Creative Pep Talk
040 - Patreon
Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is 8 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 want to 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 and enjoy the episode. Hey, you're listening to the creative pep talk podcast with me, graphic illustrator Andy J Miller, this show is about finding clarity and strategy so that you can maximize your creative career. You can find this show on iTunes or on my site, Andy-J-Miller.com/podcast or on the illustration website, illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. Without further ado, let's get down to business, our business. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have and I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out Squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself and when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met and we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians and folks that work in video and film as well and we have people that are just starting out, people are super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're going to 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 handyjpizza.substack.com and I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Hey everybody, it's Andy. This is the chill short episode. I just wanted to tell you that I set up a patreon for the podcast and I want to tell you a little bit about why I did that, why I think it's a good idea and where you can find it. I set up the patreon because I had several people reach out to me and suggest that I do one and suggest that I would do one so that people had that opportunity to support the podcast financially. It's a pretty interesting platform. It's kind of like Kickstarter but instead of funding one project or one thing, you're giving ongoing support for a series of work by an artist and unlike Kickstarter where it's a very transactional thing, it's almost like you're just buying different things. This is more about giving to an artist so that they can keep doing the free thing they do or the thing that the series that they continually give. For podcasts, it works where you pledge a certain amount per episode. I set one up. You can find it at www.patreon.com/creativepeptalk and you can find a video there that explains a little bit more. You can see the different tiers of support which we're going to talk about in a minute and some of the goals and a little bit of the explanation about why I'm doing this. Here's why I'm doing this because I am a full-time illustrator and it's a busy, busy thing to do. I'm constantly juggling different types of projects and work and promoting my work and admin and all that jazz and the podcast takes me about half a day to a day a week and it's something that I'm so passionate about doing. It's something that I really believe in but as time is wearing extremely thin, I'm struggling to find time to do it always and it's not because I don't want to do it. I do want to do it. It's one of my top priorities but it's because I support a family of five with the podcast. That'd be kind of cool but I support a family of five with illustration and so I'm hustling and doing the work and it's busy and since I've been doing the podcast, I've had to sacrifice a few evenings and weekends. Not that that's just because of the podcast but while doing the podcast and getting closer and closer to having to turn down jobs that I really want to do and so as I'm going along, I'm thinking more and more about how do I keep doing this work that I believe in because there's so many people that send me emails and write new messages and comment on the podcast and share it and say that it keeps them going, that they got something from it, that it's helped them have a breakthrough in their career and that's so important to me and I love doing it so much and I want to figure out how do I kind of make this work in the long term. So doing a Patreon is a way of making this decision easier. It's a way of kind of solidifying its place in my week and I think that there's part of me that says, you know, if you can't just, if you're not so big time that you can't just take off a day a week to do a podcast, then should you really be up on your high horse trying to teach other people how to do this thing. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a little peek behind the curtain, not a giant peek because I think that's a little bit uncouth, not very tasteful or tactful so I'm not going to give you everything but I'm just going to give you an idea of where I'm at and why I do this. So I make a good salary for a 28 year old college graduate. I think it's comparable to other successful pretty top level guys in other fields and I do that with illustration and art and I don't say that to brag. I'm definitely not rolling in the Benjamin's. I'm not. Oh, the holidays are here, you've got to find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister Kasturi and her kids, Jetson and Jeddon, Jirfree and Jagab and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing, you've got to shop small, it just, it's a lot but it doesn't have to be, uncommon goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like the Stitch of 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. Personally, 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. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man, then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get a $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com/results to claim your credit, that's LinkedIn.com/results. Terms and conditions apply, LinkedIn, the place to be, to be, but I've in a few years doubled my income, my yearly salary. I've worked with some of my dream clients and I've accomplished some of my big goals. And again, I don't say that to be like, "Look how cool I am." I just say it because that's my rationale for doing the podcast. I'm not where I want to be, I'm not maybe the top tip top of the field, but I'm also someone who has accomplished things and the number one reason I do this podcast is because me seven years ago, fresh out of school, I was desperate for this podcast and it didn't exist. I was desperate for someone to get into the deeper things about the real philosophy of how do you approach making art for a living. Even just three or four years ago when I'm starting to pick up steam, but I need to generate more money and I just need to grow my business, I had to struggle through all kinds of things that I could have done way faster had I understood some of these principles that I talk about on the podcast. And so yes, I may not be top of the field big giant dude with money flying out all over the place, but I have grown a lot, I feel like I'm a pro at this and I know a thing or two about it and I know that by sharing it, I get better just by thinking about all these things and keeping them fresh in my mind and it may enable someone else to have some kind of breakthrough. And so that's why I do this and you know, I really believe in doing this and I'm super passionate about it. And so that's why I do the podcast. That's why I set this patreon up because I want to make this decision a really easy one for myself and you know, I believe in this work and I want you to know that if you don't feel like you want to pledge any amount per episode or anything like that, you can listen to this completely and utterly guilt free. No matter how much money I raise, I'm going to try to find ways of making time for this because it's work that I'm passionate about, I believe in, I believe it's helping other people and helping me get better. So you can, you don't, there's no guilt to pledge any money and I'm going to try to do it regardless. I might maybe a little bit less able to be extremely invested, but I'm always going to be trying to do this work because it's work that I'm really passionate about and I really believe in. And so there's no guilt, there's, there's no shame, but if that's, you've, I've had a lot of people come and ask, how can we support the podcast? I, you know, how can I do something to give back and whatever? So if, if that's something you want to do, then awesome. You can go check it out at www.patreon, which is P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/creativepeptalk. And so right now I'm just going to explain the different tiers of backing that you can do. Uh, number, the first one is a dollar per episode and for this one, you can, uh, if you pledge dollar an episode, I will put your name slash link or URL on my creative pep talk Patreon page, uh, patron Patreon page on my website and you'll have access to the patron exclusive content, content on Patreon. The $5 per podcast, you get the above perk and then you get an access to an exclusive pep talks episodes of the podcast available nowhere else online. Um, I'm not going to do these on iTunes anymore, I'm just going to reserve these shorter episodes that, um, come more than once a week just for the $5 and $10 patrons just as a secret kind of perk, um, you won't have to pay any extra for those. You will only be backing the episodes I put on iTunes, um, but I will give you the secret page on my website where these will be with a password. Uh, and then the $10 pledge, which is $10 per episode, you get all the above plus a quarterly portfolio slash art career strategy review via email by me. And I've done this with other people that have paid me to be like an art career coach, um, and just look at their portfolio, tell me what issues they're struggling with, um, and I try to look at it and assess where I think, um, they can change things to help, uh, achieve some of the goals that they're trying to achieve. Um, so you get that four times a year, um, by email and then you also get a do not be afraid, uh, creative pep talk poster and if you want me to, I will even give you a shout out at the end of one of the, uh, creative pep talk, uh, podcast episodes. Um, so those are the pledges you can also go on there and see, like, if you get certain dollar amounts per episode of the podcast, there's different, um, things you can unlock, some of those are jokes and kind of ridiculous and some of those are more serious. So you can go check that out on the Patreon page, you know, I could do this, uh, I could raise funds with ads and some of the more traditional things, but I actually, the more I investigated this, the more I felt like this is a better opportunity to dig deeper into the community that listens to this and the friends that I've made, um, through this podcast, it's a way of kind of creating a group that's a little bit more solid and people can go from being more like an audience, which is something I don't really like and more of like a participant, someone that has like something invested in this community that's kind of growing around this. Um, and so, you know, I think this is a cool thing. I think it's a good idea. If this is something that you feel like you want to do, go check it out. Um, I really appreciate it. If not, there's no guilt in you consuming the show for free, just keep doing that. Um, I'm only going to remind you a few more times about the Patreon and wish me luck. I hope this thing, uh, you know, is an awesome thing for everybody. Looking forward to seeing where it's going. I appreciate all the iTunes reviews again. I appreciate you sharing the Patreon and telling people about it. Um, that's awesome, and thank you for all your ongoing support and all the excitement around the podcast. It means a ton to me, and I hope that this is a step in a new, awesome direction. And until next week, if you can't, uh, feel like you can't keep making art, just figure out some way of staying peped up until I can get back here. Uh, that sounds really epic, it's not. I get it. It's something you put on while you draw. I get it. Um, thanks for your time and attention. If you want to find this podcast, you can find it on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk or on my website or on iTunes. Thank you. I will speak to you soon. Stay peped up. Hey, y'all. One more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine, and I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately. And if you want to check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you want to test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Using Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. Be a man. (upbeat music)