Creative Pep Talk
028 - Take Off the Governor
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You can also listen to this podcast on illustrationh.com/creativepeptalk, illustration age is this super great illustration website supporting the cause of illustration and spreading awesome inspiration. Thank you illustration age for doing that, thank you for Thomas James for reaching out and making that syndication with illustration age happen, I really appreciate it. Okay, so today let's get started right off the bat. What we're going to talk about the episode is called take off the governor. Take off the governor, now if you are like me, I don't know if this is normal but I grew up in western New York, near Buffalo and also in Indiana and I seem to be around a lot of kids that had access to motor vehicles like four wheelers and go carts and you know I was the type of kid that my friends would be taking their mountain bikes and building these ramps like Napoleon Dynamite and going off the ramps and doing no hands, I never liked riding a bike with no hands, I wasn't super coordinated in that way and just always every time I tried anything I always end up getting hurt and I always have these friends you know that they have these you know they would have these go carts or these four wheelers and we go to get on them and they'd be like by the way my dad doesn't know but I took off the governor and if you don't know what that means I guess there's this thing where you put there's a speed limiter on the engine of these things to make it not go too fast because kids are operating them. My friends thought you should go ahead and take that off secretly and let it go crazy and I always hated that idea in fact I remember once I was riding a four wheeler through the woods through these paths that we've made and I got the confidence up and I was like I'm going to take the governor off my own mind and just go totally crazy on this thing and ride like put the pedal to the metal and as soon as I did that I crashed straight into a tree and busted my lip I got my lip caught in my braces and I had to go to the orthodontist to get them get my lip off of my braces and that just furthered the idea that I'm not one of these people that takes the governor off and that was my experience and I that was what it reminded me of today this idea of taking the limitations off the self-imposed limitations or the limitations that are imposed by your environment or people around you or what the industry says and actually you know I can see how this episode could be perceived as one of those is named Tony Robbins I can't remember he's the guy he's a motivational speaker or Matt Foley thing like take the limitations off your mind and experience your dreams dream big be crazy and I don't mean it like that you know I always say that wisdom is the key to wisdom is nuance and I feel like all the things we're talking about today they're actually practical Apple actionable things that you can do that open up doors that help you have a bigger career a better career and be more likely to achieve your own version of success within your career there it sounds very lofty but I think it's actually very practical and I think there are so many ways that we put limitations on ourselves and keep ourselves from having better careers bigger opportunities and so that's what today is about I feel like if you look into the future and you have this thing that I call the arrogance of the untested you know when I was in college I had this thing where it's like you haven't been tested by your work hasn't been tested by the real world and it's easy in that place to be arrogant about your ideas and how good you are and all that you see that with students from time to time then you get out in the real world it kicks your butt and you get humble right and I think that it's easy to look out into the future and have the arrogance to say editorial markets dead or this thing's gonna happen or that's gonna happen or I'll never really be able to make more than this amount or I'll never be able to do that and I think it's easy to do that but I've found that the universe tends to hate that thinking and I never seem to get I never seem to have doors open when I have that attitude about something and I think it's when I have that humility to say I don't know what the next year is gonna look like and here's some of the things yeah I might have goals or hopes or wishes or what I want to see happen but the times that I'm like I'm ready to go on the adventure of where this this art is gonna take me where this stuff is gonna take me and I want to actually springboard into bigger things that I can't even think of right now Jim Koodal of Koodal Partners it's a design studio I think they're based in Chicago he said that you know what the problem with goals especially like long term goals are often when you're birthing these goals in your mind by the time you reach them five years down the road you're a different person and they're not that satisfying when you when you get to the finish line because the goals that you have then are totally different and I think part of the idea of that is this idea of limiting yourself and what you think you can do instead of being open to what happens being optimistic about where the next stage is gonna be or what what an illustrator could be you know not putting all the limitations on that so I've got seven points here we go. 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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 sub stack 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 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 dot com slash creative pet talk or Andy j pizza dot sub stack dot com and I hope to see you at this month's meetup. So number one titles as springboards not cages again back to this anti extreme thinking back you know I feel like just as an example five years ago you read a billion articles that said do what you love follow your passion you know all that stuff and and everybody's going crazy for it and then five years later I've read I've read 15 million articles about that's it's not that simple you can't just follow what you love you should just do the practical thing like you know that's what life's about and I think that both are wrong I feel like again like nuances the key to wisdom for me at least I feel like you got a whole things in relativity and I feel that often this discussion of what you call yourself whether it's an illustrator a designer a musician an art director a creative director whatever it is whatever you call yourself you have these people that split in these extreme opinions either that you shouldn't even have a title because it limits you and it's doesn't mean anything it's irrelevant or you have to have a title in it by choosing the perfect title that's how you open up the door to all of your hopes and dreams I don't think either of these I think it's something you need to use in the right way and I'll and I'll explain what I mean by that but first I just want to mention a Jeff McFetridge is a self-professed graphic designer he calls himself a graphic designer I think if you went to look at his work you probably think it was more illustration now in talks he said that he doesn't know why anybody would call himself an illustrator and why because he feels that that's someone an illustrator is someone who needs somebody else to give them a job where graphic designers can make their own projects they can do these bigger projects they have more say in the process and I think maybe that's a misunderstanding of what illustrators are or could be but I see what he's saying and it kind of reminds me of this idea of actors you know actors are the low link in the chain there have to be given the role they have to be cast in the movie they have to have the screenplay given to them and it's they're dependent on other people and so you know on the set of freaks and geeks Jason Seagull tells a story he plays Nick and freaks and geeks my favorite character I was like Nick in high school and he says that Jason Seagull says that Judd Apatow told him that you know he's something like you don't have the face of an actor you're not going to be given roles like the big roles if you want a big career you need to write your own roles and I and I this stuck with me because Jason Seagull went on to be a writer and a director and an actor and he would act in his own major pictures and some of those were really successful and I think in that same way he didn't use he didn't let actor be a cage that held him in he let it be a springboard for all kinds of different things actually in the world of graphic design we've had some really awesome examples of this using the term graphic design to be a springboard to bigger possibilities than we could imagine Jim Kudall said that he he's one of the co-owners of field notes with Aaron Draplin and they're both these kind of designer turned entrepreneurs and they saw that design were these people that helped solve other people's problems helped other people's products be successful but they had all the same skills to make their own products and make their own products successful Tina Roth Eisenberg is another one of these people who started as a designer but she realized she had all of the things necessary to make her own products to make her own companies and I think it's in that way they use the term designer to act as a springboard to do bigger and better things than people think that they can do I think it's important to have a good title that puts you in the right place for instance if you went to go hire a plumber locally in your area and you searched on Google and there was a search that came up and the whole website of this company never mentions plumbing they call themselves interior water engineers you don't hire that person because you need a plumber right I think the title matters if you want to do illustration jobs or jobs that illustrators do you should call yourself an illustrator or mention illustration at least I think that it can act as a springboard into the future that you want but I think as soon as you let it determine your path and determine the stuff that you do and keep you from doing bigger things or you think oh an editorial illustrator could never earn more than X amount of dollars a year and I'm hitting the or an illustrator could never hire anybody or an illustrator never does this or an illustrator never does that as soon as you start doing that you're letting it act as a cage and I think you've got to balance these two things and you've got to take the limits off that title so number one was titles as springboards not cages number two your weaknesses I'm someone who is very familiar with my weaknesses you know as at an early age I knew I'm not going to fit into a normal job I you know I think I've said on the podcast before you know I worked at a movie theater and they would put me on the till they put me on the cash register and I would lose money just lose money and they would count me down and so many times my boss really liked me so he didn't give me too much of a hard time but he'd be like look you're $20 short you're $10 short you're 75 cents short you're always short or somehow you have more money in here and I just was so bad at it you know I was so bad at that money and forms and bureaucracy and jumping through hoops you know I was always bad at that through school and I knew when I graduated and I want to be a freelance artist that there were all these massive blocks in the way like doing your own like figuring out how you're going to get your taxes done or finding your own health care you know getting my wife to get her visa and move over here to America was a all I knew there was all this bureaucracy in the way and it was just this giant roadblock you know they talk about the archetype of the hero is this common myth that we've told each other throughout history and I one of the ideas with that is that when the hero starts on the journey when Luke Skywalker starts on his journey he's not prepared to fight Darth Vader right but he goes on the journey anyway and I think that one of the things that you've got to do you've got to believe that just because you're not just because these weaknesses could hold you back right now doesn't mean that there's not going to be a way that's made in the future that means that your weaknesses are irrelevant you know there's this marketing guy called Gary Vanderchuk and you know he's not typically I'm not trying to diss him or anything but he's not really the guy that I hang around he's kind of crass and whatever kind of aggressive and it's not my cup of tea in that way but I think he has a lot of good ideas and I try not to judge people I try not to judge where ideas come from because I think going in looking for ideas in interesting places pays off and I heard him say that you need to stop spending all of this time trying to be something you're not you need to spend all of this time figuring out who you really are getting self-aware about your strengths and your weaknesses and pouring into the path that's going to work for you and quit worrying about all the ways you don't measure up into something else and he said that in America we're constantly trying to tell people the story of how they can become something that they can't and he said for instance when it comes to entrepreneurs he doesn't think that you can teach and teach people to be entrepreneurs it's that something you are you aren't and I tend to fall into the camp of there's some things you can't do and it makes me think of one of my heroes Dennis Rodman which is ridiculous but on the court right I think I've told this before I was telling my friend on the phone we were talking about his design business and talking about his strengths and weaknesses and this idea came up of being the Michael Jordan of something and I thought fantastic for Michael Jordan he got to be the Michael Jordan of basketball right he got to be the best of the best of the whole sport and I when I think of myself I know I'm not going to be the Michael Jordan of illustration like I'm hoping I could be the Michael Jordan of taking simple shapes and breathing weird life and story into them and say kind of poetic silly big spiritual existential things with circles with legs on him right I want to be the Michael Jordan of that that's a small little plot of land but I feel like I could do that and I always loved the Dennis Rodman thing mainly because I can't shoot a ball and I'm pretty good at getting rebounds though and I thought Dennis Rodman if he was beating himself up all the time about how he can't be a point guard he can't shoot threes he you know all this stuff he spent all this time thinking I'll never be the Michael Jordan of basketball if he spent all of that time worrying about that he couldn't have spent time developing and pushing his amazing ability to be the best rebounder in the US and that was his role and went because he owned that thing and he didn't let his weaknesses stop him from being an all-star in the NBA like he led he was a piece of the puzzle of leading them to several championships and I'll be the Dennis Rodman of illustration I don't have to be I'll be the Oprah Dennis Rodman of illustration I'll take that role you can't let your weaknesses stop you and you can't spend all of your time worrying about how you have these things that are going to keep you from where you want to go letting those letting your weaknesses control where you go is a massive way of letting limitations stop you all right number three your peers now I don't live in a massive city I don't live in you know New York City I don't live in that in Brooklyn or Portland or whatever and I look at that and sometimes I'm a little bit jealous by that concentrated group of amazing creative people and I can see this awesome value that comes from that part of me though worries that um that it's a battle to not let your peers put limitations on you and I think of this idea of uh I could have titled this number three coolness you know not letting the people around you determine what's cool and what's not and letting that determine what you end up doing you know the people you're around really really scientifically have a giant impact on who you are you know we really do in some ways become the people that were around there was a test I heard about on a recent episode of radio lab where they talk about this idea of um they did this experiment on rats and they would tell one group of people that these rats were extremely smart rats like they passed all the tests much better than anybody else and then they would tell the other group that comes in that these are the really really stupid rats and what they found was kind of shocking that when the people came in and they thought the rats were brilliant the rats performed really really well when the people came in and they thought the rats were dumb the the rats performed really really badly I feel like when you are so immersed in peers and colleagues it is so hard not to let them limit who you are what you do the work that you make I find that having a little bit of distance for that has actually helped me there were seasons in my life like in college where having those peers right next to me and constantly giving me feedback and everything really helped but I can also see how our work kind of all melded together and got really similar now there are plenty of people out there that can work in a studio next to somebody and be unique and original and not let them you know limit what they do I think for me often in the past I've let my insecurities cause me to question what I do when somebody calls me out for something that they think isn't cool or think think isn't working or whatever even if I like them and I think the key to this the key to not letting your peers determine or limit what your original originality and work becomes I think the key is to have a really strong sense and security in your own personal values as an artist and your own vision of what you want and becoming so acquainted with that that you don't let things shake you I feel like this is a really difficult thing to do now some of you out there can can sit next to somebody all day and you've got you've got the security and you've got the vision to know when feedbacks helpful when it's hurtful and we're going to talk about that in the next point but I really benefited from kind of going into a place of obscurity for a few years I lived in a small town for three years when I moved back to America in 2010 and I felt like in those three years I got a real sense I made a bunch of work on my own without a lot of distractions without a lot of people influencing me and I felt like I found a competence in doing my own thing and in not letting other people determine what that is. 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I feel like early in my career you know I think it was the height of the designer blog trolls and you know I just graduated I had a fresh portfolio it was a little like it was typically as a student a little bit more derivative than it is now although I still have influences and you know I had a few like two comments on a blog that I was featured on I know you're not supposed to read your reviews or whatever but that just like massively trashed what I was doing and it it really did throw me on to a side road that I think took a lot of my time and I feel like I let it I let those people limit what I was doing I let them change what I was doing I let them cause to it caused me to shrink and rather than grow and I was recently introduced to this concept of the 80/20 rule and it's basically this idea that that 20% no matter what you do there's always going to be 20% that doesn't work there's always going to be 20% that hates what you do even if you're the best of the best of the best the best possibility for you is that 20% hate what you do even if 80% love what you do the problem with that is someone pointed out is that the 20% is usually the loudest they're usually the one that wants to give the most feedback I found again like knowing your values helps you deal with your peers input it especially helps you to know when feedback is constructive or deconstructive and again if we want to go back to this idea of extremism you know there's some people that are like ignore the haters and some people are like well you kind of have to listen to feedback sometimes and I don't think either of these I don't think they're mutually exclusive I think you have to understand which feedback is going to be constructive for you and which is going to hurt you you know I felt like I when I again when I graduated and I was doing this work that I had I ran into a few people that I was looking to to give me feedback and the stuff that they told me whether they intended to or not is not my my my place to judge but they told me things that really seared and hurt me and put me on paths that my work was never intended to go you know my work was never going to be hyper realism my work was never going to be ultra conceptual and and I let their judgments of it that were not constructive deconstruct and limit what I was doing and I think again this comes back to having a clear understanding of what is your work about what are you what are you passionate about what do you want your work to be what are your values as an artist and understanding the more you have a security in that the more you're not you're going to understand when feedback comes in and it's someone trying to put you on their path and feedback comes in and it's someone that's going to push you further on your own path you know I see this I feel like in the music industry all the time you know a lot of my favorite bands I feel like you had this time maybe pre like you know early 2000s late 90s early 2000s where all these bands are doing this awesome stuff and it feels very like new and and and big and important and and really awesome and then in 2005 2006 2007 you start getting the hip the rise of the hipsters in domain screen culture and even the word starts to become ubiquitous right and everybody's dissing and judging and ironically you know pushing this idea of hipster and I feel like it caused a lot of my favorite bands to become self-critical to want to detach themselves from this you know the copycats that came after the fact and all that and they started making music that wasn't true to their band because they they let all of that feedback in that chat or throw them off and I'm happy to say that some of my favorite bands recently have actually came back from that and they're making that music that they were kind of born to make that their band was created to make and I'm just like so pumped that you know it usually happens you get off on the side road and then eventually you just realize there's part of your style there's part of your voice there's part of your you know creative destiny that you have you can't control yeah there's part of it you chart yourself but there's part of who you are that's not going to change and and I think it's important to be true to that so number four is de haters uh five your goals your goals can limit what you end up doing in your life here's a there's a stupid joke I think most people know it here it is uh there's this guy drowning in the ocean and he prays to god to save him and then this boat comes by and there's three different kinds of boats they all come by and every time he says no I prayed to god and he's gonna save me I don't need your help and then he drowns in the ocean he goes to heaven and he says god why didn't you help me and god's like I sent three boats and I and I feel like sometimes that we view our futures and our careers this way you know we make a list of the five jobs we want or the five clients we want to work for the the types of jobs we want and when those things don't come in we ignore all the opportunities and sometimes you got to put your blinders on that's true sometimes you got to have that drive and that focus to push into an area but sometimes there's this awesome thing happening because it's not what you expected you ignore it for instance for this this podcast this podcast has kind of taken me on a weird journey you know I meant to do it as this really small thing where I could just put some ideas out there but I kept growing and the listeners and subscribers kept growing and people were sending me messages and they were excited about it and it started to open other doors and I was spending a lot of time trying to develop other pursuits that I've now put on the back burner because that this thing is you know feels right and it's and it's working and I'm loving it and I feel like I was tempted to say no I'm working on something else I don't have time for the podcast I don't okay great I'm glad people are in do it or whatever but I've got this other stuff that I've already planned on doing I feel like that you've got to be prepared to sit in that place of being driven and working and making waves and be ready to go with the flow or take the big wave when it comes even if it's one that you didn't expect you know recently one of the listeners sent me a message about this episode of the Paper Wings podcast and it was it's one of the recent ones you can find it and it's a someone who works in animation I can't remember her name but she she talks about this journey of going into animation you know wanting to do storyboarding and then it ended up that died off and she went into I don't know voice acting and then she went into this and then she went into that and she ended up going through lots of different stages that she never expected and there were plenty of times where she was being stubborn and saying I'm not that I'm not doing that and she had to be she had to get open and take the limitations off her goals of what she thought she she wanted and realized there was so much more if she was open to it you know I've had these goals like I want to work for this client and then a client pretty much exactly the same just with a different name would come along and I would say no no thanks like I'm waiting for God to save me and I say no to the boat and I feel like you've got to let you've got to be open to your career surprising you like that's part of the fun I feel like the universe like loves to like throw a curveball you know and I and I feel like if your attitude is open and you don't have that clenching fist and you have your instead of everything you're given just have an open hand with it that you're you're going to be much more successful in your creative pursuits so don't let your goals limit you number six your circumstance let me just tell you all the reasons why I shouldn't be able to get the big jobs and I shouldn't be uh I shouldn't have even the success that I've already had you know um whatever success that may be uh I'll just tell you I've got I married young I've never lived in the in the major cities I live in Ohio uh I didn't go to art school I went to a regular university I've got plenty of things about my experience you know I've got two parents you know that I was raised by people that don't know anything about art they don't care about art none of my siblings do um you know I grew up listening to boys to men you know I've got everything working against me from being a prolific creative person someone who gets the big jobs who competes with the big dogs in this world of illustration I've got everything going against me you know uh in a lot of ways right and I think that often you hear these defeated people these defeated students or or people and they say look I just can't change this thing that I've got and it negates me from playing and I and you know what I don't want to devalue the fact that some people do have health problems or or different issues that do hold them back in certain ways and I acknowledge that but I feel like the same people you know um another recent episode of uh radio lab I think no it was invisibility they talked about this idea that blindness was um was an illusion put on blind people by the non-blind and this idea that um there's this guy who's famous for writing a bike and he's blind which he finds as a massive uh desk to him but he he can do this clicking thing that helps him kind of see in his mind kind of like bats do and he teaches other people how to do it and he feels like all these um this compassion and limitations that people put on the blind actually holds them back and I feel like it's these ideas these things that say that negates me from play the world says that if I uh if I'm not single and living in the big city and and go to art school I can't play the big game and I found that's not true and and almost all of those things are not true you can't focus on the things that you can't change and then on top of that you can't believe that everything in your life can't change I think that some things that we convince ourselves we're stuck here you know it's just this is the way it's gonna be you know maybe I'll go to get an MFA in art school you know maybe you know things can change maybe we'll move I you know I'm happy where I am I think we live in an amazing place and I think that I don't have to live in these big cities there's actually all these benefits that come from living here but I think so often you hear people tell themselves stories about why they're eliminated from play by these things that they cannot change and I think it's so easy to let your circumstance limit where you're going number seven you're heroes I've recently heard a quote uh I think it was on instagram I saw there's a there's this website call or podcast called pencil versus pixel and I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Caesar on that podcast it's a really good one like big backlog of artist interviews and the recent one he had a quote about the fact that you can be inspired by these people that you look up to but you can't take the same path that they take because everybody's path is different and you can be inspired by the path but you can't try to replicate it because your path is going to be different and I've had this same experience you know I heard this great thing by the lead singer of the band deer hunter and he said that in his early days in the early band they would try to make an album for the bands that quit making albums they tried to say okay what would the next pavement album have uh how would the next pavement album what would it sound like and and they would try to basically make that album or what their favorite band that you know hasn't made an album in five years they would say what would the next album sound like and I think that early on especially that's actually a good practice that's you know to look in and have those inspirations and and dive deep into other people's worlds and paths and understand what makes them tick I think that that's been happening since day one of artists it's something you've got to do but at some point you've got to be open to making different decisions than your heroes would have done you've got to I feel like I make decisions a lot where I know my heroes would disapprove you know and I feel like you've got to have the confidence in your own path to not let that archetype of what you think success is determine the decisions that you make and limit what you do I feel like so often you're looking at someone else's paper and it's causing you to not make the choices and write the words that you're supposed to write on the paper okay that's all I've got let's just I'm just going to do a little recap for those of you that take notes or whatever you want to have a quick recap here it is number one titles as springboards not cages so if you call yourself an illustrator let that be a context for someone to help understand what you do but don't let it limit the choices you make or what that could mean make you can make any of these titles mean something that it's never meant before number two your weaknesses there are certain weaknesses that you have that are never going to change but it doesn't mean there's no weakness that you could have that could stop you from doing something that you have in your strengths number three your peers it's so easy for this idea of what's cool to determine your outcomes or to determine what it is you should be doing but you shouldn't let what your peers think stop you from what you think and what your values are as an artist four de haters you can't let people intentionally or unintentionally throw you off your path by by giving you deconstructive criticism you have to have a sense of what's going to be helpful and what's not and when people are trying to put you on their path instead of doing your own number five your goals you can't be like that guy in the joke who's who prays to be saved and then misses all the boats that come you've got to be open to be surprised about where you're where your career is going to take you you can't determine every step and and let that limit the places that you go number six your circumstance you can't let anything eliminate you from play you know there's even people out there who you know lost their hands tragically and still go on to be artists in different ways you know you can't let something you know I don't want to um you know I don't want to be harsh and I don't want to say I understand everybody's circumstance I know there are circumstances that are tough but you can't let things disqualify you just because other people say that they disqualify you and number seven your heroes you can't have the same path as your favorite artist you can't do the same thing you've got to make your own path you've got to make your own decisions otherwise it's not interesting it's not exciting to other people the conclusion of this is when people say editorial's dead you can't make a living doing that prince dead you know illustration's dead graphic design is changing and prince gonna go in and all you know all that stuff there's all this talk always telling people this is what the future is going to be and I feel like when you act on that and you let that limit your idea of where you can go it's actually you that's holding your career back and I feel like recently even you know I was on the phone I called a an illustrator buddy of mine and we were having a really great talk about this idea of feeling like you've hit a glass ceiling you know when you've you know recently I felt like time-wise I just don't have extra time and based on the amount of money that someone in my position can make on illustration I feel like I was maxing out you know because illustrators don't hire people or they don't do this or they can't take on bigger projects or whatever it is and I just found myself believing those lies of limitation like they're gonna you know that just because someone hasn't done it before doesn't mean somebody can't do it it just means it hasn't happened yet and I think of that same thing with this you know the the mile runners you know it happens over and over where we think that humans have pushed to the max what they're capable of doing you know there'll be this unattainable time to run the mile nobody's ever done it nobody ever could do it and then somebody does it and then all of a sudden everybody can do it and it's literally that is like scientifically proven that there are these limitations on our mind that we put on ourselves and they actually keep us from pursuing bigger and better things again I don't know what it's a radio lab day but there's another example of how you know there was these surfers that were using wave runners or something to to hit these bigger waves than they've ever hit that anybody could do without you know mechanics or technology and it was blowing people's minds what they could do when they were you know I think they were like tied to these wave runners and doing these waves that nobody's ever done before but just by opening up those limitations of their minds then humans went out on to do these waves without the wave runners and they said the same example for you know bands and in musicians where the computer could do this like perfect timing you know perfect beat and these sorts of things and be this really robotic thing that we didn't think was even possible with humans but once we opened up our minds to that being possible even though it was just a computer doing it that humans went on to do it and I really do believe that whether you want to look at it as logic or magic I believe that the way that you put limitations on yourself truly does limit where you're going to end up in your career all right I super appreciate you guys listening and all the feedback you know if this isn't show isn't your thing that's okay you don't have to listen I'm not being harsh but I know there are people out there who this show is helping them and it's helping me by being able to share this stuff and go through all these ideas with you and so I really appreciate if I appreciate you listeners out there I appreciate all these people who keep buying that do not be afraid poster that I've connected to the creative pep talk and you know that's a good way of me being able to justify spending half a day a week or more on this and I and I really appreciate that I appreciate the people that have given donations to the show if if you want to do that there's a button on my blog that says donate and you can do that through PayPal if you don't like doing that or you don't want to do that or you can't do that don't feel any pressure it's I'm not doing this show to make money I have a job doing you know a freelance career but being able to financially justify spending this time is great for me and great for my family and so I really appreciate those of you who have reached out and done that. Thank you illustration age for syndicating the show and getting this a whole new audience you can find my podcast at illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk you can also find it on my website Andy-j-miller.com/podcast you can find it on iTunes really appreciate all those awesome reviews you guys have been giving me I'm told that's how other people find it that's how the podcast grows so I really appreciate all you guys doing that thank you so much thank you for listening and until next Thursday now here's a note my wife is overdue with the baby we've got our third kid we're basically like Amish now we've got kids going all over the place they're out numbering us and you know what I'm loving it I can't not wait till this I got a baby girl coming I'm super excited and if I don't do a podcast next week that's why but until I get this next one out stay peped up and keep pushing and making stuff thank you guys speak soon so so so hey all one more quick thing earlier this year I rebuilt my website using square spaces 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 calm 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 pep talk for 10% off your first purchase thanks squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. I'm with missile dine the creator of this is actually happening a podcast from wondering 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 one three plus in the