Creative Pep Talk
030 - 15 Steps to More Work
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, enjoy the episode. Well, hello there everybody, it's Andy J. Miller and you're listening to the Creative Pab Talk Podcast. You can listen to this at my website, Andy-j-miller.com/podcast or on illustrationh.com/creativepabtalk. 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And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. So today, we're going to talk about 15 steps to more work. There's not a bigger question on illustrators' minds, then how do I get more work or better work or just how do I bring in work? You know, I feel like that's kind of a confusing thing these days. So I wanted to just kind of hopefully bring some clarity to the topic and just kind of share some of the stuff that I've learned. You know, before I get into that though, I just want to talk about, I feel like, this question is on my mind a lot. Why do I make this podcast? And you know, I know that I do it for real reasons and it's something that I really believe in and something that I love doing. And I started thinking about it and I realized that it's because being an artist, especially being a commercial artist is really tough, you know, getting your finances in order, making enough money, being emotionally confident and secure enough to make your best work is not easy. You know, it's a struggle for me. Because I just feel like, you know, I get so, I can get so defeated and, you know, I have to figure out ways to stay motivated and stay excited about what I'm doing. Even when things, you know, even through all the ebbs and flows and the feasts and famines of freelance life, you know, you have to figure out ways of staying motivated, encouraged and excited about what you're doing. You know, I believe that the world is better because, because of artists, I believe the world is more full, more enriching when artists are free to do their best work, free from financial issues, free with time, free without anxiety, free from anxiety, you know, confident in what they do, time on their hands to create awesome things and I want to do my tiny part with this podcast to help free up artists and break through the things that are keeping them from doing their best work. And I really do believe that. I do believe that, you know, the world is a more truthful, beautiful place and that lives are better and you can say so much more with a painting than you can with a pie chart and I really believe that. And so, you know, I feel so privileged to be able to spend my life doing art and, you know, it makes me want to go and pay it forward and help others the way I've been helped and help others break through in the ways that I broke through. And, you know, also, it's still struggle. It's going to be a struggle forever. I think no matter how successful you are, you know, I've never been in a more successful time, my career, and there's still struggles, there's still things that I have to maintain and fight against and break through. And so, you know, it's not, I don't see it so much as handing down a hand as much as it is, as huddling together with you guys and figuring out the best way to approach being a commercial artist. And so, that's what it's about. And so, today I want to talk about the biggest question, which is more work, getting work. How do you do it? You know, I think the best of the best, they're still promoting themselves. They're still looking for work. And so whether you're a young person or not young, but you're looking for the first job, your big break, or you're a seasoned veteran and you just want to get into new territory or unlock some new doors, I feel like these 15 things are kind of just shifts in your mind and shifts in your strategy that can unlock some great things. And you know, when I was thinking about this topic, it got me thinking about building roads. You know, I lived in England. I lived in a place called Yorkshire, it's in the north of England, and you know, I feel like these roads, I don't know for sure, but it seems like the roads were kind of dictated by the land. You know, they were built in a time when you couldn't just put a road wherever you wanted. If there was a mountain there, you had to go around it or up over it, or you know, you had to go through the hills, you had to go through the valleys, and actually it makes a car journey quite beautiful. It's not super efficient. You know, we lived about 15 minutes from the city and it took us about a 45 minute drive to get there. But I will say the drive through the English countryside was breathtaking, it was amazing. And you know, I feel like in America, when we were building roads, post-industrial age, if there was a mountain, we just blew a hole straight through it. You know, it was that brute force approach to the path. And you know, yeah, you can get through a minute and five minutes, which is perfectly efficient and direct, but you have to do it by going through a dark black tunnel. And that contrasted with the beauty of going with the flow and going with the countryside. You know, it got me thinking about the difference between marketing and putting your work out into the world now, and then what it was like 10, 15, 20 years ago. You know, I think now it's like a game, it's like playing music with your audience. You know, you have to discern in the moment, you have to be on your toes, you have to be up for the challenge, you have to get creative about how you get your work into the hands of buyers. But back in the day, yeah, it was a more simple way of doing things. It was the brute forces, if I just send you 15 million postcards over the next 10 years, one day you might hire me. Or if I just blast you with email promotions, then maybe you'll buy my product. And yeah, you know what the good thing about that was? It was direct and obvious. If I wanted to work with this client, I shot all of my promo emails and postcards directly at their face until they gave me a job. Nowadays though, I just don't think it works like that anymore. And I think the beauty of it is, is that it used to be you could smash people over the head with promos, and if you were the lucky one and you got in and you got the jobs, then you were in the secret club, the commercial art club. And that meant that all of your wildest dreams would come true. The sad thing was it was only one in a million people that could actually do it. The good news now for me is, and I like it better this way, is that it's the rise of the blue collar artist, you know, and I don't mean that you can't make a decent living. I mean that more people can make a more normal living doing art than ever before. And I think, you know, I'll take that trade. It makes me happy to know that creative people are more likely to be able to do their thing these days than ever before. And so that's kind of the foundation for the stuff we want to talk about today. And if you're looking for the best place to buy cheap promo postcards, you're going to, you have to listen to a different podcast because that's not what this is going to be about. All right. You know, last thing before we get into the, into the list. Sometimes I feel like when we're talking about this, maybe less direct way of marketing, that it can seem like you have to not care whether you get the jobs. It can seem like you don't, you know, yeah, you don't have to care. You don't have, it doesn't matter if you get the jobs or not. You know, it seems like you're that band that, you know, when you're saying you don't have to go out there and like smash people over the head with your product, it can sound like what I'm saying is just do your music, do your art, do your thing, stay in the basement. Just, just care about your craft and don't really go out there and chart new territory and don't go out there and, you know, be driven and try to go out there and get what you want. I'm not saying that at all actually. And I, and I do think you can, you have to care about making a living on this. I'm not saying you'd be the band who's like, well, if we're discovered, then great, but if not, who cares? I just want to do my thing. I'm not saying that, you know, what I am saying is you need to be more open to the way that the path unravels. And, and, and that's what we're talking about today, but I still think setting goals and, and having intentions works. It just works in a little bit more of an organic way than it used to. All right. Number one, get off the stage and into the house. So this week, Jay Z unleashed his music streaming service and it got some really nasty feedback online. You know, there was all these pop superstars investing and there was this massive event and they were saying it's a revolution in music. And, you know, it just had this like top down feel, you know, I read this article about it and they were just saying it felt so out of touch with the way things are now and that these mega stars just seemed so egotistical. And, you know, I think that's the way of the past when it comes to the artist and audience. You know, I think you got to get rid of the stage. You need to quit thinking of yourself as better or above other people. You don't have to elevate yourself above other people to be successful as an artist anymore. You know, Damien Drotto is a folk musician and he's been a part of this new kind of house show thing where professional musicians, book shows at people's houses in play shows with acoustic guitars in their living rooms, face to face of their audience, answering the audience's questions, being friends with the audience, connecting with them. Isn't that like what art is supposed to be about connecting? And they're still making a good living. You know, they've cut out a bunch of the middlemen. You know, a lot of non-creative people are profiting less from this model and there's more money going into the artist's hands. Are they making the Madonna money? No, but maybe they don't need to. Maybe that's not a fantastic thing in the first place. You know, this, I really believe that every time you approach putting your work out there or trying to get more work and you're pushing your work out there as this person that's above your audience, I think that you're really like putting hurdles in your way. Because I think that we live in a time where we know that every person is as valuable as anybody else. And I think it's actually a beautiful thing, this deletion of the pedestal or, you know, getting rid of the stage and connecting. You know, I always felt like, okay, I get to do art for a living, but I don't think that's any more important than someone who's teaching at the elementary school down the road. It's a different path. And I think that is the way to approach it. And I think you've got to delete this thing that says you have to be above your audience in order to make a living. So that's get off the stage and into the house. Number two, forget manipulation. You know, I think sometimes we want this job so bad, we want this client, we want this type of work, we want this living, we want to be illustrators or whatever it is so bad that we just were willing to manipulate people. We want to just make them do what we want them to do. We want them to make them give us the job. How do we make other people do what we want to do? And that is like, that's selling at its most manipulative. That's the most dirty snake oil salesman approach to what you do. James Victoria says that he's a designer and he says that your work is like a gift. And I think when you see your work as a gift and not just a gift but a great gift, you don't have to be so salesmen-ish about it. You know, I feel like when I think about selling a gift, you only sell a gift when it's a bad gift. And I was reminded of that moment on old school where Will Ferrell re-gifts this bread maker to his friend's kid and the friend's kid opens the bread maker and Will Ferrell says, "Yay, it's got three speeds." It's like selling this bread maker to this kid. And I just think that's what, you know, when you see your work as this thing that, you know, isn't fantastic, you don't think it's a good gift. You feel like you have to build it up with all this rhetoric and exclamation points. You know, I just don't think that that's the right attitude to have. I think the more that you can, that you respect other people's free will to decide whether they like it or not, the better off you're going to be on selling people on the work. Number three, become discoverable. Okay, this is a weird kind of thing. It's like an indirect thing. And to me, it's kind of like a polite dance with your audience. So we talked about this before, you know, which of your favorite bands did you get into because they sent you a promo postcard? Which of your favorite bands sent you a promo email and you'd never heard of them and they emailed you and said, "Please buy my album on Bandcamp." And you were like, "Yeah!" And you went on there, you clicked the link and you're like, "This is amazing. Thanks for informing me about your amazing music." And that's how most of us get into our favorite bands, right? No. Today, it's never been, you know, humans love to discover stuff for themselves. And no one really discovers a band for themselves, right? Like, you didn't walk into a vacuum and hear a band for the first time. But any way that they can feel like they chose to discover this, the better. It's like indirect ways of getting the music. Sometimes it's even hard to say how you found an artist in all because it felt so indirect, it felt so natural to discover them. And so how do you make your work discoverable? That's kind of a weird question, but I think there's some obvious and easy answers. I think the point is to be in the right places at the right times. Go to the places where the illustrators like you are. Go get in the conversations with them on social media about the things that they're talking about. Go to the places where they are and talk about it. You know, if I want to start talking, you know, recently I've been thinking about the possibility of having an agent again. Now, rather than sending emails to all the agent, illustration agents that I like and saying, "Hey, will you rep me?" I wrote a blog post about it. And I did it because I had a lot of thoughts on it. I'm not 100% sure that it's the right thing. And I wanted to talk with other people about it. And I thought, "You know what? I want to get into this conversation about having an agent." And by doing that, maybe the right agent will be able to discover me. And that's the way that I think you have to approach being discoverable. By being in the conversation, going in real life to the conferences where the people like you are and being part of that community, putting in that time and work to be in the right places online. You know, I feel like all of these things are more like a foundation of values and ideas rather than an X, Y, and Z plan. Like, do this and do that and do that and then you'll get jobs. So the idea for me, you know, when I look back and I think about how I got into illustration, you know, at the time, there were a lot more like communities online on certain websites. And, you know, I was a part of those websites and I was busy in there and things have changed. That's not exactly the way it works anymore. I think nowadays it's more, those conversations are more happened on social media. So how do you connect with that industry? How do you be present in that place? How do you be in the right place at the right time now? And that's something you're going to have to, it's going to change every year. And so you're going to have to be present and up for the challenge. Alright, so become discoverable. Be share your, Austin Cleon wrote the book, share your work. He talks about just making the work and then putting it out in the world into the right places. Alright, number four is delight, don't sell. And I feel like we have a lot more in common with comedians, musicians, and actors than we do lawn mowing services. You know, lawn mowing, it's a need, it's a necessity. Like people need their lawn lawns mode, right? And so, by just making people aware of your lawn mowing service, you're likely to get picked up if that's something people want. So, go put postcards in their mailbox, right? Send them promo emails and stuff like that. That's fine. But what we're doing, we're not doing that needs-based service. Nobody needs illustration, right? And the same way that nobody needs comedy or music or acting. It's not food. It's not your basic necessities. And, you know, I wouldn't listen to a comedian that sent me a promo postcard. I just wouldn't do that. I would listen to one that somehow connected to me. Somehow, they delighted me, right? So, I feel like what you've got to do is you've got to make great, delightful stuff and put it out into the world. Whether that means start a project online on Tumblr or on Instagram, start a project where you're giving away a little bit of what you do for free just to delight other people. Do something that's going to make other people excited about what you do and enjoy it. So, basically, I'm saying your work needs to be the Chinese chicken of the food court, of the illustration industry. Think about it like this. I don't know why, but the only people that seem to understand this principle are the people that run the Chinese food places in food courts. They are the staple of the food court and they are always busy. Their line is always giant. And why? Well, they give away free bites of that chicken when you walk past, right? They figured that out. They just give you a little taste of it and they believe they're things good and if it's good, people will buy it. You know, the people across the street, what they do or across the food court, just get a bigger sign. You know, you've got to think differently. You can't do it like, "Okay, I'll just double my postcards or I'll just get bigger ads." Why not just give them a taste of what you have for offer? I think making that kind of free content is a way more successful way of getting new work than just buying bigger ad space. So create, and you know what personally, I like this idea of creating free content for the web, like giving people free illustration as free entertainment on Instagram or free entertainment on their social platforms. Like, here's just, I'm going to just entertain you for free and in exchange, I'm going to be on your mind if you follow it. And if you're in on the right person's mind at the right time, you get the right job. All right. Don't over hype. Don't oversell. Nobody wants to be convinced that they should love your art. Don't use a billion exclamation points. You know, put your stuff out there and respect other people's free will. Respect their ability to decide whether they like it or not. You know, I have these cousins Nick and Jared and when I was in middle school, we were best friends and they lived in Indiana and I lived in western New York. And, you know, all of my friends in middle school knew about Nick and Jared. They knew the legendary Nick and Jared and all of their glory just from the stories I told them. I didn't know that one day Nick and Jared were going to come visit me in New York and boy did my friends give them an insanely hard time. You know, they just couldn't accept them. They they'd heard too much. You know, they they were forced. They didn't have a choice to say whether they were awesome or not. I've told them that they were. I think that you've got to not oversell your work. You know, how hard is it to watch a movie that your friend has told you everything about and told you this is the best movie? Well, you feel like you have to say you don't like it just so that you feel like you have a choice about how you feel about the thing. You know, Nick and Jared actually had over hyped me on something. When I was a kid, we went out for the day and their friend Daniel had actually introduced them to Monty Python's Holy Grail and they told me everything about the movie and how insanely amazing it was and how funny it was. And that night we were going to watch it. And I'll tell you, even to this day, I can't enjoy Monty Python. They ruined it for me because I didn't feel like I had a chance to decide whether it was going to delight me or not. And that is what you do when you put on when you put your promos out there and say this is the best illustration you will ever see. You know, that it makes people want to say no just so they have a choice on how they feel about it. So I really believe when you're going the way to approach your promoting and promoting your work is to say, hey, I made this thing and just let them finish whether it's good or not. Let them have their own thoughts and feelings about it. Oh, the holidays are here. You've got to find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister Katherine and her kids, Jetson and Jettin, Jirfree and Jaggab and another two J kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing. You've got to shop small. It just, it's a lot, but it doesn't have to be. Uncommon goods makes all of this simple and straightforward for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like the Stitch a Day advent calendar and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me. That was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family to get 15% off your next gift. Go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Come this out on this limited time offer, uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. You've got questions? O'Reilly Auto Parts has answers. Need a pro you can trust? We've got that too. No matter what you need, our professional parts people have the training and expertise to help you do things right. Deep automotive knowledge. Just one part that makes O'Reilly stand apart, the professional parts people. You know, okay, so that's number five, don't over hype. Number six is be a friend. Okay, you've heard it. It's who you know, right? That's, you know, and I believe there is definitely truth to this. I do believe that networking is really important. Getting to know people and creating that social network around your work is, you know, some of my best jobs have happened through that same thing. You know, Zig Ziglar is like, was a motivational speaker and I heard a quote from him the other day that I thought was fantastic about networking. And the idea was he said that if you go out there looking for a friend, you're not going to find anything. It's the scarcest commodity in the world. But if you go out there looking to be a friend, you're going to find millions of friends. That's not the quote, but it says something like that. And I totally agree with that. You know, these people that I don't like networking or, you know, you go to the networking events and there's those people that are like, what can I take from you? How can I use you? You know, it's so gross and it feels terrible, right? And, and I know that that puts lots of people off this idea of networking. My approach has been, it's been, and when I've had this attitude, it's really worked for me. When I get in those situations, I try to think, how can I help all of these people? How when I go to this, how when I go to this event, how can I be a friend to every person I meet? And in fact, I even think of it like this. And it's actually been a great experience. You know, I'm not, it's been a long time since I've seen Indiana Jones, but I guess the Holy Grail is like a theme in this episode. But the Holy Grail, you know, when he's going to pick which one is the right Holy Grail, he has to pick the ugliest one, the one that looks least likely to be the best. And that's the one that the Holy Grail. And so I feel like when you go to these networking things, everybody wants to talk to the big shot with, you know, 50,000 Twitter followers and art director of the New York Times and all that jazz. Everybody wants to be that person's friend, right? I've actually found that it's a lot better to just be friends with the people that want to be your friend. Just go naturally connect with people. Those are the people that you're going to want to work with in the long term anyway. You know, I've got a buddy of mine and he had a, he had this really obnoxious, ridiculous sound as his text message sound. And I said, man, you know, what if that goes off in a meeting? And he's like, well, if the people in the meeting don't think it's funny, then they're not my kind of people and they're not the type of people I want to work with. And I just thought, man, that's so much confidence. But I think it's really true. It's like when you go into these events, instead of trying to people please your way to the top, allow yourself to really connect with people because those are the people that you're going to do the great projects with. Those are the people that are really going to understand your value as an artist. And that's the stuff that leads to awesome stuff. So that's number six. Be a friend. All right. Number seven. This is connected to number six. Be you. You know, this one could also be called interview the interviewer. Okay. I feel like instead of going out there into the world and thinking, oh, I would be so lucky if you give me the job. You know, I heard once in a talk, Jeff McFeteridge, the illustrator said that, you know, he realized he used to get contacted by these corporations and he would feel like, I'm so lucky. Thank you. What do you want me to do? I'll do anything for you. What kind of, you know, work do you want me to do? And he just realized that they were coming to him because he had value to bring to them. They were going to give him money. And in exchange, he was going to give them this commodity that he was good at, this thing that was going to benefit them. And I think in that same way, I think when you respect what you do and you believe in what you do enough, you will go out there into the world and you won't feel like you have to sell your soul to get work. You'll feel like I'm bringing as much to the table as you're bringing to me. And when you come to me with the job, I'm going to question whether that job's right for me as much as you question whether I'm right for your job. And I think when you start to just change that paradigm in your mind and you gain that respect for what you do and you start curating the projects that you want to be a part of that actually the right projects are more likely to fall in your lap. Number eight, be obsessed. I can't remember where I heard this, but I was listening to some some podcast or radio thing. And they said that, you know, who are the ones in your class that succeed in the field? And they said, it's always the fans. You know, it's the you know, sometimes I'm talking to a student illustrator and I'll be like, you know, who's your favorite illustrator? And they're like, I don't know. I'm like, what kind of stuff you're into? I don't really know. And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? How can you be into? How can you want to be an illustrator? But you're not a fan of illustration. And if you're not a fan, you can't be part of the pack. It's like, you know, every little niche and market in the industry has their own quirks. And when they can smell that you're an outsider, they run you out of town. You know, if you want to get into comics, you got to know the lingo. You've got to have the smell on you. You've got to show that you read thousands of comics and you've made tons of stuff and you know what you're doing and you're and you're totally all into it. I think this is it's really important to, you know, to understand that making art for a living is now a global competition and you can't just dabble in stuff. And I've heard students say, well, I want to go into, you know, concept art, but I wouldn't mind dabbling in editorial work. And I'm like, dude, people kill for editorial work. They, you know, there are people that want that so bad they spend their whole lives working towards it. And so I think you've got to get out of that dabbling mindset. You've got to push to the areas that you're really truly obsessed with. And you've got to know the nouns of the thing that you love. You've got to know the nouns, the people, the places and the things of that industry and of that market. And you have to really be obsessed and be super into it and sold out into this thing that you want to do. I think that when you're really obsessed, you go to the events, you listen to the podcasts, you talk to the people, you reach out and connect. When you're really all in on something and you really love it, that's when it starts working. When you're there and you're invested. So number eight, be obsessed. Number nine, make remarkable work. Seth Goden wrote this book, Purple Cow. And he said that, you know, when you drive by a field and there's a cow in it, you don't stop and look at it. But if it's a Purple Cow, you do, right? You know, I heard once Frank Chimero said he's a designer. I heard him saying a talk. You know, when someone has an emotional response to your work and they make a noise, right? Like they make a, oh, or, or they laugh or whatever, like that is a strong, powerful thing to do with your art. And I think you should be trying to make art that evokes an involuntary response. You know, have you ever been sat next to a friend who was watching something on their laptop with headphones on and they start and they start cracking up and you're like, what? What's so funny? And then they show you the video and then you're cracking up. It's like making work that's worth remarking on. Like, that's, that's involuntarily you have a response to, like an emotional, visceral response. Like, that alone is the best type of sharing that someone can do. And when, when, when, when you connect with someone and you try to make that work, that's not just, you know, I think Seth Goden said, good work isn't good enough anymore. You've got to, and it doesn't have, it doesn't mean your skills have to be insane. I think it means being intentional about really making something that's true to you that, that connects with the audience in such a way that they have to remark. Sometimes, sometimes those are involuntary remarks. Sometimes those remarks, you know, it's like, when you really love something, the ex, when you really love something, you have to share it. You know, my brother, he's hilarious. He's like this, you know, if he really loves something, he's got to sell it to somebody else. He's got to get someone else to enjoy it with him. And it's that kind of stuff that you're trying to make, not that wishy washy, what I call buttered spaghetti. You want to make that specialty thing that touches someone in such a way that they have to share it with somebody else. They have to experience with somebody else. And when you make that kind of work, they put it on social media. They share it with their friends. They tell people about it. That's the kind of work you're making. You're not trying to make the most proficient, technically perfect work that's good enough. That's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to make the thing that's worth remarking on. All right. Number 10, something we talk about a lot, but it's something worth revisiting. It's knowing what you want. And I was listening to the author, I think his name is Greg McEwen. He wrote a book called Essentialism or something like that. And I heard him say something great. And he talked about this idea of every quarter taking a day off site and thinking about what it is you really, really want. I think we live in such a confusing time. When you flip through Twitter and you're looking through all these different artists and all the amazing things are doing, I think sometimes you're not comparing yourself to even I think some comparisons are worthwhile because I think competition can really fire you up. But when you flip through Twitter or Instagram or whatever and you look at 200 artists and you compare yourself to not just one of them, but all 200 of them at the same time, you want to give up. You don't want to do it. And I think or even worse, you want to do everything. And you have that fear of missing out and you think, I'm going to try everything. And you know, I want, I want it all. I want to have this type of work. I want to have a book and I want to have being magazines and I want to have a concept work and I want to be working on movies and I want to do all the stuff. And when you really confuse yourself by not understanding which of those things are you going to die if you don't do, that's the stuff that you got to focus on. You know, one of the ways that I kind of figured this stuff out about the stuff that I wanted to focus my time on was when I was really hurting for time. And I would, the only time I could get to work on some extra stuff was if I got up really early in the morning at like 4 a.m. And I realized that there were certain personal projects that it would get me out of bed at 4 a.m. and certain ones that wouldn't. And it was the one that if, you know, if you want to, if you think maybe I want to write a book or maybe I want to make a kids book or maybe I want to do editorial illustration or whatever, make a personal project and see which you get out of bed for. See which you're willing to trade some sleep for. That's the stuff that you really want. That's the stuff that you really want to focus on. And I think when you know what you really want and you make work based on what you really want, that's how you find your market. And it's by knowing your market that you get the work. But I think it starts with understanding what do I really want? What, what thing am I going to die if I don't go after? Another really good clarifying question on what do you want? Next time you have free time, just ask yourself, what do you want to make? What, what do you want to make with like, with like you, you're desperate to make it? Just ask yourself what that thing is and go towards that thing. If you don't feel like making it right now, why would you feel like making it later when you, when the job comes in? Like that's the, that motivation that's just purely in you. That's the stuff you want to run after. All right, number 11. Open your hands. You know, two nights ago, I had a bunch of crazy dreams. I'm just a crazy dreamer. I've got, you know, I had three dreams that night. One of them was, I was telling somebody that I had Elsa's frozen powers from frozen. And they weren't quite as powerful, but they were pretty similar. And I just noticed like, I said, he said, Oh, you mean like, Mr. Freeze? And I was like, yeah, I guess I could have thought of a more typically masculine way of saying that I had freezing powers, but you know, I've never been typically masculine anyway. So why start now? But I had Elsa's frozen powers. And you know, this point is, I'm not going to sing it, but it's about, Oh gosh, what am I doing? It's about letting go. Oh, I can't believe I did it, but I did it. And I'm sticking with it. I think that there is something to have in that open hands mentality. I think when you want something so bad, we've talked about this before, you're like lenny and of mice and men where you have that mouse that you love so much that you squeeze them so hard that you kill it. You know, it also reminded me of in school as a kid, they told a story about this guy who wanted to pickle out of a jar and he put his hand in the jar and he grabbed the pickle, but he couldn't get his hand out of the jar unless he let go of the pickle, but he wouldn't let go of it. And it's like, I don't know if that's a good metaphor or not, but it's like this thing of you can't squeeze, you know, you can't squeeze the thing that you love so hard or the thing that you want so bad that it has no, you know, you kill that free will again, right? You've got to be open to the path. You know, I used to kind of, when I was charting out the territory of like the work that I wanted to be doing, I would like list the clients that I was hoping to work for that year. And actually, what I found was I would shoot towards that, but a really similar client, sometimes one that I'd never even heard of would come out of the woodwork and want to work with me. And I would almost blow them off because they weren't the exact client that I was looking for. And I feel like that's just an example of having that clenching hand that doesn't that you don't actually let the road be dictated by the land, like, you know, those English roads, you don't let the, you don't let the universe collaborate with you on what happens on the path. And I feel like when you don't allow that, everything starts to lock up. And so I think that it's really important to go with the flow and let, you know, to a certain extent, like chart a territory and then let it happen the way it happens. You know, I feel like you're never going to feel successful if you chart this very specific path, because it's so rare that it happens that way. You know, for instance, you know, I got into illustration and design because I wanted to work with modest mouse. I wanted to make modest mouse posters. And, you know, I wanted to collaborate with that band. And, you know, that's this past year, I did a poster for the lead singer of Why, who's another one of my favorite bands. You know, I got to talk with them on the phone and we talked about what the poster was going to be. And we kind of just, you know, collaborated on the concept of what it was going to be like. And it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career to work with someone who made music that I love so much and connected with so much. And, you know, I feel like if I had had that goal that was so tightly squeezed and it was like, well, it's not modest mouse. So I never really did the thing that I wanted to do. I wouldn't even be able to feel the success of enjoying that work. And so I feel like you've got to be open to the way that things play out. Or you're not going to enjoy it anyway. Okay, number 12, find the weakest link in the chain. Find the weakest link, you know, on cartoons, right? When they're trying to like bust a giant rock or bust a, you know, a glacier or whatever, you have that scientist who like feels around and listens to the rock and then finds that perfect weak point and then just taps it with a hammer and then it crumbles to the ground. I feel like that's the way that you've got to approach getting into the industries that you want to get a part of to be to be a part of is that you have to search for what's the weakest point of entry because I feel like once you get into it, then it's so much easier. It's so much more like swimming downstream. But before you get into it's like swimming upstream. So when I was graduating, there was a few companies out there that would you could upload your portfolio and they would consider you to pitch you for different jobs. And it was like a giant pool of artists, but it was just one place where I could get my foot in the door. And I did a few jobs that way. And it was how I got my first clients. Now those things don't really exist anymore. But that's the that's the places you need to look for. Whatever industry or whatever area you want to be a part of, search the horizon for the weakest part of the fortress and then put all of your efforts into getting in. I think it's just so important to just get past the front gate. And once you're in, you can diversify and go in all kinds of different directions. That's my suggestion for for breaking in. Number 13 could either be dressed for the job that you want, not the job you have or fake it till you make it. You know, I don't like fake it till you make it because it seems like you're lying. And when I first graduated, I did I wanted to fake it till I made it. And I and I did a bunch of stuff like that. But I never lied. You know, I did a project for it was a college project. And on my website, I said, this is a college project. And it was a color, but I'd made everything. I'd made this coloring book that looked like a coloring book based on indie bands that I liked. And it looked pretty professional. And, you know, it got some different media attention. And the people that took the time to read realized that it wasn't a real coloring book. But a bunch of people just looked at it and it looked real. So they thought it was real. So they reported on it like it was real. And I didn't do anything dishonest. But I wore the right clothes for the job. I played the part. I did the right lingo. I did the right, you know, I put my best foot forward and I didn't do anything that said I'm not ready, or I'm a student, or I'm, you know, recently I was asking about what makes a good website portfolio on Twitter, because I teach a class where we do that. And Jennifer Daniel, who is an art director and illustrator, said that you shouldn't put I'm a student in your bio if you're a student making a website, because it's just going to get you lower fees and less respect in the industry. And I just feel like that's the kind of mentality that you've got to have when you're trying to get more work and trying to chart new territory. You need to have that attitude of I'm going to I'm going to present myself the way that I want to be perceived. And so even when I was trying to like get more into editorial, I would put I would make editorial style images and put them in my portfolio. And I would write about them as if they were professional jobs, like I would use the same language that I would use to describe work that I had done for magazines. And I think that's the kind of way that you present yourself to open more doors. All right, number 14, get comfy with the times. Okay, I think that when it comes to marketing and promoting yourself, the way that you go about doing it has changed, but the foundation hasn't. I think it's always been an illustration in commercial art. It's always about having a voice. And it's just about different avenues to put that voice into. I feel like it's it's less like I think if you think about promotion like a roadmap, that it's not going to work for you because the ways the roads change every year. But if you think of promotion more like a mindset and more like a compass that points generally to the right direction and you read the land, then you're more likely to get where you want to go. You know, when I graduated, I think it was a lot about like the gatekeepers were kind of like blogs and stuff. You know, you had to connect with the blogs and if they shared your work, then you were golden and you got jobs. But that's not really the way it is anymore. And it used to be that you had to focus all your efforts on art directors. How do you send them promotional materials? How do you connect with them and network with them? And I think nowadays, probably the place where all that stuff is happening most is social media. You know, some people think you don't even need a website anymore. You just need to have an Instagram or a Tumblr. I don't think that. But I think it's a good point. I think right now, those conversations are happening on social media. But the thing is, is that this podcast would be out of date in a year because in a year, things are going to change. And if you have your attitude that promotion is a roadmap, you're going to get lost because everything changes all the time. But if you have the foundation of values and the values of promotion is about having a voice, having an opinion, illustration has always been about that. It's always been about, I actually have something to say. And what you have to do is get comfortable with the times that you're in and figure out where are people saying what they have to say and then focus that direction. I think it's more about methodology to approaching how you say things and less about the exact location of where you say things. You need to just go fluid with the times and always be growing about where the conversations are taking place. Number 15, go long or go home. And I think if you really, really want something and you want it for the right reasons, you're comfortable with doing whatever it takes. Yeah, you might want it so bad that you want it now. But if you really, truly want it and this is a life work for you, I think you've got to have your attitude be, I'm in this for the long haul, I'm going to do whatever it takes and I'm going to push as long and hard as possible for as long as I need to to make the thing work. And I think you've got to, especially students, you've got to stop thinking about how do I make my career happen right now. You know, I keep saying that it's like, you know, it's not like Mario 3, Super Mario 3, where you can get the whistle, you can find the whistle and it skips like five levels and you can skip from, you know, level seven or level three to level seven. Like it's not, there are no magic whistles in commercial art. Like you've got to take the slow and steady round. You've got to solve whatever is making you want to rush, if it's financial need, then you're going to have to find a different way to make money. You know, and I, and just as a side note, you know, if you want to be rich, commercial art's not the direction to take. You know, I do believe you can make a living, but if you're trying to get the rich quick scheme and you think that, you know, if you play your cards right on social media, that everything's going to work out, you know, it doesn't work like that. You know, there are no, there's no get rich quick schemes. And I think like these, you know, these young guns that get super famous right away actually have a harder path in the long run in a lot of ways. And so I think if you just change your attitude towards, how am I going to make, how am I going to build up a sustainable career? You know, for, that looks like a lot of different things. It looks like how do I build products? How do I build, you know, different avenues of making a living? How do I, how do I get really good jobs that spur on to better jobs instead of just trying to make something happen right now? I think it's so important to shift your thinking and solve whatever that, you know, that needy desperation for things to happen right now. Whatever that is, you know, I think it's, you have to be, you have to resolve that, you have to stop and ask yourself, why do I need this thing to shift right now? And so I think that the one of the best shifts that you can have in promoting your work is how do I create a sustainable promotion that I can do over a lifetime that builds the type of life and the type of work that I want to do for a lifetime, not just for next week? Okay, so this is a little bit of an unconventional get more work podcast episode. You know, it's not your practical, do this, do that, and you'll get the jobs you want. It's a little bit deeper than that. It's a little bit more about what attitude do you approach the industry? What's the best way to ready your kind of mind and heart in approaching getting more work? And how do you, how do you create the most fertile soil for the types of jobs that you want to grow? And that's kind of what I saw this podcast as, this episode. And that's pretty much it. Those are the 15 ways. I want to say I'm real quick again. I'm just going to go back through that. Number one, get off the stage and end of the house. You know, quit putting this massive gap between you and your audience. You want to connect with them. You want to be yourself. You want to be real. And I think that's the time that we're in. Forget manipulation. Your work is a gift. Like respect other people's free will to decide whether they like your work or not. Number three, become discoverable. I think it's so much better if you just try to put your work out there in the right avenues to be discovered by the right person at the right time. The light don't sell. Don't try to make people like what you do. Try to entertain them. Remember this is the Chinese chicken in the food court metaphor. Don't over hype your work. Don't over sell it. Don't use a billion exclamation points and say your thing is the best ever and you just did the best work ever. Put it out there and let people decide how they feel about it. Be a friend. That's the networking part. Don't go out there to try to use other people. Go out there to help other people that will come back to you. I can guarantee it. Be you. I think it's so important to go out there and in view getting jobs like you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. Be obsessed. Be obsessed with the market you want to be and be totally all in and know the people places and noun people places and things related to that field. Make remarkable work. Make work that people have to remark on that people have to share and want to enjoy with other people. Know what you want. Really know the thing that you really really want. The thing that when you get it is going to feel really really satisfying. Open your hands. Let it go. Don't squeeze super tightly to any one thing. Let the universe surprise you with the path. Number 12. Find the weakest link in the part of the industry you want to go in and put all of your efforts in there because once you're into the once you're past the mode it's way easier to move around and find different jobs. 13. Dress to the job you want. Not for the job you have. 14. Get comfortable with the avenues of the time where the conversations about work and illustration and art and the things that you want to be a part of are happening and go put your voice in those different avenues. Number 15. Go long or go home. This is about the long game. Shift your thinking from I need money next week to I need to build a sustainable career that's going to be enjoyable in the long term. There's no secret Mario 3 whistles. All right that's it. I hope this was helpful. It was a pretty hefty one but I hope it helps you know I really do believe that the world will be better if you figure out how to free up your time and your finances and and your energy and your confidence and make your best work and put that into the world and so you know what I'm going to be here next week hopefully and I will be trying to pep you up to do more of that awesome work. I really I really appreciate you guys listening and reviewing on iTunes and all that stuff. If you want to hear this podcast online you can check it out on illustrationh.com/creativepeptalk but until then and until next week 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. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. I'm Whit Misildine 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.