Creative Pep Talk
041 - Repeat Client 1
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work, or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hey, you're listening to the Creative Pep Talk podcast with me, graphic illustrator Andy J. Miller. This show is about finding clarity and strategy so that you can maximize your creative career. You can find this show on iTunes, or on my site, Andy-J, hyphen Miller.com/podcast, or on the illustration website, illustrationh.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. (upbeat music) Hey, it's me, Andy, the guy with the podcast. I've got another one ready to go. I'm ready to roll. I've had a busy week so far and it's been great. Been working on some exciting new stuff, but I've finally managed to get around to doing the podcast and I've got some good stuff. I've been thinking really hard about actionable things that are practical that you can actually just go do right now after you listen to the podcast that can impact your art career. That's what today is about. And before we get started and we get straight into it, I've got two things stick with me on these. Number one, we did a contest for Baron Fig sketchbooks. They are sponsors, proud sponsors of the Creative Peptalk. And we love those guys. They make fine products. We had a little contest. What I had you do was I had you go out and sketch something, either notes or a picture while you listen to the podcast. And then post that on Instagram and tag me in it. Now you've done it. You've went and done it. I've picked a winner. We've got a winner right here for the Baron Fig confidant sketchbook. And here it is. Da da da da. It's Erin Wetzel, I think is how you say it. It's W-E-I-T-Z-E-L-L. And she did a mighty fine page of doodles to one of the last podcasts. And you have won. So if you're listening, send me an email with your address and I will get that out to you. Otherwise I'll be contacting you through Instagram. Thank you for participating. You can go check her stuff out on Instagram. Now we have a new contest for Baron Fig. I'm giving away, or should I say, Baron Fig is giving away a $20 gift card for their shop online. Where you can go buy some cool sketchbook products. $20 gift card. Now for this one. Starting today, which is a Wednesday and it's Wednesday the 24th of June. Starting today, this is the new contest. Go review the podcast on iTunes. Write a little review. And then email me the details of your review. So I know who it was. And I will pick one of the people that reviewed the podcast to give away the $20 gift card. And you have until the next podcast comes out next week. Could be Monday, could be Wednesday, could be Friday, but it's whenever that next podcast comes out, you have until then, so get moving, go on iTunes, log in, write your little review, email me what review is yours. And I will pick one to give the $20 gift card. Thank you, Baron Fig for sponsoring the podcast. All right, one more thing. Real quick, the Patreon. I have a Patreon for the Creative PEP Talk podcast. What does that mean? It's kind of like a Kickstarter, but it's for raising ongoing support for a project that you're doing. So I have one for this podcast where every time I put a new podcast up, there are people that have backed a certain amount of money every time I publish a new podcast. One of the things I do with that is if you back it at $5 or more per podcast, you get access to these peppy talks, shorter versions of the podcast exclusively, and you don't pay for them, they just go straight on to the Patreon, you can listen to them there. This week I did one, and there was a really good response, and it was about social media. I don't do a lot of stuff that's, I try to focus on timeless principles on how to approach your career, but I wanted to do something about some of the things that have been working for me, and where I think you need to focus your marketing efforts. And I think right now, social media is a place where you really need to be strategic, and you need to be thinking about how do you win on those platforms because that's really where the internet is these days. And so on the latest episode, I kind of just talked about what my theories are with that, what I've been doing, what's been working for me, and where I see things going a little bit. So if you wanna check that out, go back to Patreon. I also had some people reach out and ask about the $10 backers where you get an art review, a portfolio review, and a strategy review for your art career. I've got 10 places for that, and they're all booked currently, and until I can review all four of the, all 10 of those people, and I get some kind of schedule that makes sense, I'm not gonna open any more spots, but I will let you know, and if you wanna be on the waiting list, you can go to patreon.com/creativepeptalk, and there's a link under the $10 backers that says notify me when there's more places, you can go check that out, 'cause I've had some people ask me about that. So, go check that out. Let's get started on the topic at hand. Okay, let's do this. So, let's just say that you're in a place where you're receiving lukewarm results. You're not in that perfect balance of demand and calling, skills and passion. You don't have that place where you're either not getting the right response to your work, you know, you're not getting enough clients or people aren't excited about what you're doing, or you've been doing the same thing too long, and you're kind of sick of it, and you've lost the life has kind of disappeared from your passion. If you're in that place where you're saying, I've been doing this, I'm making tons of stuff, and people just aren't excited about what I'm making. I post something up, and I'm not getting the response that I want, and I'm not getting the clients come through that I want. And I think one of the things you hear with this, and I think there's some truth to it, but I think it's incomplete, is this idea of true grit or brute force, this idea that if you just keep plugging away, that eventually there will be a payoff. Now, I believe, and I've seen, that yes, commitment and investment over time and never giving up, year after year, yes, there are better and better payoffs every year from just going, just keep going, just keep chugging along, just keep swimming, just keep going, yes, there are awesome results that come from that, but if it's just you doing the same thing over and over every year, your progress is gonna be kind of incremental, and I think what is it, and this is what we're gonna talk about today, what is it that we can take those incremental growth and make it exponential? How do you take something, instead of just doing the same thing over and over and over, and just waiting for the years to pass and the results to pile up? How do you go from that thinking, which is just like going from a one, to a two, to a three, to a four, every year? How do you take that, what do you add to that equation to go from one this year to two next year to four the year after that, to eight the year after that, to 16 the year after that? How do you do something that where you're actually knocking down dominoes, and it's kind of having an explosive effect, and that's what I wanna talk about today, that's the idea, but first, I wanna tell you about something. Ta-kira Kobayashi, I believe it is, he was a Japanese man, and he has a special story, this is something I heard about from Freakonomics podcast, and it's really, really remarkable. So, maybe you're familiar with the world of eating contests, it's, I can barely stomach to watch it, it's so gross to me, but it's also kind of interesting and crazy. In the world of eating contests, there is a holy grail of that, which is eating hot dogs, which this is super gross, but just eating as many hot dogs as you can in a set period of time, right? You've probably seen it before, I think they even showed on like sports channels, like ESPN, these people that eat crazy amounts of hot dogs. Now, here's a really interesting thing, we're talking about this idea of incremental growth. So, over the years, you know, they worked at it, worked at it, they just kept people, just kept trying harder to eat more hot dogs, and just eventually they got to this place where someone in this short period of time, in the little contest, they could eat like 25 hot dogs in, you know, a few minutes. And every year, you know, it would go up a little bit, maybe like, I don't know, now they're, you know, they went from 20 hot dogs to 22 to 23 to one year, 25. And now the world record is 25 hot dogs. But, then comes along, Tachira Kobayashi, he comes along and he goes in and he comes to the plate, literally, he comes to the plate, steps to the plate, and eats not 26 hot dogs, not 27, not 28, not even 30. He steps up and eats 50 hot dogs. He doubles the world record. And how does he do that? How does he go from, you know, how does he take this area where they're doing this incremental growth and, you know, people are just by sheer brute force and true grit, just keep trying, keep fishing, keep fishing, keep swimming, how do they go from that to, you know, one more hot dog year and it gets a little bit bigger and better to doubling the record. What did he do? How did he do that? It wasn't an overnight success, in fact. Here's the lesson he learned. He didn't just go at it with brute force and just keep making it, keep sticking to it. He studied digestion, techniques. He learned and experimented with new things. How did he do it? He didn't just eat hot dogs like someone would rarely eat hot dogs. He came up with ideas like splitting them in half, you know, dunking the hot dog in water. You know, eating the bun separately from the hot dog. He read about things. He learned and it was learning. And I look back often and I think about, you know, the people that when I graduated seven years ago, there were a bunch of people working then that aren't in the race anymore. And if they are, there are some people that haven't, their work hasn't changed a lot or they haven't had a lot of exponential growth, big breakthroughs. And I think about, you know, part of it for me, I just feel like I've been blessed and I'm lucky and I'm thankful for the way that things have played out for me. And then there's another part of it where I realized that the biggest exponential growth that I've come across in my career have been due to my obsession with learning and pushing the needle forward. How do I take, how do I expand what I'm doing without just, you know, showing up every day with more than that? How do you, how do you go beyond the incremental change? And I look at what I've done and that's, this is what this podcast is about. I wanted to talk about all the areas that I've practically learned new things and the things that have actually made a dramatic difference. The turning points in my career have almost all come from learning new things. And I want to talk about the different areas and how to kind of do that in a practical way and some practical suggestions. I believe that art careers don't just happen or not happen. Like you're either lucky and you're in the right place the right time and it works or you just don't ever get noticed. And I've never believed that and I absolutely don't believe that now. I think it has a lot more to do with effort, goals and learning. Are you growing? Are you expanding? Are you getting better? Year after year? Are you having that exponential growth? How do you go from a place where you're getting those lukewarm results where people aren't responding to the work or you're not getting enough clients, you're not making enough money, you're not in the zone with the peers that you want to be a part of? How do you go from that to going to a place where your inbox is overflowing with opportunities? How do you go from a place where you're doing, your choices are either work that makes you sick, you know, going to a job that you hate and or maybe a few, you know, decent jobs or less money in your bank account but actually being able to do some work that you like. How do you go from those choices to choices where you're picking from good jobs that are coming in and great jobs that are coming in? How do you get to a place where when you post something online people are going crazy about it? People are loving it, people are obsessed with it, people are sharing it. They're excited about what you're making. How do you go from, how do you do that? I really believe that the key is in pushing yourself in your learning. So maybe you look around and all of your peers are doing the same sorts of work, the same kinds of things, you're all in the same level in your technique. How do you go from there to pushing past that? Or maybe you keep interacting with clients and it's not going the way you want it to go. Either they're not happy with the way you're doing it, maybe you're just meeting expectations and they don't return because they weren't excited, they weren't surprised by you. You know, you didn't have that wow factor. I think the first thing that you have to grow in and learn is tech. And by this I mean technique and technology. I think you need to focus on how do I expand my knowledge of software and hardware? I think when I first started out, I love this idea of DIY, I love this idea of handmade, I love this idea of classic, making work that could have been made now or it could have been made 50 years ago, but both of those are just good work. It's not about technology, it's not about technique, it's about making good decisions. And I feel like there's some truth to that and there's stuff about that that's paid off for me. But something hit me really hard, this idea, that if you look back to the 1950s and you look at all the great commercial art that was being made back then and you read about the people that were making waves at the time, people that were amazing doing great things. You read about those people and one thing I realized was all of those people were kind of at the cutting edge of technology. They were using all of the resources available to them at that point. You don't read about the guy that was doing retro work that reflected the 20s, that's just not how it works. And yeah, I have influences of retro work, and vintage work, I have those influences, but I'm trying to take advantage of everything available to me now. I'm trying to be proficient in the programs. I'm trying to use the tools that put me ahead of competition, that expand my capabilities. I can't tell you how big of a change things have made like just doing tutorials on the different programs that I was struggling with, where there was some, you know, back in the day, the pen tool with Illustrator, just I couldn't figure it out, you know, and I was trying to learn it just by doing. And I kept making things where they were wonky and you could kind of see where I was using the tool and it was driving me nuts. And so I just went and did a bunch of tutorials about it until I felt like I get it, I get that thing. You know, there were other times in my life and in my career where I was hitting a brick wall, I looked around in my peers, everything was feeling samey and I learned some new technology that pushed me forward, that pushed my work into places that other people's work wasn't going. And it was slow, it took time. You know, learning new technology and new techniques, it's not fun, that's why most people don't do it. For a lot of people, it's not fun. But if you wanna be exponentially growing and you wanna break through the pack and the noise, this is one of the best ways. If you wanna be one of the people that in 50 years they're looking back and saying that was someone that defined the time, you've gotta use the things that are here and now, that you've gotta use those things that push your work that make it relevant to today. So I suggest what you do is you identify some of the techniques and the technology that you feel like could take what you're doing now and push it forward and cause you to be able to do things that you never knew you could do. Identify what those tools, what the hardware, what the software would be and then go learn those things. So it might look like finding tutorials. It might look like going and doing a Skillshare class. It might look like auditing some classes at the local art school. Go out there and develop new techniques. Grow what you do. Don't just do the same thing over and over or you're gonna have that incremental growth. That's just a little bit of a time. If you learn some new techniques and new technology, that has the potential to unlock exponential results. Okay, so we've got tech number two is theory. Maybe your work is fine. Maybe you've got all the technology. There are certain people out there that just are obsessed with learning new tech and maybe you've done that. Maybe you know every program inside and out but people aren't responding. People don't know you. You don't know how to get your work out there or maybe you can't break into an industry that you've been wanting to work in. Maybe you wanna work in editorial. Maybe you wanna work in kids books. Maybe you wanna make logos for big, awesome companies but you just can't break in. Well, here's something that has massively helped me in its theory, learning the theory. So the philosophy and I think it's important to think of it like this. We live, we work and live in this art business and I think we're really good at studying the philosophy and the theory of the art side. You know, how many artists I know that know the history of fine art? You know, fine art history. And that's great, that's fine. And they can name all of the artists from every era and all the things they learned and what the philosophies were. And that's great and I think you should do that. But they don't know very much about business or marketing. But this isn't, you know, it's really kind of like a 50/50 thing. It's not just art with a little business. It's art business, it's right in there. And I think it's just as important to understand the philosophy and theories of business and marketing as it is art. I think one of the things that you've gotta do is go soak in as much information as possible. Go read books, go watch interviews, go soak in this stuff and read about what's been written about the history of illustration, the history of graphic design. Go read about the theories, the current theories of how to market your business, outside of art. That's helped me tremendously. Go read books about, I've read books about how to market your business, how to grow a platform, how to reach customers on the internet. Go read those things, those business philosophies and theories and come bring that back to our industry and then read about your industry. Learn about what other people are doing, what other people have done. Know what makes good illustration in design and what doesn't. What are the ideas on that? What are the theories on that? For some actionable things, what I think you can go do is go buy a book on our industry, go buy a book about illustration. I've been reading The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield and that's about the uphill battle of doing creative work. Go read that book, that book's fantastic. Go soak up as much information as possible. Go read about, go find marketing books. Go find business books. How do you grow a business, business, outside of this? Go find those books and go read 'em. After this podcast, go to Amazon, buy the bullet, buy two books. Buy one that's directly related to your industry and then buy one that is directly related to business or marketing. Go do some research on that and get reading. All right, number three. So we had number one, tech, number two theory. Number three is looking. Imagine if in accounting, you went to accounting school, I don't even know if that's a thing, but imagine you go to accounting school and you wanna do tax accounting and they say, okay, yeah, you've just gotta figure it out. Don't go look at what other tax accountants do. Don't go look at that stuff. You've gotta find your own path there. Don't go read the books, don't go look at the history. Don't look at what your peers are doing. You've gotta make your own way. You've gotta find your own path. This is so much how the art world works in this day and age and it hasn't always looked like this, but it's gotten so unhealthy to this place where people say, if you wanna be an illustrator, don't look at other illustrators. They're like, no, that's crazy. This is how people learn. One of the main ways people learn is by looking and consuming. If you're a standup comic, those people study each other like crazy. They become giant fans of the craft. How does this person do this? How do they craft that joke? How do they do what they're doing? You have to go soak up your industry like crazy. I think one of the things that is a bad idea is going and taking one person directly from your industry and then obsessing over that one person and looking at everything they've ever done and copying them and trying to do what they do. I think that's a terrible idea. What I think is a good idea is go get a pen board and go actually do this. This is the actual thing that you can do. Go get a Pinterest account. Go get a secret pen board or a regular pen board, whatever you wanna do and start pinning stuff and shoot for 100 to 200 different people from your field. New and old and just pin it and look at what, how do they do what they do? What makes what they do good, analyze it? Go soak in it, go see what makes other people good. And as long as you're not focusing on the same person over and over and you're not just focusing on people from your direct industry, add stuff from fine art, do a fine art pen board, do an illustration one, do a design one, do an animation one, do things that are on the periphery of what you do and then also kind of outside of what you do, do ceramics. Go look at what makes these things good. For instance, if you go, one thing that I realized a few years ago where things were not like clicking, something wasn't happening in my work, is I realized I was doing almost all curvilinear lines and not any rectilinear lines. And I realized the work that I really responded to had a good balance of curvy lines and then really straight jagged lines. And that was something that was really missing from my work. But I learned that from just consuming tons and tons of art and looking at why is this thing, what is it about this thing that I'm really responding to or that my work doesn't have? And I don't think that looks like copying exactly someone's technique, but I do think you'd need to consume it. And I think people that go out there and say, don't look at other illustrators, don't look at what they're doing, I think it's the same thing is like, we're in business. We wanna make a living, we wanna have a craft. We don't wanna be some fine artist on the street doing weird, totally original stuff. We're trying to work in the commercial industry. And I think it's the same as telling an accountant, tax accountant, don't go read the books, don't go look at what they're doing, don't go try to find, don't try to take someone else's path. No, you've gotta go learn by looking at what other people are doing. And so I think one of the actionable things, you can go get a Pinterest account, go get a pen board and figure that out. I think, another thing you can do, not just looking at their work, not just looking at other people's work and consuming that, go read interviews. Because I think sometimes when you're stuck and your work's fine, your techniques are good, your theories good, but you can't figure out why am I not having a breakthrough? When you don't know what you don't know, when you're in that place where you just don't know why things are not moving, I think it's really helpful just to go soak in it. Go soak in the people that it's working for. Go meet them face to face. Go read as many artists interviews as you can. I went through a phase of really digging into just listening to other people. I went and watched videos, there's two things I suggest you go look at. If you're a commercial artist, like knows like on Vimeo, they have a bunch of different articles like on Vimeo, they have a bunch of different artists series videos with people like Tina Roth, Eisenberg, Victor Nye, Jessica Hish, James Victoria, go check out those videos, go listen to what it sounds like for someone who's kind of hitting their stride, what they talk about and what they think about. Go to thegreatdiscontent.com. Go read all the artist interviews on there. Read about what their journey was like, what lessons they learned, what breakthroughs they had. Soak in that info. Go watch talks online. Go watch creative morning talks. Go watch Kate Bingham and Bert's talk on personal projects, it's fantastic, it's creative morning talk. Go watch Aaron Draplin's talk, the 50-point plan to ruin your career. That's amazing, fantastic. Go listen to Stefan Sagmeister's, all of his talks you can find 'cause they're brilliant. Go listen to those talks. Go find talks and then soak in that information and just learn by looking, learn by that osmosis of soaking in that. And then go make a pen board and go study. What do all of these people that are really doing work that is amazing? What are they doing that I'm not doing? What's missing from my work? And pull from a wide gambit of things, not just things from your industry and not just things from a few artists. Go, and if you're struggling, that's something I've heard Austin Kleon suggest. Go find your three favorite artists and then go look into read interviews of those people and go find what their three favorite artists were and start making that inspiration family tree and go back and back and back. And the further you go back, the more source material you've got. And I think when it comes to looking, I think there's an interesting distinction that you should make. We've all heard this quote, we're sick of hearing it, but I'm gonna say it again anyway. I don't know if it's Picasso or T.S. Eliot, but he says good artists copy, great artists steal. You've heard it before. What I take from that is good artists, regular artists, like your everyday artists, those people are basically just copying other people. Yeah, they might take a little bit, they might put a little spin on it or they might mash up a few different things and put them together. But the people that go from good to great that people that find that exponential growth, they don't just copy, they steal it. And I don't think they steal it like they take it and they say, I made this. I don't think that's what that means. I think what it means is they go out there, they go study things and then they steal it in that, they take what that person was doing and then they make it their own, not by just re-appropriating it, but by internalizing it, consuming it, soaking in it and then pushing it through their own experiences, through their own skills, through their own technique, their own hand in their work. And it transforms it from something that was someone else's and now it's something that's completely unique in your own. That's what I think that quote means. Okay, we had tech, theory, and then looking, the fourth one is doing, doing stuff. Maybe you've got all the right information in your head. Maybe you've read all the books. Maybe you've looked at all the stuff. Maybe you've done all the tutorials, but it's still not working for you. You're still not finding that sweet spot of results. You're not finding that passion, that calling, that excitement, that newness. Well, maybe you're in a place where you just need to start making stuff. You need to just do the work. You need to experiment with what you're doing. If I've talked about this before, I like to play board games. We recently got a game called Airplanes. It's kind of like Ticket to Ride. Amazing, I'm obsessed with this game. It's so good, we've played it like crazy. But it's kind of complicated. It's kind of hard to explain exactly how to play the game. And if you've ever tried to teach kind of a more complicated board game to someone, you know, it's a super annoying task. And there's just all the fumbling. And then as you're trying to explain all this head knowledge, somewhere along the way, someone says, let's just start. Let's just start doing it. And that's what it's like. I think you can get all blustered, learning all the theories, all the techniques, all the looking at what everybody else is doing. You get all this head knowledge, and that's great, and it's really necessary. But at some point, you've got to just play the game. And as you play, the things are just going to start happening and learning. But I think what you can't do is just keep doing the same techniques over and over and over. And just pulling things you're learning from other people. You can't just regurgitate that stuff. You've got to play around and mess around and get in the sketchbook and experiment. Go look at something unexpected that happened from that last piece. So sometimes what I do, and this is really helpful, I'll be working on some work for a client. And what I like about client work is that they usually get you to do things that you wouldn't do exactly on your own. And when I'm doing that, usually some accident happens, or some unexpected thing happens. And even if I can't justify going down that rabbit hole within the client project, then after the project is done, I will go back, and I'll take that unexpected thing, and I'll make some personal work based on it. 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We're all out of the ordinary. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile unlimited, premium wireless. Have it to get 30, 30, 30, but get 20, 20, 20, but get 20, 20, 20, but get 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So, give it a try at Mint Mobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabyte CD-Tale. [silence] So, I've got two actionable things that you can actually go do with this. And it's one, or maybe three, actually. One, make sure you're doing a sketchbook. If you've never done a sketchbook before or you're intimidated by it, go buy something cheap that has decent paper in it so you don't worry about wasting it. And just start messing around in there. You know, I've said before that wanting to be a commercial artist and not having a sketchbook is like wanting to be a bodybuilder and never lifting weights. You're like never doing the workout. You're never like getting your hands dirty with actually messing around with the stuff. You've got to, you can't just show up to the competition. You've got to practice in the sport before the game. So, I think that you've really got to do the sketchbook. The second thing you can do that I think is really helpful is take some things in past pieces of work, go back and look at your five past pieces of work that you really liked and think about what unexpected things happened, what surprises happened, what things, what worked that I didn't ever do before, I never saw anybody else do, and then go take that thing and then go make something else like that and just build on that, do something and then go down that rabbit hole and keep pushing that little accident until it starts developing into its own thing. Something totally new. This has definitely happened to me plenty of times. The third thing I suggest is not necessarily for your client work or for your professional work, but go mess around with other materials, doing other types of work that you wouldn't regularly do. So, if you're all digital, go paint some stuff, go make some collages. If you're all illustration, go try to do some design and I don't suggest showing all of this work to people, but one of the things I've seen that I'm really interested in and it's made an impact on me is some of my favorite musicians like Justin Vernon from Bonne Verre. He has like four other bands and you can tell he doesn't take those bands as seriously as he does his own work, but you can also tell in between making these Bonne Verre albums, when he's doing stuff with the shouting matches or I can't even think off top of my head for some reason, he's got like two or three other bands. When he's doing that stuff, he's more experimental. He's doing things that are more throw away in some ways and just kind of having fun, but using those vehicles as new materials and I think he then takes stuff that he learned there and he brings it back to his main project. So for me, one of the ways that's looked is messing with materials that I don't usually mess with. Instead of doing a sketch with pencil, I do a sketch with paper, I cut out paper. I would do collages, I would mess with paint. I've done tons of that stuff over the years and I usually don't show it any of that stuff. Another thing is I've had a few small little clients from time to time, some regular work where I was doing like graphic design properly instead of the illustration that I do. And within it, I would explore new styles and explore different things that I would never do, different techniques, different programs. And I would just try a bunch of stuff that I was free to try kind of out of the spotlight of my work and eventually that stuff slowly, if I made new discoveries, there were ways that I brought that back to what I was doing and that was super helpful. So go experiment with new materials in new, maybe even slightly different industries. That's learning by doing. We had tech theory looking doing. Now we're gonna talk about analyzing. So after you've done all that stuff, you can stop and you look back on everything that's happened. You know, I think, think about if NASA launched a rocket to try to go to the moon and it blows up, it doesn't get there, it doesn't make it, right? What if the next day they were just like, "All right, let's come up with a new idea." And they just start working on a new rocket that next day. No way, that's not what they do. They look at what happened with the last one, what worked, what didn't work. Let's analyze this thing. Let's break it down, let's measure it. Let's measure the success. And I think in art, we often don't do that. But when you're talking about art, business, commercial art, I think it's really important to measure and analyze. You can't just keep making and making and making and making. That's throwing the spaghetti on the wall and just seeing what sticks. It's not precise. It's not, that's gonna get you that incremental growth. It's like trial and error. It's not the most precise way to grow what you're doing. The most precise way is to make a big effort, throw the spaghetti against the wall first. Look at the strands that stuck. Look at the ones that almost stuck. Get rid of the ones that didn't stick. Go check out, go look at what have people really, really been excited about in your work on social media or clients or other people when they introduce you, what they tell other people about your work, what they tell other people about how they view what you do. Go think about those things and go start to measure those things. Yeah, if you go on Instagram and your most popular post is some post that you hate, don't worry about this. Forget it. If that's not part of, that's missing the passion and the calling, just write that off. But go look at the ones that you're excited about and people also responded to and start thinking, what was it about this thing that was working and then go try to repeat that a little bit. Go try to expand on that topic. The actionable things that I think you can go do. Go do your Myers-Briggs test. That's a personality test. It's based on psychology and it will tell you about your strengths and weaknesses. It'll help you analyze yourself. Another one that's really good and you can go pay 10 bucks for it is strengths finder by the Gallup institution. If you go check that out on Google, you can actually go buy this test. It's 10 bucks. It'll tell you your top five strengths. Those five strengths. When I first did it, it didn't really impact me that much. But then I went back to the results and I looked through, these are the five things that I do really well. And it actually dramatically changed the way that I look at myself. And because of that, it changed the way I approach problems. It gave me a confidence in the way that I approach different problems. And that was another way of analyzing myself for results. Then go back, go look through the social media that you use. Go back and go rank. You'll probably be surprised 'cause in your mind, you've probably skewed how this actually is. But go back and make a list. What were the top five posts that people really responded to, either in likes or comments or whatever, and go analyze, what was it about these things that was really working? Go look at the smallest five, the ones that nobody liked and think, what was it about that that I thought was gonna be good, but people didn't really respond to you. And then another thing you need to do is look at your metrics. Go look at your website metrics. Go look at Google Analytics for your website if you don't have it. And go look at what are the pieces of work that people are looking at. What did I do to get the most results? How do I approach that? What language did I use? What, how did I get the word out? I think it's super important to stop. Don't just keep making and making. Don't just start the next rocket the next day. But stop and say, what's working, what's not working? And keep yourself in a state of self analysis. Yeah, there are times when you need to just make work and not edit it. But there are also times when you need to stop and look at, this is working, this isn't working, and be calculated about what your next step is. You know, if I look back five years and I look at the things that I was struggling with, the things that were bugging me, the things that just weren't making any sense, the things where I was struggling. I wasn't getting the response that I wanted. People weren't responding the way I wanted them to. They weren't excited about the work. You know, I wasn't getting repeat clients. You know, I was, I had financial struggles. I wasn't getting the work that I wanted to get. I had to do a bunch of work that I didn't want to do. Looking back five years ago and being in that place and not knowing how do I go to the next zone. Well, I'll just say, you know, for me, what's really worked, putting the time and energy to learn has dramatically paid off. I've heard this quote, you know, you want to earn more, learn more. I think it's really actually true. And if you want to grow your art business, focus on learning because you know that quote by Einstein. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Yeah, you'll get those incremental results where a little bit more people will hear about your work every year. And you know, there'll be a few more clients that repeat and all that. And yeah, over time it just does grow a little bit. But if you're looking for things where you're trying to get that exponential growth, you're trying to hit those tipping points. You're trying to take where you're at and go get some dramatic results. You've got to learn. You've got to focus on growing. And I look at the people five years ago that were surrounding me and the people that disappeared or didn't really get anywhere were the people that just kept doing the same thing over and over. If you look at my work from today and you compare it with five years ago or seven years ago, it is dramatically different. The technology that I've learned since then, the techniques that I've learned since then have dramatically changed. My theoretical approach and philosophy about how to do business, how to market myself, how to make good work, what makes good work, all of that's dramatically changed. My ideas are better. My concepts are better. My understanding of the industries I'm a part of are better. If you look back and you look at, I think I really believe that pretty much every great artist, their work starts off more derivative and eventually becomes more and more original as they go along. I think you hear that story over and over. I don't think it's something we need to be ashamed of actually. I think back in the day, in the Renaissance, people grew by copying people directly. And most of the time, we don't do that at all. If we don't copy people directly almost at any stage in our career. But if you look back, most people start more derivative and become more original over time. And I think if you look back at my work, you can see seven years ago, you can see the influences are a lot more obvious than they are now. But I'm still looking, I'm still growing, I'm still going out there and seeing that person's stuff is working, that person's stuff is working. You know, I've got like 300 favorite illustrators and I've got like 50 favorite fine artists and I've got 50 favorite animators and 50 favorite storytellers and, you know, all of them, I'm taking all, I'm soaking, I'm still soaking in the world of art, in the world, in actually in the world. And I'm going out and finding those new experiences and that's impacting what I've done and that's changed and grew what I've done. If you go back and, you know, over the years, the things that have really helped me is just doing experiments, never losing that curiosity to try new things and not ever stopping and knowing and noticing. You know, when I'm making a piece of work, I'm always trying to reflect while I'm doing it, like, ooh, that thing will work. I'm going to repeat that next time. Ooh, that little technique or that little accident, actually, something happened there. I'm going to do that more intentionally next time. I believe if you dedicate yourself to growing and learning and expounding on what you're currently doing, that you will find that tipping point and that exponential growth where things kind of explode and you're getting those results, and you're in that place where you've wanted to be. So go check those things out. If you, if something resonated with you, go do the actionable step and actually don't just leave this in your head, but go do something 'cause I think you have to have the confidence and just trust me that when you dedicate yourself to this, that results really do happen. So I hope that really helped you. I hope that it was exciting to you. I hope you go share the podcast and you're excited about it. Don't forget about the Baron Fig contest this week. There's a $20 gift card at stake. Go review the podcast on iTunes and then go send me which review was your by email, which review was yours by email, and I will pick a winner by next week. You can also go check this out at patreon.com/creativepeptalk where you can just go even give a dollar per podcast helps. I've had a bunch of dollar backers and I'm seeing this group of patrons as the membership to the creative pep talk, the people that are involved in the community around this, the people that are helping each other, sharing what they're learning and growing from what other people are learning. Go check that out or go back at the $5 level and you can get access to a few of the pep talks that I've already done. And you can check out the one that I did this week on social media and finding results and strategy in that place. And thank you so much for listening. I hope this episode really helps you. And you can find this podcast on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk or on my website, Andy-J-Miller.com or on iTunes, you can go subscribe there. Thank you so much. Until next week, do whatever it takes to stay peped up and keep making great work. See you soon. [ Music ] Hey, 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 Andy-J-Pizza.com. If you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. I'm Whit Missaldine, the creator of This is Actually Happening, a podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who 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. Follow This is Actually Happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.