Episode 4/4 of The Journey of The True Fan Series
- How do you find an audience for your work?
- Does it feel like you're sat quietly with your fishing rod, just waiting patiently for something to bite?
- Have you really considered what you're hoping to catch and how best to get its attention?
In this episode we explore the DISCOVERY of the 3 part plan: Discovery, Trust and Sell.
We get into the essential purpose of your website too!
This episode is in partnership with Squarespace!
Head to https://www.squarespace.com/PEPTALK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code PEPTALK
SHOW NOTES:
Co-Writing / Editing: Sophie Miller http://sophiemiller.co
Audio Editing / Sound Design: Conner Jones http://pendingbeautiful.co
Soundtrack / Theme Song: Yoni Wolf / WHY? http://whywithaquestionmark.com
Mentioned:
Seth Godin 'Be Remarkable'
Immanuel Kant
SPONSORS:
Uncommon Goods
Check out Uncommon Goods and use my code PEPTALK for a great deal:
www.uncommongoods.com
Miro
Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly - Miro | The Innovation Workspace
on the creative journey it's easy to get lost but don't worry your liftoff sometimes you just need a creative pep song hey y'all you're listening to the creative pop cart podcast I'm your host Danny Jay Pizza I'm a New York Times best-selling author illustrator and this show is everything that I'm learning about building a thriving creative practice when I learn new stuff I shared on this show because I like creative people and this world we live in is not really set up for them to win I know that from personal experience I just you know I like to share the things that have helped me because I love creativity and I love creative people 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 Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that sinks in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly we talk a lot on this show about the idea of how creative research shows that playing with the problem is essential to innovation now when I think of play I don't think of documents and email so if your team is often working remote you need something more dynamic and collaborative I think that Miro's mind maps and flow charts where team members can edit and play in real time has a lot more capacity for innovation and playing with the problem than traditional ways of collaborating over the Internet whether you work in innovation product design engineering UX agile or IT bring your teams to Miro's revolutionary innovation workspace and be faster from idea to outcome go to Miro.com to find out how that's M-I-R-O dot com how do you get new people to discover your work and find out that you even exist is it just you know podcast the internet to death is it just if you're not making thousands of reels and reels and reels and reels every single day what are you even doing you're leaving it on the table you're leaving so much on the table they say you know is it short form video is it linked in like what where's the hack how do we get in there it just feels so noisy and full I actually don't feel like that's how creative work really spreads or or finds its audience I think it starts mostly with knowing what you're cooking as a creative person now I don't know a ton about cooking I've cooked a few recipes of my day we try to cook as much as possible in our home we kind of have some staples on rotation we kind you know we try to keep it fresh but I wouldn't claim to be some great cook I think that you're growing I grew up in Midwest and we didn't really we weren't like a foodie household but my stepdad who I saw from time to time when I was staying with my mom he was a cook and a chef in the Navy and the rumors around our family were that he cooked on Air Force One or something I don't know if that's true that that's the kind of stuff that gets thrown around and when it's not like your primary household you don't really fact check it I don't know but he was in the Navy they moved around a lot they lived in Florida they lived in West Virginia and I remember one summer we went and stayed with them for a few weeks in West Virginia and it was like in an apartment complex that was near the ocean and we would go hang out with the kids where they would hang out which was like on the dock and we were the new kids on the dock because there was a dock and the kids that's where the kids would hang out but we weren't listening to that we're actually listening to all for one I swear that was kind of the era and kids were talking about that or just to give you context of when this was in the 90s and so we would go like that being a Midwesterner this was like another planet guy going out and sitting on the dock with these kids from the apartment complex I've never seen anything like it this is how they spent their days they had like this these fishing nets that they would like swing above their heads like a lasso and then fling it into the ocean like really far out there and then just reel it in and reel it in they would cast it and reel it in and they would reel in like hundreds of times and they would get like a shrimp in a weird tiny fish and maybe the odd little spider crab so something like that but you know it wasn't a lot but it felt like magic to this Indiana boy and it was pretty incredible now as we're there my step dad drops into conversation here and there like one day we're gonna do a big seafood gumbo and with fresh seafood and it's gonna be amazing if you've never had it it's just gonna be incredible and I was like sure man like yeah yeah go for it like you're gonna be out there for days I've seen people try to catch stuff from the ocean it isn't very easy I don't like you know it's gonna be mostly soup with some a few shrimp at it in there and he talked a big game the whole summer and then as it was winding down he was like okay hey this Sunday we're doing it it's it's gonna be gumbo night and I was like okay man go get out there we're not gonna have anything to eat and then Friday comes around Saturday comes around Saturday comes around and he's like inviting the neighbors hey tomorrow is the big gumbo and I'm like oh my gosh we're not we're not even have any for ourselves to eat why are you inviting them I haven't even seen you out there one day and Sunday comes around and I think he's gonna be out there like the crack of dawn hustling casting and casting and reeling and reeling he ain't doing nothing he just sitting around chilling it gets to be about three o'clock in the afternoon I'm like hey are you like where's the fish like what are we gonna eat he's like I don't worry about it he's like let's go get him and we walk out there to the dock he doesn't even have a net and he bends over on the dock on where one of the big posts is and he reaches down and I see this chain and he pulls up this massive crab basket full of crabs I didn't even know when he ever put it out there he must have been he must have put it out the night before he posts puts him in a bucket goes and makes this massive seafood gumbo I can't even honestly I can't even remember if I tried it I wish I could go back in time now I'm a lot more adventurous with my flavors I wish I could go it sounds amazing I wish I could go test it now but I don't remember if I had it but the neighbors ate we had a huge feast and yeah I was I was completely proven wrong and taken by surprise the reason I tell you this is because this is what it feels like being a creator in the era that we live in there are folks out there that are stood out there cast in the internet to death reeling and reeling and reeling and not coming up with much and then you have those other folks that know what they're cooking and they know how to set up the trap and they can pick this stuff up overnight because the lion's share of the of what's essential to people discovering your work is them sharing it it's word of mouth it's making something so remarkable that people will remark on it as Seth Godin would say that when it comes to how people discover your work that the primary element of that isn't about hustling and putting it in front of people and spamming everybody like mad the primary element is knowing what you're cooking knowing who it's for and setting up the right bait and trap for those people to discover it now every time I mention this phrase I bore myself with it I see everybody turn off when this happens but I have to mention it just please just pry open your eyes like the freaking cartoons and just I'm not it's gonna be brief I'm gonna say it the diffusion of innovation okay sounds fancy I don't fully understand it honestly the diffusion of innovation okay but you've heard about it the early adopters the early innovators the early majority all that kind of thing it's about how ideas spread and I think art spreads in a similar way we're not gonna go through each piece of it the only thing I want to talk about is that the way that ideas spread is that they don't cast out super wide they don't cast and cast and cast and real and real and real like they they go deep they know who it's for the easiest way to make something remarkable that people will remark on and will spread by word of mouth is to know who it's for and make it for those people and tap into what a manual Kant called common sense he was really into this idea that taste our taste what we find to be tasty in terms of not just food but art and beauty was a thing that we shared in common with other people it was a sensitivity that we had in common with other people a common sense and if you know who you're making for if you know what you're trying to catch you can tailor make that trap with that bait and that that invitation to bring in the exact right people and when you do that you don't have to hustle like a maniac it might not be as easy as catching crabs overnight but it but it is much simpler than hustling and casting and reeling on the internet day after day after day and so in this episode we're going to talk about how do you figure out the kind of bait that you need to create for your creative practice to get the kind of results that you're after 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.com/creativepeptalk or andyjpizza.substack.com and i hope to see you at this month's meetup it's holiday shopping time y'all it's time to freak out not because uncommon goods is here to make it easy listen all i did was click the for her section on this site and i instantly saw five things that i could get selfie don't tell her but i'm thinking either the national park sweaters the tea advent calendar there's also just below that little bubble tea kit for my oldest and then i saw one of these you know the retro little viewfinder orange real viewer things but you can make it your own photos okay it might not make sense just you have to go check it out yourself here's a thing i have seriously never seen so many good options for gifts online in one place and unlike lots of other convenient options shopping uncommon goods actually supports small businesses to get 15% off your next gift go to uncommon goods.com/peptalk that's uncommon goods.com/peptalk for 15% off don't miss out on this limited time offer uncommon goods we're all out of the ordinary okay so if you don't know this is part of our journey of the true fan series we've been doing this is episode four of four the last episode and it's all about the second creative journey the first creative journey is making the work discovering what it is developing it into something and like crafting a final statement a final product um whether uh you're a musician making an album or a filmmaker making a film or a writer making a book you're you make this thing but that's only half the journey the second journey is getting it out into the world and if you believe in the thing that you made you owe it to yourself and to that thing that you made to do everything that you can to get it out there and give it a chance don't just kick the baby out the nest and expect it to fly you got to give it some flying lessons you got to put some roller blades on that thing you know what i'm saying and so that's what this whole series is about now this practice is a strategic practice it means starting with the end in mind so we did the weird thing of going backwards the first episode we talked about the three pieces and then the second episode we talked about the third piece then we went to the second piece this is the first piece and the reason is because you need to know what you're after before you know what bait to choose we're going to talk about that in a second but this is the last episode the three pieces are you need people to discover your work develop a relationship like learn to trust it and then third make the sale so we did the sale then we did the trust now we're doing the last piece which is the first piece this is the you know this is the challenge of learning to think strategically it's backwards thinking but it's really powerful if you can if you can master it and you can wrap your head around it it's worth the while so we're talking about discovery how do you get people to discover your work this whole series was lucky enough to be sponsored by square space they made it possible and when we came up with this series we approached square space because we thought they would be really essential they are an essential piece of my second journey of my creative practice whenever I launch anything whenever I relaunch a portfolio or I have a new direction in my creative practice that I'm trying to go to one of the really essential parts is making a website that is tailor made to achieve that thing we talked about this a ton in the previous episode because building trust with your audience is essential and in this day and age I think there's no better place to build trust to show people that you are who you say you are and you do what you say you can do than with a website and I loved what square space made possible with their new fluid engine I could make a site that felt like me felt like my creative work without knowing any code and so if you want to go check that out go check it out antijpizza.com and see what I made with it if you want to go start 10 karen you can do that for free at squarespace.com/peptalk and when you're ready to go live you can get 10% off your first purchase by using the promo code pep talk now we're talking about uh we're pep talking about this process we're in the last piece the discovery phase how do you get new people to find your work um we've already decided what the sales are going to be what like what the end product is going to be we've already decided we've already explored how to build a site that builds trust how do we get people to the site how do we get people to to find you for the first time that's what we're going to talk about today now look yeah i'm making a catching crabs metaphor and and traps and bait and all that stuff and it honestly i just have to say it doesn't it doesn't strike a chord in terms of the humanity of this you're not actually trying to trap art directors and editors and in real them in with bait okay you're not doing that it's just a metaphor and at the end i'm actually going to come back and say something that's a little bit more human about this uh this crab catching but for now let's roll with it because i think there's some interesting um things that we can take away and the most essential piece of this if you don't take anything else away is that the key to getting your work discovered to getting it out there is knowing what you're cooking that's the hardest part and we already did that in episode two we talked about the sales element we talked about what are you trying to sell is it a book to a publisher is it a is it trying to get editorial illustration jobs is it trying to get cast in commercial whatever it is the most difficult part of this process is knowing what you're cooking knowing what you're catching like what are you trying to sell because it tells you who you're trying to sell to and that is the most essential thing because that saves so many resources when it comes to this short form video thing or you know internet marketing and social media and all that part of the reason why it feels so fruitless is because you are casting out wide and you're casting and you're you're catching tons of stuff that you don't actually want and it's wasting tons and tons of resources just throwing out a wide net as i was researching this uh crab catching crab baskets just to see if there was anything interesting one of the things that really surprised me was that these crab baskets one of the things that the fishermen talk about is you need to make sure the door is the right size and you can actually do some alterations to it change how far it opens depending on the crab that you want to catch so it's not just that you know you're catching crabs you have to know are you trying to get a snow crab or are you trying to get a king crab because if you catch the wrong things it will waste resources it will fill the basket with things you don't want and that's most of the effort that gets put online that's most of what comes from it is that you're you're getting tons of people to discover your work that can make no difference to your creative practice whatsoever and you're wasting a bunch of time creating for those people and so the most difficult part of the process is to know what am i selling that tells you who you're selling to that's most of the battle that's the other reason we went backwards is because once you know that then you can build the perfect trap the perfect site the perfect thing that builds trust and then you can get to that last piece which is selecting the proper bait the thing that is tailor-made to the person that you're trying to attract now that's the thing i'm going to leave you with the cta for this episode the call to adventure um how to put this to action is to choose the bait make sure that it is custom tailored to the person that you're trying to attract now if you were trying to catch crabs and you've never done that before your first guess would probably be wrong at least mine was i thought okay what kind of bait you put in these crab baskets first thing i thought was worms because that's just like the cliche thing that you fish with right like i didn't think it was worm but that's just the the first that's the only thing i could think and then i did a little research on mine oh actually they catch it's kind of gross and weird but they catch crabs with chicken crabs love chicken who would have known just uh the whole image is just grossing me out but if you know what you're after you know what to put in that basket you know what's going to bring the the things that you're after into your ecosystem and that's super essential now why is that essential because when you know what you're catching you can figure out what they like to eat if you're trying to attract an art director for the New York Times you need to know what do they consume what kind of media are they looking at that is how they find the people like you if you're trying to get on the radar of event organizers how did they discover new people what are they consuming what do they like to consume because it doesn't make any sense to make a podcast if you're trying to make something in and attract people that don't listen to podcasts i personally made a podcast and have been casting for 10 years because i wanted to do talks and i thought this is a portfolio of talks and i want to go get booked at conferences and events and so it made sense the bait matched the thing i was trying to catch and the same goes for you the the challenge that i'm going to give you the action that i want you to take is to figure out the people you're trying to attract what do they consume it's called the crab diet you've heard the carb diet this is the crab diet you need to figure out what the crab diet is and so how do you do that i can't tell you and it doesn't really matter because i make this podcast not to be tactics you know tactic things are a little bit tacky they're just of the moment they're they're very timely if i told you the latest thing trend on tiktok is to save it in your draft for three days and then post it and then make sure you tag these three all of that stuff will be by the time you hear it will be completely overdone but if you can understand the more timeless principle underneath it then you can apply that to no matter how the market changes the principle underneath it is you need to be getting around the people that know what these folks like to consume know where they're looking you need to go where they're going and understand their behaviors the most essential pieces of information i've ever got in my creative practice have come from being at the events where people like me are and hearing the tip of like oh if you really want to uh break out in this thing you need to be making zines you need to be making sliders on instagram you need to be making uh podcast whatever it is you need to get around those people to figure out what they like to consume so that you can make that kind of stuff you know if you're a musician if i was a musician i wouldn't be making tiktoks i'd be making singles on spotify and i'd be making them collaborative i'd be making lots of songs with other people in the world that i want to connect with and so that's your challenge your challenge today is to figure out who you already know who you're trying to sell to you already know what the product is you need to find out where do they consume stuff what is the bait they like to eat now back to this thing of this crab metaphor feeling a little bit tactless feeling a little bit not not very human i i personally think that the best way to attract the people that can be the true fans that can make or break your creative practice is to not see them as crabs but see them as people and and hopefully they're the people that share a common sense of taste with you that they care about the stuff that you care about you know one of the easiest ways to figure out what those people are consuming is be one of those people you know if they are people like you they have similar consumer behaviors as you they have similar tastes and similar appetites and that's the easiest way to figure that out and that kind of brings me to my last thing which is i told you like this metaphor of catching crabs it works i think there's uh i think um but i also felt like there's an element of it that feels a little bit less human than what i feel like this process can actually look like because i don't think the easiest way is to just figure out what crabs eat and create the perfect trap and you know all that i think it actually looks like being a crab i think it looks like little mermaid i want to be where the crabs are be a crab because uh crabs are cool i thought they were when i was a kid i did think they were and i remember being on the dock and i must have pointed out one of those crabs to another kid there was a spider crab that would like hang out on the rocks and it was far down like below the dock and uh i remember i must have shown him i was like dude look at that and he's like oh man you should come out here early early in the morning and there are hundreds of those crabs and i thought okay i don't know i don't have an alarm here it's summertime uh no one's gonna wake me up to go look at the crabs i don't know hopefully i can just will myself and uh waking up early one day and um it didn't happen for a while and then one day randomly i woke up super early like right when the sun was rising and i thought i'm gonna go run out there and see it and it honestly even thinking about it now it was so magical it feels like a dream like i they're part of me it's like did this happen i think but i do think it did and i i left the house what i don't my parents didn't know um and i ran out to the dock and i looked down and it was this kind of like uh you know that kind of awe fear inspiring feeling where it's gross and amazing at the same time there was just this huge pile of these black spider crabs and it was like freaking me out but also just like super intriguing and uh and that to me is maybe a better image of what it looks like to tap into this is the fear and the awe and the excitement of you know getting to those places where the other crabs are and becoming tapping into not just knowing what they like to eat because you're trying to catch them but because you are them like the easiest way to know what they consume is to tap into what you consume when you are in the right area for your creative work you live and breathe and eat this thing and i think when i find myself venturing too far out when i find myself um seeing others uh seeing people that could hire me seeing people that could buy my stuff as this other thing that i have to trap and bait and uh and reel in it usually means i've gone too far outside of myself and my own consumer habits and my own um tastes and preferences but if i can be driven by the interest and the passion that will get me up out of bed early in the morning just because i'm excited about it uh that's the kind of energy that leads to making the kind of work that people remark on and talk about and share and i actually um don't have to go to tremendous efforting to get myself to go to those places where those people are and get that insight and tap into that it's not just it's not a chore it is a um it's a gift it's it's an experience it's something i desperately want to do and so that's the last thing that i'll leave you with is that if it doesn't feel like that um then it might not be the right direction and you might need to go back to the start and say what do i want this sale sale to be who are the people that i want to have a trusting mutual relationship with and then i can start figuring out where i need to be where those people are consuming what they consume because um that's where i want to consume stuff that's where i want to be participating um and so the metaphor has gotten ridiculous and messy and weird but i hope that um if you take anything away at all that you take away that leading with a common sense of taste a common sense of passion and connecting with people that are excited about the same stuff that you're excited about is the best strategic move that you can make in the journey of the sure fan real quick i just want to say we every month last monday of the month we meet up with the supporters of the show people who support the show on patreon and the people that support uh via sub stack we do a creative pet rally on zoom and we talk about concepts from the show so we're going to be talking about uh this series and we're going to explore questions together and we're going to talk about how you can apply it to your specific creative practice one of the things that i have experienced over the ten years of making this is um a lot of people that listen to it they uh they like the concepts they get something out of applying them but there are certain ways in which it's just really difficult to know how to apply it specifically to their particular scenario and so that's what we try to do in those little meetups uh and so any level any level of support that you do on patreon and sub stack you can join those um we try to move them around a little bit every other one is at noon eastern time and then um then we try to flip it between a morning one for me and a night one for me or or an afternoon one for me we try to move it around so that people in different time zones can catch them when they can um but it we've been doing it every month this year and i feel like we've really found our groove uh exploring topics from the show and the last meeting was just a blast we're doing another one today this afternoon um not when you're hearing this but when i'm recording this and uh yeah we're going to do them we do them every single month so go check it out patreon.com/creativepeptalk and if you want to do or you can do it on sub stack anyjpizza.substack.com uh hope to see you there massive thanks got to thank my uh friends and team for making this with me uh Sophie Miller who is the co-producer and chief content editor of this thing um she puts a lot of hours in helping us make this the best thing we can make Connor Jones uh the legend from pending beautiful who is the auto audio video editor and sound designer and to yoni wolf of the band Y for the theme music and all the other soundtrack we just are so blessed and honored to have these tunes that i'm such a huge fan of massive thanks of course to you for listening i hope you got some good pep out of it and until we speak again stay peped up i did consider Barney a friend and he's still a friend to this day the idea of Barney is something that i want to live up to you know i love you you love me i call it the purple mantra Barney taught me how to be a man generation Barney a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us listen wherever you get your podcast 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 jpz.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 pep talk for 10% off your first purchase thanks square space for supporting the show and for supporting creative people [ Silence ]
Episode 4/4 of The Journey of The True Fan Series
How do you find an audience for your work?
Does it feel like you're sat quietly with your fishing rod, just waiting patiently for something to bite?
Have you really considered what you're hoping to catch and how best to get its attention?
In this episode we explore the DISCOVERY of the 3 part plan: Discovery, Trust and Sell.
We get into the essential purpose of your website too!
This episode is in partnership with Squarespace!
Head to https://www.squarespace.com/PEPTALK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code PEPTALK
SHOW NOTES:
Co-Writing / Editing: Sophie Miller http://sophiemiller.co
Audio Editing / Sound Design: Conner Jones http://pendingbeautiful.co
Soundtrack / Theme Song: Yoni Wolf / WHY? http://whywithaquestionmark.com
Mentioned:
Seth Godin 'Be Remarkable'
Immanuel Kant
SPONSORS:
Uncommon Goods
Check out Uncommon Goods and use my code PEPTALK for a great deal:
www.uncommongoods.com
Miro
Miro is a collaborative virtual workspace that syncs in real time for you and your team so that you can innovate an idea into an outcome seamlessly - Miro | The Innovation Workspace
