Creative Pep Talk
027 - How to Stand Out
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. Hello, hello, you hear that music and you know that it's time for the creative Peptalk podcast and I am the person who does the podcast, Andy J. Miller, graphic illustrator, and I started this podcast to help other creative people find their thing and I can pep them up frankly to get people excited about what they're doing, you know, I find it that as an artist, I'm the type of artist that, you know, I find myself getting down often or getting fed up with the process or getting depressed about, you know, my work or whatever and you know, so I have my own ways of getting Pept up and I just thought I would put something out there in the world into my industry I love to help have other people out and kind of pass that on and remember also you can find this online at www.illistrationage.com/creativepeptalk awesome illustration website go check that out. So today what we're talking about is how to stand out. Now you know what, I'll tell you what's really been on my mind is this idea of pessimism. You know, I feel like every industry I think the deeper you go into any industry I think you're going to find that pessimism that's lurking around every corner and the longer you're in an industry the more in tune you are with pessimism I think there's all kinds of reasons. I think one of the reasons is that things change and whenever things change you gain something but you also lose something and I think, you know, I think in some ways the pessimism is just a grieving process for things that you lose but I think the other side of it is is that people get, you know, when I hear people getting aggravated about how many artists are out there, how busy the internet is, how things change, how you can't get this price anymore, all that stuff. When I hear people say that, I feel like they're communicating like I'm not brave enough for the challenge, like I'm not, and sometimes there's things that need to be complained about, that need fixed, that need to be talked about, but I feel like that instead of looking out and thinking it's totally, it looks terrible out there, I'm not going out there. Instead of thinking that, thinking this is a challenge that I am up for and I think one of the biggest challenges if you're a commercial artist of any kind is standing out from the crowd, you know, sometimes if you go on to like Pinterest or something or whatever and you look out into the abyss of the internet and you just get a sense for how much art and design and illustration is out there, it can be really overwhelming and it can make you want to give up especially when there's so much good stuff out there. And I think that instead of wanting to give up, seeing as how do I stand out from the crowd, how do I make my voice heard among all of this shouting? You know, I did something I hate doing actually last semester with my students, I made them do like one of these, you know, I don't know, experiment, like thought experiment things that I hate when public speakers do stuff like this, but I just, I felt like it was, there's something to it, okay? And so I had all of them shout at the top of their lungs and then I much quieter than anybody else went, they were all saying shouting and I did a like much quieter than anybody else, but my voice was the voice that was heard and it was just the point of, you know, you've got to do something different, you can't just get noisier, you can't just get, you know, I think when we want to stand out or we're trying to stake our claim in the industry, often, you know, the laziest thing to do is just to shout louder, it's just to make more stuff, it's just, you know, tweet about your work more, you know, send more emails out or just, just pure like, you know, it's that hard work versus working smarter, you know. My brother was a troublemaker, my older brother in high school, and when we were in these assemblies, everybody would be clapping or shouting or whatever, you know, and he would make some really weird, obnoxious noise and to, even though you could barely hear anything throughout the whole gym, you could hear him making this stupid noise. And I just thought like, standing out in your industry is so much about being smart and clever and being up for the challenge, and so that is what today is about. You know, I think that for me, this looked like finding things that I could do that would differentiate me from the competition, and so I'm just going to give you seven of those things today, and hopefully some of them will resonate with you and help you to stick out from your competition. Alright, number one, get personal. You know, I think so often, we want to believe, right, we want to believe that art or whatever industry is about pure merit, and although I don't think you can truly have a successful career without being really good at what you do, I think it's not a meritocracy. It's not purely based on how good your work is. You know, I think so much about art and illustration design is about relationships. Are you fun to work with? Do you seem like a human? Do you seem like a person? You know, I feel like business is often just about relationships, and I think so often, you know, I'm reminded of this talk by Frank Chimero Chimero. I can never remember. I think even by his own admission, he says, people in his family say his last name differently, but he has a talk called the shape of design, and he goes into this idea that he says that being squishy is actually better than being slick, and that I think even on the internet, he made this point of like, everything is so slick, like everybody's just trying to make a portfolio website that just looks a little bit nicer than the next person, or everybody's trying to make that work that just looks a little bit better drawn or a little bit like slicker or nicer, whatever, and I think that that's actually just like that shouting match where you just try to get louder, and I think the best thing that you can do is be squishy, be human, get personal with what you do. You know, I think one of the things that really helped me was looking deep within what are my interests, what are my passions, and start making work about that. So I started making work about dreams and science, and I loved, you know, things that were anthropomorphized, that were like an animal objects and foliage, and okay, foliage, you know, plants and stuff, drawing plants, that's not the most original thing, but when you mix it with the other things, and we're going to get to that a little bit later about contradictions or mixing, mashing up different things, it became more original. And I heard this quote on James Victoria did a lecture for the do lectures, you can go check that out online, and it's actually he quotes James Joyce the writer, and he says that in the particular lies the universal, and I think that is so true, and I think it's like the idea is that in the details, if you get really, really specific about your personal details, there's going to be something in that specificity that's actually universal, and I think one of the best examples I've ever heard of this is my favorite album probably from last year was this album called Benji by Sun Kilmoon, and I warn you before you listen to it, it's pretty raw, and it's really sad, so be warned, but what is amazing about that album is that it is so chock full of random specific details like his dad's girlfriend getting mad because his dad flirts with the girls, and he says girls, the girls that live or that work at Panera Bread, or he talks about how his sister is now dating a deer hunter and she's getting used to venison, and I just, and honestly, it's like you would think that that would not work, like getting so specific that you're talking about KFC and Panera Bread and sports bars and all that, but it's like folk music, and it is so powerful, it is one of the most powerful albums I've ever heard, and it's not, and it's funny too because of the specificity, but in those details you just, it resonates, like you're like, yes, I know this story, like I, even though it's different, like my dad doesn't have the same experience, I don't have the same experience with my dad that he did, but he gets these, he tells these really specific stories about death and life and relationships, and within that specificness there's these deep emotions and relationships that you can relate to, and so I feel like, often, we're so worried about connecting with the masses that we forget that we need to just be ourselves and if you trust, even if those, even those, especially your obscure interests, especially the things that make you really unique, I think pushing that, like I talk a lot about boys to men, I listen to boys to men a little bit, I grew up listening to them, you know, I went through a period of time in college where I've rejected my 90s R&B roots and I, you know, they might not have the most merit as music, but, you know, I started talking about that and I put it in my little talk I did in an icon, partly because I just thought, what other illustrator listens to boys to men, right, and as, even if it's a goofy thing and it was more like a confession than a something I was like proud of, I felt like this is just something about me and I just trust being honest with who I am and so, yeah, I think it's important to get personal and in that personal details you're going to find ways of connecting and the other thing that happens is that as you like, like that boys to men thing, that makes me stand out as someone, even in a stupid way, that makes me stand out from other illustrators and I think it's just like that stupid noise that cuts through all the yelling, like that's what that is, that's what the idea of that is and so I think it's important to get personal and I think the other thing that happens from that is if there's ever an editorial illustration about boys to men, they're coming to me because it's all over online and if they're, you know, I've had a ton of people come to me for illustrations about dreams, you know, I made a dream journal with Chronicle Books, I talk about my dreams all the time, it's something that's a really big influence on me and I've had people come to me with work about dreams, okay, so number one was get personal, number two was look for contradictions, now I think one of the things that you find when you start talking to students or young people are people that are trying to work through finding their voice, finding their thing in creativity, finding their, you know, sword in the stone of creativity, they're one thing that they want to do, one of the biggest things that you run into is this idea that they have this eclectic taste, they have this, you know, all these seemingly contradictory things about them, you know, I feel like, I feel like actually that it's within these seemingly contradictory things that we find that are uniqueness and our creative voice, you know, I think it's like if you're super into, you know, I was talking to my, one of my best buddies, Andrew Nyer recently and he was, you know, I pointed out that the fact that he has this taste for kind of stupid comedy that I like to, you know, we grew up on like Dumb and Dumber and Asfinter and all that stuff and we have that taste for that but then he also loves that modernism, minimalism, Massimo, Vignelli, like design and actually his products have that combination of like this, the stupid and the clever like mixed together and I think that that's what makes his products unique and that's what makes him stand out from the crowd and so I think that it's those places where you feel like I don't know how to marry these two tastes or interests or parts of myself, those are the places where you need to force combinations and for me, what that looked like was I've got this interest in like, I always go back to this, it's just the most obvious one which is Fraggles, I got this interest in Fraggle Rock, right, this thing about that that speaks to me and on the other side I have this interest of like Alexander Gerard, like mid-century illustration that's like graphic and clean and on the other side I'm interested in these like stories that are narrative and dreamy and weird and kind of like surreal and one of the things that really helped me was like going into a piece of work, like personal work where I'm going to intentionally take these two things that seem clashing in contradictory in a lot of ways and I'm going to force them down on a page together and there was so much discovery in that moment when I took, when I told my brain to stop thinking that these things were completely disconnected and I'm going to connect them, I'm going to make them connect, you know some people believe that creativity is literally just the art of taking two unrelated things and smashing them together and I think if you look out into the world you know inventions are often, they're not things that came from nowhere, it's like the iPhone or the iPad, like those aren't things that came from nowhere, that was about taking a phone and then computer technology and mashing them together and the iPad which sold crazy amount of products was literally taking the iPhone and the laptop and just mashing them together and I even look at a sticky note, it's like taking glue and a little piece of paper and just mashing them together and I think that it's in that same way that one of the best ways to stick out is to take these things that are seemingly unrelated, even that duality of your different parts of your personality, the parts that seem like they don't go together and finding the place in between and why because when you connect things that seem unrelated there's like a delight in a surprise that happens from that and that cuts through all the noise, alright, so that's number two, look for the contradictions, don't run away from the contradictions, mash up the contradictions in your life and in your personality and your taste, number three, bring something from another industry, this podcast actually is that exactly, it's one of the ways that I wanted to like set myself apart, I listen to an insane amount of podcasts, I'm so interested in them, I've listened to a crazy amount of talks online and in person, I love lectures, I love podcasts, I love talk radio, I just love that stuff and I just, you know, I've soaked up so much of that from marketing industry, from, you know, spiritual venues and writers and all that stuff and I've soaked up all of that and I love that stuff so much and I noticed really that there wasn't really any podcast and I'm, you know, I was crazy for podcasts, any podcasts delivering the type of information that is common in a lot of other industries and so I took that and I brought it over, the first time I was kind of introduced to this concept was through a guy called Nate Williams, if you want to check his workout, I think it's in the number eight W.com and he's an illustrator who's always been really helpful to me, at some point he let me call him on the phone and we talked a bunch a few years ago and we were just talking about things that, I was asking him for feedback to give me feedback on my portfolio and the work that I was doing and he said that one thing you need to do is like figure out things that nobody's doing in our industry that are common in other industries, you know, whether it's like if nobody's going to trade shows, go to a trade show, bring, you know, find a trade show that what you do is relevant but nobody from your industry is showing up, you know, and that's kind of like something that I've been trying to recently do with like kids books as I saw that a lot of my peers weren't at the time at least going to kids books and I felt like I could take an original thing to a different industry so it works vice versa, you know, I think a good example of this, there's a guy called John Maynard Keynes I think his name is and he was an economist and economist traditionally dealt with money, the world of money and he thought we could take these same principles of, you know, studying the incentives and how money works and we could apply them to everything else in life and I think originally I think when you step out there and it's uncomfortable because once you, if you stand out from the crowd it's not comfortable, we're going to get to that in a minute but when you do that it's not comfortable, it's often not, you know, received well by everybody, you know, there's downsides to it, I feel like making this podcast, there's all kinds of downsides to me saying I'm going to, you know, I'm going to spread some knowledge throughout the creative world, you know, there's all kinds of downsides for me, for that but there's all kinds of awesome things by leaping out into an area that's unknown and so this John Maynard Keynes, he stepped out of the traditional world of economics and he founded the idea of macroeconomics and if you've heard of that book Freakonomics that's all macroeconomics, it's basically the study of incentives outside of the money world and actually those studies have led to big changes in the world for good and it was taking that thing from one industry and moving it to another industry and I think that that's so good, so one of the things that you can do is take notice to the other industries that you're a part of or that you're interested in or you know something about maybe you, maybe you're someone who came from a different industry, you know, there's a lot of people that later on go into commercial art that started a career in finance or accounting or marketing or engineering or whatever, take the lessons that you learned from those places, take them for wherever you can get them and bring them here, bring them into our industry, what is it about our industry that's, what are we missing, you know, that's, I think there's, that's a really great way to stand out from the crowd, all right. Number four, develop a new skill or process, so when I was in college and actually before college, you know, I've always like drawn line drawing and when I was in college early on I was doing these really busy line drawings and, you know, patterns and just kind of mindless like drawing of lines and shapes and patterns and all that and, I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have and I have applied this to my creative practice too which means if you want professional results you need to present online like a pro and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product, so go check it out squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself and when you're ready to launch your site use promo code PEPTALK all one word all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I've 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.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. You know, I didn't really actually know anybody else that was doing that. You know, there was maybe just a few people and they were just kind of random. And I was doing that. I was so obsessed with it. And then closer to when I graduated, I started noticing that it was this line drawing pattern stuff was starting to grow. And actually, there were some books coming out. And when I got those books and I was like kind of so pumped like this thing that I was into doing, there was starting to be a culture around it. And it was like really fun and exciting and I was really passionate about it and I loved doing the work. But I would say like maybe two years after college, I just felt like I looked around and it was just becoming this ubiquitous thing. It was becoming this oversaturated thing. And I was looking at my peers and I was just thinking like, I could draw busier. I could draw crazier. I could draw better. I could do all of the obvious things you could do. Just like that, it's obvious. You could try to just shout louder. But I ran across some art that was created with the Wacom tablet. And at the time, I didn't feel like I had any peers that were creating on that. There were tons of illustrators that were. But in my own little part of the industry, I didn't feel like anybody else was using that tool that I knew of. And so I decided I bought one and I made a clean switch. And I don't know if I necessarily recommend that because I went through an ugly phase with that work. There was still some really cool stuff that happened but it was kind of, it was a little bit rough early on and I made that switch and I feel like and I could be wrong. But I felt like people were asking me questions like, how was I making the work that I was making and what was I doing differently. And I feel like for a period of time at least, that learning that new skill and having a completely new process and I was approaching my work in some ways, very similar way, really helped me stand out and I felt like it gave my career a big boost. And so I think sometimes it's about looking around and developing a skill that you see none of your peers developing reminds me of Shaq. You know, Shaq at some point in his career, you know, he was dominant down in paint. That's something that sports people say, I think. And he was dominant down there, getting rebounds, smashing people, layups, all that jazz and instead of just working on that stuff and trying to get better and better and yell louder, he at some point started getting obsessed with practicing his free throws until he got really, really good at that. That was a way that he expanded his thing and he got better than his competition by focusing on developing a new skill. You know, I think about this guy, Kyle Webster, I was lucky enough to meet him at Icon last year, super nice guy and you probably know him. He makes Photoshop brushes and he's also an illustrator. I think most people first find out about him through his skill of developing really good Photoshop brushes. But I also think that that in turn, just by getting his name out there from that differentiation, he gets a lot of illustration work by people knowing about him for his brushes. And I think that that's a really good example of developing an auxiliary on the side skill or a new skill or a new process that you don't other see other people doing instead of just trying to get better at your process, trying something completely different. All right. Number five. So number four was develop a new skill or process. Number five is walk a straight line. Walk a straight line. People get blown away by someone walking a straight line for a long period of time. It just doesn't happen, like someone committing to something and digging deep, people take notice of that, even the most ordinary thing in the world. If you commit to it and you do it hard enough and long enough, people will watch and I'm reminded of Forrest Gump, this stupid idea of he just starts running and he keeps running and he's running and he just never stops running. He runs back from coast to coast or whatever and he gets the whole nation's attention from just running. Why? Because he just ran in a straight line long enough. I have a friend. I've talked about him on the podcast that I had in the UK, one of my favorite people. He gives great man hugs. His name is Jeff Bowman. When we graduated, I think we both ran into different problems as you do, I think, when you graduate and we're both trying to figure out how do we differentiate what we do, how do we reinvent what we do, how do we just breathe new life and find our path. One of the things he did is he started to focus on his love for the outdoors and nature. I didn't cognitively think this, but I remember thinking like, "Yeah, nature's awesome. Like I love nature. I like drawing plants and animals and stuff like that. Like I'm totally into nature too. Yeah, that's cool. I'm glad you're in nature, man. That's cool." And it didn't really strike me as this super original thing at the time because I liked it. Everybody liked it, you know? But then he would do these long trips with backpacking and climbing mountains and all this stuff. And I was like, "Man, no, Jeff really likes this. Like this is really a thing." And next thing I know, he was living in Norway for a year, you know, doing snowboarding and living in the cabin and, you know, being obsessed with this nature and then eventually going on retreats about nature and then making a book for Gestaltin, a published book called the, what's it called, The Outsiders, about outside and new outdoor living. And like, he made a whole giant book about it. And he's just kept walking that line. He's making another book. He's still doing trips. He's still doing workshops. He's still drawing and making art about nature that he loves. And loving nature is one thing. Loving to go on a run, that's one thing. It's not something people pay attention to because it's not that uncommon. But once you run far enough, long enough in the straight line, people start to take notice of that. So for me, right, I created a daily drawing project called Nod and, you know, notes on Tumblr may be the most meaningless thing in the world. I don't know, probably, but just for the sake of the argument, let's just talk about that for a minute. I started drawing these daily characters every weekday and I was going to do it for a year. And I'd post them onto, you can find them on my website if you want to see that. So I started posting these characters every weekday for a year. And I would name them and I'd write a little thing about them. I went back to look through it so I could prove a point to my students. You know, I did it so I could differentiate myself because it was a passion. It was something I knew I could commit to because I loved it. I really, really loved this idea of Nod, this idea of this world with these thousands of characters that are all different, but also really simple. I love this idea of like, how can I take, just change little things about these simple shapes and give them life and differentiate them, like, how much can I, how little can I change and make an original character from character to character? I loved all these ideas and I felt like I could play with this idea for the rest of my life and I'm still playing with this idea. But I started off, right, and I'm drawing these pictures and I would say, you know, the first image, first character, I got like 17 notes. The next one I got two, the next one I got zero, then one, then three, then zero, zero, four, seven, zero, fifteen, zero, two, zero, and this keeps going and going and going. So that's April and then in February, the next year, it finally gets picked up on Tumblr Radar. Funnily enough, one of my least favorite characters, of course it always happens like that. One of my least favorite characters gets picked up by Tumblr Radar and gets, and I get 5,000 notes on that stupid character. His name was Squunky. You can go look him up. And I get a surge of followers and I get a bunch more interaction and I don't know exactly what came from that. But I did get noticed, the project got noticed, it stood out from the crowd. Why? Because I just kept walking that straight line. I'm not even sure it was about quantity, it was just about commitment and I think it's one of those things where if you just like, stop in your tracks and you ask yourself what do I have in common with my six year old self? Whatever I'm passionate about now that I was passionate about when I was six years old, I'm probably going to be passionate about it in six months. Start obviously walking that direction with your work. It's an investment and it takes time. When you leave your town running as gump, people are probably not going to notice. Maybe one or two people noticed. When you get to the other side of the country and you're still running, people will start to pay attention. And I don't think it's longevity, I think it's commitment and intention of walking in a straight line. That's number five, walking a straight line. Number six, number six, fight the fear. I think that it's proven that as far as evolution is concerned, deep within our DNA we're supposed to fit in with the tribe, with the pack, with the species, we're supposed to fit in. We're supposed to not be different, we're not supposed to, and I think it causes us to have this part of our brain, the little animal part of our brain, the monkey part of our brain that says don't stick out from the pack. Because if you do that, you're going to be the one that gets attacked by a saber tooth tiger. If you do that, you're going to be ridiculed and ostracized. And I think that we still have that thing in us that says do not stand out from the pack. So even your best students, if you're a teacher, even your best students when you say who wants to present their presentation first, even your best students look away. Yeah, there's exceptions to the rules, but almost everybody looks down and tries not to make eye contact with the teacher, right? Don't stand out. And I feel like, if you're feeling that fear, that that is the number one sign that you need to go do it. I feel like with this podcast, it's one of my favorite things I've ever done. It's one of the best ways that I've ever differentiated what I do. But it was really, really scary. It still is scary. Just to know that I've got this set of recordings out there that people can throw on any time they'd like and ridicule me if they want to, you know? And I think that it's, I feel like that this is, this fear of standing out is one of the things that holds you back the most. So if there's something in the back of your mind that you've been thinking about doing, but you're unsure because nobody else is doing it, you need to go ahead and do it. And some people won't like it, but some people really will and they'll notice it. Doing something that nobody else doing is very scary, but it's the only way that you get noticed. It's the only way that you stand out from the crowd. Drawing insanely better than the next guy is really easy as far as emotions go. Like, it doesn't take any courage to draw better than the next guy. It does take courage to draw something totally different than what all the rest of your peers are doing. So when you feel that fear instead of running the opposite way and running back to the crowd and getting back into that pack mentality, when you feel that fear, follow it and push it and keep going. All right. So number six is fight the fear. Number seven, the last one is be the best. Now that sounds like yell louder, but what I mean is be the best at something tiny, something tiny. Define what that thing you think you could be better at than anybody else in the world. Find that thing for me. What I'm trying to be the best at is taking simple shapes and making them feel like so much more. I'm so that comes from this deep interest in the parts of life that make you feel like there's more to life than what you see. And I love this idea that I could take a circle and two rudimentary legs and arms and eyes and some big chunky eyebrows and make it feel like something you've never seen before and make it feel like it's alive. I love that. I love that idea. And you know what? Maybe I'm not the best in the world. Maybe I never will be, but I'll settle for the Kobe Bryant of making circles with legs that feel like they're people. I feel like they're alive. I'll settle for Kobe Bryant. Kyle Webster is the best at making Photoshop brushes. That's it. In some ways, that's a big thing, but in the scheme of history, it's not the most giant thing. And I'm not undermining it. I'm just saying that's something he could be the best in the world about. You know, one of the people that we always talk about, you hear about her all the time and she's really super great is Jessica Hish. And she is the best at making pretty kind of traditionally feminine vector lettering. And that's the little thing that she's carved out. I think Aaron Draplin, he's the best at making that industrial fat, chunky logos. What is it that you could be the best at and then pour all the time and energy? I feel like so much about standing out is about committing to something. Like people notice when someone just keeps going. And I think I said this at the last bit of the last podcast, which was at some point in my career early on when I was struggling and I felt like people were, you know, trying to keep me out and all that stuff. There's something in me that said, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to keep doing this. And I think that more than anything else is like a guarantee of getting noticed. It's just saying deep within you, you're going to keep going and find things that you're willing to commit to because people start paying attention when it's not just talk, when it's not just, you know, the daily internet chatter of look at he threw this thing up and that no, look at this kind of cool image. That goes away so quickly. And it's just adding to the chatter and the noise. But if someone just takes a walk and they go deliberately down that path for long enough, people are going to pay attention. I think Lisa Condon is such a good example of someone who is so good at committing to something and walking that straight line and being the best at one small thing until people take notice. You know, lots of people put up quotes, hand-drawn quotes of famous, you know, famous, inspiring quotes. But she did it for a year and she did it passionately and she did it authentically and you believed it. And it eventually turns into a book, of course, because she's so good at committing that she can turn out these awesome books over and over. It makes me think of Gordon Ramsay, right? Gordon Ramsay, one of my favorite all-time shows was Kitchen Nightmares, the British edition, because the American was a little bit too cheesy for me and too dramatic. But he'd always go in there and he'd find these restaurants and their menus were 15 pages long and they were giant books of menus. And he'd say, he'd try everything on the menu and he'd say, this dish right here, this dish is amazing. This could be the best dish in the world of this one little thing. Get rid of everything else and make your restaurant about this dish and everything supporting this. Have a one-page menu. And I think as a creative, that's what you got to think of. How do you have your one-page menu? What's your shining star thing? What can you do better than anybody? And if you can't do it better than anybody now, what's the thing that your skills are naturally gifted to push towards and you think you have the potential to be better at that thing than anybody else? Okay. So, I'm just going to go over this real quick, just a little recap. We had number one, get personal that James Joyce quote in the particular lies the universal. Get personal with your work. Number two, look for the contradictions. Mine are Fraggles and Alexander Gerard. Instead of running away from that eclectic taste, mash it up. Do the girl talk thing, right? Number three, bring something from another industry, something that works in another industry and bring it to yours, something that is not currently going on. Oh, the holidays are here. You got to find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister Cassieree and her kids, Jetson and Jeddon, Jurfree and Jaggab and another two Jay kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus there's the ethical thing, you 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. Don't miss out on this limited time offer, uncommon goods. We're all out of the ordinary. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices. Plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points so you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. Number four, develop a new skill or process. Instead of just trying to get better at the process that everybody else is doing, make up a new process. Bring a new tool into the works. Do something that nobody else is doing. Learn a skill that none of your peers have. Number five, walk a straight line. Do the gum thing. Just pick a direction that you feel passionate about and push towards it. Number six, fight the fear. Standing out from the pack is scary, but it's the only way that you end up getting notice and standing out. Standing out. It's what you want, but at the same time, it's not what you want. It's hard. Number seven, the last one is be the best at something tiny. What's the tiny thing that you think you could do better than anyone and commit to being the best at that thing. All right, that's it. That's another podcast. I super love doing it. I'm really glad that you guys are all really appreciating it and sending me all these messages and all this and I'm sorry I'm not super fast at getting back at that. I'm kind of overwhelmed by sheer amount, but I love hearing from you. I love hearing you guys' stories. Yeah, I really appreciate it. And you know what? When it comes to standing out, I feel like I think about these artists like Nick Drake, who was this amazing musician. And in his own time, people didn't really recognize his work. And sometimes it makes me really sad to think that there are illustrators out there who are not reaching their potential because they're not standing out from the crowd. They're not getting noticed even though their work is amazing and even though they're super talented. And so I think whether you like it or not, this industry is not completely based on merit and you've got to go out there and find ways of differentiating yourself from other people. Okay, so I really appreciate it. All those people that have bought the poster that do not be afraid poster on my website. I really appreciate it. I've had some people actually contact me and ask for a way to donate to the podcast and donate to me doing this. And if you're one of those people, you can go to my website and click my blog link or the podcast link. And on the sidebar, there's a donate button. You can donate with PayPal or credit card or whatever. That's not you. Don't worry about it. But for me, it's like I spend about half a day or more doing this a week and I never started it to make money. But I'm having to juggle more things and I'm having to figure out how to make it work. And I want to keep doing it. I'm going to keep doing it regardless of if I can justify it financially. But if I can, that just makes it an easier decision for me. I'd like to actually grow the show, spend more time writing and figuring out ways of making it better. But right now, I'm kind of at my max. So I really appreciate those who have reached out and said that they want to figure out ways of supporting the show that maybe aren't into the poster. And I'm thinking of different ways of helping to justify it financially. So that's you. Go check it out if it's not you. And that's not your thing. Don't worry about it. I really appreciate all this. If you want to find the show, you can find it on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. That's a great website for finding inspiration for illustration and go check that out. I think that's about it. I'm trying to do these every Thursday. So you can try to look out for them every Thursday. And if you, oh, I got one more thing. So I created a survey for the podcast just to get some feedback about general stuff. There's some really stupid questions in there too. It's only seven questions long. If you wouldn't mind and you want to do that, go to my website, go to the blog. The latest post has a link to the survey. You can go answer some questions and help me make the show better and more effective for you. All right, until next week, stay peped. Keep making awesome stuff. I will talk to you then. Goodbye. 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 Missldine, the creator of This Is Actually Happening, a podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events told by the people who lift them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Follow This Is Actually Happening, on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the