← Creative Pep Talk
Creative Pep Talk
492 - 7 Steps I'd Take If I Was Starting My Creative Practice From Scratch in 2025
00:31:47
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- [00:03]
Andy J. Pizza
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. Okay, so this is the seven steps that I would take in 2025 if I was starting my creative practice today. And I knew everything that know today, having had a creative practice for over 15 years, something like that. I'm. It's a creative practice, not a math practice. I haven't practiced math in a long time. Not a practicing math person. Mathematician. Anyway, what, here's what I would do if I was starting from scratch today and I'm doing this episode because first of all, things change a lot. So this is updated. What I would do today is differently. Is differently than I would do in a previously year. You know, things change a lot and how I approach it changes. And also this is kind of, you know, some of these ideas are scattered throughout the podcast creative pep talk that I've been doing for 10 years. And so I thought, what if I just collect them all together and this will be kind of a best practices as I see them right now, like the essential things to be doing in your creative practice to make sure that you are building progress. 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 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 Pep talk 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. Hey, y'all. I'm cutting in just to give you a quick little voice memo about our creative pep rallies that we do a month at the end of every month for supporters of the show on Patreon and Substack. The last Monday of every month, we meet up on Zoom for an hour and a half, maybe a little bit longer. Sometimes we talk about applying the ideas from the show to your creative practice and talk about where the show's going in this next meetup. I want to share an episode. I'm working on an episode idea that I've been working through with you and get some of your feedback in real time. It's an episode I'm really excited about, but I'd love to get some of your insight too. We've had a great time. The first of the year meeting was really well attended and had just a great community vibe and we talked through a lot of the stuff that creatives are facing right now and it was just great, great. So hope to see you there. You can sign up at andyjpiza.substack.com or patreon.com creative pep talk, whichever one you prefer. And the links to the meetup get posted. When we post almost every episode, we have the link included to register so you don't miss it. All right, hope to see you there. Here we go. Seven things. They're sequential seven steps. The first one is build a freaking newsletter, man. And this is just me talking to myself in the past. Why aren't you built? Why are you building an Instagram buddy? Build the newsletter. You can also do Instagram, but start with the newsletter. If you don't have the newsletter, start with the fricking newsletter. Just start building it. This is the idea, you know, don't put a hot tub and a brand new kitchen in the rental property that you'll never get the money back on. Don't invest and make creative awesome stuff for places you don't own, like Instagram or TikTok or whatever it is, whatever platform like, it is a waste. Instead, invest in something that you can keep forever. Build on your own property, which is your email. Now, I will, for me, right now, in 2025. The sweet spot of these two things is substack. Now, Substack isn't perfect. We're not going to go into all that. There's definitely some, you know, there's definitely valid critiques of Substack. However, here's what I love about it in 2025 and why I've invested a lot of time there over the past year. The main thing is that, yes, it has some of the functionality of other platforms you can discover. I've discovered a lot of great artists and writers on Substack in the app through the Notes function, which kind of acts like Twitter. Some incredible, incredible creative things I've discovered that way. So they have this organic reach and that's great. But it also has the functionality of a newsletter and you get that functionality for free. Whereas a couple hundred subscribers on Another platform is going to cost you a monthly amount. Substack is free because the way they monetize is if you create a paid a paywall for some of your benefits or some of your emails, they take a percentage of that. So if you don't create a paywall, it's just free. And that's incredible. But even more incredible than that is that you aren't owned. Your list isn't owned by the landlord. That is Zuckerberg and Musk. You own that relationship because at any time you can export that entire list onto any other email platform, onto a spreadsheet, because you're not building followers in a random space, you're building subscribers. That's a game changer. And so I, if I was starting today, that's the first thing I would do is I would get that newsletter. Another cool thing about Substack is it doesn't have to be writing if. If that's not your forte. If you get intimidated by grammar, I get it. You can also do audio newsletters there. You can do free podcasting. You can actually do a podcast, post it there for free, and even set up the RSS to go to all the podcasting apps and just do a podcast through Substack. And so if, if I and I would start there and I wouldn't make it, I wouldn't get fancy with it. I wouldn't be like, this is the newsletter about. This is the daily take. This is the hot topic newsletter. No, I would just make it your name so that even if you're in a band, I would make it your name so that that can evolve with you for the rest of your creative journey. That to me, that is the most valuable resource. This is the thing that bands like Grateful Dead have been doing with mailing lists and keeping connection, owning a connection to the people that want to hear from you and not letting anybody else get in between that. And at the time being of making this, Substack is making it so that they aren't mitigating the ownership and that might change. And if that changes, then I will export that list and go somewhere else where I can continue to build on my own property. So that's the first thing I would do. The second thing I would do is I would choose a platform based on native fit for the type of creative work that I'm doing. And for me right now, as an illustrator and writer, I actually think Substack can work for this too, because people go to Substack to discover illustration and writing. The idea here is that you're choosing a platform where people go. Where people are hungry for the thing that you're serving. Okay, this is the idea that if you want to open a restaurant in the mall, you don't go hand out samples at J.C. penney. People aren't hungry at J.C. penney, Man. They're hungry when they're walking towards or through the food court. That's where you want to hand out samples and give them a taste of what you're doing. That's what you're doing on social media. You're giving them a sample of your product. If you don't have a product, by the way, getting discovered isn't really. It doesn't really matter. But here's what I would do. Choose a platform that is native to the creative stuff. Natively, creatively to the stuff that you do. And if you're illustrator or writer, this is, you know, this is. This is not evergreen material right here. Saying that substack's a good spot for that. It's been a really interesting spot for me recently. That might change relatively quickly. But if you're a musician, I would do this on Spotify. I would treat your Spotify like social media and not like a discography. Save your discography for your vinyl, for your, you know, the things that you actually want to press out in the real world and use Spotify to release stuff and test stuff and give people samples of what you do because you can't make money there hardly. Anyway, if you're a comedian, I'd probably say TikTok. If you're an entertainer of some kind, I'd probably say YouTube. But really, the. The best answer there is going to be being deeply connected to your people, the people that do what you do, and finding out where they go and where people discover them and making sure that you have a presence there. So that's the second thing, the third thing. The third thing is test with small bets of creativity on that platform. So this is the idea of treasure prospecting, gold prospector. Be a gold price. Be the old prospector and get out there and drill thousands of holes that you can test for gold. Like, you don't. What you don't want to do is create an album, to create a gallery show, to create this huge statement of work when you're just getting started. You don't even know what works. You don't even know what connects with you. You don't know what connects with other people. You're trying to find the Venn diagram of that thing. If you're a working artist, which is kind of what this show's about. It's not. It's not really about just the kind of art. That's just a diary where you're just journaling to yourself and you only pleasing yourself. I actually think that's a great place to start as a creative. Even if you're a working artist, start with the stuff that connects with you. Don't go up on stage and test material that doesn't resonate with you. That's a terrible idea. Start with you. But like Rick Rubin says, the audience comes last, but he's not saying that they don't come into the equation like you want. If you're. If you're a working artist, part of what is firing you up is not just expressing yourself to yourself, but connecting to other people and seeing that other people resonate or get what you're saying or get something from what you're saying. The third thing is test with small bets. And so gold prospecting or looking for oil, whatever you're not going to take. You're not going to just pick a random spot with your creativity and say, I'm going to spend three years making a book right there. No, what I would do is I would write on stage like comedians do, where they go to the clubs, they have a list of material, a bunch of random jokes, bunch of holes that they're drilling, and they try it all out and they see how it feels, they see how it connects. They see if they, you know, they just miss completely or is there something there and they gotta go back and maybe dig a bunch of different places around there. You're trying to find, like, hints that there is gold here before you dive deep, before you dig deep into a particular area. So if you're a musician, what this could look like is instead of working on your album, just release singles and maybe EPS on Spotify and just keep doing that until you hit something that feels resonant to you and resonant to others. One little aside here is that when I was starting out, whenever you're starting out, I wouldn't value quantity of feedback too highly because it's just too random. And only certain types of creative work go viral. If you think about the things that meant the most to you, that really connected with you on a deep level, that changed you as a person. Those creative things, those were movies, those were songs, those were pieces of work, those were books, they were things that never would never, ever, ever go viral. I can almost guarantee you that. So going viral, if you can hack it, you can make that work and that's part of your process and it makes sense for your, you know, the flow of your customers. That's great, fine, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a gift if you can do that. But most of us are going to be making creative work, especially if we're building something for a living, especially if we're optimizing for self expression and connection, aren't going to be valuing what we do through virality or for quantity. And instead, especially in those early days, all you're going to have is the quality of feedback. And so as you're releasing those singles, as you're releasing those EPs, what you're looking for is your own taste, getting high on your own supply and being like, is this doing it? Is this like hitting me? Is it? You know, I remember hearing Thom York in an interview talking about how a lot of his lyrics, he's not really sure what they mean. He just knows that when they make him well up that he's on to something. And one of my all time favorite, all time recent favorite musicians, Alex G. I just, I celebrate the entire back catalog of this guy. He talks about the same thing is that he doesn't really know what he's saying, he just knows when he's feeling what he's saying and he know, he's like, that's like, oh, I've hit a, I've hit a nerve in my unconscious here with the words and the melody and I'm moving towards that. And so as you're putting out this stuff, you know, even does it feel authentic when you put it out? What do you feel like a month later? What do you feel like when you're writing it? You're trying to hit that vein but then you're also seeing how do my friends, how do my peers. You know, one of the most valuable things that I ever experienced as a creative was being in college with a few other illustrators who had similar tastes, different skill sets, different abilities and just the healthy competition of like oh man, they made that. Oh, that makes me want to level up my game and, and then I made something that impressed them and that makes me want to double down in that direction. Like that is valuable. That's fun. I don't know why we, we have this anti comparison trap thing and it's true. You don't want to, you don't want to let the world tell you what you need to be doing. You don't want to get onto Instagram and see one person, they're working on kids books and the next person's working on podcasts, the next person's working editorial, the next person's working on writing a book. Like what? You don't want to see all that stuff and just run around willy nilly and let it decide what you're going to be doing. So I get that on that level, the comparison trap thing, but I think this thing of like working with a little bit of community, working with a little bit of healthy competition, trying to impress each other, trying to get feedback, seeing what hits, that kind of quality feedback where someone said that that piece I'm obsessed with. I take notice when people who have similar taste to me, people whose taste I really respect, say stuff like that. And I think, okay, I hit a little bit of gold there. What would it look like to turn that single into an ep? What would it look like to turn that EP into an album? That's the fourth thing. So the fourth thing is create a product around when you hit. When if you've done six posts, 50 posts, whatever it is, of whatever you're doing and you find one that is just hitting it for you and hitting it for other people, then it's time to take that thing to the next level. You know, I've heard it talked about in business, this idea of like you're, you're firing these little shots onto the horizon, waiting for a hit and then you're getting your cannon out and now you're going to, now you're going to double down, now you're going to go to the lab, now you're going to make an album, a zine, a book, a whole portfolio in that direction. And if I was just starting out, it would go from a single to an ep, a small bet to a medium bet. If it's an EP that I'm like, oh, this is it, then I'm gonna move from an EP to an album. But I'm just gonna slowly start creating that special from that handful of jokes that worked.
- [18:27]
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Andy J. Pizza
The fifth thing I would do is I would launch. Now, I didn't do this well when I was just starting out, but what you want to do is you don't want to just put all that work and act like your Beyonce and just drop it on the Internet and expect everything. You know, if you build it, they will come. That just doesn't work if you don't have people that are already interested in what you do. And so what I would do is I would make a plan to make this thing. I'd create a little bit of a deadline and then I would think about doing a bare bones kind of GoFundMe or Kickstarter, you know, just the, the bare amount that, the small amount, bare minimum that I would need to make this thing a reality and create some constraints and some timelines and some deadlines around it. And the other thing about the launch, the other thing loved about doing Kickstarters or GoFundMes, that kind of thing, is that it's not just great for raising a little bit of money, it's even better for the pr. It's even better for getting on people's radar, telling people, this is the thing that I'm doing. And it has a timeline. There's like a scarcity element to it. There's a. This is happening in real life, in real time, in my practice and I'm investing in it and I care about it so much. I would like you to invest in it. It. And I would also probably pair that with some kind of in real life component, you know, that launch, a launch party, a mini launch party, bake a cake. We've done that. We've just baked a cake and took a picture of it and said we're celebrating the launch. Like whatever it is, but make it real. And yeah, I think that there's something cool that, you know, when we've done like book tour stops and stuff, rarely does that move a lot of books. But just the, but the experience, first and foremost just makes it real to you, which is so. I mean, God, what the hell are we doing if all we're doing is posting crap to the Internet. Like do something that makes it real for your real life where you look back and remember that. Because you're not going to remember the day that you got another, like on a social media platform or the third day of your Kickstarter or whatever. You're going to remember that. Cake, man. Remember every cake. Enjoy every sandwich. Can't remember who said that, but it was a comedian, I think. Do some have an in real life component for yourself. And also because, you know, just again, that's another level of that's a touch point for people in real life and online that says this is a real thing that happened. And some of those book stop, book tour stops, the photos of that make it apparent to people in real life and online that this is a real experience that we are really invested in. All right, that's five set the launch. Do a launch. Number six collabs leading up to the event. This is remixes and features with other artists doing remixes of the songs, releasing those in drips. This is pod swaps, like swapping guests on another podcast or feed drops where you're dropping one of their episodes in your feed and you're in there dropping one in their feed. Collaborative posts on Instagram where you're making illustrations where you're illustrating half of it. They're illustrating half of it, by the way. It's just fun. It's just fun. Okay. Not only is a great career strategy, it's one of the only ways that you're going to get on anybody else's radar is featuring on a song with an artist that they already like or opening being an opening act for another artist. Like, the best way to be discovered by potential new fans is by connecting with people that make similar stuff to you. And not only that, like I said, not only that, not only is it a great way to get discovered, it's just more fun. Like being part of the scene is part of the joy of making stuff. And so as you lead up to the launch and then after the launch, I would be doing a series of collaborative things. Whatever it is you do with people that make stuff in your scene and in your genre. Seven, seven. Launch and post mortem. Okay, after you do the launch, here's what I would do. I would go back through the process and I would say, which of these things went well? Which of these things didn't go well? If it didn't get the you were looking for, where did it? You know, some of that's just your expectations were wrong. You just thought this thing was going to Change everything overnight. I had to do this version of this process 10 times for it to get anywhere really significantly interesting. Like, it reminds me of Jonathan Larson, the guy who created the movie Rent. Highly recommend going and watching Tick, Tick Boom, the movie version with Andrew Garfield that Lin Manuel Miranda put out a few years ago on Netflix because it's such a good. It's a little bit discouraging in a way, but it sets real expectations. And it's also motivating because you're seeing these people that are part of this scene and loving working with each other, making stuff that they love. And it's about how Jonathan Larson did this. He's the guy who made Rent this mega hit on Broadway, but he had to make two other plays before that that didn't really go anywhere. The first one being this take on 1984, this sci fi, weird, you know, rock opera thing. And it was his baby. This was his masterwork. He put everything into this. And really it just led to the next thing. And I think that's a good expectation. You're. We've did an episode recently where we're talking about how creative work isn't about winning the game. It's about playing the game. It's about keeping it up in the air and about, you know, Judd Apatow, the filmmaker, talking about how he doesn't make movies to just, like, win the game and get all the awards and get all the money. He just wants to make a movie that he loves, that does well enough where they let him make another movie and that's enough for him like that. If you love the creative game, that's. That's the right expectation. I think that's the way to go into it. And so, okay, seven is the postmortem. You're looking at. You're looking at how it went. Try to pinpoint where did this thing go wrong, and then you do it all over again and try something different at that stage. Maybe you picked the wrong platform and it's not really where people go to discover the kind of things that you do. Maybe you. The small bets were wrong. You ended up going with Vanity metric of likes, where you should have gone with the thing that really resonated with you the most and with some of your core friends and peers. So look back through it, figure out which part you want to tweak, and then do it all over again. So that. That's what I would do. And I would. And I plan on doing this. Like I said, as long as they'll let you, like that's the fun part. I loved hearing Gary Goleman on the comedian on Mike Braviglia's podcast talking about this, like, saying he's in the sweet spot. He's not mega famous, he's not super rich. He's. He has a, a legit creative practice. And he just wants, he just wants the gift of being able to do this forever. Now, like that. That's the dream. For me, that is. The dream is you're doing it, you're getting by, you're loving every minute of it. And so if I was starting today in 2025, I would do this and then I'd do it again, and I'd do it again and I'd do it again because guess what? That is what I'm doing. If you follow along, you will see me doing this over and over and over again. I've probably done it 10 times in my creative practice and I hope that I get to do it 10 more because I really, it's, it's great. It's fun. Speaking of Substack, we talked about that a bunch of times. I'm going to put in the post of this episode on substack, Andy J. Pizza.substack.com I'm going to put a little flow chart that has these seven things in it that can help you go through and ask yourself, do you have a newsletter? Yes. Okay. You can move on to number two. No, get a newsletter. And I would, I really say that, like, go sign up to wherever you want. You know, check out the different pros and cons. I like Substack for a whole bunch of reasons. If you get on there, come subscribe to my thing. Every week we're gonna give you a new episode of this show so that you can stay pepped so you can string together staying in the habit of being creative in the creative mindset, remembering that you want to make this more than just a hobby, a thing that you do randomly, but you want to make it a practice. That's what we make this show for every single week. And if you, and if you sign up anywhere else, it might get lost in the algorithm, you might lose track of it and therefore also potentially that top of mind reminder that you want to be creative week in and week out. And so you can sign up at any j pizza.substack.com and you can find the flowchart there. In this episode, we try to put little goodies in there as well as remind you when an episode drops so you never miss one. Thank you. To Sophie Miller, the editor and copy producer of the show. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for audio and video edits and sound design. Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band why? For our theme music and our glorious soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay pepped up.
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