Transcript
Andy J. Pizza (0:03)
On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. Hey, you're listening to Creative Pep Talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey. I'm your host, Andy J. Pizza. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator. And this show is is everything I'm learning about building and maintaining a thriving creative practice. This is chapter one in a new series we're doing called Journey of the True Fan. Have you ever made something that you love so much, but when you put it out into the world, it just totally fell flat? Like, maybe it's even worse than that. Like, you made something you knew was your best work. You knew that on a creative level this was a breakthrough. You knew that it should generate more positive momentum in your creative practice than the things that you made before because it was better. But when you finally put it out there, when you finally let the cat out of the bag, even though you know this stuff is the good stuff, and you maybe even also know that you shouldn't get your hopes up, you have built up this launch or this post or this moment so much in your mind as this thing that is going to change everything and mark this totally new chapter in your creative practice. But when you let it out, the world is crickets. It's just nothing. This is an awful experience. It's happened to me plenty of times. But it's even riskier than just some hurt feelings or unmet expectations. Because if you do this enough times, you are risking going to a place where you never feel like sharing any of your work ever again. And you will feel like, man, what's the point if it doesn't matter how good the work is anyway? If that doesn't mean that more people will see it or more people will embrace it or enjoy it, if it's just going to get squashed under the noise of everything, why bother? Some artists, when they experience this enough times, turn to this kind of detachment from the result. And actually, there's a degree in which when you're making the work, detaching yourself from the result is exactly what you need to do. I think. I think you need to go all into connecting to yourself and enjoying the process. But I think too much detachment from the result means you won't put in the work in order to give this thing a chance, in order to do justice to this work by doing everything you can to get it out there. And this detachment to the result is a popular idea because it just feels good. It feels like, well, it's not up to me who likes it. It's not up to me if this thing is a success. That's somebody else's job or that's the universe's decision. And it feels kind of like how the universe should be. Like, forget about how people are going to respond to the work. That's not your job. Your job is to make the art. Like, what artist doesn't want to hear this? Like, we want to. I want to just focus on making the art. Like, that's the. That's why I got into this. That's the fun part. It's the part that comes natural to me. Meanwhile, though, the artists that are cleaning up, the artists that are having a lot of success with their work, refuse to hatch those creative babies and just push them out of the nest and hope for the best. They care too much about this thing that they've made. It's too important to them. They've invested too much to not slowly and purposefully invest in the work so that it has the best possible odds of taking off or getting to people that are going to enjoy it. And they do this because they know what the work is capable of. And so what's the difference between the artists that just kick the thing out of the nest and hope for the best and the artists that put in the time? The difference is that these artists that. That put in the time are able to batch their efforts into different seasons. These artists recognize that what got them to making the album isn't the same energy. It's not the same thing that's going to get it out into the world that they're going to have to access a totally different side of themselves. These artists know that once you create something that, yes, that is the creative part is your hero's journey, but after that, that's over. Your creative hero's journey ends when you finished making the work. But that doesn't mean that the work is over. This is where the art ends and the work starts. And it's not time to focus on your own journey, but it's time to tend to another creative traveler's journey. And it's someone you love and honor and respect. Who is it? It is your potential true fans. These are. These are the people that are going to benefit, that are going to connect with, that are going to feel seen by the work that you're making. And creatives that master this side of the practice don't just have more success posting their work or launching their books or getting their albums out there better. This skill is essential to the overall health and longevity of the work, to whether you feel that it matters the next time you go back to create something, to give it your all, to make it as good as you can make it. Because if you can, if you have the assurance that you are going to do everything you can to get it out there, it's going to help you feel more confident that spending the time making the thing is worth it. And so we're doing a series called the Journey of the True Fan. It is about that second journey. It's about when you've got the work done. You've developed a style, you've developed your stories, you have put yourself into the craft and into the portfolio. Whatever it is you make, then comes the time to get it out into the world. Yes, you could think of it as marketing, you could think of it as related to social media, but it goes way beyond that. And the principles we're going to talk about in this series are much more evergreen than any social media strategy. They are the key pieces to this journey and making sure that you have an ability to connect with the people that want to connect with the work that you're making. 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 pep talk 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 syncs 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. So the creative process or the creative journey is something that we're all probably familiar with. On some level, someone is called to make some art and they search the world and the world within themselves for something inspiring. Then they grind in that kind of movie montage to polish that thing and kind of figure out what it is that they found. And then they craft their piece or hopefully their masterpiece. We've got countless biographies and biopics and rockumentaries about that story. We love that story. I love that story. It's romantic, it's admirable, it's epic. It's why I wanted to get into a creative journey in the first place and a creative practice in the first place. But in my experience, it is an incomplete journey. This notion that slaving away in obscurity is all you ever need to do until you hit that big break is sometimes the same thing that prevents any significant breakthrough from ever taking place. Instead, if you just hide away, making your work, working on your work all the time, you end up overworking things. You tinker and you toil over the same details again and again. And then when you finally launch and put it out there, you put out this perfectly crafted masterpiece, it's often two crickets. And then you go back to the drawing board and you do it all over again, assuming that what went wrong was that your work just wasn't good enough, right? Like if it didn't perform, if people didn't spread it throughout the land, it must not have been that good. You think if I make something truly great, the next time it's going to be a hit. And then you go back and you just, you know, try to make it even better and make the. The next thing, you know, totally outshine the previous thing and that that'll fix it. But what if that creative journey, that creative process that we know and that we're deeply familiar with, is only half of the recipe? It's like kneading the dough, letting it rise and expecting to come back to some serious bread, but instead you find some overworked, not even half baked thing that nobody wants, and in fact, talking about kneading dough. All the while, you repeat this cycle in vain. Your bank account is dwindling. You're pouring money into making stuff because it's not free to create things most of the time, most of the ways that you create cost you something. And you're pouring every extra penny an hour into your work. And eventually you're not going to be able to stay funded or motivated to keep going. And you're going to eventually feel like you have to just kind of call it a day. Finding your inspiration, forming the work, crafting it into something tangible that is essential. That's the romance, that is the art. But then it's time for the work. Then it's time to put on a totally different hat. It's time to access the part of you that reflects, refuses to let all that inspiration and perspiration go to waste. Then you've got to tap into the side of you that believes in the work, that believes. Like, you know, there's. When I've made something that I am proud of and I really stop and think about it and think, like, do I think this is good? Like, it's not always. I don't always feel this way. But on. On some occasions I'm like, yes, I know there are people that this is going to be their jam, and I want to figure out how to get it to those people. And you got to tap into that side of yourself that believes in the work, no matter how small that belief is. And you've got to let it fuel your fire to get it to the people that you know are going to get it and be better off for it, no matter how few people that might be. This is the second half of the process. This is the second journey. So we've touched on this idea a couple times in the life of this podcast, but now we're going to go on a deeper dive, including a framework that has been essential for me when thinking about this side of the process. We're going to get to the parts of that framework in just a second. But like I said, in the first half of your creative practice, in the. In the larger journey of both the creativity and the practice, and the first half is the creative journey. You are the hero. You're on a mission to find the sweet creative elixir within yourself. But in the back half, it's totally different. Once you have unearthed and polished that offering, once you're ready to launch the album or the book or the portfolio or movie, then it's time to take a completely different role. Now it's time to put down the metaphorical or literal creative heroes pencil Sword of Destiny and pick up the humble pencil staff of the creative guide. If the first half is the journey of the creative, the second half is the journey of the true fan, the fans of your creative work. This journey of the true fan is not your journey. It is the journey to guide others on. Unlike the creative journey where you discovered, developed and polished your art, the second journey of the true fan is where they discover your work, they develop a connection with it, and you offer them a way of supporting the work and truly owning a piece of it for themselves, both literally but also metaphorically. Because when done in the right way, that art becomes a part of their lives. It becomes a part of who they are and how they even think about their own identity and identify themselves to other people in the world. Like, for example, like, the best case scenario is you get to be a way that people explain who they are to people with bumper stickers on their car or T shirts that they wear. Or when someone says, hey, who are you? You might struggle to explain it. Like, I don't know, it's. It'd be hard to answer who is Andy J. Pizza? But I can tell you for sure that I am an Elden Ring fan. I'm a fan of the band, I'm a fan of Moomin and Miyazaki and Jim Henson. Like, these are a huge part of how I think of who I am. And they've helped me understand myself. That's why I use them as shorthand for my identity. So this second journey is like a mirror of the first journey. The first journey, you discover, develop and display the work in a final way. And in the second journey, you guide true fans to discover and develop a deeper relationship with the work and then literally buy the final form in some way or another. So let's call the three aspects of the journey of the true fan, Discovery, trust and sales. So the first one's discovery, second one's trust. The third third is sales. This is basically a streamlined, simplified, three part version of what you would find in marketing that they call the customer journey. But I have streamlined it and simplified it because you don't want to be a marketer, you don't need to go that hard in that direction because you don't want to, because you want to be an artist, not a marketer. So you see this journey anywhere you look in the world, both just in general business and commerce and whatever. But Also, it's deeply established in the arts and all of these parts and how they work and what, what it means to get discovered and develop a relationship and what kind of sales you need to make to fund this thing or what people are actually buying. All of those things shift. But one really classic example that I'm sure you're familiar with is in the world of music. So discovery, trust, sales. This looks like singles, albums, merch. Now, when we get into the individual episodes, focusing on each one of these, I will give you a much more nuanced idea, because it's not as simple as singles, albums, and merch, because singles, you know, back in the day, that meant singles that you put on the radio or that you're trying to get on mtv, but it doesn't really work that way anymore. But I think this example is one that we'll go back to a lot throughout this process. So this idea that when it comes to presenting your work to the world, that you're no longer the hero, but the guide, no longer the Luke Skywalker, but now you're the Yoda, originally comes from a talk by mega TED Talk speaker Nancy Duarte. It's a talk, in fact, about how to do a TED Talk. It's really great, especially if you do any public speaking. Highly recommend seeking that out. Check in the show notes for it. And Duarte said that the biggest mistake that speakers make is mistaking the fact that they're on stage for meaning that they're the hero in this talk and in this setting, and mistaking that this talk is about them and for them to get out their message that it's about their journey. When in reality, great public speakers know that the talk is always about the audience in their journey. You are, at best, Obi Wan Kenobi in their journey. So for further exploration on this idea, if you want to, you know, listen to this episode and you want to do some research and really dig into this stuff before we get into the next episodes. You can also check out more on the idea of being the guide in business from Donald Miller's book Building a Story Brand or his podcasts and Business, where he has taken some of those ideas from Nancy Duarte's work and put them into a business messaging framework. And it's really more about crafting your message than what we're going to talk about, which is kind of the full package of getting your work out there into the world. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture book makers, 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@ either patreon.com creative pep talk or Andy J. Pete and I hope to see you at this month's meetup.