm doing the podcast, I'm gonna put it out there while I'm in the middle of it. 'Cause I think it will never be as relevant as it is now. And so I apologize for missing a week here and there, for not being able to get back to you on emails and stuff because I am in the thick of making this career. And so that's just part of the game. That's part of the territory. So this week we're talking about business. I called this episode business time. And if I could afford it, I would have got that fly to the concords. It's business time song, but I can't afford that. But that's what this is, it's business time. I wanna talk about how important it is to take the business side of your career seriously as serious as your art. You know, I haven't seen many artists be successful that weren't also good at business. I have seen really good business people that weren't so good at art make a great career in the arts. That's something to think about. It's some kind of relevant thing. And so as I was thinking through this topic, the thing that kind of hit me in the face was as visual people, as artists, we are in the business of impressions. Often visual impressions, sometimes audio impressions, but we are in the business of making an impression on people. We are good at making impressions on people. We think about how to do this. You know, if you think about branding, especially, is about impression management, building an impression. And I think that that's fantastic. It's awesome to know how to do that. But, but, I think that we're so enamored with the impressions that we give each other, that often we miss the truth, right? You know, I think about it like this. When I was younger, I would look at these bands that I was obsessed with, and my friends were obsessed with, and you would think, okay, they're signed, these bands are signed, they're touring, they have record, so they have record labels, and all of my friends are obsessed with these bands. We all talk about them, we love this album. It meant so much to us. Come to find out, a lot of these bands, the people in the bands are working day jobs. And that was a paradigm shift for me. It kind of exploded my view of music right now. And the impression was, they're touring, they're signed, people are talking about 'em, they must be making good money. Not true, there are all kinds of hurdles to make money as a musician. Doesn't mean it can't be done, and we're gonna get back to that, but that impression was not accurate, right? Now, part of it is though, if I didn't have that impression, I might not take the music as seriously, I might have not interacted with it as openly if I thought these are struggling people. So I can see the reason why this kind of fake it 'til you make it think I can understand it, but I think if you wanna make a go at it, you need to push past this impression thing and find out the real facts. In the world of illustration and design, sometimes it looks like having an agent. You know, anyone I know who has an agent or has had an agent, which I have, all has a similar opinion about the current state of having an agent, which is currently most agents, they're, what they do for you is really delegating some of your time and energy to them to deal with things that you don't wanna deal with, help you with the kind of the parts of the business that you don't wanna do or can't do as well as they could. It also has some cache to have an agent, so it looks kinda good, but, but what I've learned in myself and what I've seen from other people is that agents don't actually get you that much work this day and age. They're not actually a magic bullet for marketing, for getting new clients. Pretty much everyone I've talked to, with the best agents out there, those agents are only getting them like 10% of their jobs. That's a massive paradigm shift for many people out there because the people out there that don't have agents think often that all they need to do is get an agent. If they had an agent, everything would change and it would be the magic bullet and their careers would dramatically change at an instant. Now, that's another impression that's not based on the facts, that's not based in reality. And therefore, it will cause you to do things which waste time, waste energy, don't get results and keep you off the real path or the real things you need to be thinking about and doing. And so, this is, I think about these young people that wanna get out of school and I feel like the illustration world, in particular, we look at and we think, so much of it is built on editorial work, but editorial game has dramatically changed in the past 15 to 20 years, like dramatically changed. And so many people come out of the gate and they think, oh, if I could just work with the New York Times, if I could just work with the New Yorker, I'd be set. And when I graduated, I had those kind of impressions, not necessarily about editorial, but about winning or this or that job or this or that client and then everything's downhill from there, right? That impression is inaccurate. You know, so many of these bands that get signed, you never hear about 'em. They still have their jobs. They, you know, touring is a grind. You know, think about it like this. We talk so much about editorial. We celebrate editorial illustration. We have whole courses and components of art schools dedicated to training people how to do editorial work, right? Think about it like this. Let's step back from the cache that comes with doing work for the New York Times and how that might look, what impression that might get. Let's bring it back into reality. Let's look at editorial from a greater stance, from a factual stance. So for an editorial illustration, let's say you're getting $500 per illustration. You would need to do 80 of those in a year in order to make $40,000, like a kind of a decent, you know, kind of entry level, closed a little bit more than entry level salary. You need to do 80 in a year. How many editorial jobs are out there? You know, that's more than one a week and it's not in spots or cheaper than that. Now, I don't say that to say editorial industry's dead or don't do editorial. I'm not saying any of that. I don't know enough about it. I'm not an expert on that. But if you look at it with just plain numbers, all of a sudden, pushing that direction, instead of pushing that direction just because it looks good, it's like, well, if they're a signed band, they must got it figured out. Or if they're working for the New York Times, they must got it figured out. If they're working for the New Yorker, if they're doing this, if they're doing that, must be good, but there are so many people out there that have those things, those awards, those accolades, but they're not thriving financially or they're not enjoying the work, right? So we take it from this abstract feeling and instead of chasing this abstract idea, I think it's important as a business person to get it down on paper and think about it in that strategic, legitimate way. Now, people do make it, right? I am not doing this podcast to go out there and say, everything sucks. Why try to be an artist? It's so hard, forget it. I wouldn't be making that podcast. I wouldn't be making, this is almost 50 episodes. I wouldn't be making those episodes if I didn't believe that it was the most exciting time in the world to be an artist. I really do believe that. Is it hard? Yes, but there have never been more opportunities. Art has never been more in demand or at the front of culture. It's an exciting time and there are so many awesome opportunities and people are out there doing it, right? My suggestion is instead of looking at it like who looks cool, who seems to be doing cool stuff and they must have it figured out, take it from that abstract place and look at who really is thriving financially, making fulfilling creative work. Who are those people? What type of work are they doing? And how do I aim my target towards that? Because what we're talking about is demand versus calling again. Where is there a demand in the market? Like a real demand, like there's, there's a whole market dedicated to this type of work. There's decent money in it and I feel called to that. Like I enjoy that type of work. I feel like it's in me to do that type of work. Where do those things intersect as facts and really had that direction? Now, I believe that there are people out there. Okay, there are challenges. Editorial markets changed. You know, web design has dramatically changed. 10 years ago, web design was a sure shot. Like, but now look at it, like it's changed dramatically with things like Squarespace and even just WordPress, the way that templates have become so dynamic, it doesn't make a lot of sense for most businesses to buy a website from scratch, right? And have it coded from scratch. It's just not feasible. It costs too much money, too much manpower. And there's too much of a demand. And so things have dramatically changed, but I think there are people out there making it, okay? Yeah, so getting signed as a band maybe doesn't mean that much anymore. However, there are these people out there. They've caught onto this idea. It's called the thousand true fans. Go look it up online. There's this, you know, there's all kinds of stuff on it. It's really interesting. It's this idea that if you can just get a thousand people to spend a hundred bucks a year on your work, you have $100,000 and that's a fantastic living, right? That's thriving financially. There are musicians out there that have tapped into this idea and they're doing house shows, okay? They're traveling, doing these shows in people's houses. These are like legitimate artists like Damian Drotto, David Bison. They go out there and they play in people's houses and they charge, you know, 20 bucks a ticket or whatever and they're making that revenue and it's direct to them. They don't give a cut to anybody else. It's person to person. You know, look at education, higher education. There's all kinds of challenges there. But look at the way online is booming. You know, I see challenges and I love working at the art school that I work at. And I think that there are so many benefits to being a part of that. But I also see that it's not the best option for everybody and there are people out there living their lives already that can't afford to go back. And so I want to get into that online education because also that eliminates the middleman. And all of a sudden I can give direct value as a practitioner to people that already want to learn that already know it's hard, right? So there are these awesome opportunities. It's just making sure that you know which ones are legitimate and which ones aren't. Which ones maybe look cool versus ones that are legitimately working. So you have, look at this time. We live in a time when, you know, this illustrator designer thing. Everybody's got a word for it. I don't really like any of them. I'd prefer a commercial artist. But, you know, the designer who also illustrates, this is like an explosion. You know, designer's doing illustrations for the New York Times. And then also doing logos. And then also doing this mixture of illustration design. That thing's exploding. There's so many awesome opportunities there. Look at the web. Here's another example of how things are actually really trending positively if you look at the right area. The web, we've realized that the most successful content on the web uses awesome pictures. That is amazing news for photographers and illustrators. It means that if you're really good at making pictures, businesses need you to engage their customers on Twitter and Facebook and blogs and online. If they need you and if you're really good, that means that there's value there and that means you can make money, right? So, the web's exploding with pictures. That's good news for artists. There's so much good news. Yes, things are always gonna change. You gotta be on your toes. You gotta watch, you know, don't just watch the trends and the impressions, but try to get down to the facts, right? So, when I first started out, I was suckered into this impression thing, you know? Even just down to not working out the math, right? So, when I graduated and I got paid to do a picture, you know, some of the first pictures I get paid to do, it's like doing crack. It's like, honestly, it's like this crazy feeling. You're like, what? You're gonna pay me money and I'm gonna make a picture and this is the best thing ever. And I'm gonna be rich because you paid me $1,000 and I'm like freaking out. I'm like, dude, I got paid $1,000 for this illustration, right? But the illustration takes me two weeks. That took me two weeks in my time to go through that process. Now, $1,000 every two weeks, what does that end up being like? I don't know. I'm not fantastic in math. This is my first problem. Like $25,000 a year or something like that. That's a terrible wage as an adult, as someone who, you know, wants to have a family and all that, I was hit by the impression of what $1,000 felt like. I mean, but as soon as you're like taking taxes out, paying for the extra healthcare costs in America, that $1,000 is just gone, like quick, right? Not to mention that it's in relation to how much time you're spending. Now, I don't say that to be the Debbie Downer because it's awesome to get paid, right? And your first thousand bucks on a picture, not so bad. That's a great feeling. But you've got to take that feeling and investigate it and say, what's the truth here? What does that actually, what does that make my yearly salary? And if that's my yearly salary, how do I change things? How do I make it so that I get at least two of those jobs at the same time? So I can make 50 grand a year. These are the type of thoughts that I think we need to approach making art for a living in a business way, with business sense, not based on impressions and feelings. Oh, the holidays are here. You've got to find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister, Katherine, and her kids, Jetson, and Jetta, and Jirfree, and Jaggab, and another two J kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing. You've got to 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. You know, I had an agent for a while and I thought, okay, magic bullet suite. Here's the problem, though, is that the value the agent brought, it wasn't that it wasn't valuable, it was valuable. But I had extra time and energy at the time. So selling that time and energy, like giving him money to take over things that I couldn't spend time doing was actually a bad deal for me because I had my commodity that I had was extra time. What I didn't have was extra money. So I was paying him to do things that to spend time doing things that I could have done and I could have kept the money. And so I ended up letting that go because it wasn't right for me at the time. Now, I'm closer to thinking about, look, if someone, if I can hire somebody or partner with somebody and they can take away, you know, 30% of my headaches for 30% of my money, maybe I'll think about doing that. But because my impression didn't match reality, because I didn't have that business sense, that's why I ended up getting burnt in that situation. You know, I think about it like this. Here's my point, okay? Is that in any other area of business, no serious business person goes into starting a business without a business plan. I've never seen an artist with a business plan. You know, my brother, he wanted to start a restaurant when we first graduated and, you know, he probably would have been awesome at it. He probably still would. Josh out there, if you're listening, which I know you're not. My, you know, he was thinking about starting this kind of restaurant. I don't remember what it was. Let's say it was a burger joint. And he was telling my dad, and my dad's a business guy, and my dad was like, all right, yeah, great. Let's hear the market analysis. How many burger joints are in the area that you're looking at opening up? How much money are they raking in? How much would it cost to get the place? What's the rent look like? You know, what's the market analysis? What's the competitor analysis? What makes you unique compared to your competitors? What is your clear proposition as a business? What are your goals? What are your milestones? How much money do you need to borrow at the beginning? Who's your board of directors, right? These are the questions you ask when you start a business. But how many artists ask these questions? And so today, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to stop and say, all right, let's just stop. This is gonna be casual. And actually in my business school for artists, it's like business 101, but business school for artists, I wanna do a more formal version of this, a more intense version of this. But these are just some kind of passive ideas to get your brain working maybe more on this business side. And maybe just help you tackle some of the like fundamental things or revisit them. You know, there might be things that you already know. You know, I'm talking to you guys out there who are my design and illustration heroes that listen to this. You know, I always feel weird that you're listening because you know more than I do. But so if this is stuff you already know, maybe it'll just be a reminder. Let's talk about some different points that are really important to think about in terms of your business plan for your art. So one of the first parts of a business plan is to define clearly who you are and what you do, what your service is. I can't tell you, when I do these reviews for people's portfolios, how often it is really, really, really confusing what it is they do. When I go to their website or I go look at their social media, I don't really know what it is they do. I don't know what market they're in. Like I don't know if they're in children's books. I don't know if they're in children's illustration market, editorial market, advertising. You know, I don't know, I can't even tell what it is, what's their value proposition? Like what are they giving to the client? I'm not even sure if I was the right client. I'm not even sure I would know that this work was for me for a lot of people. And I actually heard a writer, Donald Miller, he's the writer of Blue Like Jazz. I heard him say something interesting recently. And it was this, that people don't buy the best. They buy what they understand. People buy Apple computers, not because they're the most powerful computers. They're not technically, they don't have the most, you know, the biggest engines, if you will. They're the easiest to understand. That's why people use Apple because they're so intuitive and easy to understand. And so if you don't understand what it is you do, you can't clearly define what market you're in, who your customer is, what value you bring. How anybody else know, and if they don't understand your value, they're not gonna pay for it. And so for me, this kind of looks like at some point I realized that I've got kind of a few different markets and there's kind of a hierarchy. So first and foremost, my work probably works best for the kids illustration market. Probably second best for that illustration for advertising, like big brand collaborations. And then probably on a third rung, some kind of editorial illustration where you're taking, I don't know if it's like, a theory or like abstract things and making them seem more simple. So that's kind of the third level. That's the third tier. But that's kind of, when I figured that out, and I pushed into that in a direct, intentional way, all kinds of awesome things happened. When I realized that I've got basically two customers, I've got the, I've got sophisticated kids or kids with taste, aka parents who curate tasteful things for their kids. That's my first customer. My second customer is an adult who is unafraid to embrace their playful side. So illustration for adults that like to be playful don't mind being silly, not being edgy. And my value, what I bring to a project is basically, I think usually two things. One, like playful sophistication. Like they wanna have, they need visuals that are really fun, but also slick and kind of sophisticated, kind of like, in between like Wes Anderson and Jim Henson. It's not a place in between that, where it's not totally crazy muppets, and it's not totally like slick, intentional, like Wes Anderson-y. It's kind of like right in the middle. And so I get a lot of, when there's a lot of companies that come to me that wanna have that like, we are, we've got it, we wanna display this work, we wanna say this message that is playful and fun, but also kind of cool, kind of considered and with style. So that's kind of what I, you know, might sound like a lot of jargon, but it actually really helped me to understand like this is what I bring to projects. And then maybe a secondary value that I can bring is taking theoretical things and kind of illustrating those. So it could be like abstract things, like big scientific ideas or philosophical ideas or theoretical or theological, these big kind of airy things. I like to illustrate things that are invisible, you know, like theories. And so I can use that illustration and make like psychedelic, like, you know, seeing smells kind of illustration. And I can bring that to a project. The project I just did, you know, I did some projects with IDEO earlier this year. And that was that kind of case where I'm taking that sophisticated playful thing and I'm applying it there. My work for Nickelodeon was really similar to that where it's like work for kids, but it's also kind of slick. And then on the side of the value that I can bring that has to do with taking that weird abstract stuff and making it approachable and fun and kind of simple. I just did a big campaign with the Guardian for Glastonbury and we were doing this really psychedelic stuff, which feels like what it feels like to interact with music. And IDEO is like expanding your mind. And so it's like illustrating expansion of consciousness. And that's another one of my sweet spots. And so those are the two things that I think I bring those things to projects and they're things that are in demand, like brands need to do those things. And so I understand what market I'm in, what customer I'm going towards, and then what I actually bring to the table with my product. And that clearly defined IDEO. And you know what? When you first start thinking about this, especially early on, it's gonna feel forced and it's gonna be contrived and you're gonna say, here's the value that I bring to the project and it's gonna be this big jargony long thing and it's not really gonna be accurate. But that is part of the process. Like I think one of the biggest challenges as an artist is to put yourself in the work. James Victoria talks a lot about this. But I think, yes, putting yourself in the work is a challenge. A bigger challenge though, Mr. James, if you're listening, which I don't think he listens to this, but if you are listening, I would just say to you that I think a bigger challenge is in the beginning is just finding out who the heck you are in the first place. And when you start to get a sense of this is who I am and then you can start putting it in your work, but that's a really hard challenge. And so clearly defining what you do, who your market is, all that, that's really hard work. And when you start it, it's gonna be unnatural and it's gonna be hard and it's gonna be messy and you're gonna mess up. But if it's feeling like hard and it's uncomfortable, you're probably on the right track. Okay, the next kind of thing to think about is a market analysis. I think it's a good idea. If you wanna get into editorial, you have a specific part of the editorial market you wanna go down. It's a good idea to even just go ask those art directors, how much do you pay? How many illustrations do you commission in a year? They might not only tell you, I don't know if they will, they might tell you and maybe that's just one way that you get in touch and how they're familiar with you and maybe they'll work with you. But go there and find out how much do they pay? How many do they commission in a year? And then work out through a different, or go research it online or go ask other people that do that work and work out how many you'd have to make to make the kind of income you want. And if the numbers look crazy, then maybe you need to think about diversifying with a few markets, right? Or going towards a market that makes a lot more sense. Now in this market analysis, one of the other things you should do is go check out your competitors, go see who's really crushing it in these industries. Go check them out, go look at how many illustrations they seem to be doing in a year, or how much art or logos or design or whatever. Go check it out and then go try to do some basic math, just to wrap your head around what it would look like to try to make the kind of salary you wanna make, doing the art that you wanna do. Go see also in that market analysis, go see what the competitors are doing, what their unique value is, and then how you can differentiate yourself from them. One of the things I look at when I'm reviewing students or people online reviewing their portfolios is an understanding of the standards of their market. Now, so often you go to a website and it's breaking all the standards of the rules, the rules of that market, and then you bring it up to someone and they'll be like, "Well, I wanna stand out." But I think either you can do two things with the rules. You can either play by the rules so that people know where you stand and what market you're a part of, that you speak the language, or you break them in really, really intentional ways. You can't just break them because you don't give a dang about the rules. So go find out, go study the competitors, understand what they're doing, and then you can make decisions, intentional decisions of how you're gonna differentiate. That's what good businesses do. If you wanna start a burger joint, you go look at the five burger joints in town and you think, this person's doing that, this person's doing that. Here's the hole in the market. This is what's not being done. I'm gonna go that direction. You only know that because you went and looked at what other people were doing. Number three, the third thing you can do with your casual business plan for your art, is milestones. Coming up with a timeline and goals, and they don't have to be, you don't have to have 50 goals, maybe just have five goals, and you can have a timeline about, after this year, I wanna earn X amount of dollars. I wanna crack open this industry and just try to get my first job in that market by this time. I wanna grow my social network by a reasonable amount. Have some specific goals. They say, what gets measured is manageable. I think that's not the right phrase, but it's something like that. And so I think milestones help you measure, help you have clear ideas of where you're trying to go, and when you have a clear idea, it's so much easier to go a direction that you wanna go. They say you can't drive anywhere with a parked car. You have to have, you gotta turn on your engine, have a direction, pick a direction and go, right? You can't just sit there in confusion, and these milestones will help you break down the directions that you wanna go. The last thing, number four, a board of directors, okay? You need advisors. If you're gonna go anywhere significant, you need some advisors. At any given time, I feel like I have two or three different peer advisors, people that are doing similar things that I'm doing, that I can pick their brain like crazy, they can pick my brain like crazy. We both respect each other, value each other's opinions, and we help each other get where we're trying to go. Kinda like a team. And then I also have some advisors that are ahead of me. And I call on them less often. I don't bug them as much because I understand that they're further along than me, they're busier than me and all that. But they unlock doors that I could never have unlocked on my own. And so when you have a clear idea of where you're trying to go, I think it's extremely important to try to tap into a group around you of peers that can be on your pseudo board of directors, and then a few people that are ahead of you that can help you unlock doors that you couldn't on your own. You know, when you think about people that are ahead of you, one of the things you need to think about is don't go so far ahead that you can't possibly bring any value to them. You know, I think the people I try to reach out to are people that I think, you know what, I might have some kind of thing that they don't do. And when we talk, they might get something out of it as well, even if it's just the feeling of helping somebody that's actually gonna take that advice and do something good with it. So that's something to think about when it comes to like mentors. Okay. Now, what does it look like if you don't take the business side seriously, if you ignore all of that, and you just blindly go out and just do what feels right, base all of your ideas on impressions instead of the facts? I think it looks like there are people out there that have all the right awards, all the accolades, you know, they get to go on cool trips and do public speaking, all the while feeling like a fraud because it's not working financially and they're having to bootstrap every little thing. I've been there, you know, early on, I was, you know, I think imposter syndrome is something that you can deal with at any time in your career, where you start thinking, well, a lot of people really knew, you know, if every stage of your career comes with challenges, and I don't think you should be ashamed of them, right? But I think it's not a great situation to be in a place where you're maybe the coolest person in the room, but your actual life isn't working the way that you want it to be. The other thing that can happen, if you're out there searching without that intention, without that business sense, is you can end up in a place where you're making loads of money, but you're not creatively fulfilled. So you got great demand, but you're missing your calling and that is equally sucky. And I think it's kind of like, you know, wizard of the, wizard of the vase, what? Wizard, the wizard of Oz, where you go on this giant journey and at the end, when you finally get there, it's a massive letdown because you let the impression trick you. You look behind the curtain, it's just a dude, it's not a giant flaming head. Like you thought, and he doesn't actually have any power. And I think that's what it looks like when you let vague impressions lead the way instead of the facts and the figures. Now, on the other hand, what does it look like if it's a success? What happens if you get to the end of the road and it's better than you thought? One of the best analogies that I could come up with for this is, have you ever eaten a really good salad? Like you were like, okay, I'm watching my figure. I'm gonna have a salad, whatever. I wanna have the burger and fries. I wanna have a pizza, a whole pizza to myself, but I'll have the salad. You get the salad and you eat it and it's like slow-cooked meat, slow-cooked lean proteins and vinegar and maybe a little blue cheese and, I don't know, you know, just a hint of bacon and you eat it and it's like, these flavors are amazing. I went for the smart decision and it turned out to be better than I thought it was. This is my analogy for going with the facts instead of the impressions. I'm really tasty salad, man, I've had salads that I've gone on to think about the rest of the day and I'm just happy that I had such an amazing salad. You know, on the other side, the other, on a more practical term, you know, when I narrowed down my market and I thought, you know, I wanna push really hard into the kid's market as my number one market. You know, working with a client like Nickelodeon and I don't mean to name drop, but, you know, that's just, that was an amazing experience. You know, I've worked with them six or seven times and I can't tell you how freaking good it feels to work with a client where your value is exactly what they're trying to get. They understand you, they came to you for what you do and you can deliver it and it's better than you even think that it will be. This, my friends, is what I believe that is like to go somewhere intentionally that you wanna go and then get there and it's exactly as you thought it was gonna be or better. So much better than accidentally happening upon something that is worse than you thought it was gonna be and I think when you let those vague impressions lead the way and sometimes it can mask itself in comparing yourself to others, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, like looking around and thinking, oh, if I could just do what they were doing, that would be amazing and I think that vague impression of what those people seem to be doing. If you let that lead, you're gonna end up in places that are worse than you expected. But if you base it, if you inject some of that business into your art, into your path, I really think that you can go places that end up better in experience than you expected and that, to me, you know, I do feel like I've done some work that was really creatively fulfilling that have helped me thrive financially in that experience of setting a course and then even just the feeling of succeeding at something that you set ahead of yourself is so fulfilling and so awesome. And I think that if you're intentional like this, that you can make it happen. And that's exactly why I do the podcast so that I can help other people do that because it's such an awesome feeling and such a great experience. And if you've done some of that, which I'm sure you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Okay, that's this week's podcast, business time, talking about following the hard facts instead of the vague impressions. You know, I think we need an injection of that into our industry. We need to not be ashamed to get paid for our work and demand our value. You know, one of the things that's on my mind is there are so many visual projects out there where the artists aren't the ones making the good money and that really makes me mad. I know we need other people involved in the industry. I totally believe in that. But I feel like if the values in the art we should be, we should figure out how to articulate our worth. We should be good at business so that we get paid what we deserve to get paid, that our value is seen in an obvious way. And that's something I'm gonna keep fighting for. Thank you guys for listening. Now, if you appreciate this and it means something to you, go back the Patreon, patreon.com/creativepeptalk. I am up to about 150 bucks per episode of the podcast. Honestly, guys, I've been stacked, really stacked. I'm super grateful for the work that's come in. I'm loving all the work I'm doing. But you know what? Knowing those people are putting the money where their mouth is and knowing that when I spend this time that it's not a wash financially, it has encouraged me to keep going and I thank you guys so much and I implore you to go back at $1 or $5. At $5 you get access to extra pep talks, shorter ones that I do more often. At $10, which you can't actually back right now 'cause I closed it down, but those people are getting personal reviews on their work. I'm trying to figure out a different thing because that takes so long to do. Those 10 special people, I don't know if anybody else will actually get that opportunity. I'm trying to keep up with all the backing things, but you know, I'm stacked. So I'm doing my best. Thank you guys for backing. If you haven't yet, go check it out. patreon.com/creativepeptalk. Even just backing a dollar. You know, Jason Sturgel, my friend, he just backed a dollar. Thank you, sir. You got a special shout out that's usually reserved for the $10 backers, but you're my buddy and I'm super grateful for all the support on the podcast. Go be like Jason. When I see a friend like that back and it just means the most to me, that's awesome. Thank you guys. I'm gonna try to be back here next week with a fresh episode. I've got a special plan for episode 50 and I've pulled a few favors. I'm super pumped about it. I'm actually gonna be doing a rebrand at that time too. I've got some new theme music that I am so excited about. I'm giving them away too much already, but I'm excited. I feel like the first 50 episodes were kind of like beta and I'm learning exactly what I want this to be and I think 50 is gonna be like the real launch. So thanks guys. And until next week, do whatever it takes to stay peped up and make great work. Until then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hey y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately and if you wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself and when you're ready to launch use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. - I did consider Barney a friend and he's still a friend to this day. - The idea of Barney is something that I want to live up to. You know, I love you, you love me. I call it the purple mantra. - Barney taught me how to be a man. - Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music)