Creative Pep Talk
042 - Effective Side Projects
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. Oh, the holidays are here, you gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister Catherine, and her kids, Jetson, and Jetta, and Jeffrey, and Jacob, and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus, there's the ethical thing, you gotta shop small, just, it's a lot, but it doesn't have to be. Uncommon Goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chocked full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like the Stitch-a-Day advent calendar, and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me, that was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family to get 15% off your next gift. Go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer, uncommon goods, we're all out of the ordinary. (upbeat music) Hey, you're listening to the Creative Peptalk 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 time to get jazzed out of your minds about making stuff. It's the creative pep talk podcast with me, Andy J. Miller. I'm a designer who makes pictures. I do illustration. I probably think more like a designer, but I make pictures for a living. If you don't know, if you're new to the podcast, let me just give you a little rundown about who I am, just to fill you in. I'm from the great state of Indiana. I'm a mid-westerner. I currently live in Columbus, Ohio. I've lived here for about a year. I live with my wife who happens to be a British woman. I found her over in England where I did my college and I spent a few extra years there, stayed there for about five years. We made three beautiful children, so I'm one of those people who is surrounded by kids. That's kind of who I am. That's what I'm about, you know? I like a weird mystical side of life, but I also like rational, logical side of life. I'm just kind of a weird mixture of that. And I do this podcast because I'm passionate about helping other people pursue a life of creativity and be able to make a living with their creative endeavors. That's why I do this because I can't imagine being stuck in an office doing Excel spreadsheets or something for a living and that depresses me and it depresses me if someone else has to do that that doesn't want to, is not meant to do that. So that's why I do this. You know, you might know my work from the Andy Rock coloring book or the Andy Rock poster book I did with Chronicle Books. Another way that people often know my work is a color me blank show with Andrew Nyer, where we draw a giant black and white mural that is then colored by five and a half foot giant markers that Andrew developed. Another way you might know my work is from the NOD project where I drew a new character every weekday for a year. And my recent side project is the creative pep talk, the podcast. I actually started this as a thing called art directions on my tumbler where I was writing articles about creativity and doing kind of editorial style illustration to go alongside it. That's how this kind of endeavor started and now it's kind of an audio project. So that's me, if you're new to the podcast, that's a little tidbit, little snippet to get you up to speed with who I am, why I am the way that I am and why I'm doing this project. Another side note before we get launched into the topic, today we're gonna talk about making effective side projects. But before we get there, I'm not gonna go on and on about it, but I wanna tell you about the Patreon is picking up speed. It's super awesome and exciting, I'm loving it. You can find it at patreon.com/creativepeptalk and that's me raising funds for the podcast. It's going super awesome. It's kind of created a little community around this podcast and we're starting to have conversations about the topics that we have on the podcast, the patrons that have backed able to interact with them all together and they're able to interact with each other, which is super cool. I've already put up my first exclusive pepi talk up there on finding a demand for your work and that's exclusive to the $5 backers and more. I've also, I've got 10, I had 10 spots of the $10 per episode of the podcast where you get a quarterly strategy/art portfolio review from me and I'm just getting that started and I might raise the number from 10 someday, but right now I wanna make sure this is manageable and so there was 10 spots and now there's only six left and they're kind of filling up quicker than I even thought they would. So if that's something you wanna do, go check that out. All right, let's get started on the podcast. Today, we're talking about effective side projects. It could be called 10 ingredients for side project success. And when I mean side project, I'm basically talking about projects that you initiate on your own, that you create to promote your work, to create a new body of work, to get into a new type of work. It's basically a project that's self-contained, that has its own rules, that the only person pushing you to do it is you and you come up with everything and you're responsible for doing everything. I guess unless it's a collaborative project, but that is basically what I'm talking about. I've built pretty much my whole career on doing side projects and I'm super passionate about it. I think that I'm this type of person that likes to dig down deep into something and really try to find the essence or the theory or the principle behind things. And when it comes to the side project thing, I knew that the side projects were working and they were fulfilling me and they were helping me get new work, but I wanted to dig down deeper to what is this thing and why does it work and what's going on there? And it took me a long time. I didn't know really what to call it or what was really happening for a long time. And this is just, let me just pause for one second and just give you a disclaimer. Saying side project sounds really cool, like cool designer side projects. We love talking about side projects. Sounds so casual, sounds so casual. And I think that one of the main things about being cool is that you have to act like you don't care. If you don't act like you don't care and you're casual and no big deal and nothing's formal and I'm not really trying, that's a cool way to act. And I think people at the top often act like, yeah, just did my side project. I didn't really care how it went. It was just something that just naturally happened out of nowhere. I'm just basically so cool that it just appeared out of thin air next to me. And I think that does a disservice to the people that are just getting started out or struggling to promote their work or whatever. It doesn't, actually it's not very effective. It's not very helpful for other people. And that's something that really bugs me. And so I'm not doing the Creative PEP Talk podcast to be cool. I'm doing it to help other people and to connect with other people in the community about creative topics. And so this is the disclaimer. I'm gonna go into a little bout of really uncoolness and very marketing-ish, marketing-ishness. Marketing-ish, I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm gonna talk about some marketing lingo. And the reason I'm gonna do it is because I think that it will give you the best understanding about what's going on and help you leverage side projects in a way that are really powerful. So side projects, what are side projects? In marketing terms, whether you like it or not, they're actually content marketing. Now, if you make pictures and you make concepts and designs, you are a content creator, whether you like it or not, whether you like that terminology or not, you're a content creator, you create content. And there's this cool thing that's happened in marketing, if you like marketing at all. And it's this idea that it's better and more effective to advertise your product by creating content than creating an ad. And my best way I feel like I've explained in this is the idea of a McDonald's commercial versus an old spice commercial. A McDonald's commercial is a 30-second ad. And what is an ad? It's an ad that says you need our product for some reason. That's an ad. And it's boring and everybody's sick of it. Content has value all on its own. And so an old spice commercial is a great example of a piece of content created instead of an ad. And so their 30-second commercial is a 30-second bit of comedy. And because it has value all on its own, people share it, people engage with it, people enjoy it. And then they make positive association with what that brand offers. And it's so much more effective than just saying buy our stuff. And whether you like it or not, side projects are basically ultimate content marketing. And the cool thing about being a creator is that you naturally have all the capabilities to create your own content to market your work. Now, there are other brands out there that have to hire you to make the cool content for social media and real life and all that. They have to hire you, but the cool thing about you is that you have all the skills you need to create your own content marketing strategy in your own content all by yourself. And whether you like the marketing side, whether you like to call it content marketing or whether you like to call it side projects, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't bug me either way. I just like, I liked figuring out that it was basically content marketing so that I could read more about that topic in specifics and proven like methods. And I think all of that actually helped me make better, more effective side projects. And this is what we're gonna talk about today. And so I'm gonna go back to being cool and talk only about side projects from now on. We're not gonna talk about content marketing. But that's what it is, whether you like it or not. And we can pretend like you made that project 'cause you're the most casual guy in the world and it was just an extension of your being and all that. Or we can be honest and say you did it because you wanna get more cool jobs. You wanna make a living and make an art. I'll be honest. I love all the projects that I've made, the big ones that I've really spent a lot of time on. I love, I'm passionate about 'em. I enjoy doing them. But I did them so that I could make a living doing art because I love making art and I wanna be able to pursue it with my whole being. Okay, that's the spiel, that's the spiel. Let me set the stage here real quick. You know, I do a Pinterest project in my self-promotion class for my art school students. And one of the things that happens every time is when you start diving into Pinterest, if you ever have, or just the internet in general, it could be Tumblr, it could be anything. But Pinterest is a good example. You start diving into Pinterest and you start finding the artwork that resonates with you and invariably or undeniably, you go down a rabbit hole of art that you never knew existed and there are masses and masses of this art that is amazing and it's blowing your mind and so at first, it's kind of like this, it goes in stages. So your first stage of doing that is whoa, or the students kind of go through this. Whoa, this man, Pinterest is amazing. I can't believe how many amazing things out there that are out there that I know about. This is brilliant. And the next stage that hits them is that if there's this much amazing stuff out there, why is anyone gonna care about my work? That is a sobering thought and it's an important thought to have and it's a legitimate thought. I'm here to say that I think side projects are the answer to this problem. Here's what I wanna suppose. Even if you're not the most brilliant, I hope you are the most brilliantly talented artist in the world and that your art is just blowing people's minds. But even if it's not, let's take a leaf from a leaf. I don't know if that makes any sense. Let's take a page. Let's take a page from Forrest Gump's book. Someone who was limited in all kinds of ways and consistently made history. And I just wanna take one example of something he did that was totally normal, but he did it in such a way that it got him tons of attention. And this is where he runs without ceasing for gods of time. Running, doing a jog means nothing. No one cares. When you see a jogger out on the road, you don't even think about it. It's white noise. But here's a guy who jogs, I don't know, from one side of the country to the other side, I don't remember what the actual thing is, but he keeps jogging and everybody starts to notice and he's on the news and people are asking him why and people are looking and saying, what is going on? And I believe that if you walk a straight line long enough online, people start to ask questions and notice. The reason I think this is true is that I think the internet is the opposite of willpower. It is the opposite of a straight line. It is ADHD on in a digital format. And when you start to walk a straight line and you're consistent and you have willpower and you keep going, people start thinking, what does this guy know that I don't know? What is this guy up to? What is he doing or what is she doing? It could be, you could be a woman, that's totally, totally what I'm talking about. God, the important thing is, is to understand that I think side projects are an amazing way to take a season of your life and walk towards one thing. If you go back and listen to the "Pinsel in the Stone" episode, it's a lot like this. When you see that thing out in the distance and you walk towards it, and if you do the "Pinsel in the Stone" little quadrant worksheet thing that I have on my blog and you find the direction that you wanna head, a side project is a great way to commit to something for a season of your life and to head towards that goal and to commit to it and have clear constraints. I believe that this tactic works and I actually know it works because it's worked for me four or five times. Here, I'm gonna list the 10 things that I think make effective side projects. These are the things that I suggest to my students. I have my students in the self promo class do a side project as a way of promoting their work. And these are the things that I've kind of learned having gone through this with a few different groups and having analyzed the things that have worked in my own side projects. Every good side project isn't gonna have all these things. And it's gonna have a different balance of these things. But I'm pretty sure that every successful side project has some of these ingredients in a strong way. Without further ado in preface, let's get moving. Number one, courage. I think that being an artist is about standing out from the crowd. You can't just meld in with the background and not stick out. You can't be shy as an artist. It's true that if you stand out that you're gonna get attention and some of it's not gonna be good. But you're gonna get attention. I'll tell you what, a stupid story from my high school days. When I was in high school, I was as average as anyone else. I didn't play a sport. I didn't have a hobby really. I drew pictures, but not especially better than anybody else. I didn't have a fashion. I didn't have a group. I was just the most bland person in the world. Until one day, I was in the office. And I don't remember why I was in the office, but I'm standing there and there's some students coming and going. And one of the students that I knew was on student council and he said, "Andy, come here. "I wanna sign you up to this danceathon, dance off." What song do you wanna dance to? And I was like, I'm not doing that. That sounds like excruciating. And he said, look, I can't get anybody to sign up. We've only got two people signed up so far. And I was like, yeah, because it's gonna be painful. I don't wanna do it. And he's like, come on, please do it. And I just thought, all right, I'm gonna do it. This is my chance to say, to be something, to do something in my high school career that makes me stand out. And I had an idea. This was at a time when Napoleon Dynamite had only been on a small release. And we'd actually heard about it and driven a few hours away at a movie theater to go see it. And I didn't know very many people who had seen it, almost nobody. And I had the idea, I told him, I told him the song, "Canned Heat." I'm gonna dance to "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai. And that's the song that's at the end of Napoleon Dynamite. What I did then was I went online wire and I downloaded the movie, which I don't suggest you doing, but, and I don't stand by that young Andy downloading illegally, but I downloaded the movie and I memorized the dance. I made my own vote for Pedro T-shirt 'cause there was none of that yet. And I wore, I stuffed my feet into my little brother's snow boots and I tucked my jeans in. And I did the Napoleon Dynamite dance. The thing that I didn't think about was that nobody had seen Napoleon Dynamite and they didn't know that it was from a movie. And so I was like a real Napoleon Dynamite. And, and so then I became that guy that, I stood out from the crowd finally like, "Oh, hey, it's that guy that did the dance, that weird dance." And the funny thing even was, because nobody was familiar with it, there was a bunch of kids that would be like laughing and I heard later that teachers were telling people off for laughing at me because they thought I was serious. And so I became Napoleon Dynamite dancing guy after that in my high school. There was no value to that really, but it did feel good to sit down from the crowd. And I believe that in order to do great art, in order to cut through the mounds and mounds of amazing Pinterest artists out there, you've got to stand out from the crowd. You've got to do something that pushes you out beyond the masses. And I think that when you're out there, that it's scary because you're going to be judged. If you set yourself apart from other people, you are going to be judged. And that's when I believe that when you go do this personal project, you need to think about, how do I do something that other people are not doing? And when you go to do that, the right sign that you're on the right path should be that it's a little bit scary. You should be a little bit afraid. If you're not a little bit afraid of your project, then you're not being courageous enough. You need to be putting something out there in such a way that you're standing out from the crowd. Number two is intent. Now, if you go back to the Pencil in the Stone episode and I'm talking about it was easy to run a long distance without a map because I had a tower in the distance that I was running towards. And every time I got off track, I just readjusted my course towards the tower and eventually I ended up there. And I think when you have a personal project, you should have a really clear idea of what you're trying to achieve with this project. You know, when I did my non-project, that was about developing my own more original style. And I wanted to go down that direction and take some things that were really personal to me. And I just thought by sheer quantity, if I have to draw 260 of these characters, I'm gonna find some new things that define my work that are different to what other people do. And I did. That was my intent. My intent with art directions, articles, creative articles that I did, I wanted to get into editorial illustration and not very many people were asking me to do that at the time. And so what did I do? I wrote my own articles and illustrated those. And I did it towards a community that needed that kind of information so that they would share it and that I, and obviously I'm really passionate about that. We're gonna get to passion too. But the intent was I want to do editorial illustration and not very many people are asking me to do that. I'll write my own articles. And so I believe one of the biggest things that you need to do with your project is to have a really clear idea about what is it that you're trying to achieve with this project. It can be about personal development, like a specific skill that you wanna do. It can be about staking your claim as a cat artist. It can be, I wanna get into kids' books and you can build with that clear goal in mind. It's so much easier to build an effective project. So I think having a clear intent is really important. Number three, commitment. You know, have you ever met anybody that like had lost 100 pounds? And you said, how did you do it? They were like, I don't know really. I just kind of, kind of just happened. I just thought, you know, I don't wanna be this heavy anymore. So I'm gonna just eat better. A little, I'm gonna eat better. No, you've never met that person. If you're in that situation and the stakes are high and there's something significant to be done, you've got to have a real plan because you're not, when you get into it, if you don't have a plan and you don't have a discipline in a commitment, then you're not gonna do it because you're not gonna always feel like doing it. And so I think it's important from the beginning of a project to have some kind of clear rules and commitment, some kind of plan. Those are the things that end up happening. The other thing I think that's awesome about having a commitment, especially a time commitment or a commitment to a certain amount of work is that when it comes to this idea of finding your place in the market and finding the work that you're supposed to be doing, I think it's best to think in seasons. And with the PEPI Talks this week, for my Patreon backers, I'm gonna talk about thinking about your career in seasons rather than one whole run or one marathon thinking about it as a series of sprints. And I think the reason why you need to do that is because finding your ultimate kind of goal in work takes a long time, takes should take a lifetime and you're always gonna feel like you're missing something because it's gonna take a lifetime to fulfill whatever that thing is and every piece builds on the previous piece. And I think if you think of your life in seasons, there's not so much pressure for this thing to be absolutely perfect. And so you think of this side project, it's gonna be for the next six months to a year or whatever, or even just two months and just see it as I'm gonna head that direction, I'm gonna commit to going all the way there. And when I get there, I'm gonna re kind of adjust where I'm going in that same way that I was running towards that tower that was miles away. Now that in the distance, I don't even really know, you don't have to know exactly what that is other than I'm looking for the work that I'm meant to be doing. And when I would take a road, that could be like a side project or a season of your life and I take that road to the very end. And when I get there, I notice that I've gone a little bit to West and I need to head back East a little bit towards the tower. And once I'm there, I readjust and that could be another side project. And I think the what is really good about this, commitment idea, is that you have a hunch and you really think about what direction you're gonna have, what intention you have with this project. And then once you make that decision, you lock down and you explore it thoroughly until you really understand whether this is the right direction or not, and you see what's actually on the other side of this wall. And once you do that, you can go to the next season of your life. So I really believe that this is a great way to explore the type of work that you're supposed to be doing. And I think a great way of doing that is having clear rules and clear commitments about what your project is gonna be, when you're gonna do it, how long it's gonna go, having really specific guidelines. And almost think of it as giving yourself your own design brief. The looser the project is, I think the worse it is. And you're gonna, if you haven't done this before, you're gonna wanna wiggle away and try to make it really loose. But if it's really loose, it's also really confusing and not, and when things are confusing to other people, they don't put the time in to figure it out. And so I think the tighter the idea, the better. Number four is passion. Why is passion important when it comes to your side projects? There's two reasons why I'm a big believer in passion in general, and they both apply here. Number one is, if you're not passionate about doing something, you're not going to stick at it long enough to achieve anything significant. And I believe a career in the arts is a significant achievement. It's not easy. Lots of people wanna do it, not everybody can do it. And I believe that if you're gonna do something significant, you better like doing it. Because if you don't like doing it, you're not gonna spend the time necessary to get good at it. And I think of it like, you know, basketball players practicing their shot. If you're gonna be, if you're trying to be a basketball player 'cause you wanna get rich, that's not the easiest way. I can tell you right now. And if you don't love shooting baskets, you're not gonna spend all the time necessary out on the court practicing your shot. And so I think when it comes to projects, if you're gonna do one that's effective, that you're gonna pour the right amount of time and energy into, you've gotta be excited about it. And so my biggest piece of advice for this is, if you had a free day today, what would you make? If you could make anything, if you could spend all day today just working on one thing, what would that be? What do you really feel like making? And that's one of the first questions. And once you have that answer, you can build a project around that type of work. And yeah, you might only wanna, you might only feel like making that type of work for the next couple of months. But you try to gauge, I think if I had a morning, a week working on this type of work, I could be excited about that for two months. For instance, when I did my nod project and I was gonna do a new character every weekday for a year, I knew that I was so passionate about this work because I'd been researching and thinking about what my work was gonna be about for about a year. And the nod project and the character development project, all came from that research. And I'd spent so much time and energy thinking and trying out different things that I knew that I'm so passionate about this, I could do this every day for a year. And when I finished that year, I could have kept going. That's how passionate I was about this project. And I think that is why passion is such a big deal. I also think that passion is a massive deal because it's contagious. You know, you don't remember the teachers in high school that weren't passionate about what they did. And the ones that were, you caught the bug, you caught whatever it was. You know, I wasn't into English, but I had an amazing English teacher. And I caught that bug. I was like, I caught the passion for literature because of that person. And when you're passionate about your work, it sells to other people. When you're passionate, it helps them be passionate about what you do. And if you don't care about your project, why does anybody else care? This is one of my biggest arguments against heading for only a demand in the market that you don't care about. I do think thinking about a demand in the market is really important, but I think it's only part of the equation. Okay, number five, growth. For me, side projects are the easiest way to hack this growth component. Like learning a new skill or breaking into a new market. Side projects are the ultimate hack for doing that. And here's why I believe that. I liken it to punk music. I don't listen to punk music. I've never listened to punk music. But as someone who finds it really hard to get motivated to learn new things, I love the idea of punk music because I love that it got a generation of people playing instruments and starting bands. How many bands started after the kid knew three chords on a guitar because of punk music? And why is that an awesome hack because it's learning by doing? Man, I'll tell you what sounds like torture to me. Having someone try to teach me guitar. And they say, look, we're gonna learn all the chords you can learn before we play a song, before you get to create anything. And I would just be like, no way. I will never learn guitar if I have to do it that way. And so when it comes to learning a new skill, so for the non-project, I wanted to learn a little bit about writing. And so I put that as part of the project. And so that I wrote a little bit for 260 days. And I got some interesting tricks and development with that. When it came to editorial work, I wanted to learn, how do you kind of do something that has a little bit of a visual trick or visual interest? How do you communicate a story? And I wanted to learn more about, I wanted to get good at doing that. And so how did I do that? I learned by doing, by writing my own articles and illustrating them. And by doing that, I got better. And by getting better and developing that portfolio, I started getting editorial work. So I think that side projects are the best hack for growth. I also think that it's great growth in your career because it's a really good way of solidifying yourself in a particular place in the market. So if you, I think is a good example of this, we're gonna talk about a few different examples. A great example is Mikey Burton. Awesome dude, loved that guy. So he makes amazing work and he seems like such a cool guy. And he's doing this food project. You know, he's done so many images of food for his food blog. When an art director thinks of that kind of graphic style and they need food, who do they think of? They think of Mikey Burton. So this is a great way to start solidifying yourself in a specific place in the market because that, so many directors, that's how they, they're so busy. They have to hire so many people or so many people that need creative work don't have time to go explore all the different types of people that make work on a particular subject or a particular thing or all the logo artists or all the people that do brochures or whatever it is, they don't have time to explore everybody that possibly could do that. And by solidifying yourself by walking a straight line and growing into a new area and saying, I am this person, you're taking so much work off their hands and it sticks in their mind as this is the person I go to when I need this thing. All right. Number six, all good side projects have a clear audience. They have an obvious audience. And this one, I am so passionate about this one. You know, I think as artists, I feel like we often ignore this idea of audience. I think we're told it should just be about you. It should just be what you know, what you care about and whatever you wanna do, you just do what you wanna do. And I think that's part of the equation, but I think on the other side, if you don't think about audience, I think you can get into some kind of weird situations like, for instance, imagine, right? Opening a pet grooming service for a pet that you don't know if it exists. Like, I'm gonna open a brand new shop and we groom this animal that I'm not really, I don't know if it exists or not, but we're open in the shop. Nobody would tell you to do that. I know it's a stupid example, but it works for me. And I think so many times we create this work or these side projects just because it felt good to do. We have no idea if there are people out there existing audiences that want this thing. Like, you would open a grooming shop for dogs 'cause you know people want their dogs groomed. When you're creating a body of work, tap into audiences that already exist. This is why you like lots of shows from the same TV channel. This is why you like lots of bands from the same record label because you've developed trust and you've developed that as part of your identity. And when they put something out, you know it's for you. And so by tapping into an existing audience, it could be people that like psychology, it could be people that like cats, it could be people that like food, it could be people that like design, it doesn't matter, but it needs to be a preexisting audience. Building an audience from the ground up from nothing is incredibly difficult and it pretty much doesn't happen. We've talked about this on the podcast. Tapping into a preexisting audience makes it so that when someone comes across it, they know it's for them. And you know what, you don't have to do fan art to do this. You don't have to make a sequel to do this. There's plenty of ways to do it. You know, it's like, it doesn't have to be dumb and dumb or two, okay? It can be another movie where it's the sidekick goofballs. That is something that there's lots of people that know that they already like that. They like wedding crashers. They like dumb and dumber. They like all the infinite amounts of those types of buddy movies. If you look into it, this is why genres exist. This is why these areas of trust exist. I believe it's important to think, what is the audience for this thing? And it should already exist. Number seven, it should have wow factor. Wow factor. This one, we're gonna balance with number eight and I'm gonna get to that in a minute, but wow factor, it should have some kind of commercial, you know, commercial art needs to have some kind of utility or some kind of clear value. This is not the contemporary art museum. And you know, the thing that people don't like about contemporary art a lot of the times and the reason why contemporary artists wouldn't make very good commercial artists, people that wanna make a living, doing this outside of the gallery is because people have a hard time appreciating art generally that they could do or that they would have done. Things that would have been the most obvious solution in the world. Now, I believe when it comes to wow factor, you either need to push into something that people wouldn't do or wouldn't think to do or actually couldn't do. So things that you're really, really good at that are kind of supernatural that lots of people couldn't do or you need to try to do stuff that people just wouldn't do. I think a great example of this is Kate Bingham and Bert. She has this amazing project called Obsessive Consumption. And part of that, I believe it was part of this project. She did a project where she illustrated every single one of her credit card statements. Illustrated 'em, like verbatim. And she did it until she paid off the debt and the debt was like $25,000. That was something that almost no one else in the world would have done and that's what gave it wow factor like. I can't believe that she's doing that. I think the other side of it is think of someone like Jima Carell. Jima Carell makes a hilarious, awesome comics and cartooning. And she does a lot of work with cats, pugs. She's the pugs, not drugs artist. And the thing that she does that other people can't do is she's super clever. That's like her supernatural ability and that's the wow factor. So I think it's gotta be something people couldn't do or wouldn't do or wouldn't have thought to do. That's what gives you wow factor in every project. If you don't have any wow factor, there's no point in doing it. If there's nothing extra, like there's just no point in doing it. The wow factor could be something that they wouldn't have done because they couldn't have thought of it because it was a really original, interesting idea. Now, you have to balance wow factor with doability. Wayne Gretzky quote, what about this? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You know, the power of ideas are in the doing of them. You know, I'm sure you know people that are completely brilliant, but they don't have any credentials. They have nothing to show for it 'cause they've never finished anything. They don't go anywhere because nobody cares about your idea if you don't actually do it. And I think when I give this project to my students, I'm constantly telling them, you've gotta balance the wow factor, like making it really cool, making it interesting with the doability. And I would rather it be completely a doable project than something that blows people's minds. Because the wow factor can just be the fact that you keep doing it. You're committed. You do it every day. You do it every week. You keep coming back. We can't believe that you keep doing that. That can be the wow factor. But I think it's really important that whatever you do, you balance it being amazing with you actually doing it. And nothing is more important than actually making the thing because I believe that more than anything, side projects are about straight line, walking a straight line. And that can be in the real life or it can be on the internet, especially that works on the internet. This is the forest gump them with your walking in a straight line long enough till people take notice. And I think it's so important to make it doable. Number nine, great side projects have you. Number nine is you. They have to have you. I'm a big believer in this idea. Art that lacks life is dead. And the only life you have to give is yours. If the art has no human quality, if it has nothing that people can relate to as a human, they will not respond to the work. It will be bland. If you try to go out there and do something that somebody else is doing and try to take the essence and you don't add anything to it, you know what? I've recently been thinking about this quote again. And I think it's originally a Picasso quote of you've heard it before. Good artist copy, great artist steal. And I heard, I can't remember, but I heard someone say, explain it this way. And I thought, man, this is so brilliant. I never really thought about that. You know, surface level, if you take that quote, and maybe this is what he meant, that if you copy somebody, if you just like take a little bit from them, then you're just being a good artist. But if you just absolutely rip it off, then you're being a great artist. That's not what he meant, I don't think. And I don't think that's what it means. I think what it means is if you copy what other people do, and you just try to do what they're doing, there's nothing fantastic about that. That's every day, tons of people do that. But if you take something from someone else and you steal it, you're taking it and you're making it your own. If you don't put your own spin on it, you don't put your own blood, sweat, and tears, your own personality, your own you, your life onto the page, nobody is going to care, no one's going to relate to it. Because if you take something that's out there already and you just regurgitate it, it's just more white noise. It's just more stuff that blends in with all the stuff that's already out there. And I'm goofy like this to actually believe that the world is like a giant puzzle. As cheesy as it says, it's like a giant puzzle and it's missing your piece. And until you're ready to put your piece out there, it's not going to work. So you can think of it in that cosmic level or you can think about it in the most mundane everyday level that says you can only write what you know because you're the expert on that. You have to put yourself into your work. And if you don't, it's going to die on the table. It's going to lack life and art without life is dead. And the only life that you have to give is yours. That's the only life that you have. So number 10, last one is thought. It's got to have thought. I've told this story before on the podcast and I'll tell it again. When it came to the Andy Rock Colleen book, that's been one of my most successful side projects and it was really my first proper side project. I came up with that idea. After, you know, I had a project for college and we were supposed to come up with four concepts. I came up with one that I really liked and I knew I was going to do it and it wasn't the Andy Rock Colleen book and it was a bad idea and it was my first idea. I recently heard somewhere, first ideas are the worst ideas and I knew that I wanted to do it. And so the day before I had to present my other three ideas that I hadn't thought of, I laid in bed the night before and I just forced myself to come up with three ideas and I wanted them to kind of be bad so that they would pale in comparison of the idea that I already knew I wanted to do. And without any pressure on it, because when you come up with one idea, it's got to be good. But if you know you're going to come up with four, then you have no pressure because only one of them have to be good. And I really believe when it comes to making a great project, making a great side project, it's really good to go through iterations and to put a lot of time and thinking into it and to come up with multiple ideas. Don't just come up with the first idea that comes to you and run with it. Even if you love it, come up with other ideas that help you clarify how much you love or why that idea is so good. Can almost guarantee that if you come up with four ideas, one of them, one of the third ones, the last three is going to be better than the first one. So I think thought is one of the best things to bake into the side projects. Okay, let me just go through it real quick. This is what we've got. We've got courage. It's important to stand out and to stand out is a little bit scary. If you're feeling a little bit afraid, you're on the right path. Number two, intent. Having a real purpose, that is so important when it comes to your side project. Number three, commitment. We don't know any people that have lost 100 pounds just because they casually kind of felt like they wanted to. No, if you're going to do anything significant, you've got to commit. You've got to have a real plan. Number four, passion. It's contagious. And if you don't care about your project, who else will? Five, growth. This side projects are the best hack for growth. It's like the punk music. It's learning by doing. Six, having a clear audience. Remember, you wouldn't open a grooming, pet grooming shop for an animal that you don't sure if it exists. Tap into an existing market. Seven, wow factor, wow factor. We want to balance that with number eight, doability. Wow factor is something that other people either can't do or wouldn't have thought of doing or wouldn't be willing to do. Doability, make sure this is something that you can really achieve before you start it. Number nine, you. It needs you in the project. Art without life is dead and you, the only life you have is your own. So you have to pour that life into the art. And number 10, thought. Bacon, thought. I don't know who said it. If you know, tweet at me, but I think the first ideas are the worst ideas. Come up with multiple ideas, iterate the idea, get feedback, really think about it before you kick it off. I think one of the biggest things you need to make sure you're doing is make sure you have fun. Go on to Pencil versus Pixel, that podcast by my friend Cesar. He did a recent episode. I can't remember who it was with, but in the title it says something about why side projects need to be stupid. They, you do need to have fun with it. Like one of the ways that you can bacon wow factor is just doing something. Like taking, I think delight is defined by taking care and interest in little things that seem inconsequential. Like finding, like take these things that you love and you're interested in and give them the care that nobody else will. Like pour your time and energy into a project that nobody else would do. And by doing that, you're gonna achieve promoting your work and marketing it and standing out from the crowd and you're gonna develop new skills and solidify your place in new parts of the market. And I really think that this actually works. You know, I've built my complete career on the back of doing this. I haven't sent tons of postcards out. I haven't like, you know, I haven't been schmoozing with networking and all that jazz. I do, you know, I've done, back in the day, you know, I tried to hustle and figure it out. But the thing that's been the most effective for me are my side projects, my indie rock coloring book, my color, color me blank exhibit, creative pep talk podcast has been a great way of standing out and doing my nod project where I drew a new character every day for a year. Those are the ways that people know about my work. And those were all examples of side projects. Not all projects are gonna have all of these ingredients. And they're all gonna be different, you know, think about all the different ways you can make bread and all the different versions of bread. There's bagels, there's wheat loaf, there's a pumpernickel, I don't know. Think about all these. That's kind of every side projects like a different type of bread. They're gonna have different proportions of these ingredients. Some of them are gonna throw in an egg, some of them are gonna leave a few out, but they're all a different balance. And when you balance them differently, you get different results. And so I think that all of these things are worth having. You don't need them all. You need them in different proportions, depending on what your goals are and what you're trying to do. But I believe that all of these ideas are things that are gonna help you make better side projects. That's it for today. I hope you loved it. Thanks for reaching out. Thanks for the iTunes reviews. Thanks for Patreon backers. You guys are awesome. I'm gonna start mentioning a $10 backer every week. This week, I will tell you, go check out Anne Picard's work. A-N-N-P-I-C-K-A-R-D. She's a $10 backer on the Patreon. Go check her workouts, really cool. Thank you, Anne, for backing at $10. Thank you guys for supporting the podcast, for spreading the word. It's super awesome. You know, in the next year or so, I'm gonna start being more open to doing speaking engagements and stuff like that. And I've got a few things in the works. So if that's something you're looking for, I'm starting to be available for that. You can listen to this at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Also, I'm going to be doing a giveaway for Baron Fig sketchbooks. I'm gonna tell you more about that. So stay tuned and thank you Baron Fig for the support. Until we speak again, stay peped up. Hey, you guys have a little bonus. My daughter has some tips for you on how to be an awesome creative person. Her name's Dot. Here she is. Um, door, um, door your imagination. Thanks Dot, that was a great tip. Maybe she'll come back next week with some more great feedback. That's gold. Draw your imagination. See you guys soon. Stay peped up. (soft 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'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 lift 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. Followed 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.