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Creative Pep Talk
046 - Making Things Happen
(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. (gentle music) (singing) 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 antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Hey everybody, it's me, Andy J. Miller. And it's the creative pep talk podcast, a new one. I'm ready to make a new podcast. I've been stewing over this topic for quite some time and I've been wishing and wanting and hoping that I could put this podcast out for days and days but I'm extremely swamped. So for those of you who are waiting on an email response from me and the like, just to understand I'm doing my best, I've got a lot of stuff going on which is great. I can't complain. There's some super exciting fun things going on that yeah, I'm just pumped out of my mind about but it means that I'm behind on the email game. I'm not as quick to get a podcast out as I'd like. So bear with me. But in the meantime, enjoy this episode. Making things happen. That's what we're gonna talk about today. Before we jump straight in, let me get some real quick things out of the way. Number one, the Baron Fig Sketchbook $20 gift card contest. I had you go out there, review the podcast on iTunes and I told you I would pick one and you would be the winner. I've done it. I've picked the winner. All right, drum roll, just imagine a drum roll. There it is. Here's the winner, Zach Roush, I believe it is. I'm not fantastic at pronouncing names just by reading them. You know, there's all kinds of different ways you could pronounce them and I always seem to guess the wrong way. So I'm sorry if that's wrong but Zach, you are the winner. Here is his review. It says, as Robin is to Batman, as many as to Mickey, as Jordan was to the Chicago Bulls, as Sean Stockman and Nathan Morris are to Wannye Morris. Great boys to men reference, by the way, is the creative pep talk to your creativity. Pucker up those ears, ladies and gents, because you're in for a real treat for your creative stomach. Sounds tasty. Andy shares both his own triumphs and failures and teaches what you can take away from both in your own creative career. I'm reading that wrong. Anyway, if you need some insight into a creative career and like podcast, check this out. Zach, you are the winner. I will be sending that out ASAP. Congrats. Thank you, Baron Fig for sponsoring the podcast and I hope that you get some sweet sketchbooks. Thank you for all that participated. I have a few other things to give away. I'm not gonna get to that this episode, but stay tuned. Real other quick note, Patreon. Thank you for backing the Patreon. Hey, if you can just go back to Patreon for $1, even that makes a big difference. It adds up, I've got a lot of dollar backers and I will tell you this. Having this little buffer of sponsorship from the listeners has really made me own this podcast in a different way. It's made me realize there are people out there that this means something to them and they're willing to prove it and that's awesome and I appreciate it. So if you can just back a dollar, I'd really appreciate that. Go check out patreon.com/creativepeptalk. I just did, I haven't opened any more quarterly review $10 backers, but I just finished a review for, I believe it's Kai Vale. Sorry if I'm saying that wrong. She's an illustrator, does amazing work. I gave her a really extensive overview of my thoughts about her career path and we had some awesome conversation there. That was fantastic. I hope that I get to open up more spots for that in the future or I'm trying to figure out maybe even a better way to do this. Maybe an online course of some kind that has art coaching wrapped in there or something, but I love doing this. It's definitely one of my biggest passions helping people think through their art careers. So anyway, thank you Patreon guys. Go check that out. Okay, let's get started. Today's episode is called Making Things Happen. Making things happen and you know what? I feel like when I hear that, I'm thinking that it's this very vague statement. Like, go make things happen. Like you've heard that a billion times. And I think that's the problem with these cliches and platitudes is that often there's a real nugget of truth within these things that we repeat and say over and over. But because we say them over and over, you know, the dark side wants to strip away the power by becoming mundane. When these things become mundane and cliche, we forget that there's actually truth within them. And I think this idea of making things happen has lost the fact that it's really actually quite powerful. It's actually quite, it's a magical kind of thing. And it's actually a big deal. And I think at the core of everyone is either an idea that you have the ability to affect change in results in your life or you don't. Either humans have the power to go make things happen or they don't or things just happen to people. And there's no controlling it, there's no influencing it. This subtle belief actually affects everything that we do in our life. Everything that we do in our art career, the ways that we interact with it, the ways that we spend time honing our craft, working towards goals or not doing those things. I think at the core, is this belief do we or do we not have the power to affect positive change in our lives? Put a pin in that. Let's just talk about something else real quick. I want to tell you what the creative pep talk is about because I'm always trying to shave away at this block of material and figure out what is this thing that's driving me? What am I trying to accomplish? Why should you be listening to this? Here's what I've got right now. Okay, I'm a commercial artist and I want to help other commercial artists find clarity and strategy so they can thrive financially, making creatively fulfilling work. Now, that sounds like you could easily get lost in that and the buzz words of it. It's not supposed to be buzz word heavy, it's supposed to be meaningful and articulate exactly what it is I'm trying to say. And every word I've tried to pick in a certain way to really communicate the idea. So I've realized, so I'm a commercial artist and I want to help other commercial artists. That's not just a random phrase. I actually want to bring that term back because I think so many people are lost in between illustration, fine art and graphic design and you find these people, they all have the same kind of essence but we're losing the words and I want to bring back this idea of commercial art so it can overlap any of those things but it basically means an artist that's business-minded. Someone that's 50% art, 50% business and there's no shame in that. I think Andy Warhol was that. I think plenty of the amazing artists that inspire us have that 50% business, 50% artist and I think it's fine to embrace that. I want to financially thrive. That's the business side but I also want to make creative work that's fulfilling, that's the art side and bringing those together and being strategic about achieving those, that's what the podcast is about. And so if that's you, if you want to thrive financially making creative work that's fulfilling that's what this is about and I think this spectrum is actually the thing that you balance your whole career so at any stage in your career you could be a little bit out of balance and that's what this podcast strives to help you find the balance of thriving financially so maybe you're not thriving financially with your work and you need to work on how do I get better at the business side or maybe you aren't making work that's fulfilling, maybe you were in the past but you're not anymore. So that's something that strategy and clarity can help get you to. That's what this podcast is about and I've realized that at the core of this message and the core of this idea there's just this one thing and if you don't have this one thing this podcast won't help you a lick. It won't help you one bit and if the core is do you or do you not believe that you have the power to affect positive change? Do you believe that you can make things happen? That's the core and if you don't have that nothing I say on this podcast is gonna help. Now I believe that life is a collaboration. Life is offense and defense. Yes it's true, life will throw you curve balls and they're not always fair. They're not the same as everybody else's and you have to roll with it. There is an aspect of going with the flow but if you only go with the flow you will not win the game. I need some music that says getting ready to go into sports metaphor because just to warn you I don't know anything about sports. I've taken, I've picked stuff up through osmosis because my family both on my wife's side and my side are all sports fanatics and so I don't know anything firsthand but I feel like I've heard enough to know a little bit and almost that just enough to make it dangerous like just enough so I can make a fool of myself but I feel like that outsider view often helps me see things in an analogy way like ways that might be helpful. Anyway, here's the deal, sports metaphor. Football AKA soccer in this sport you've got people, I think you've got three sets of people let's not get into that but there are people that are playing offense that are all about scoring points and then there are the players that are in positions that are all about defense. They don't even go to the other side of the field I believe. Okay, is defense important? Absolutely, it's a necessity. You have to be good at rolling with the punches. You have to be good at going with the flow when things start getting thrown your way, when a curve ball's thrown your way, something you don't expect, it's super important to be able to defend against that, to be able to roll with it, to be able to block the shot. You have to do that but it doesn't matter how good you are at picking up the current, going with the flow. It doesn't matter how good you are, you can never win without playing offense. You've got to play offense to score. The best you can do without making waves is tie, a tie game, is come out even. You've got to be out there with your strategy, with your plays, with your plans. How are you going to hit the ball into the net and have the goal moment? That seems like a big thing. A lot of shouting when the goal happens. If you're not, and this is what I believe, yes, you have to figure out how you go with the flow. When things start to change, when an opportunity comes your way that you don't expect, when some obstacle happens, how do you break it down? When life happens to you, how do you defend against it? That's important, totally important. But if you're only in reaction mode, if you're never out there pushing things, making things, trying to introduce new things and ideas, I don't think you have any possibility of scoring or winning. That's the difference between going with the flow and making waves. That's the difference between believing life just happens to you and believing that you have the possibility of happening to life. That's what this podcast is about. And if you want to get something from it, you've got to get on that side that says, I have some power to affect what happens today, tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now. Let me just tell you a little bit of a story. So when I graduated in '08, that's when the recession was starting to hit that fever pitch moment where that's all anybody ever talked about. And I think especially if you're a young adult in college or high school and people are talking about the recession in the economy, it's white noise. You're like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Shut up. It's going to be fine, but just wait. So I graduated in that time. And actually what I heard in retrospect, I kind of figured out and heard that the recession doesn't hit the arts industries for quite some time. It's like one of the last things to get hit, but then it gets hit. And so when I graduated in '08, I was working so hard. I was trying to do everything I could to make a career as a freelance artist, a freelance commercial artist. And I was working at Subway. That was the only job I could muster in that town. And yeah, I'll blame the recession for it, but I don't know if it's actually true. I was just fresh off the graduation scene, working at Subway, every day after Subway, I would be taking the bus home, wishing, praying, hoping, please let me find something else. Please let this commercial art thing work or let me find something just better than making sandwiches. I can't make any more of these stupid sandwiches. And I don't want to be a sandwich artist anymore. I want to be a real artist. And as I'm going through that, soon after we graduate, we have our first kid. And actually the day my daughter, Dot, is born, I win a pitch for Sony, a job for Sony, an illustration job, and I'm over the moon. And I'm just super excited. And actually that starts a wave of things happening where I'm getting more and more work every month after, and then every month leading up to about a year after I graduate. And if my calculations are correct, this is right about when the recession really hits the arts industry. And a year after I graduate, I get a massive job. We'd make plans to move back to the States and slowly kind of nothing else comes in. The jobs dry up. So here I am, what I've done up into this point is I've just taken the next right move. I've just kind of like let my inspiration guide me in school, just kind of did what I was into, kept making work, put up a website, put that work up, kept making more stuff that was fun, that I liked doing. And I kind of just like, I was letting things happen. I was just kind of like, everything was just rolling out in this natural kind of progression. And then here I am a year later, and maybe even a little bit longer because the next year rolls around. We move in January, 2010, it's the beginning of the year. And this career that was blossoming, this thing that was unraveling or unrolling is dead. It stopped. Whatever momentum I had going for me was over, it dried up. And that was the moment when I started to get strategic. And I hit this obstacle and I wanted to give up. And so right in that time, I had to get a part-time job and I didn't want to go. I'd had a graphic design position in the past and there were just things about doing that kind of creative work that were almost more crushing than just getting some money for something. And I just thought, I want to do something else. So I got a part-time job and a youth shelter. And actually, there was all kinds of amazing things about that and that was kind of a life forming event for me. But so I got a little part-time job in 2010 to make ends meet and that's when I started to really reflect, analyze and get strategic for the first time. For the first time, I wasn't just doing the next natural move. I wasn't just kind of watching what happened in React to it. I stopped and I asked myself questions and I analyzed and I tried to formulate plans based on this analysis. And it was really hard. Here's the things I looked at. I looked at myself, my work and my marketing. I looked at myself, I looked at who am I? What are my strengths? What do I want to do? What do I do that makes a difference? What's different about my work or who I am rather? I looked at my work and I said, what's working? What's not working? What's good? What's not? What's pro? What's amateur? What's exciting about the work? What's not exciting about the work? What, where is my work? I just took an inventory of what's wrong with my work. And there were plenty of things, I'll tell you that. There was all kinds of improvements that I needed to make and ways that I could expand and get excited about kind of growing that body of work into something that was more compelling to other people. I looked at my marketing. Mainly that I didn't have a market. I had no idea where my work was supposed to go. And if I didn't know, how was anybody else supposed to know who this work was actually for? You know, so much of the content of the work had almost no purpose. It had some kind of really random purposes that I'd kind of stumbled upon. But there was nothing like the content, the things I was actually drawing, they weren't meaningful to any specific market or any specific demand. And I wanted to make a career out of this. So I wanted to figure that out. What, who can I market this work towards? Where does this go? And as I'm stopping and I'm looking at all this stuff and I'm kind of trying to be self-analytical about where I'd gone, what had worked, what's not working. And then how do I look at all of these things in a strategic way and then make a strategic plan? And I remember sitting at this pizza place called Zwanzigs in Columbus, Indiana with my dad. And I'm sitting there and I had just racked my brain and I spoke with friends and mentors and I looked at all my work and I've been coming up with these strategies and I've been trying to implement them and the thing about it was, I just didn't know what I believed. I didn't know if I believed that I could affect positive change, if I could make things happen or if all this strategy was meaningless. And I remember just talking to my dad and just kind of just getting really aggravated. Like, just not knowing if any of this effort meant anything, does strategy actually work? I remember saying something like that. - My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laughing at me to this day. - Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get a $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. And I think this is a big reason why we struggle to believe that we have any effect over what happens in our life because I think that if I asked you, do you think that you can affect what happens today? I think a lot of people would probably say yes. Yeah, I think that I can kind of make some choices that affect the way that the day goes. How I treat people, how I act, what decisions I make, I can make, I can change the way that today goes. And if I said, do you think you can change tomorrow, you'd probably say yes. And if I said, do you think you could make choices today and tomorrow that could make next week terrible, like ruin your life? Or do you think you could make choices that are gonna help you help next week go pretty well? And I think in your work and in your home life, think you probably would say, yeah, I can do those things. But I think if I said, do you think that you can make choices right now in your life that are going to affect next year? You might be like, I don't know. What about five years? Do you believe you can do things now that are gonna affect what's happening five years from now? I think most people would say, no, why is that? Here's why I think it is. I think it's the same reason that it's hard to realize that we're on a revolving planet. That the change is so gradual and incremental that it's hard to even notice. And I think it's the same reason why people long ago thought the world was flat. Because that curvature of the earth is so gradual that it's hard to notice. And in that same way, I think making things happen in your art career, it's hard to believe because it happens so gradually. But if you don't, I think if you don't pick up on that fact, you miss the best opportunities. You miss the best potential that you have. If you believe that the things you're doing on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, right now are going to positively affect where you are in five years. You're gonna be so much more dedicated to pushing into those things. I wish I could go back like Marty McFly and slap myself in the face and tell myself at Zwan's eggs, this is your density. This is, you've got to, come on, like it's gonna work. Like this strategy, it's not for nothing. It's gonna break through. I feel like I'm still, I'm still getting the payoff of some of those strategies and those things that I was pouring into at the time and that analysis. I feel like so much of the things that the results I was looking for, I got from doing those things from being strategic, from being analytical, to finding that clarity and pushing into that on a regular basis. If you look at an article on 99U about true grit, 99U.com, it says that the biggest predictor of success, scientifically proven, is whether someone has a clear goal and whether they are willing to break through, to do what it takes to break through the obstacles that come in the way. If you're going with the flow, obstacles just put, you just get pushed aside. You just let obstacles push you aside and go a different way. You just, you can't go through, you can't go with the flow and break through an obstacle, right? And I really believe that if you wanna achieve anything significant in your art career, if you wanna get somewhere really worth going, you've gotta figure out how do I break down obstacles. You know, I think cool, being cool, being in, being hip in the art world, that can happen by chance. In fact, I think being cool in general, it's just a chance thing because you can't make cool happen because that's, by definition, uncool. When I was in middle school, I've got an example of this. This is a happenstance example of being cool. When I was in middle school, I lived in Western New York, Jamestown New York, and through a series of misunderstandings, here I am, sixth grade, a series of misunderstandings. I think that the most popular girl in school has asked me to go out with her and be her boyfriend. I don't actually think she meant to ask me that, but she was so nice that she just went along with it. And so here I am dating the most popular girl in school. My popularity soared through the roof, and that's how I became cool in that school. Total, total chance, just ridiculous way that that worked out. And I remember in eighth grade, soaking up popularity, feeling awesome, thinking I'm super cool, and when I was gonna move to a new school the next year, back to Indiana. And I remember thinking, I'm not going to be cool there. However, I became cool here. I don't know how it happened, but what if I'm not cool there? That will suck. Newsflash, in high school, I was not cool. And I wanted to be cool. I wanted to get that back, and I tried all kinds of things. They didn't work. I never really was cool. I was actually more uncool for trying so hard to be cool. And I just believe, cool, yeah. You could be cool, you could accidentally be cool. You could go with the flow and find yourself in a position being cool. That's great. However, significance in your art career or significance in general never happens by chance. So you could have cool, maybe significance, you can't have it without strategy, planning, pushing, breaking through obstacles. If you go look at the expeditions to reach the South Pole, there was a lot of different attempts. There was these specific attempts that were at the same time. I think it's, I don't know about these last names. I don't know how to say these last names. Amundsen, Amundsen? I don't know. Amundsen versus Scott. And this is referenced all the time in business and all kinds of different studies because they did the same trip to the South Pole and they had very different results. And basically what you realize is Scott was really courageous. He had that like, I'm just gonna go do it. I'm just gonna go make it happen. He had that like, I'm just gonna do it. Yeah, okay, he had that. But he didn't, he made it to the South Pole, I think his whole team ended up dying afterwards. And they didn't have a successful mission. While Amundsen did, what was the difference? Well, Amundsen had obsessive planning, obsessive strategy, obsessive leadership. That significance, that going to the South Pole and coming back, how did he actually make it happen? He did it through believing in the strategy, believing in the planning. And I think that kind of crazy significance, any significance of any kind, I believe happens through really believing in strategy, believing in planning, analyzing, knowing that through, going through the process, you will find a result on the other side. You know, I think inspiration in art can happen by chance. Back in my college days, I was, I experimented with rap. I bet you didn't know what I was gonna say. I experimented with making rap music. I think I've talked about this on the podcast. I guess, I grew up listening to hip hop, R&B, rap. And then I got into indie music that was, you know, in my mind, felt more artistic and creative. And I wanted to mash up these things and actually, since that time, all kinds of great examples of this have actually come out. And, but at the time, I didn't really know a lot of really creative focused rap. And so I was trying to do that, I was trying to learn how to do that. And here's what I learned about, when you don't really, if you don't have great skills, you're not really strategic, you haven't been planning, you haven't been incrementally working on crafting or honing your craft, rather. If you haven't been doing that, you're pretty much relying on inspiration because out of the maybe 50 songs that I made with friends, there were maybe two or three that I still really liked today. And I don't know at all how I made those songs. I can go back and listen to them. And I'm like, I don't know where that melody came from. I don't know where that lyric came from. I don't know, couldn't explain what it is. I don't know anything about me. I don't know about scales. I don't know about music theory. I don't know any of that stuff. But those songs, I've shown them to lots of friends and stuff and they really like them. And yeah, okay, maybe it's not a hit, but inspiration can happen by chance. You can get inspired and make something cool by chance. But a career of consistent quality never happens by chance. It only makes waves by intentionally breaking through obstacles. What's the difference between vampire weekend and Chumba Wumba? There's only one difference. They're basically the same. That's not true at all, but what's the difference? I think it's strategy. You know, I listen to vampire weekend. They're kind of like an indie band and their last album, Modern Vampires in the city, I think it's called. It's one of my all time favorite albums. I think it's fantastic. It's really deep and beautiful. And I listen to an interview with, I think it's, man, I'm so bad with names. I don't know. Ezra Coning, Koenig, I don't know, I'm sorry. I don't know, I'm bad with names. But Ezra, he talks about making this latest album and talks about how strategic they were and what songs they chose and how they, you know, he said that they had made a lot of songs that I thought these could be like top 40 hits, but they weren't challenging and exciting him in the right way. And they weren't adding to the statement of the album in the right way. And they weren't lining up with what they wanted their next album to be. So they scrapped those songs or they worked on them and tweaked them and honed them in until they were closer to that place they were shooting for. And I think if you take that versus Chumba Wumba, and that's just an example of a one-hit wonder, they had that song "Tub Thumping" because it's golf. I can barely say these things with a straight face. These names are terrible, but they had, you know, these one-hit wonders are Lynn, "Steal My Sunshine." That's another one from "Back in the Day" or "How Bizarre" by OMC, these one-hit wonders from the 90s. You know, these one-hit wonders, I always thought, man, as a commercial artist, ultimate failure would be one-hit wonder, like being a one-hit wonder. That would be ultimate failure. And that's one of the reasons I've been so obsessed with strategy because I wanna figure out how do you consistently make quality? How do you consistently affect positive change by knowing the right way to approach your work? I believe that being analytical, stepping back, looking at all of the, looking at the market, looking at your skills, looking at your work, you can actually push the needle forward by being strategic. So going back to what this podcast is all about, this could be my self-titled album, this episode, that this could be the creative pep talk podcast episode. Because I'm unpacking why I do this and I'm unpacking what the belief at the core of this and how you're gonna get the most out of this and what this is all about and why I think these ideas matter, why they're meaningful to me, why I can get up at four, five, six a.m. in the morning to give you guys a podcast because I believe that this, these ideas have changed my trajectory. They've made things happen for me. And it gets me so excited because I believe in helping commercial artists find financial thriving, making that work that fulfills them creatively. And I think that the way to do that is to find that clarity and that strategy. And because I think if you find those, you will get the results that you're looking for. And it's a subtle quiet little thing, this belief. But we all have a stance on it. I really think everybody you meet has a stance on whether things just happen to you and you have no way of affecting it or you actually have the power to go out there and design your life to make things happen. That little subtle quiet belief is actually dramatically affecting all of your daily decisions. And then all of those daily decisions are affecting what your life looks like today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. And in five years. And I guess this podcast episode is really me talking to myself in Zwanzing and saying, that's that pizza place that I was with my dad thinking just any of this actually gonna work. And I just, and this episode is me looking back and saying, it's gonna work. Some of those results that seem so far away, so impossible, you're gonna get 'em, you're gonna taste 'em by pushing into this. And so I never liked doing a podcast that's all airy, esoteric, hard to grasp, all that, you know, just, I love that stuff, but I'm all about not just strategy, not just pontificating about what it takes to make great art, not just that, but how do you take all of that good philosophy and then make it into results? So here's my actionable step for you. What I think you can go do with this is take a moment, take a retreat. It can be an hour long walk, or it can be a five day getaway in a cabin by yourself. Whatever it is, take stock of where you're at, where are you? Talk to other people about it. Talk to your peer mentors and your proper mentors. Talk to 'em about what your suspicions are. Get feedback about where they see you are, in who you are, what your work is, and what your market is, and how you're marketing your work. Take stock of all of that. Go take a walk, or go get away, and actually look at all of these things, and then formulate a real plan. I suggest a year long plan. If I go back to myself in 2009, and we were moving to America and I'm stopping everything in my tracks and saying, okay, I've hit a massive brick wall, the momentum is gone, what do I do now? And I'm analyzing myself, my work, and my marketing. In that time, I start formulating a plan, a year long plan. One part of that ended up being my daily drawing project nod, which was the thing that actually got the momentum back. It started to push that rock back down the hill, and we started picking up some speed. It started snowballing after that. That was my first strategic move. I thought, if I make a new character every weekday for a year, someone is gonna notice that, and I'm gonna start getting some work related to that work that I'm really inspired by that character design. And I did, that paid off, there was some real payoff, and what I realized actually after I did that year long is that that project wasn't as strategic as it could have been. And after that, I did another plan, and that next plan was actually more effective than the previous one. And so, the actionable thing that you can go take away from this episode is, stop what you're doing. Stop the chaos of the internet and social media and all of these things. They're gonna distract you. They're gonna keep you in defense mode. They're gonna keep you on the defensive side, blocking the shots from the goal. And that's all you're ever gonna get done is being reactive. But if you're just being reactive, you're just going at the flow and you can't score those, the most meaningful things are scored by you kicking some butt. So one of the things recently, I have this thing on my list that I've been dying to get done. And you know what, you know what I had to do? It was that offensive shot. I had to trade some sleep. One morning, I thought, you know what? If I spend four hours on this thing, I'm gonna get it to that next stage. So I got up at 4 a.m. one day, worked 'til eight on it. And I did it. I passed through that obstacle. And I did something that wasn't reactive. I did something that was proactive. If you look around in the art world, commercial art world, you're gonna notice the people that are making waves are going out there and they're looking out into the market and they're saying, what can I contribute, not just react to? What can I put out into there that's gonna affect positive change? It's gonna take me to a different place. Okay, I've got sufficiently worked up. And I'm sorry, you know what, I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm preaching. I get a little preachy sometimes, but it's just because I'm talking to myself five years ago. I'm saying, wake up, man, this is working, do it, go for it. And the reason I'm doing that is because I believe to the level that you believe that you can affect change, that's the amount of change that you can actually affect. If you don't believe that this stuff works, you're not gonna do it. We talk about this almost every episode, that zig-zigler quote. You know, the kid that doesn't believe he can't, the kid that believes he's gonna fail the test doesn't study. And in that same way, if you don't believe that you can make things happen, you don't spend very much time trying to make things happen. And so I just want, I wanted to look back and say, Andy, this is your destiny, smack you in the face and say, do something, stand up for yourself, go get the thing. Spend more time on this strategy, spend more time trying to affect positive change, 'cause the more you do that, the more you believe that that's gonna work, the more it works. Thank you guys for listening, for sharing. You guys have been sharing the podcast on Twitter and Instagram like crazy. That's so awesome, it makes my day so, so nice, love that. Thank you for being excited about the podcast, thank you for pushing it out there, thank you for reviewing it on iTunes, thank you for backing it on Patreon. That Patreon has really helped me just be like, look, it's not, I'm not getting rich off that, you know, and I don't need to get rich off that, but it does mean that it's easy to make, it's just making that decision to stick at this thing easier for me and my family. So thank you for, you'd $1 backers, you $5 backers, you $10 backers. I'm gonna try to get some more peppy talks out there for you $5 and $10 backers. I wanna just figure out a way of making that a little bit quicker off the cuff, just so I can focus on getting it out there and not focus on it being perfect. Where I'm a little bit, I try to craft this, the bigger peppy talks a little bit more. So thank you, I might be absent next week from the podcast, I've actually got some big things in the works that might stop me from doing that, but hopefully I'll be able to figure out something. Whatever happens, remember you can find this episode on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk or on my website, Andy-j-miller.com/creativepeptalk or you can find it on iTunes and subscribe there. Thank you so much, guys. If, do whatever it takes until next episode to stay peped up, keep making awesome work. I will be in touch with you soon, signing off. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (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 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 Msildine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Follow This Is Actually Happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery app.