← Creative Pep Talk
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To get great opportunities, you have to have a great, unique selling point. You have to stand out in a considerable, meaningful way. But that is easier said than done. When we live in a time where it feels like everything's been done. How can you do anything unique? How can you have a unique selling point? It is very anxiety inducing. It's difficult to ask yourself, what do I have to offer that's different to what anyone else is doing? I've been thinking about this recently because this year I've had a handful of jobs that have just felt so tailored to what I do and who I am as an artist. And I've been thinking about, like, what did it take to create these opportunities? I was recently outside of Boston visiting a school that I did a bunch of illustration for. And it just, the whole opportunity just felt so tailored to me. And it got me thinking about what did I do to put myself in a position for this to happen. And it came down to a few things, but the most important was having a sense of what the twist I put on illustration is or put on being an artist or a creator is. What is my creative twist? So that's we're going to talk. That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about your unique selling point, your creative twist, how to find it and why. Finding it is maybe easier and more fun and less overwhelming than you think. And if you stick around to the end, I'm going to be back with a creative call to adventure. It's called the Universal fyp, something we've talked about a little bit on this show before. But I've got a new twist on it based on this whole episode that I think is going to be really helpful to you, seeing that you already have a unique selling point in the works. You just have to recognize how to cultivate it. So stick around for that. But for now, let's talk about what is the key to unlocking a unique selling point for your creative work. Let's go 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. Longtime listeners know running is a huge part of my creative journey. It regulates my mood, keeps me creatively tuned in, and helps me focus. So as an artist and a runner, I am super into Vander Jacket. That's because it's the only running apparel company that I've ever heard of that was founded by an artist. And the business and the clothing scream creativity. Vanderjacket apparel is made of leftover fabric from bigger apparel companies. That limitation of using exclusively dead stock fabric actually forces the Vander team to innovate and create unique running styles. It all is really unique and super cool. All apparel is made in Denver by the founder and a small team of brilliant clothing construction workers. They are the only running company I have ever heard of that makes one of a kind garments and does so in small batches of running clothes. It's getting colder recently and I have loved running in my vanderjacket jacket, deep pockets for my AirPods sleeves with thumb holes that keep my hands really warm. So good if you're looking for something special this holiday season, whether your family's gifts need to be local, handmade, one of a kind or repurposed, Vanderjacket checks every box. Head to vanderjacket.com and use code creative in all caps. Creative for 20% off your first order that's V A N D E R jacket.com promo code creative for 20% off your first order reminder for forgetful creative folks, now is the time to get holiday shopping before it's too late and it's not fun anymore. Uncommon Goods makes holiday shopping stress free and joyful with thousands of one of a kind gifts that you can't find anywhere else. Uncommon Goods has products that are high quality and unique and often handmade or made in the us. Many are crafted by independent artists or small businesses which means a lot are small batch and can sell out pretty fast. We got a bunch of great presents on there recently. A super unique pint glass from my father in law, this cool color changing umbrella for my youngest kid. A Taste of Italy snack box for my fam to remind us of our summer vacation. Uncommon Goods has stuff for everybody. Moms and dads and kids and teens, book lovers, history buffs, die hard football fans to foodies, mixolog, avid gardeners. You'll find thousands of gifts that you can't find anywhere else. So shop early, have fun and cross some names off your list today. To get 15% off your next gift, go to UncommonGoods.com Pep Talk that's UncommonGoods.com Pep Talk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer Uncommon Goods we're all out of the ordinary. Everyone in the creative biz wants better opportunities and like any business, that means having a unique selling point. You have to have something different than what's already out there and in the businessy world they call it usp. So I might abbreviate that from time to time. Unique selling point, usp. It might sound a little bit overly business y. However, I would say it's more true that you need a unique selling point if you are in a creative business than in any other industry. Because it really, really matters when you're doing creative stuff that you're putting your own twist on it. You have got to put a satisfying twist on what you do. And if you are on this creative journey and you're moving towards success, you're. You've gotta have a twist like that in your future. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, andy, dude, thank you. So easy. I didn't know I was supposed to do something original with my creative thing. Now that you've told me, put the twist on it. Done easy, right? No, not right. I understand that it is easier said than done. Like I said, especially in an era where everything feels done and redone and rebooted and sequel and prequel and reposted and copied and re turned out like we live in that era, it can feel nearly impossible to do anything truly unique. But in my creative practice and in my experience, there is some really good news. And it's that your creative twist and you showing up in a different way. It's not about some massive unicorn of an invention or innovation. It's about finding your point of view that comes natural to you, that is authentic to you, and tapping into that. That's what it's all about. It's not about coming up with the eighth wonder of the world. It's about figuring out what your sixth sense is like. For example, maybe your sixth sense is guessing the end of a movie. That's one of my sixth senses. Actually, when the movie Sixth Sense came out in the theater, I guessed the big twist before it happened. Now, I know you're all just really impressed, but I had a lot of help. I can't fully take the credit because when we sat down in that movie theater, my cousins were with me. They'd already seen it. He leans over and he whispers, there's a big twist coming. There's a big twist coming. And of course, that's a huge part of being able to guess the twist. Guess that knowing that this movie contains a big twist, that there's a big twist coming. Because when you know that, you're gonna look a little bit more intently, you're gonna be more aware, you're gonna be looking for any clues, any hints. And so it's not super impressive that I guessed the end of sixth, I had that heads up, but I want to, in this episode of the show, be your cousin for a minute and just lean over and whisper to you. If you're on the creative path, I'll give you the hint that gives you everything you need to guess it. To guess the twist is coming. And it's this. There's a huge twist coming. There's a huge twist on the horizon. You if you are making creative work because every creative thing that you do is a type of twist. And now that you know that's coming, you can do what I did in that theater. You can heighten your awareness. You can be looking for the clues, you can be looking for the juicy things that are standing out to you because you are preparing for the that twist. You have to be aware of. What am I noticing? Noticing what I'm noticing. The key to finding your creative twist is figuring out what your unique point of view is. And you do that by noticing what you're noticing. You look around and as you move through life, if something perks up your spirit in your soul and your creativity, if something unusual seems out of place in the narrative, that's your cue to dial in. Because you know a twist is coming. You know it needs to be coming. You know you need that unique selling point one day. And the place that it arrives from are those little juicy clues and nuggets that you find along your creative path. And so it doesn't become that difficult to put a twist on something, to guess the twist when you have been dialed in, when you have been tuned in to all of the little clues along the way. And what this looks like practically is looking at what I like. I told you at the start, I just got back from a place outside of Boston. It's a school called Landmark, the Landmark School. And it's a school for kids with dyslexia or language based or reading based learning difficulties and challenges. And I was there because I did something like 11 or 13 illustrations that were in my exact style, the kind of concepts I come up with all the time for this podcast and other things that I make for myself. I made these for their school and they have all these illustrations blown up on the wall. It was so fun. And as I was there talking to these kids that are neurodivergent and learn differently, I am talking to them and I'm feeling like this is the perfect opportunity for me. And I've had a few of those this year as an illustrator for clients. And I felt like, man, how did I get so lucky. And in some ways, yes, there's luck involved. And I'm not denying that. But ult, ultimately, I think the thing that makes the difference and put me in those scenarios to get those sorts of jobs were pulling at those little clues, trusting that there were twists on my horizon if I was willing to pull the threads that were uniquely me. And the thing about looking back on my creative journey and noticing what are the things that made the difference? A lot of those clues, a lot of those threads, a lot of those nuggets were things that at the time, time didn't seem to be to do with anything about my creative career or creative journey. You know, I think about the work that I made for this project, and a lot of that was made possible because I got super into Carl Jung and into symbolism and I was studying dreams and I was reading man and His Symbols, that book, and I was listening to this podcast and I was going super deep on this Jungian psychology. Not because I thought it. I honestly did not think at all that it had anything to do with my creativity. I thought it was about personal development. I thought it was just something I was hyper fixated on and curious about. And then after reading the book A Man and His Symbols, I realized like a huge percent of this percentage of this is about art. I mean, symbols, it's about symbols, it's about illustration. A lot of it's even interpreting and wrestling with art and like dream images, and all of it has to do with illustration. I don't know if I'm just not that quick or something and I just missed it. But this helped me fall in love with writing with pictures in a deeper way than I ever imagined. And it helped really increase my engagement with it and how I came up with ideas and what I thought of as visual metaphors. And all of that work filtered into my personal work. That's the stuff that they referenced when giving me this client job. They're like, do this kind of thing. And I wouldn't have done that had I not pulled at that thread. But the thing that I'd learned is, same thing happened to me with writing picture books and telling stories on stage and on the show. From getting super into Joseph Campbell and that leading into being obsessed with storytelling, all of that came. I didn't know any of that had to do with my creative future. I stumbled upon it kind of begrudgingly followed my curiosity because I couldn't help myself thinking, this is a total aside. It's not really helping me in any considerable way. I'm just curious about this and then come to find out later it became completely essential to telling the kind of stories that I tell now for a living. And so I learned that a few different ways. And now I've realized that there is a huge twist coming on the horizon of my creative path. Because that's what being a creative is. And if that's true, if I know it's coming, if I know it's on the horizon, I can increase my awareness. I can give myself permission to take notice of what I notice. And especially true if the people around me don't seem to be as interested in that stuff because that's telling me something about my point of view. And I can have the faith and the trust in my creativity and in my journey to say even if I don't know how this is related to anything that I'm gonna do in the I can trust that I need to let my curiosity lead the way. And so if you want to get better opportunities, if you want to make work that is more unique to your point of view, the key is to allow yourself to be aware and invest in those weird little things that you're obsessive about, that you're curious about. Even. Especially when you can't see how this has to do with anything that could make money, anything that could be make your creative work better. Because those are the places that have not been explored. If it's not obvious to you what the value of them is, you have to trust that intuition. And so the great thing you have now is you got a cousin like this guy that leaned over and said, hey, that twist is coming. Heighten your awareness. Look for the things that are out of the normal. Lean into those atypical things that just seem unusually juicy and you don't count them off because you can't see how they're going to pay off in the future.
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Coca Cola for the big. For the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you.
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Tis the season for all your holiday favorites. Like a very Jonas Christmas movie and Home Alone on Disney.
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Did I burn down my. I don't think so.
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Then Hulu has National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
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We're all in for a very big Christmas treat.
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All of these and more streaming this holiday season and right now. Save big with our special Black Friday offer bundle Disney plus and Hulu for just $4.99 a month for one year savings compared to current regular monthly price and 12 watt offer for ad support at Disney Plus. Hulu bundle only then $12.99 a month or then current regular monthly price 18 plus terms apply.
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So like I said, when I was in Massachusetts, feeling very grateful. I was walking to dinner the night before I was going to visit these schools and I was just feeling so privileged and lucky. And I thought, this isn't a thing that I would have never dreamt of doing. It's not like a thing that as a kid I even knew was possible. I want to do school visits outside of Boston about my writing with pictures. I was just feeling really privileged and lucky and thinking about what could I pass on to anybody else that might help them get into these kind of circumstances that feel custom made for you as a creative person. And the more I thought about it, the more I was thinking, oh, it's something about leaning into your curiosity, pulling those threads, knowing, learning. You know, I learned it the first time on accident, but then after I did it on accident, learning, like, if I will trust that that stuff will bleed into my creative work in such a way where my work will be different to everybody else's because I'm pulling those threads that aren't interesting to anyone else. And so that's kind of what I was mulling over when I got back home. I started pulling that thread because this is what I do for the show is now I'm interested in that. And I start thinking, is there any extra work? And this is kind of an example of what you can do when you have an encounter like that and you're having an emotional, like that moment of gratitude and you're thinking about what are the pieces there. I'm getting curious about this. Then I start doing searches and research around, is there anything to this? Have other people experienced this? What are the ways I could describe it? And some of the stuff that I ended up searching turned up this paper, this scientific paper called An Atypical Salience Account of Creativity. And it proposes this theory that is exactly what we're talking about, which is creative outcomes come from people that have atypical attention. And so they didn't say adhd, but I think that's probably part of it. But they gave a couple different examples of how you can develop or how this different type of attention manifests. But essentially what it is is the ability to notice and pay attention to things that everyone else is ignoring, and that that ends up becoming the key to creative outcomes. And I want. If you don't get anything else from this episode, I would zero in on this word that I've actually heard Jungians talk about before. It's salience. And salience is, I think, a synonym for it would be importance, but it's essentially what you notice, what you focus on, what you think is important. And so we have a salience network in our brain, and I want to kind of coin this idea of creative salience, that term which gets at what's going on in this paper, but it's getting at what we're talking about in this episode. Creative salience is a totally different thing than what you're doing on an everyday basis, or what typical people are doing, or people that aren't focused on creative output are doing, which they're only focused on the things that are going to make ends meet or make them happy, or they know where this thread is leading and it's leading to something they know they want, an incentive or a reward. That's how a typical salience network fires. It's looking for things like, oh, we know that the end of that thread is something we want, but creative salience is a curiosity that says, I don't know where this is going. And that's what's interesting about that fodder. When I got into Jungian stuff, when I got into Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey and stuff, I didn't know the reason it was interesting wasn't because what I knew what was at the end of that thread, it's because I didn't know. And I actually wanted to know. I had an intuition that that was going to be interesting or important or juicy for me. And so the key is to develop that creative salience. You already have it. You already have these little moments of things that catch your interest in a deeper way than anyone else around you. The shift that I would encourage you to make in this episode is to give it space, give it investment, especially when you don't know where it's leading. If something fires you up and makes you lean in and you don't even know what you could possibly gain from it, that's telling you this is raw fodder for a creative twist. Something is at the end of that rope that I don't see coming. And that's exactly the kind of stuff that's going to elevate my work. So lean into the creative salience, that salience. Look for things that have levels of salience that are unexplainable that you, that you have a gut response to, that you're more attracted to than anyone else around you and then double down on those things and what that might look like. And that's what we're going to talk about next is going not just looking out from now on, but looking back on the things that had salience that you discredited because you thought, oh, they're a waste of time. I don't see the reward, I don't see the incentive. No one else around me cares that I'm into this stuff, so I'm just going to drop it and going back to those things and saying no. This has potential for a creative twist if I will pull that thread. Okay, it's time for our creative call to adventure. I don't like to leave you with just an idea. I want to encourage you to put it to work in a real way in your creative practice today. So that's what this is. This one is called the universal FYP. Now if you don't know FYP means for you page, it's on TikTok and it's the videos that it's just delivering to you because they think it might be of interest. We're going to take that and we're going to put a couple twists on it. The first twist is imagine that everything that you're encountering in your everyday life is the FYP page that is being delivered to you from the algorithm of the universe that it is feeding you things that it thinks might be of interest, that it thinks you might need to dig into, that it thinks you might need to give some time attending to. So what if your everyday life. This sounds like I'm really trying to like sell being present to like Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids of like dude, life is like a for you page. Okay, man? Everything that you're encountering in the real world is served to you by a mega algorithm. Okay, I'm not exactly saying that, but I am saying that the things that you find interesting, like as you're moving throughout your everyday, what if you paid attention to them? Like you do the for your page. Assuming something is delivering this to you and it is giving and if you find interest into it that you would pull that thread. Now the other twist that I want to put on the FYP the for your page is FYP finish your plate. We've talked about this a couple times on the show because it's a central practice of mine when I'm feeling like, oh, I don't know what my work is about. I don't know what I want it to be about next. I don't know what the twist is. I want to put on the stuff that I'm making in the next book or the next episode or whatever. I will pause and I will think, I need to do the fyp. Finish your plate. Like, the universe is giving me these, this serving me this stuff, and I'm ignoring it. That there are things, there are threads that seemed so salient to me in the moment and then guess what? Out of sight, out of mind, completely slipped it. And then I didn't do anything with it. I didn't follow that curiosity, I didn't pull that thread happen. This has happened to me so many times where I get stuck. I'm in a dead end and I think, hold on, I can't remember what. I can't. I can't think of any podcast to listen to. I can't think of any book to read. I can't think, you know, nothing feels exactly right. And I don't know what do to. To do in my work next. I don't know what to say. And I'll think, when was the last time I felt that level of salience? When was the last time that I encountered something and it felt like kismet with the universe? I was like, oh my gosh, like, yes, that's so interesting. That's speaking to me. And then I didn't finish that plate. I didn't eat the veggies, I didn't do the extra work to dig into it and see its relevance and understand it. That's what I recommend you do. Because the likelihood that you don't have anything unique in your journey, the likelihood of that being true is so small. You are already probably in the midst of a journey to develop your own unique selling point within your creative work. If you will go back and pick up that thread and that juicy thing that you encountered on your universal FYP moving through life. And so you've already got the first fruits of something that could make your work completely different. If you will pause and be like, what's the last thing that I noticed that just lit me up in an unexplainable way. And I wanted to go on a journey not where I had the end in mind, where I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know where it would take me. And I don't even, especially if I don't know what is the relevance to the economy with this. What Is the utility of it? No, we're talking about the stuff that moves your soul and your spirit. Whether you can see any way to make money from it, no way to monetize this bhad baby, that's the stuff that makes your stuff so interesting and unique. And if you will trust that there will be ways in which this creates a human that I become, where my work will have a unique point of view. If you will trust that, you will be able to pull that thread. And so finish your plate. Check out the universal fyp. Check out what are the things that I've let fall by the wayside because of the pressures of everyday life. And how can I check out a book on that? How can I listen to a podcast on that? How can I go do a little research and see if there's any papers on that? It might not look like that for you. Like, for me, that often comes into this, like, pseudo academic pursuit of trying to figure something out or wrestle with a theory. For you, it might be an encounter with a bird that you had, man, and you didn't. You just completely blew it off. That encounter with a bird, nothing's more important than that. I'm telling you, I'm feeling it right now. Outside my window. Is a blue jay on. There was a blue jay right on the gutters. And yes, it's begging me to pay attention to it instead of record this podcast. And I'm loving it. And I'm look, I see you. I'm gonna get to you in just a minute. We're about to finish up. Think about those things, the blue jays, the Jungians, whatever it is. Where are those veggies that you need to finish your plate on? Because if you will, it will turn into a unique human. You are what you eat, right? Eat those veggies, eat those things that nobody else is interested in. Clear that plate. It's going to make a difference. All right. If you've made it this far in the podcast, I feel pretty comfortable sharing a secret with you. We just had a book go on pre order. It is. I'm very excited about this. I'm actually almost getting emotional because we haven't been able to talk about it. It's a follow up to our book Invisible Things. It's called Mysterious Things. It is coming out in 2026 and it just went on pre order. If you want to get a pre order book, if you want to put a pre order in, go to InvisibleThings Co and there's a bunch of links to bookshops that you can go order from. We so appreciate it. It's one of the ways that you guys have supported me being able to do this podcast and do my creative practice and keep going on this journey. So I so appreciate it. And I cannot wait for you to see this book. Sophie and I wrote it together and I illustrated it, and it's about this thing that we're talking about in this episode. Cultivating curiosity. Yes. And you adult listening to this. Yes. I think that the book can encourage your curiosity, but even more so your kids. And kids. You know, this book is about how freaking cool and mysterious our universe is. And at the heart of it is the universe, the knowledge paradox that says somehow we keep learning new things all the time. Feels like mystery should be dwindling. We should be getting closer and closer to figuring it all out. And yet people like Einstein would talk about this knowledge paradox that said, somehow, the more we know, the more we realize we don't know. Physicists 100 years ago thought we had maybe 1% left to figure out. Physicists, nowadays, a lot of them, people in the quantum physics world are like, we don't even know if we scratched 1% of our knowledge. This universe is nuts. And that's kind of what it's about. It's about this idea that, for me as a kid, I felt like all the books I was given and in school, I had this sense of like, okay, everyone's been here for a long time. We figured it all out. We put in these books, read them, so you can catch up and get to work. And it was just so uninspiring to me to feel like we had explored everything, figured everything out. And then it wasn't until I was like a late teen, early 20s, that I realized, oh, there's huge mysteries left, that our universe is so weirdly mysterious. And it really made me fall in love with learning in a way. And school ended up feeling like you were learning to play an instrument, a guitar, but you'd never heard any music. You didn't know why we were doing this. What is the payoff? Not just in terms of money and getting a job, but satisfaction and being thoroughly engaged in your life. And when I realized that it's a part of engaging the mystery and leaning into it, that learning just came to life for me in a different way. And unfortunately, it was at the end of my formal education experience. So we made this book to help inspire kids while they're in the thick of learning to be like, this universe is wild, and curiosity is a big character in the book. Mystery is a character in the book and it's just packed full with stuff that we're just super jazzed about. We hope you frickin love it. Go to InvisibleThings Co and pre order it please. Pre orders make such a big difference to whether a book succeeds or fails. If it has a big opening with pre orders it gets on the radar of a bunch of other things and it has potential of really thriving but if it doesn't, sometimes it just never really takes off. So would so appreciate it if you would go get a book for yourself. It's the kind of I try to make books that are for grownups and kids. Things that you would just like to have on the shelf because it's hopefully beautiful and inspiring and also stuff that you could gift the nephews and nieces and children in your life. Hope you friggin love it. Can't wait for you to see it. InvisibleThings Co all right, that's it on that little thing. I thought it was appropriate on this episode of Curiosity to go there. Thanks for bearing with me on that and massive thanks to Sophie Miller, who is an editor and producer on this show. Thanks to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful Beautiful for audio edits, video edits, animation and sound design. Thank you to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme song and soundtrack. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay Pep Tap. Foreign. 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@andyjpizza.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'. All.