566 - Creative Strategy: Less Social Media, Income Streams & 3 Essentials

Summary

Creative Pep Talk Ep. 566 – Creative Strategy: Less Social Media, Income Streams & 3 Essentials

Original Air Date: July 29, 2026
Host: Andy J. Pizza
Guest Host/Interviewer: Amelia Herbey (from Off the Grid podcast)

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Episode Overview

This episode features Andy J. Pizza as a guest on Amelia Herbey’s "Off the Grid", a podcast for creatives building their careers outside the confines of social media. The conversation centers on how Andy structures his creative business, develops his career with intentional strategy, and balances income streams while navigating the changes and challenges in the creative industry. Andy and Amelia also break down a powerful framework for creative strategy, discuss the evolving role of social media, and dig into the importance of resilience and experimentation for artists.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Andy’s Current Creative Business Structure (2026)

• Diverse Income Streams

  • Book royalties, particularly picture books, currently lead Andy’s income.
  • Client work comes second (brands, corporate gigs).
  • Supplemental streams: podcast sponsorships, Patreon, public speaking/talks, online classes (e.g., Skillshare).
  • Income sources shift from year to year—e.g., Skillshare used to be the top-earner, then podcasting, and so on.
  • Quote: “All of these things are interconnected in a way that's hard to pick apart...what is the purpose of each of these things and how do they fit together?” (Andy, 06:18)

• The Business Flywheel

  • Rather than focusing on what brings in the most cash, Andy thinks of business elements as interconnected—a “flywheel”, where one project leads to another, creating ongoing momentum.

• The Importance of Diversification

  • Diversifying creativity and income takes pressure off any single area and keeps things fresh.
  • Quote: “When the podcast started taking off, it took the pressure off illustration. And that's when I started doing some of my favorite illustration I ever did to date...” (Andy, 10:17)

• Realities and Challenges

  • The entrepreneurial art life is creatively freeing but often isolating. Andy misses social interaction and sometimes struggles with loneliness, despite being introverted.
  • Quote: “The entrepreneurial art game is incredibly lonely...sometimes I feel like my social skills are just atrophying because I just don’t see that many different people that often.” (Andy, 11:48)

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2. Navigating Creative Strategy vs. The Tall Tales of Virality

• Myth of the Singular Signature Offer

  • Andy and Amelia debunk the online business myth that success is about a singular focus or product. For most artists, diversification and adaptation are essential.

• Strategic Creativity Is Also Creativity

  • Deliberate, goal-oriented planning (“strategy with the end in mind”) is as creative as “discovery-driven” creativity.
  • Quote: “I think it's just as creative, just a very different type of creativity to do strategy...it's about co-creating with life.” (Andy, 21:42)

• Role of Social Media: From Tool to Trap

  • Andy has always shown up online (Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram), but he built platforms intentionally, with strategic goals in mind.
  • Social media used to be more meaningful for discovery, but its current state resembles a casino—creatives are lured in by the promise of sudden virality, but “the house always wins.”
  • Quote: “It's so sad to me because I know people that have went mega viral...it mostly didn’t do anything for them.” (Andy, 25:13)

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3. Strategic Project Example: The Podcast as a Portfolio

• Backwards Planning

  • Andy’s journey to public speaking was intentional: he reverse-engineered a path from his dream of being booked at design conferences, using the podcast as a “talk reel.”
  • Quote: “I want to be the person that gets booked on the design conferences...What would I need to build to cold call that first one? And that's a project. And so my project was the podcast.” (Andy, 31:10)

• Many Roads, Not All Successful

  • Not all strategic projects pay off—a key lesson is that experiencing “bad” projects is essential to figuring out what’s right for you.
  • Quote: “Doing the thing is the best way to know—not thinking about the thing...those side quests are always valuable.” (Andy, 37:08)

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4. The Musician Model: Singles, Albums, Tours & Merch

• A Three-Part Framework for Creative Business

  1. Singles – Discovery engine (freebies, one-off pieces, collaborations, shareable content).
  2. Albums – Deepening trust (podcasts, newsletters, books, long-form content).
  3. Tours & Merch – Revenue streams and superfans (paid offerings, events, products).

• The Overlooked Middle: Nurturing Fans

  • Most creatives focus on discovery (“going viral”) or what they’ll sell, but neglect the nurturing “album” stage that builds trust.
  • Quote: “The biggest takeaway...is that there is that middle piece. It’s the most ignored. Most people are thinking about, how do I get discovered? And then I'll make up the rest later.” (Andy, 47:20)

• Personal Examples

  • Amelia’s “single” was her viral “100 Ways to Share Your Work Off Social Media,” “Off the Grid” podcast as “album,” memberships and group programs as “tour/merch.”
  • Andy’s podcast started as a “single,” became an “album,” and led to merch (books, talks, Patreon).

• Cycle and Churn

  • It’s natural for fans to come and go; few remain superfans forever, so artists must continuously “play the game” with new singles and albums.

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5. Authenticity, Experimentation, and False Goals

• Shedding False Expectations

  • Not every project fulfills the fantasy you imagine. Andy shares an early-career example: designing book covers without reading the books.
  • “Doing the project” reveals the reality, and failure is part of refining your truest inclinations.

• Clever Ideas Aren’t Enough

  • Both hosts emphasize that only by actually doing the clever thing do you discover if it’s genuinely meaningful.

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6. Creative Practice without Social Media: Essentials

• If You Want to Succeed Without Social Media:
  • Apply the “Musician Model”: What are your singles, albums, and tours/merch?
  • Focus on building the “middle” (long-form, trust-building content/community).
  • Get intentional about discovery even without algorithms—collaborate, publish, guest, etc.
  • Keep experimenting; not every clever or strategic idea will work, but every project will teach you.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Social Media & Algorithms
  “They are weaponizing this feeling of ‘at any second my life could change’...the house wins every time.” — Andy, 25:13

• On the Interconnectedness of Creative Work
  “I like having all of these different parts that are, to me, kind of all the same thing too...Even when I'm writing with words, I'm still writing with pictures…” — Andy, 10:17

• On Making Strategic Moves
  “I want to be the person that gets booked on the design conferences...What would I need to build to cold call that first one? And that's a project.” — Andy, 31:10

• On Failure & Learning
  “Doing the thing is the best way to know—not thinking about the thing...those side quests are always valuable.” — Andy, 37:08

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:23 — Interview begins; income streams today
• 09:06 — Diversification is essential for creative satisfaction
• 14:01 — Good and bad creative "eras," and the role of support systems
• 18:13 — The origin story of Andy’s podcast and social presence
• 21:42 — The value and rarity of strategic creativity
• 24:25 — Social media as the casino; dangers of the virality myth
• 27:24 — Example: using the podcast as a strategic “portfolio”
• 36:39 — Learning by failing: "bad projects" shape real direction
• 42:21 / 44:29 / 47:20 — Explaining the musician framework (Singles–Albums–Tour/Merch) and creative marketing funnel
• 53:39 — Fan churn and the lifecycle of engagement
• 57:15 — New book “Mysterious Things” and the knowledge paradox

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Episode Highlight: “Mysterious Things” Book Launch

• New book “Mysterious Things” – a children’s picture book sequel to “Invisible Things,” exploring curiosity, mystery, and the “knowledge paradox.”
  • “As we learn more and more and more, you would assume that at some point mystery is going to be extinct...the knowledge paradox says the more that we know, the more more we realize we don’t know.” — Andy, 57:17
• Pre-order from Andy’s local Birdie Books for a signed copy: InvisibleThings.co
• Book available everywhere July 14.

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Takeaways & Actionable Insights

• Multiple, fluid income streams are normal—try to build a creative “ecosystem” rather than relying on “the one thing.”
• Be intentional and strategic, not just reactive or “vibe-driven” in your creative goals.
• The most successful creative businesses nurture deep relationships, not just wide discovery or hard selling.
• Leaving or reducing social media is viable, but requires you to develop clear discovery (singles), depth (albums), and revenue/community offers (tours & merch).
• Failure is not only inevitable, but essential for refining what work is for you.
• Define your own creative strategy: Where do you want to go, and how can strategic projects help build the necessary portfolio, community, or expertise?

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For More From Andy J. Pizza

• Explore more at creativepeptalk.com
• Andy’s personal site: andyjpizza.com
• For signed/pre-order copies: InvisibleThings.co

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This episode serves as an in-depth masterclass on building an adaptive, resilient creative practice on your own terms—anchored in both creative discipline and playful experimentation.

Transcript

[Andy J. Pizza]

Is social media driving you crazy? Do you feel like your creative practice is off balance? Do you need to rethink your creative strategy or embrace creative strategy for the first time? If any of those ring true to you, this episode is for you. This episode is me being interviewed by Amelia Herbey on her podcast off the Grid. I Off the Grid is for creatives trying to succeed without social media. And I had such a blast when we talked about so many different interesting things that I decided to share it. Here we talk about my income streams, what having creative strategy looks like, why bad projects are necessary, and what you need if you're trying to create your practice off of social media. Let's go. You know that feeling when you're creating a mood board for styling your house or your studio, but there's this pesky feeling in the back of your head that's saying you're wasting your time. You're never gonna be able to afford any of this. That happened to me when I started putting together my podcast studio room. There was this one piece that I knew would bring it all together. It was like a dark green bubble looking couch and I went online looking for some kind of compromise that would be somewhat kind of like what I wanted. But then, boom. Wayfair had exactly what I was looking for at a price that I did not expect. The green Key Hila Modern Boucle Loveseat is one of my favorite pieces of furniture that I have ever owned. If you have a space that doesn't match your taste, I highly recommend checking out Wayfair. There is a huge selection, great price and with Wayfair Verified you can shortcut to the good stuff. Their team of product specialists vets everything by hand using a 10 point inspection, testing things like quality of materials, functionality and features and even how long it takes to build. Ready to upgrade your home for less? Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. That's W A Y F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, Every Home this episode is sponsored by Squarespace. I freaking love having Squarespace as a sponsor because it's easy to sell it when you love something this much. I'm a big fan. Squarespace is an all in one website platform designed to help you succeed online. Here's what I love about Squarespace it's they're intuitive and super versatile. Drag and drop tools mean you can make a custom website without knowledge of code. That makes people say whoa, who made that for you? Looks like you built that from scratch. People have really said stuff like that to me about my site, and I built it myself quite easily with Squarespace. You can check it [e-mail] if you want to check that out. What I did with it, it doesn't look template and it screams my creative brand. I also love that I have all of my domains through Squarespace now, which makes it seamless and easy to. I know the first thing us creative folks do when we get an idea is to grab that URL. Now you can keep track of all your websites and your domains in one place. That's super intuitive and easy to manage. Head to squarespace.com pep talk for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEP Talk all one word to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[Amelia Herbey]

Hi, Andy. Welcome to off the Grid.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Hey, happy to be here.

[Amelia Herbey]

I am thrilled to have you, as I'm sure are many listeners who press play on this episode. Creative Pep Talk is oft recommended in the Interweb and the Clubhouse and every space I run. Your show gets dropped in the links regularly.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So it was very nice to hear.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah. And it's really impressive that you're still making it over 500 episodes in.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I'm not slowing down. I feel like, if anything, I've ramped up, but I still love making it.

[Amelia Herbey]

That's the gift, right? To be able to stay in the practice over time, which is one of the many things I want to talk to you about today. So you have had a 20 year career as an artist, as a creative, you've done so many cool things. You've collaborated with brands that everybody knows about, like Nickelodeon and Xbox and Apple. You've gotten to do stuff on Sesame Street. You've published so many amazing books. And I know that, you know, looking at your career from my perspective, it's like, wow, this is all so cool that somebody can actually do this. But also, I know as someone who also works with artists, that all of that type of work is shifting. You know, last year, this year, a lot has changed. We're all dealing with different, like, market forces, the rise of AI. Like, all these things are impacting creatives and artists in every industry. So I kind of wanted to start with you today, just like in the present moment, and ask you what your business looks like in 2026, like, what are the things that you're doing now? And like, how are you making money as an artist these days?

[Andy J. Pizza]

You know, I've been Asked this a few times, and usually I don't know the answer because I am very into the business of trying to succeed and trying to make sure I'm doing the kind of work that I want to be doing. But I'm not always good about knowing what the income streams are and how much they are and all that kind of thing. But you asked me at a good time because I just did my taxes. So I have.

[Amelia Herbey]

We're like six days from tax deadline.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And the other piece of it that's kind of hard is that it changes all the time. So last year isn't necessarily indicative of what it was the year before and prior to that. But last year, I think books were the biggest part of my income. Doing picture books and clients were probably second. And then everything else fell underneath that. So podcasting sponsors and Patreon and talks, and we still get some from the classes that we did on Skillshare, but there were definitely years when Skillshare was number one, and there were years when podcast sponsors made a lot more money than they do now. If you're not in the podcasting space, this is kind of boring. But in 2022, podcasting hit a huge bubble in terms of sponsorships for all kinds of reasons. Mainly just that we had all the investors just pouring tons and tons of money into something that could never get the returns they were looking for. You know, these huge tech companies buying podcasts for billions of dollars and stuff like that. Like, it was a ridiculous time. And, you know, it was kind of fun to be part of that a little bit in a ton, tiny way prior to that. But then, you know, 2022 and 2023, it just kind of all the money just disappeared overnight. And then we've kind of rebuilt it since then, so now it's still a piece of what I do. And. But the other reason why I think that question is kind of difficult to answer. I guess it's not even just difficult to answer as much as it is not how I think about it. So I think about it much more like all of these things are interconnected in a way that's hard to pick apart. It's kind of like in the business world, what they call, like, a flywheel. Like, this thing leads to that thing, leads to that thing, leads to that thing. And so, to me, I don't think of it as which is the most profitable as much as, like, what is the purpose of each of these things and how do they fit together? And I'm thinking about that a lot. Like, I Even think about it. Like, one of the things I had in mind as I started pursuing picture books more seriously was, okay, if I. If I really make a big part of my business and my creative identity, picture books, then what does that say about what kind of talks that I'm going to give? Even if I'm giving a talk to a corporate client, it might be more about storytelling because there's kind of a connection between those parts. So is that too much information? Not enough Where? Somewhere in between. Like, how'd I do?

[Amelia Herbey]

That was great. You were thinking both, like, very specific, and I think at, like, the higher level of how it all fits together, which I appreciate. And, you know, I love that you start with, like, it's so many different things, and it changes every year because I find that when I work with folks who have a clear art practice and they're really building their business as an artist, this is always a little obvious to them that they're doing a lot of different things, that it's always going to weave a lot together. But when I work with people who are sort of coming to it more from the online business space, they've been trained in this way of, like, one signature offer. Every piece of your work should hit like this, you know, five, six figures of revenue. And, like, it's such a different mentality. And I appreciate talking to artists who have made a living, have made a career like yourself for decades now, like, doing this work and being very upfront about, like, it's never just one thing. And even if it is one thing one year, it's not that one thing the next year. And so part of loving this work is loving, I think, like, juggling a lot of different balls, having things up in the air.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Definitely. I actually think about it like this. Like, when I was a kid, if you had asked me, like, what is my art form? What is my unique offer? Like, I wouldn't have had any idea, because at the time, we were making fake Saturday Night Live videos, and we were drawing tons of pictures, and I made, like, a fake radio show on my Talk Boy. And so I was just doing all kinds of stuff. And then when I got to go to college, then they're like, you need to focus on one thing. What is the thing that you're going to do for the rest of your life? And so I picked design and illustration, and I was like, all right, I'll do it. Fine. It was hard to pick, but now I'm all in on this. And then now I can find myself in this place. Where I'm like, God, now I gotta make videos and I gotta do this podcast. And I got. All I want to do is make the art. And I'm like, hold on, that isn't true. Like, when you were a kid, this is what you wanted to do. You wanted to express your creativity in all these different ways. And then even beyond that, a podcast is basically a fake radio show on a talk boy. That's basically what I do. And so I try to remember that. That I actually like having this diversification, not just of income, but of creativity, partially because it doesn't put too much pressure on any individual piece. When the podcast started taking off, it took the pressure off illustration. And that's when I started doing some of my favorite illustration I ever did to date, because I felt looser. And that led to some of the books that we've made. And it's just. I just. I like having all of these different parts that are, to me, kind of all the same thing too. So for me, they are also all illustration. So illustration is like, my favorite definition of that is writing with pictures. And I. Even when I'm writing with words, I'm still writing with pictures because I'm reaching for metaphors and symbols and analogies. I'm still looking for an image to kind of bring something to life. So for me, yeah, from the outside, it might look like, oh, he does all these different things. But on the inside, I'm always kind of trying to do the same thing, the thing that I like to do, which is illustrate something that I care about or that I want to say. And then, so there's the financial side, there's the creative side, and then there's the productivity side, where after doing this for a long time, I realized, like, what most artists probably already know is that I can't really be super creative more than, like, three or four hours a day. That's the max amount of creativity that I have. And I don't really feel like doing more than that. And so I used to really fight things like email, and I still don't like email, but I do feel like, okay, a couple hours in the afternoon, that's really the best way I could spend my time, because I can't really do much else anyway. And so I like having all these different outlets, too, just in terms of not burning out on one particular type of creativity or sitting in the same chair or, you know, just sitting in the same energy even. Sorry, I'm going on a huge rant. It's something I. This is Something I think about so often. And one. Another piece of it that I haven't quite figured out is I would love to have like the podcast interviews give me a little bit of this. But I do feel like the entrepreneurial art game is incredibly lonely. And I get, I definitely don't. I definitely would not thrive in a regular office like I've done that before. It is really, really, really hard for me as an ADHD person. And so I don't think I could do that. But I do feel like, man, sometimes I feel like my social skills are just atrophying because I just can't. I just don't see that many different people that often because I'm doing my little creative rhythm, which is kind of. I say it very intentionally because I know for a lot of people that is the dream. And I just want to say, like, there are elements of it that are not so great and that you're still gonna have to problem solve things. And there are all kinds of other ways where I'm not living the dream. I'm not trying to make it out like my life's baller. It is not. There's tons of problem solving and juggling and struggling and all that crap too. It's hard to keep it all going. But I just wanted to highlight that aspect of it. Like, I would like to have some part of my life that is just a little bit more like social. Even though I'm pretty introverted, I think

[Amelia Herbey]

that knowing yourself in those ways is actually a really important part of being self employed. Knowing what you need to thrive and then finding solutions to bring those things in. Because even for the introverted artists among us, like, creativity requires outside sources, right? To inspire, to rub up against, to problem solve with and for and without that. Like, you can't just live in like a friction free bubble where you make art all day. Because I think you like, run out of creative juice. It won't flow.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I think about a lot. Like, I don't know if everyone feels like this. So I'm curious what you think. Cause this is something that I haven't really explored with anybody. But for me, when I look back over my life, I have very distinct kind of good eras and not so good eras. Do you feel like that I can see it?

[Amelia Herbey]

I don't know that I thought about it that way before now. But like, when you're like, what's a bad era? I can come up with years.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So I guess I do do that even. You know, maybe they're, they're more Memorable in a way, but it was. I've been thinking about it recently because I've been in a little bit of a funk. I haven't been in a funk creatively. I feel like I've made some of my favorite stuff, but just kind of like socially, I think it's probably post Covid. And not just socially, but just mental health wise and everything. Like, I think a lot of people have experienced that. Not to mention just the state of the world. Like, it's just been a lot. And I've tried to think about the parts of it that you accept and then the parts of. Of it that you have some control over. And one aspect I've thought a lot about. What were the eras that felt great? It sounds kind of like Taylor Swift in a way. What were the. Yeah. What were the seasons? And I think a big part of it for me was like having a clear idea of like, this is what I'm all about right now. And I'm surrounded by a handful of people that are on their own journey, but we're kind of in a similar vein and we're just really like sharpening each other and inspiring each other and challenging each other. And I was thinking, oh, I kind of. I think with the pandemic and then everything after that, it's just been a weird time anyway. It's kind of a massive digression. But it is a piece of the puzzle in terms of building a lifestyle that works for your brain.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah. And I mean, I think what you described, like, it sounds very simple perhaps, but it requires a lot of moving pieces to be in that place where you're like, this is what I am all about right now. And I know other people who are actively all about something tangential or related or similar in a way that we can really grow and thrive together. You know, you have to be clear about that. You have to know those other people, they have to be in the same place. And I think that I've definitely been in eras where that felt true, where I was like, oh, we're all building. And there's something so satisfying about like crescendoing with other people. It is like an orchestra. And then sometimes you're just like a random trombone player who's off key in the back and you're like, oh no, this feels really bad.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah. Or just like walking down the street with it and just annoying people. Like that's. It feels like that sometimes. And maybe also that's not for everybody. I know there are other people that need to kind of go into really intense modes and have a really solitary focus, and maybe that'll last for a season. And then they shift gears and do a different version of a project where they're all in on that thing. But for me, I need a really diverse grouping of things to make me feel good.

[Amelia Herbey]

And I think, you know, between us, we are both podcasters with creative practices. We obviously are blending some of these different modes together. And so, of course, like, we'll feel similarly perhaps about that or attract people who feel that way. And also, like, I always like to use an ecosystems approach to a business, and we all know that mono cropping is bad for ecosystems. And I think that's true in a natural ecosystem or in a business ecosystem. Like, if your business is only built on one thing thing, it cannot be very resilient. And so I often work with people to try to be like, okay, what else can we add in here? What's. How can we take some pressure off, like you said before, or how can we, you know, companion plant some things next to each other such that you have more resilience if something dries up or there's a literal drought or, you know, the metaphor actually kind of works, I think all the way down in those instances. I want to weave in something else that's, like, very popular in the topic of this podcast and talk a little bit more about social media as well as your podcast and like, creative pep talk. And so, you know, along the way of your career, you've built a large social media following. You've built this incredibly popular podcast. I'd love to hear a bit about how those came to be. And I don't know, like, did one come before the other? Were they both just things you were doing and trying out? What. What's like the origin story of those aspects of your work?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah. So I think that one thing that is pretty different about me as a creative person is that I've always been showing up online throughout the entirety of my creative journey. It was Tumblr and Twitter back in the day, and even before that was Flickr. Like, I was in those. That era of things. I was always kind of showing up and connecting with people that were doing similar things and part of some kind of scene. I don't feel like my Instagram really got to a substantial size until after I was doing my podcast. But both of the podcast and the Instagram and then the other social media things that I've done, but especially those two were very intentional things. They were intentional, they were goal oriented, they were strategic. And the thing I was gonna say was I think that the typical way to think about creativity is that you start without knowing where you're gonna go. And I've heard John Mayer calls this Ouija board creativity, where it's like the guitar's playing itself. You know, the paintbrush has a mind of its own. Like, that kind of thing. You don't know. You start, you don't know where it's going, and that's the flying by the seat of your pants. And writers call it pantsing. I think that we mostly think that is the definition of creativity. Like, that is what creativity is. Whereas I think it's just as creative, just a very different type of creativity to do strategy. And strategy is the opposite, which is not starting without knowing where you're going to go. It's starting with the end in mind. It's starting with, I want to go there. What's the step before that? What's the step before that? All the way until you get to where you're stood, and then you try to take those steps. Right. And so I bring that up because both the podcast growth and the Instagram were both very intentional. And I could give you other examples. I don't. I'm not saying. The reason I'm bringing this up is not to say, like, when I want something, I get it. Like, it's not like that. It's not like that at all. It's just that I. There are plenty of things that I've wanted and tried to do and had a strategy for, and it didn't work. Like, that's true. I've experienced that plenty of times. The reason I bring it up is just because I think it's so underrepresented in creative conversation, and I think it's so disempowering to feel as though you are at the mercy of what life does. Does to you and what happens to you. And we in the creative world, I like to think of it like most of the people that get interviewed, it's like if in the business world, they only interviewed lottery winners and they said, how did you do it? And they're like, it was the secret man. It was like, you know, some kind of mystical thing that. And, you know, I see myself as a little bit of a mystical person. It's not. I'm not divorced from that. Spiritual practice has been important to me throughout my life. So I'm not even, like, hating on that. I'm just saying that the people that end up getting asked the most questions about how you did it are the most extreme cases. And almost every time someone's like, well, David Bowie did that, you're like, okay, how is that going to help you? It's not. I can guarantee just by probability, you're not going to be David Bowie. So I say that because I just think. I think creative strategy is an incredible muscle to strengthen because it's about co creating with life. That's what came to mind about building the podcast, building the Instagram, is that both of them were kind of separate things. And they were both things that were like, this is why I'm doing this, this is what I'm aiming for. And I'm going to figure out, how does one do that? Like, there was a time where I realized, like, oh, a lot of the jobs I want to get at this moment in time, I'm not going to get them if I don't have a larger Instagram now. I don't think that's true right now. So, you know, I'll just say that I don't really think your Instagram following is going to be a deal breaker for lots of opportunities. But I'd already had an Instagram by the time I started the podcast. But it wasn't very big or very successful. And it wasn't until maybe three or four years into the podcast that I started thinking a lot more seriously about it.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, I really like this point one, because I'm also a very strategic thinker and I think that something social media has really done to people's brains is like, sort of fuck with that sense of, like, well, anybody could be David Bowie now. Like, it's, you know, everybody knows somebody who's gone viral or knows somebody who know somebody who, like, made it as an influencer. It brought a lot of that, like, seemingly closer to home, I think, for people.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, so true.

[Amelia Herbey]

And it's been really harmful. I think it has, like, eroded the sense that we can be strategic. And also, I think a lot of people are being very strategic, but they're attempting to strategize, like, bargaining with the algorithm. That's what they think strategy is. I hear this a lot, right? It's like, well, my strategy is, how do I get the algorithm to like me? And I don't think that really works because one, an algorithm is not like a sentient entity. It can't actually bargain with you. And two, at this stage, the only motivation of these platforms is to make their own profits. And so any success you have, like, it's a byproduct of that you can't count on it. And even if you do make a ton of money doing something on social media, the next time you try to do it, it won't work again. So, like, part of what I think about strategy is it can be, like, not always strictly repeatable, but you can iterate on it, you can learn from it. And I think social media just breaks all of that logic. It doesn't work anymore.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I think you're completely right. Like, this feeling of at any second I could be David Bowie, anybody could. It's scary, even to the point where I'm not trying to be harsh on anybody. But you don't even have to have any talent or skill. I don't mean that in a harsh way. I mean that's what it promises you. And that's dangerous because it's kind of like just because of who I am and what. And I'm very pro. Like, people have value without skills and talents. I'm very pro. Pro that. But I just think in a creative career, that's an odd thing. It actually keeps you from developing and trying to create something of value and interesting. And I feel so strongly about, especially TikTok and Instagram, that the only value for those platforms really is the casino is the house. The house wins every time. And they are weaponizing this feeling of I, at any second my life could change. Why do you think they're making videos and they're having calls, real calls, with creators, one on one to coach them? Why? That's not generosity. It's because they're a TV channel that doesn't pay their creators. Like, it's. It's so sad to me because I think I know people that have went mega viral. I know people that have millions of followers. And guess what? It mostly didn't go well. It mostly didn't do anything for them other than. And the only. And this is the realistic part, and this is why I did build the Instagram. At the time, it was more meaningful. And even now, I'm glad that I have that following, purely just because it is some level of social proof that helps me get my foot in the door, in the opportunities that I want. And so it's not that it's completely meaningless. I think that some aspects of this new version of it are much more meaningless than they used to be.

[Amelia Herbey]

Social media is the casino. They're the house. We are just pulling the slot machine all day long. And I also really like your point of. Yes, of course human beings have inherent worth. And also, if you're a creative person and you just want to, like, be famous for being yourself, that that's just a celebrity that's not actually an artist.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right. It's a different thing.

[Amelia Herbey]

It's a totally different thing. And if you want to be an influencer and try to make that work through the power of celebrity, like move yourself to LA network effectively, get good at social media and maybe that can happen for you, but that's not a creative business. That's a different thing. And I think sometimes people mistake these logics as different and they don't quite understand that even those business models are so different. Being an influencer is so different than being a creator. But this gets back to the strategic piece and the question that I wanted to talk through more, which is like, how do we understand where we want to go and how do we understand the path to get there? So could you share some more specifics with an example from your work around how you charted that course?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, so I have lots and lots of examples of this. Usually the way that I go about doing it is a strategic side project. It's a body of work that kind of tells people I am who I say I am and I can do what I am asking to do. It's a, you know, a portfolio. And the easiest example of this is the podcast. And so you can see how there was strategy baked into the podcast from day one that was pretty unique to serve the goals that I had. So when I made the podcast, I always like to say this first, because if you're not adhd, you might not real. I take this for granted. So there's two things that have to be true for me to want something. First thing has to be it just intrinsically interesting to me. It's just. I'm curious about it. I like spending time on that. It's, you know, it's just an authentic expression of something I want to do. The second thing, which maybe this, I don't know if this is an ADHD thing or if it's just a human thing. I actually think ADHD people really do love helping people. And I think there's a couple reasons why. I think one is because it's easier than doing stuff yourself, because you have executive dysfunction. So you have all these answers, but you can't put them into practice super easily. And so it's really fun to be. There's nothing more fun. I love coaching people for that reason to be like, hey, maybe you should do this, this, and this. And then they go do it and succeed. And it's like, that's awesome. It's al. It's just, like, very fun. And so I think I've got a lot of dopamine from helping people. So two things always have to be true. I have to feel like I have to feel like this is something I just want to do, and I feel like this is good for people. This is good for me, and good for other people for me to do this. And also the thing about that is that's getting my whole self on board. You know, I'm a nerd for, like, Jungian thought. And I like this idea of, like, that gets my ego on board of, like, this is something that's really cool to me, and it gets my deeper self that's much more connected to the whole and to the community and that kind of thing. So when I did the podcast, it felt like I had done a talk that had hit that Venn diagram perfectly. I'd done some talks that hadn't gone super well in random, like, scenarios for a whole bunch of reasons. And then I'd done this one talk that was much more story driven. And I was like, it was just a little community talk. And I just felt like, this feels like something I want to do for the rest of my life. Like, I just. I completely fell in love with it. And sometimes you have that moment where you're like, I feel like my life has changed. And then you check with your partner and they're like, has it though?

[Amelia Herbey]

I don't know.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And that's a good. You know, that's a good indicator, right? That's a good way to check the temperature. And like, she was at that talk, my wife and Sophie. And I asked her. I was like, I think that was kind of like, something. And she was like, I think it was something like, I've never seen that before. I've never seen you in that zone. Like, that was really cool. And so I was, like, a little bit tempted to be like, maybe I should just go. I'd already. I was already an illustrator. I was already, I think, full time at that moment. And I. There was a little temptation to be like, let's just go straight into talks. Like, let's go hard into that. And. But I had kids and had already had built some of this stuff and loved that stuff too. And so I thought, okay, is there a way to, like, combine these two things, like storytelling and doing these talks with doing illustration? It wasn't until later that I was watching some, like, TED Talk or something, and they were like, hey, I Want to give you a story to kind of bring this to life. Here's my illustration. And I was like, it's the same thing. They're both illustration. And so that, yeah, that didn't come until later, but I did that talk. I wanted to get more talks. I knew, like, this, I want to do more of this. So I knew what I wanted. And I thought, okay, I want to be the person that gets booked on the design conferences and gets brought into the corporate creative teams and does talks there. So I knew what I wanted. That was my end point that I had to work my way back from. And then you say, what would the client be? Or the conference that I would speak at before that? And then before that, and then before that, maybe go back 10 steps even. And then what would I need to build to cold call that first one? And that's a project. And so my project was the podcast. And the reason why you can see the strategy in it from day one is I started this podcast in 2014, and I made it for the first 50 episodes. It was completely solo. It was just literally me talking. Eventually I started doing some interviews, but it's remained primarily a solo podcast throughout its entire decade plus existence. And the reason was, was because I was building a portfolio of talks so that I could send that to one of these conferences or someone would discover it at one of those conferences. And that's exactly what happened. And so that's an example. But the same thing happened for me in picture books. The same thing happened to me with Editorial. The same thing has happened to me in all these different spheres. They almost all have happened that way. Sometimes I feel annoyed that so much of my career has had to be me making stuff happen. Like, I would love for something just random to happen. And that was great. I've been lucky in all kinds of ways, but I'd love to be lucky in that kind of way. But I also like that my story that I tell myself around that is, if I did get lucky in all these different ways, then I wouldn't be able to tell anybody else how to do it. And I have got lucky. I'm not saying I haven't, but, yeah, a lot of the bigger things that have happened have been strategy.

[Amelia Herbey]

Thank you for laying all that out for us. And I also just love that you knew what you wanted to do, which was speak at these major design conferences, be the person that, you know, big firms, companies invite in to speak about creativity. So you started this side project, the podcast, and you, you would just use it As a talk reel, essentially. Like, here I am 50 times in a row. Which talk do you want? I have all of these options for you. And also, like, that helped you book talks. But then the podcast became its own thing. Right. Like now it's a whole arm of your business. It's not, it's obviously not just a way for you to get speaking gigs anymore. And that's something I've seen time and time again as well, is like everything I'm doing now came out of these, you know, random side quests of my life. DJing in a community radio station. And they taught me how to podcast and that got me freelance work and that led me to my studio and that led me here. Right. Like, for me personally, sometimes the strategy is more obvious in hindsight than it was when I was starting out.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, sure.

[Amelia Herbey]

But I like, I think as you get more experience in your career, you know, more of the moving pieces and you're able to be much more intentional. I'm also curious. Something that's really happened for me a lot, and I'm curious if this has been the case for you is like, in being strategic, I have had to very consciously shed a lot of the sort of false promises of things I thought I wanted that didn't turn out that way. For instance, you know, like my first book deal didn't live up to what I thought I was going after or something like that. Right. I know. It truly never does. Book deals are so fraught.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Book deals are, yeah. It's a complicated world for sure.

[Amelia Herbey]

And it's always a reckoning. I don't know anyone who's published their first book traditionally that didn't have like a complete creative reckoning in the process.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, that's true.

[Amelia Herbey]

So that to me is always like a paradigmatic example. But do you feel like when you have worked toward a goal, it's typically just been like self authored or have you found yourself chasing things that you're like, this is what people told me to do, or this is what I thought I was supposed to do. And then I had to figure out

[Andy J. Pizza]

that's not actually it for me, 100%. So all of these projects haven't worked out okay. You know, and one example of that is I remember when I was. This was when I earlier in my career, I was looking around at trying to figure out like what kind of jobs I could do that would feel right and be kind of a good fit. And I remember seeing Illustrator friends of mine or people on the Internet who had in their portfolio these Book cover illustrations that just looked amazing. And I just thought, this looks so freaking cool. Like, I would love to do that, right? And I came up with a project where I was going to make a handful of books from the public domain and recreate the COVID At the time, this was a little bit more unique than it is now. This is something that happens all the time now. It wasn't completely an original idea, but, you know, it was a little bit more novel than it is now. No pun intended. Novel. But. But I, I. The extra layer I was gonna do was we were gonna screen print em as posters. And so I did wizard of Oz and I did 20,000 leagues under the Sea. And then I did Moby Dick. And I remember posting about it and someone saying, oh, this is great. How'd you like the book? And I was like, oh, I'm supposed to. You know, I was in my, like, early 20s, maybe mid-20s still.

[Amelia Herbey]

I skimmed the Wikipedia page.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I just didn't really think that much about that side of it for some reason. And that to me, as I like to make fun of myself with that project, but also I like to use it as an example to say, doing the thing is the best way to know not thinking about the thing. Like, yes, that's something I should have known before I started it. Like, at the time, I wasn't reading any classic books. I wasn't really reading hardly any fiction, almost exclusively nonfiction. Nowadays, I'm more into fiction and even classic books than I was then. So I could probably do that project more authentically now. But I didn't know that until I had done it, you know. And so for me, those side quests are always valuable because they do get at what you're saying. Like, sometimes these things are just like an ego trip. They're just like, that looks amazing. I want. And it's similar to the celebrity or the fame or whatever. Like, so many people have had to learn that the hard way of like, ooh, all this attention is not so good. But doing those projects are some of the best way to make progress. I talked about it on the show. Like, I've seen this meme about how to put in a USB stick, and you put it in once and it's the wrong way, and then you put it in the other way and you're like, no, that's actually the wrong way. And then you put it in the right way. And that's what creative stuff is. Like, it's much easier to just try things and realize, like, because. And here's the Reason, like Steven Pressfield talks about, you're always going to feel resistance. And almost the only reason, only way you're going to know which resistance is truly the wrong resistance is by doing it the right way and the wrong way. And so I. Yeah, I feel like lots of the projects have been wrong, but the. But the best way to figure that out is to actually, like, test it.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, I often find that I have a ton of clever ideas. So many clever ideas. I mean, as strategists, all we have is clever ideas sometimes. And it has taken me years of just trying to do the clever thing to realize, like, not all these have legs, not all these are for me, but if I didn't try them, I wouldn't know that if I didn't go down those paths, I wouldn't be able to really feel into now. My, like, very honed sense of, like, oh, this is the true thing, or the real thing, or like, this feels right and no one outside of you can tell you if it feels right or not. That's such an important part of developing a creative practice. I want to stay on this theme of projects and weave social media back in because you recorded a podcast episode last summer about creative people leaving social media. Because you and I both know that last year everybody decided they wanted to leave social media. There was all of this, like, buzz around it, and people might have expected me to be like, hell, yeah, we're all leaving social media. But I am a strategic thinker. And I'm also, like, I always want people to do it intentionally. I want to make sure it's the right fit for you and your business. And

[Andy J. Pizza]

with the podcast, kids, books and talks, writing has become as much a part of my job as illustration. And it can feel really hard sometimes. But I recently heard this thing from Goosebumps writer R.L. stein. That really shifted things in my mind. He said, writing is fun. Like, go sit down and have some fun. Like, that's what it's about. Don't listen to all those writers that say that it's torture. He went on to share three easy places to find ideas. He calls this the Idea Store, and it means mining your daily experience, your memories from the past, and your imagination. This made the prospect of returning to the page so much less intimidating. All of this was from R.L. stine's class on Masterclass on writing for young audiences, something that I know a lot of you are working on. There are 200 more classes like this, and for every other area of your work and life, chock full of little moments you didn't know you needed. Three and four members feel inspired every time they watch. 83% have applied something they've learned to their real lives and there's no risk. Every new membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener to this show, you get 15% off any annual [e-mail] Pep Talk. That's 15% [e-mail] Pep Talk. Head to masterclass.com Pep Talk to see the latest offer. Man, I can't tell you how badly I wish I had been able to find a great therapist that accepted my insurance. Back in my mid-20s, I was figuring out I was ADHD. I was struggling in my career and struggling to support a new family and finding a good therapist that I could afford would have been a total game changer. I'm almost 40 now and I've been in therapy in some capacity for the past few years and it has made such a massive impact on my mental health. I truly wish that everybody could do it. And that is why I'm thrilled to tell you about Rula. Rula is a an online healthcare company that allows you to quickly and easily find therapists that accept your insurance. Literally, the first thing you do on their site is put your zip code in and your insurance into the search bar and Rula asks you a few simple questions about the care that you're looking for and boom. Delivers lots of options of therapists that take your insurance. Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when they use their insurance. And I love, love how this is making therapy accessible to more people. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by Insurance. Visit rula.compit talk to get started. That's R U L A.competTalk you deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

[Amelia Herbey]

I loved your episode because I felt like it really grounded us in, like how do you make this decision? And you provided a framework for leaving. Social media kind of follows the musician model of singles albums and tours with merch. And I had never heard anybody talk about this before. So I'm curious, could you kind of explain that to off the grid listeners and walk us through that framework?

[Andy J. Pizza]

So at the time I was listening to your podcast and Cody Cook Parrott's podcast and and also just feeling in part the reason I was like seeking that stuff out was because I was Feeling not just the burnout of social media and doom scrolling and all that. Like I was feeling all that, but I was also realizing like I've been taught to believe this is important for my creative career. You know, people's billion dollar businesses rely on people like us believing that we need to be creating for exposure for them for free. And I was starting to realize like, this isn't really serving my creative goals like it used to. And I wanted to think about it a little bit differently. And so I was kind of exploring. I took lots of breaks from social media and different kinds of tried different things, but ultimately it got me thinking about what are my actual creative goals and what are my creative business goals and what are the things that I need to be doing. And one thing I'll just say, like when I first started as an illustrator, I had some lucky breaks early on and then it all disappeared. Like it just that we, we were in the recession. This was like back in 2008, 2009, and I got, I started building some momentum, got a few lucky breaks and then it was just kind of disappeared overnight and then didn't get any work for six to eight months or something and just, it just all kind of disappeared. And I often joke that my rock bottom wasn't like drugs and alcohol, but it was business books and marketing podcasts.

[Amelia Herbey]

I mean, a funnel will only take you to rock bottom.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yes, yes, exactly. It's a pretty, the funnel. It's pretty dicey, pretty dicey stuff. But you know, I'm grateful for that time because I learned a lot of things that I think are important are not. Some of it is not compatible with creativity or you can get sucked into that and lose your creativity. But there are elements of it that I think are just really, really important. And one element of it is kind of the funnel or the customer journey, which is something that I didn't. We have an intuitive sense of, but we don't really fully maybe know what that means. I think if you would ask most artists and you got them to think about what does it when it comes to like selling my work or connecting with other people, what are the steps of that? I think I would have thought there were two things. It was, you know, you have to be discovered, you have to get on their radar and then you have to sell the painting or sell the work. And one of the things that I learned in the marketing side of things that I saw in the music industry is that they have a more complete version of that process of how someone goes from not Knowing you exist, to being a casual consumer, to being someone who is supporting you and being a true fan in that way. And so I think of it as like the journey of the true fan. And there's these three pieces. And so it's not just discovery and then sale. Like there's this really big middle part because you do want to get discovered. And how musicians do that is they have these singles and they have these collabs. They open for other bands, but they have singles. That the point of the single is to be discovered. But the fact of the matter is, just because you like a song on the radio doesn't mean you're going to the tour or buying the merch. Right? Like, what is the thing in between those two events? It's the album is that you hear the single, if you really, really like it, then you're going to go check it out and you're going to go deeper. And that going deeper is developing a sense of trust in a relationship with that artist. So there's these three parts. There is the single, which is the discovery. There's the album, which is the developing of the trust and becoming like a fan. And then there's the third part, which is the way that you support them, which, you know, nowadays is tour and merch for musicians. And so I like this because this is something that the music industry built this infrastructure around music. And it's not perfect, but I do think that we can learn a lot from it. And so to me, the thing where I landed after exploring all these different ways of having a creative career without social media or with social media or all that stuff, I thought, oh, this is kind of the wrong question. It's not really the thing I. It's not yes or no. It's. I have to have a solution for what are my singles, what are my albums, what is my tour in merch. I have to have something for those three things. I have to get people to know about me. I have to get people to be able to go deep with me. And then I have to have something that is worth that people are buying. And musicians have had to change that too, because it used to be people were buying the music and now they're not buying the music or now they are again. But there was a period of time where they weren't. And you had to sell T shirts. And like, I've heard boy genius talk about, like feeling like they're just a T shirt commercial and. Yeah, okay, I get that. And it's kind of, you know, it's funny and sad and everything. But as practice, those are the pieces that you need. And I try to be not super precious about them. Like, there were times where my podcast was the discovery engine, and then there was a time where, like, people weren't outwardly focused on finding new podcasts. And that wasn't so much the case, and it was more so the album. It was how people were going deep with me. And I think the biggest takeaway from all of this is that there is that middle piece. It's the most ignored. Most people are thinking about, how do I get discovered? And then I'll make up the rest later. Oh, if I go viral, then I'll figure out how to monetize it. So at best, they're thinking about. They're thinking about how to get discovered. And then what am I going to sell? Almost no one thinks about, do I have ways where people can get into the deep cuts and actually make that transition from being a casual appreciator to someone who knows your name. This is another crappy thing about social media. But it's similar to the radio where it's like, if I said, hey, what's the song you've enjoyed the most lately? You might, if you were. If you exclusively listen to the radio, you might not know what they're called. You might not even know the name of the song. And the same is true for art. If I said, what illustration, like, lit you up the most recently? You probably be like, I can't even find it because I don't know their name. I just saw it on Instagram or saw it on Pinterest or whatever. And so if you're trying to build a practice as either just either as a business or as a kind of community, you have to make the relationship. That middle piece is super, super essential. And the only way it gets done is a long form sort of thing. And that was another piece of wanting to do talks. Early on, I realized, like, oh, the only way I could imagine sustaining my illustration career was getting ad jobs. Frequently. They were the only ones that had the kind of margins that I could see, like, this working. And I saw all of them go to people that are doing talks. And I couldn't know if it was like a chicken or an egg thing, but I was like, I do think I need to get on stages. And that seems to be a big part of how you develop a bigger presence in the industry. And at the time I didn't. I knew talks, but I didn't realize, like, oh, that's just a long form piece of content, it is someone spending an hour with you. And so no matter how you. It could be a newsletter, it could be a podcast, it could be a talk, it could be a book. Like, for me, books have been a big part of that. Like, being published is a part of building trust for me. And that's one of the silver linings of if your first book didn't go as well as you wanted it to go, just having a book, whether it's published or self published, even just. Just having that as an accomplishment and as a statement and allowing people to go deep with you, that is that middle piece. And it's really essential and there's not really any other way to do it.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, I really appreciate how you're emphasizing these, like, three points. Often I'll think of it as a sort of marketing framework. Like, grow, nurture, sell. Like, we do need all of them. It's so interesting, too. Like, the people you work with, you're really seeing. Like, they can grow and then maybe they can sell, but they're never nurturing. And I. I often find with people who make their way into my world, they might only be nurturing. Like, I encounter a lot of people who have an email list of, like, 200 people that they have been dedicatedly talking to for years, and they're like, it's gonna be a business one day, Emelia. And I'm like, well, gotta have some options.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I know those people, too. Yeah, now that you say that, that's true. It's not really, maybe my nature, but I definitely see that. Yeah, there are a lot of people that are dedicated to, like, authenticity and doing it right and are all in for the right reasons and. Yeah, I could totally see that.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah. And I think it has a lot to do with, like, it's about, like, our personalities. It's about our, like, core wounds and what we're afraid of. It's about, you know, are we afraid of visibility? Are we afraid of making the sale? Are we afraid? You know, there's so many different places we find our comfort zone, and often we stay there. But I completely agree with you. Like, it's never going to be a business without all three pieces. Like, you can make music and play in bars forever, but if you don't have singles, albums, and tours, it's not gonna. You're not gonna make a living from your music. And so I often think that's an important thing to distinguish, too, when we talk about, like, creative strategy. Like, is that what you want? And I often Ask people when I'm working with them. Like, is the goal here that this is a business that supports you full time? Because if it is, we need to function differently than if this is just actually something you wanna do for creative fulfillment. It doesn't really matter if it makes money, it's a hobby, it's whatever. Like, those are different ways of operating, once again. But I like this framework a lot and it's helping me rethink my work. Like, even if I just chart for off the Grid listeners. Like, my first single was my list of 100 Ways to Share your work and life off social media. That was the first thing I made that got seen by like over 25,000 people. It got shared in all sorts of spaces. I never even knew it got shared in. It got translated into other languages and published in other things. Like, that was a big single for me. And then off the Grid became my album. And now, you know, it's an album with like 150 tracks. Your podcast is an album with 550 tracks. Lots of deep cuts there. And I'm sure people say to you what they say to me, which is like, I've been binging your show. I've been listening to so much of the bad cattle. Like, people find it and they just go deeper and deeper and deeper. They travel with you. And then there's the tour. For me, that's going to be my membership, the Interweb. And then also there's the meet and greet, which is the group program I run inside the membership that you only know about if you're in there and you're a VIP and you sign up for it. Right. So we build these different layers, but I think it can all track very nicely onto that musician model. And then sometimes, yeah, there is the T shirt. And the T shirt is where your superfan carries you into the world and other people can see you.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And that's great. Yeah, that ends up being that Another business thing. The flywheel of now that T shirt becomes the way that someone else discovers it. And it just kind of has this. And I think it also is important to kind of highlight. This accounts for the idea of Churn, where I know that if someone listens to like 50 episodes of my show, maybe even a hundred or 200, they might be like superfan, and they might be in the super fandom for a few years or 10 years or whatever, but a lot of people are going to eventually be like, okay, I got that. I don't need that anymore. And that's the same thing happens with music. Like as a musician you might not want to feel like that, but as a music consumer you definitely feel like that. You have eras where this was everything for me and for some reason it doesn't really do it for me anymore or they went on a different path and, you know, whatever. And there are, yeah, there are probably a handful of bands that you're going to follow for the rest of your life, but those are the exception to the rule. But that's the other thing I like about this is that kind of accounts for. You don't need to have people in your world for the rest of their life and it's okay to feel like, yeah, if this is hitting you at this time, then that's great. I think the other thing I just wanted to mention with that was there's a huge spectrum of creativity for yourself that's kind of like a diary all the way to being a full time artist. There's this hu. There's everything in between there. And even like I don't feel like it's a perfect definition, but creative researchers often use the definition of creativity. Being something creative is both novel and useful. Now there's. I think there are pros and cons to thinking about creativity that way, but it can be new to you and useful to you. Meaning it did something for you, it helped you process something, whatever. Like that's creative and that's great in its own right. I think that there are a lot of people that maybe never want to go full time, but they still want. Part of the creative impulse is coming from being a social animal and wanting to connect with other people and have conversations about it and be seen by other people and show their audience themselves and all that kind of thing. And I think anytime it start, goes beyond the journal thing, you need the singles, albums and tourists.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, I think that's a nice point. You can like move into that sharing without it needing to be like a full time business or even a business.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Even a business. Yeah, maybe you don't. Yeah, maybe the tour is the only piece that's not necessary there if you really don't want, if you don't want to sell it. But there's an exchange there that goes beyond. Yes, it's been kind of soiled by the economics and capitalism and all that in some way. But there is an exchange of energy and value and resources that goes beyond like just making money. But it's not for everybody. I'm not saying it is.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, I know that you have A book coming out soon and I was trying to figure out what book this is of yours and I couldn't count. I don't know if you've counted.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I've tried to, but I've done so many different kinds of books. I always feel like I don't even know if this number is relevant. I've done over 10 books, but there's a lot of different kinds of books.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, it's like asking how many kids you have and then deciding if you count your pets and you're like, I don't know.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I definitely count my pets on that. But yeah, yeah.

[Amelia Herbey]

I mean, as I think we should. But could you tell us about mysterious things? What is this new book of yours? When does it come out? Where can folks get it?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, it's right here.

[Amelia Herbey]

Ooh, Exciting.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Mysterious things. And if you're listening just audio, you won't be able to see it. But it's a follow up companion to a book that my wife and I, Sophie Miller, did called Invisible Things three years ago. And it is about mystery. It's about trying to switch on brains to curiosity. I think at the heart of this, we don't say that it's about the knowledge paradox, but it is about the knowledge paradox because it is a picture book. But the knowledge paradox is as we learn more and more and more, you would assume that at some point mystery is going to be extinct, like we're going to know everything. And the knowledge paradox says the more that we know, the more more we realize we don't know. And that in some ways the universe has never been more mysterious. And the reason why that's really been at the core of the Invisible Things project as a whole. And then very specifically, this book in that project, Mysterious Things, because I think that as a kid I felt like Truman from the Truman show in this very particular way where he wants to be an explorer. And if you're not familiar with that movie, it's supposed to be a young Jim Carrey in a classroom and he's in this movie set or TV set. He doesn't know it and everybody's filming him and they're trying to get him to not go anywhere because he can't actually leave this set. And so the teacher's like, actually, we've explored everything. You don't actually need to explore anything. And I felt like that as a kid. I really did. I felt like it wasn't anybody's fault. It was just the way that we went to school. It made me feel like, okay, look, all the juicy stuff has already been discovered before you got here. We put it in all these books, and for the next 12 years, you're gonna get up to speed, and then you can go get on with, you know, making value for shareholders like that.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, that's what we're told.

[Christina Quinn]

So.

[Andy J. Pizza]

But it wasn't until. So I was so checked out from learning and it. I didn't become a lifelong learner until school was almost over. And it wasn't until I started getting into, you know, popular quantum physics discussions and trippy conversations you have in college and all that kind of stuff. I started being like, oh, my gosh, like, we live in the most incredible and mysterious universe, and it just gets weirder all the time. All the time we're learning something that just seems completely impossible. And so much of our world, we don't even, like, even our technology, we don't know why it works. There's a lot of, like, you know, things in the quantum realm and stuff that they're think like they're creating these microchips that they know work in theory, but they're like, we don't really know exactly why they work. And so the more we know, the more we realize we don't know. And we have. There was, like, physicists a hundred plus years ago that felt like we only got, like, 1% left to figure out. Like, we pretty much nailed it. And then 30 years later, after that, the physicists are like, we don't even know if we know 1%. We are so limited. And so that, to me, was wanting to give this book to younger me and be like, look, the universe is crazy. Like, you don't even need to understand it. But it felt like school often felt like learning to play the guitar, but I'd never heard music before. And I'm like, why am I doing this? What. What is this? Why do I care about this? Like, even math, which I. I don't. I feel like I might have, like, the dyslexic equivalent to numbers. I'm not sure, but I. I definitely struggle with numbers. But even math, now I'm like, way more friendly with math. And there's a character called math in this book. I'm way friendlier with math because I'm like, this is the code of the universe. This is this mystical, weird, amazing thing. And so it's both. Like, I always try to make my books kind of like an art book. So they're like. It's a collection of some of my favorite paintings, in a way. And so for Adults. I know a lot of adults bought invisible things. And I make it for that reason. Like, it ended up in a lot of the, like art galleries and gift shops, which is kind of like a dream of mine. Like, I love that, that vibe. And then for kids, it's like, I just want to be like, hey, kids, I don't know if anyone's told you this, but like, learning is how you dig into the juicy mysteries of being alive. And it's really cool. And the interesting. There's just as interesting things here as there are. Maybe more so than what is in the screen that you're looking at or what have you. So that's the book. I kind of went overboard telling you about it, but it's just. Cause I'm excited about it.

[Amelia Herbey]

No, I love this. I feel like I'm like, well, we talked about plenty of mysterious things today, like marketing.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, that Internet.

[Amelia Herbey]

And also I love like seeing dark matter and math on the COVID And I'm with you. Like, I feel like once you start learning anything about quantum physics, it will crack your brain open to how much is unknown and even understanding that like the two most popular theories of physics that we have conflict and make no sense together, even though they both are evident when you look around the world. And so I love that. This is a children's book about the knowledge paradox. And of course it's beautifully illustrated and like such a. Such a wonderful, just like object in addition to being full of wisdom. So I know it comes out July 14th. Folks can get it anywhere they get their books. Do you have preferred retailers or do you. Do you signed copies or anything like that?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, if you go to InvisibleThings Co, there's a list of the retailers, like the classic ones. And then also, so if you order it from Birdie Books, which is my local bookshop that is across the road from this studio, we're gonna go sign all of those. So if you wanna sign copy, you can do pre orders from there.

[Amelia Herbey]

Perfect. All right. That will all be linked in the show notes. Folks, pre order the book. We're all authors here. Well, we're not all authors. There's enough authors here that you know pre orders matters.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, they do. Yeah, yeah.

[Amelia Herbey]

Please get the book. I'm excited to get my nephew plenty of copies. And is there anything else you wanted to say or share with off the grid listeners today, Andy?

[Andy J. Pizza]

I don't think so. This was a complete blast. Thank you for having me. A bunch of stuff that I don't always get to talk about and it was just tons of fun exploring this with you.

[Amelia Herbey]

Yeah, thanks so much for being here. Thanks everybody for tuning in. And until next time, we will see you off the grid.

[Christina Quinn]

There are a bunch of ways to prevent crime that no one is talking about, like how wind direction can make your community more violent or peaceful and how GLP1 meds could reduce felonies. This is fighting crime Crime where we ask the big questions. What if we've been having the wrong conversations about crime?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Two policies, ban the box and clean slate, don't seem to be helping, even though they sounded like they should or they would.

[Christina Quinn]

I'm your host, Christina Quinn. I'm going across the country from prisons to universities, police chiefs to inmates to look at the evidence and question everything we think we know about how to make America safe.

[Amelia Herbey]

Economists think a lot about how people respond to incentives. If we want to reduce crime and change behavior, we need to increase the costs or reduce the benefit.

[Christina Quinn]

Join us as we figure out new ways to fight crime and be prepared to think differently. Fighting crime. Listen or watch on Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Spotify.

[Lee C Camp]

Lee C Camp here. If you've been enjoying this show, I think you might enjoy my podcast, no Small Endeavor. Produced by Great Feeling Studios and prx, no Small Endeavor explores what it means to live a good life. We sit down with courageous, impassioned people like actor Martin Sheen or civil rights hero James Lawson to ask what it means to live a life worth living. Follow no Small Endeavor wherever you get your podcasts. Living a good life is no Small endeavor and we would love to help.