← Creative Pep Talk
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- [00:03]
A
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. You know, you have to stand out. You gotta find what is different about the creative work that you make and what you have to offer. But you look around at the people doing what you're trying to do, and you're like, I am not super natural at anything. I'm. I'm like, I'm not adding up. I don't know if I can even compete with these people. And I have felt like that, like I've told you before, like, I wasn't even the best drawer at my table in drawing class in high school, let alone in the illustration industry. And yet I have been able to work with clients like Xbox and Apple and Nickelodeon, and I've been able to make a nice little thing here for myself. And the same goes for color. Like, I. One of the biggest comments I get on my work is the color choices that I make. And yet I have a color deficiency. I'm like, red, green, colorblind. And so I can talk about why you not measuring up might not be the deficiency that you think it is. In fact, it might be, in some cases the opposite. It might be the key to finding out what's different about what you do and what you have to offer. And so by the end of that episode, I hope to have convinced you of that. And also, if you stick around, I'm going to give you a tactic for defining those differentiators, finding those unique selling points. It's called Squidge the Gap. So stay tuned for that for more talking about squidging for a really fun exercise that I think might help you find some of what makes you special. But first, let's talk about why your talents are really boring. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I love Squarespace. I'm a longtime user. One of the things I love about Squarespace is I will use. It's so easy to use that I will use it to create pitches. If I'm pitching a book or I'm pitching something to a client, I will use a Squarespace page in my website and I'll build the whole thing there. Then you don't have these clunky, like document PDFs clogging up people's inboxes. And it's look super slick. If you want to see one of those that I use all the time, I did one for my series right side out. Andyjpizza.com RSO and you can see how I create a little pitch summary of that project. Go to squarespace.com pep talk. Get building for free and trying it out and testing it. And then when you're ready to launch, use promo code pep talk all one word for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks, Squarespace.
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I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.
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How can 101-year-old woman fall in love again?
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And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old.
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And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.
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Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.
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We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time, being more able to look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.
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Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts.
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So I suspect that your unique creative offering is hiding. Let me get into why. I think that when you are a creative person, it seems to be natural to think about what am I a natural at? What am I? Am I a natural born drawer? Am I a natural born illustrator? Am I natural born, you know, is everything in me all added up to be a person that designs logos, or am I a natural born podcaster? That one's particularly funny, I think, because podcast didn't even exist when I was born, but I was, you know, this is something that I personally can obsess over, you know, something that I think gets talked about a lot when you're in these spaces of self discovery or try just, even just trying to pick a path, trying to brand your website, whatever it might be. One of the thoughts that comes up a lot that I think has some validity for sure is what have I always been? What has always been home for me? What comes natural for me? What did I want to do as a kid? You know, these are thoughts that we dwell on a lot. And like I said, I think for finding your general direction, there's some reality to this. You know, we just got my son guitar lessons and part of the reason I felt comfortable doing that, you know, he's already doing a few different things. But one of the reasons I felt like, yeah, that seems like a good idea, is he's in band and he's just, he's picked that up pretty easily. Kind of understands reading it and tuning just kind of naturally, not supernaturally, not like, oh, this kid's a prodigy. But more just like, yeah, he's got that kind of groove in his brain. Brain groove. He's got that. So I felt like, yeah, it seems like he's got kind of the basic nature to be able to pick that thing up. And it seems like that's been true. And I think it's probably important to think about stuff like that because as far as I know, there's like a small percentage of people, it's not even a large one, a small percentage of people cannot carry a tune. It's actually just a very. That's a sliver of people that just cannot sing, can't find the tune, don't have that brain groove. Right. I think it's worth thinking about a little bit. When I think about the overall path of where I'm going, I better have some proclivity, some predisposition to being able to do, to draw a little bit. If I'm going to be an illustrator, to write a little bit, if I'm going to be an author, to be able to, you know, form a sentence here and there. If I'm going to be a podcaster, which, you know, that comes or goes. But I think when it that big kind of general direction, it's a relevant thing to consider. Here's where I think this thinking might get in the way and be more of a distraction is once you are on the path of being an illustrator, once you are heading towards making a podcast, once you're making films, whatever it is, your general thing, yeah, you should probably have a little proclivity towards that. But then you gotta just learn it, you gotta do it, you gotta be out there. And once you're out there, you've gotta figure out, what do I have that is different to what other people have, how can I stand out, how can I uniquely serve, or how can I find my own niche or lane? And then once you're there and you're asking that question, I wonder if trying to figure out what you're natural born at is. It becomes more of a stumbling block, because I don't want to be the first one to tell you this, but you're probably not natural, super naturally born anything. You probably, if you're not Michael Jordan, if you're not Christopher Nolan, if you're not Beyonce, you're probably not so naturally anything that it's going to give you the edge you need to find your own way and connect with your own fans and audience. It's probably not going to be enough. Just to be better, just to be supernaturally better than other people. And so how do you find something that does give you not just an edge competitively, but your own world to play in and your own like community to create within? How do you find that thing? How do you find that place? And it kind of reminds me of when I moved to where I live now, which is in the Columbus, Ohio area. I've moved all over the place throughout my life, but I've been here longest. I've been here for a little over 10 years and I really do love being here. But when I came here, when I moved here, when I was looking for someone to show me the ropes show someone to show me where to connect to the pipeline, what the good eating spots are, all that kind of stuff. The differentiator there was not. I need to find someone who is natural born Columbus site, who has always called this place home, who has always been in this place. I wanted to find somebody. I looked to the person that had lived both in the place I lived in in Indiana, which just to be really confusing, just a little side note, I wanted to leave this out because it is just muddying the waters, but I can't. It's just too dumb of a coincidence. I lived in Columbus, Indiana. That's where I went to high school as well. And yeah, so I moved from Columbus, Indiana to Columbus, Ohio. It was very confusing. We're going to Columbus, Georgia next, so be careful out there. Cause we're coming. We're not. I think we're here for the long haul. But I had, I knew a guy who I went to high school with in Columbus, Indiana that moved to Columbus, Ohio. And guess what? When I wanted to connect to the scene, when I wanted to find out what was unique about this place, I went to him. Why? Because the natural born people that have always lived here, they don't understand my perspective. I know that to them there's a way in which their surroundings are kind of white noise, right? But the person that had moved here, had put in the effort, had earned their stripes as a Columbus site. They saw it from a fresh perspective. In fact, they knew where I was coming from. They had made that journey. They knew the problem that I was trying to solve, right? And I think that there's something to journey, there's something to. I used to be this and now I'm this. There's something interesting about that. The most interesting, interesting thing about you might not be what comes natural, but maybe the opposite. What are the ways that you have become something that you didn't arrive with on this planet. When I think about who I wanted to talk to, I wanted to talk to somebody who had gone on the journey. I wanted to talk to somebody that had. Could take me from where I was to where they are. And when you think about, if you're going to get advice from somebody, are you going to get physical fitness advice from someone who's like, yeah, I've kind of pretty much always had this body and it just came natural to me? Or are you going to listen to the person that was in your shoes and then took themselves through a valley, through a journey, through an adventure to find a place that you've never been to? That's who I want to listen to. Not only are they a better guide, but they're also just. It's just more interesting. It's not that interesting to be like, yeah, I've always been kind of a super freakishly talented drawer. Like, okay, please, please say no more. Literally, don't say anymore. If I'm at a party, I don't want to hear that. You know, like, if we're talking about your general direction, where you're trying to go. Yeah, that. Keep that in mind. But if you're trying to be interesting, if you're trying to stand out, if you're trying to differentiate, if you're trying to figure out, what am I going to talk about, what am I going to make work about? I want to hear your journey from where you used to be to where you are now. Which person you going to listen to? You're at a party, someone's like, yeah, I've always had freakishly weird dreams. And just kind of my whole life, I've just been having these dreams. I got to tell you about these dreams. You're going to be like, please don't. Especially if you don't have weird dreams. You're like, okay, what? Oh, you're so special.
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Yeah.
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You were born with this freakish talent for dreaming, which most people don't see as a talent, but. Or are you going to listen to this person over here and said, you know, I used to completely ignore my dreams. I was in a place where they were just white noise, didn't care about them, didn't mean anything, kind of just annoying distraction. While I'm trying to get some sleep, I'm dreaming about all this stuff. But now dreams are maybe the most guiding force in my life. If I said that to you, what do you have now? You have a journey, you have a story, you have a transformation. You're gonna say probably, even if it's just a little bit interested, what changed? What happened? What did you go through? And so I want to propose just maybe that the most interesting thing about you as a creative person isn't your natural ability, isn't your God given crazy talents from on high that were bestowed upon you in your DNA, but the ways that you didn't get it, the ways that you've changed, the way that you've transformed, the battles, the journeys that you've gone through, and that what if, what if your natural predilection determines a little bit of the industry you're in, but the niche, the way that you stand out, the way that you're different, the thing that makes people lean in might be the way that you used to not measure up. You know, so often I get asked, not asked. I mean, I just get out of the comments that I get on my work, lots of times the colors I use come up. And the funny thing is, is I'm colorblind. I'm not fully, you know, black and white colorblind, but I'm red green colorblind. And it's hard to describe really what that means. I honestly don't know what it's like to be any other way. But I do think it's probably determining why I make not perfect color choices, but interesting ones, or why I turn up my color so loud. And so this deficiency ends up becoming the difference. And the same is true in so many different ways of my creative practice and why I don't measure up with my heroes. Some of those same things end up being the things that make me different and uniquely suited for the opportunities that I do. And so that's the challenge I want to give you today. These things, you know, it kind of reminds me of the Jungian shadow work, which I'm not qualified to talk about. But here goes nothing. No, I'm not going to go deep into the psychoanalysis part of it, but it kind of, you know, I've spent a little time over there. It's a little hyper fixation of mine, the Jungian stuff. And I find it really interesting alongside the themes we've been talking about on the show for the past few weeks, this self love positive psychology, there's an idea in Jungian thought that the gold is. The gold is in the shadow, that the shadow is 99% gold, meaning the shadow self isn't your dark side, it's not your bad side. It's misunderstood, you know, partially because of the way it's named. But really the shadow is just the part of yourself that you're disconnected from and you might think is your bad side or might be things about you that you have determined are things that you have to hide even from your own conscious mind. However, when you're able to look at that, when you're able to stare in the face of these are the ways that I truly don't measure up to my heroes. You might just find that those are the things that make you different. Those are the things you know, those things that you've hidden from, even from yourself. The different ways of channeling that energy might be the thing that makes you you. That makes you different.
- [17:18]
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When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [17:41]
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Learn more@WhatsApp.com this episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [18:16]
A
Okay, on this show, we don't want to just give you something to think about or something to feel. We want to give you something you can do that potentially can have an effect on your creative journey or, or practice today. So today we're giving you this really, you know, self explanatory once the cta, the call to adventure is Squidge the gap. Gap. Squid the gap the gap. One of the problems, one of the problems with Squidge the Gap, just from the onset is squidge. I don't know if that's a word that, you know, I'm barely sure that it exists. But this is one of the problems of being married to a British person and having lived over there for a little bit. I often don't know what phrases I'm saying that are British or American or whether I just made them up from just being lost as a human. But squidge, if you don't know it means to squeeze, it means to, you know, squidge in, squidge in and make some room to Squidge something like pinch a cheek, you might squidge. Ever squidged a cheek? Squidget. Squidge the gap. Don't bridge the gap. Okay, let me explain what I mean by this real quick. I'm going to have to give you a little tiny rundown of the different way that I think about target market. Your target market narrowing down where your focus is as a creative person or running a creative business, what have you. When I use these terms that I'm about to use, this is your warning. I use them a little bit differently than others. I think when you are trying to grapple with new ideas, sometimes you have to squidge those words a little bit. You got to squeeze them, mold them, change them. You gotta, you gotta make them work for what you're trying to get at. And so I'm gonna talk real quick about industry, market and niche, or niche, however you like to say it. Don't care. I can say, I'll say it. I'll say Nick if I want to, who cares? I have the talent to say it any different way. But when I use the term industry, market, niche, I use it in a very particular way. And I'm thinking about it through the lens of creating a target. Creating a target market, literally like a target, like concentric circles within each other. And I use this in a particular way because I think it's the only way that I've ever heard explained that it makes any sense. Often these different things are used almost interchangeably. And I find that it really gives you some hierarchy, some clarity to see how they relate to each other. So for me, you have industry. That is your field that you work within. This is the big one. This is where you probably have some natural ability, whether it's music or drawing or design or filmmaking or writing or whatever. It is the big huge circle part of the pie. Where you headed that direction as a creative person, you might have, you might be, have, you might have some toes dipped in a few different little industries, big industries. But for our purposes, let's just think about one of those for now. Now, within that industry, there's another circle in that big circle, and that's your market. That's a subset of the industry. For me, I'm in the illustration industry, but I'm in the kids book market within that. I've also worked within the editorial, magazine, newspaper market. I've worked within the advertise advertising market. I've worked in these little subsets of this industry, a smaller section, right? And I'm more established in some of those than Others right within the market, though, you have a niche, a little place that you carve out and that you can think about it like a bullseye. Industry is the big circle, middle circles, market. Within that circle, you have a niche, and that's a segment of the market. That's your little area that you've carved out. That's your differentiator. We're talking about this today. We're talking about how do you stand out within your market, within your industry. You do that by finding these little places. And I would actually say it's not just one thing. I think there's a lot of pressure that gets put on your niche to be this very particular thing, when really it's a few different things that often make you different than other people. It's the little. You're. I don't mean to bring other circles into this, but it's your little Venn diagram within that. You know, even the bullseye on a dart board has little. Has a couple little places, niches like that where you have a few different things make you different. I'm not the only illustrator that likes pizza, but I am one of the only illustrators with a podcast that likes pizza and dreams and invisible things. Now, all those little things create this little space that I exist within, okay? That's how I think about industry, market, niche. The reason I bring that up is because we need to talk about how you find your uniqueness, how you find that niche where it's just you, baby. And you can. You're uniquely serving that space. And I think one of the ways that is natural for you to think about what makes you different is what makes you better. Of course, think we're capitalists. I'm not, but I think, let's not go there. Good Lordy. Let's not get so off base. It's complicated and I don't understand it, but it's obvious that when we think about what makes us different, we're going to leap to, what are we? What's the edge we got? How are we better than the competition? But today I want to flip that. Flip the gap. I want to squidge the gap. Instead of trying to bridge the gap between what I am and how the people, my quote unquote, competition, is better than me. So here's what I want you to do. This is how you squidge the gap. This how you squeeze the gap. You hold the gap, you hug the gap. Instead of trying to bridge it or conquer it, you take a list of your market models, your comps, as they Say in the publishing industry, you take other people in that computer kids book market or that genre within the music that you play that are in your little movement. You could say movement, you could say market, you could say genre. You take other people in that. You find people that are about as comparable as they get to you. List four of them. Say, these are four people that are pretty comparable to the kind of thing I want to do. And instead of thinking, how am I better? Or how can I bridge the gap and at least be where they are, instead of that, think squidge the gap. Squidge is a very fun word to say. I'm glad that I chose it. Good job, Andy. You squidge it, you embrace it. And here's how you do that. Instead of thinking how you're better, think of how do you not add up. List those things. Take a long hard look at that, shadow the stuff that you're trying to ignore and say, okay, well, every person, if I'm in this, if I was doing this for myself, I might think every person on this list lives on the coasts. They live in LA or New York, or every person on this is nonchalant. They're just naturally cool. And I'm not, I'm whatever, the opposite of nonchalant. I'm so chalant, you can't even believe it. These people have these elegant concepts, these people have perfect, subtle color theory pairing, right? So I look at all these people. These, they have all these things and I'm listing the things that I don't have now instead of pretending like they don't have an edge on me because they live in LA or live in New York, to pretend like that and ignore that is going to be to my detriment. Instead of trying to either ignore it or trying to bridge the gap and get there, I'm going to squidge the gap and I'm going to say, okay, let's flip it. They live on the coast, I live in the Midwest. I could be the down to earth version. I can be the pizza version to their oysters. And I mean, New York has pizza, but that's a different thing. Fancy sushi, right? How are the ways in which me being the Midwestern version gives me a different kind of edge if I squidge that gap. I love the idea of being like a motivational speaker and being, you know, in the spotlight and being, trying to be so eloquent, like, you must squidge the gap. And everyone's like, yeah, that's, that's really good. But you do. And take another One, let's say, okay. Some of my favorite illustrators when I was starting out, their concepts were so self evident, they were just like, oh, so, so elegant on this editorial illustration where they just perfectly nail it. And I was always too wordy for Twitter, too, too, you know, too elaborate. My ideas are just so. There's just so much going on there and that's one of the reasons why, yeah, I could sit here and try to bridge the gap and try to be more and more eloquent and elegant in these perfect, self evident concepts. Or I could add words to mine and start adding lettering to my illustrations and beefing out the concepts. There's. And that is exactly what I did. I found a little niche where I have. I'm perfect for jobs that require both illustrations and lettering combined in interesting ways. That became a big part of my niche or my niche for those of you that are sensitive to such a harsh pronunciation of niche. Nonchalant. Never going to be not a hope in the world. I'll be the loud one. I'll be the attention grabbing one. Again, works better for some projects. Perfect color pairing. I don't really have that ability because I don't even know what these colors are, but I might have the ability to have unexpected color pairings. Now I do think I, I mean personally, my color perception is very weird, but I like the colors I use and I've heard they're weird. So every single one of these ways that you don't measure up, take a long hard look at that shadow baby and see what you can find if they in gold. If you are willing to do the opposite, if you're willing to flip it, if you're willing to squidge it. Are you willing to squidge it? All right. I hope that this episode has helped you lean into not just your natural born super predilection for creativity, but the parts of you that you have had to grow. The parts of you that have. You've had to squidge and bridge and journey through. Because they might be the things that are most interesting about you.
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You.
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I would much rather hear about your breakthroughs and the ways that you have overcome things and the surprises that you found along the way. Yeah, just something to think about. Just maybe just flip this a little bit from. From your usual beating yourself up about it. Andy. About ways you don't measure up. I hope this was really helpful or at least give you a little pep in your step in your creative practice this week. If you want to dive a little bit deeper into this, I have A creative career path hand booklet that goes into some of that stuff, the industry market niche kind of concept, and also how to develop a perfect project that's designed to hit that bullseye and self initiate that quest. If you want that, you can get it for free by signing up to the newsletter@andyj.pizza.substack.com your confirmation email will have a link in there to the E book. And it's just a little booklet, but it has. It's kind of a workbook thing. Also, I should mention that I'm doing this virtual workshop on storytelling. By the time you hear this, it might be full. We have 10 spots there. We've already filled up seven of the 10 when I'm recording this. But if you want to be the first to hear about opportunities like that so that you don't miss out on it, signing up to the newsletter is the best way to hear about those. I usually give those opportunities to Patreon backers and Substack supporters first and then next is the newsletter subscribers. You can go. You can go check that out. I'm guessing it'll be full by the time you hear this, but if you want to be the first to hear about stuff like that, that's the best way to do it. We might do more of these story workshops or turning and turn it into a course or something like that. It's essentially for people that want a different take on story if they're well versed in it or are intimidated by story. You know, if you're an established illustrator and you want to make picture books or you have to do a presentation or you want to make a podcast and you want to get some basics around story that I also think are kind of the magic of story or turn them into fiction like picture books or comics or what have you, go sign up to the newsletter@andyjpizza.substack.com Massive thanks to Sophie Miller for being an editor and producer on this show. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pinion Beautiful for the audio edits, the video edits, the animation and sound design. Thank you to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again. St Pep Tap okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening, but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next. Go sign up to our newsletter@andyjpiza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our Creative Career Path handbooklet and the whole process is in there and you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up. But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up y'.
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All.
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The town of Milton may seem normal at first glance, but the shadows are cursed and the expansive woods surrounding town are forbidden. They call it the Void and nobody comes back alive.
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You're headed straight for the void.
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Milton lives suspended in time, trapped by a darkness that seems to be creeping closer and closer.
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It's safe.
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The void is kept at bay. Is it though?
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Join three friends as they embark on an epic journey into the heart of darkness.
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The Void.
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Wherever you get your podcasts, this is just the beginning.