Hey friends, Chase here

Let's talk about one of the most important questions every creator eventually asks: How do I find my creative voice? Or maybe you've heard it framed another way: How do I develop a personal style? How do I make work that actually feels like mine? How do I stop copying what everyone else is doing and start creating from a place that is uniquely my own? This question comes up all the time because it sits at the center of the creative life. Whether you're a photographer, designer, writer, filmmaker, musician, entrepreneur, or someone who simply feels called to make things, there comes a point where technical ability is not enough. You can know how to use the tools. You can understand the software. You can study the masters. You can follow the trends. You can learn the settings, the systems, the formulas, the workflows. But eventually, you hit a deeper question: What makes this mine? That is what this episode is about. And I want to be clear from the start: finding your creative voice is not about inventing some perfect brand identity overnight. It's not about locking yourself into one narrow lane forever. It's not about deciding, intellectually, "This is my style now," and then forcing every piece of work to fit inside that box. Your creative voice is much more organic than that. It is your fingerprint. Your point of view. Your taste. Your history. Your instincts. Your lived experience. Your way of seeing the world, translated through the things you make. And the only way to find it is to make. Not once. Not occasionally. Not only when you feel inspired. Again and again and again.

The Big Question: What Is Personal Style?

Personal style can sound like one of those vague creative phrases that floats around in the universe without ever becoming useful. People say things like, "You need to find your style," or "You need to develop your voice," but what does that actually mean? At its simplest, personal style is the thing that makes your work recognizable. It's the equivalent of your handwriting. You don't have to think about your handwriting every time you write your name. It's not something you consciously construct letter by letter. It just comes out of you because it has been shaped by repetition, history, muscle memory, and identity. Your creative style works the same way. It is the unique aesthetic fingerprint that you unconsciously put on everything you make. Think about music. You can hear a Prince song for just a few measures and know it's Prince before his voice even enters. There's a signature there. A rhythm. A tone. A sensibility. A way the work announces itself. Think about photography. You can look at an Ansel Adams landscape and recognize the scale, the drama, the tonality, the reverence for nature. It has a point of view. That's personal style. It's not just what you make. It's how you see. It's what you notice. It's what you repeat without realizing you're repeating it. It's the pattern behind the work. And that matters because without some kind of recognizable point of view, you're just bouncing around. You might be technically capable. You might be able to make a good photograph, a good song, a good design, a good film, a good essay. But if there's nothing distinctive about the way you make it, people have a harder time connecting that work back to you. Personal style is what helps the work become yours.

Why Your Creative Voice Matters

There are two big reasons personal style matters. The first is personal. If you spend your life chasing everyone else's style, you're going to end up miserable. Now, let's be honest: early in the creative journey, imitation is part of the process. That's normal. That's healthy. That's how we learn. You see someone whose work you admire and you try to understand how they did it. You copy a lighting setup. You study a sentence structure. You recreate a beat. You reverse-engineer a design. You try to make something that looks or sounds or feels like the thing that inspired you. There's nothing wrong with that. In the beginning, imitation helps you learn how to move the tools around. It helps you close the gap between what you see in your mind and what you're actually capable of making. But imitation is not the destination. If all you ever do is copy what's trendy, or borrow someone else's point of view, or chase whatever style is getting attention right now, you are not expressing yourself. You are expressing the culture around you. And that is a direct path to burnout. Because the reason we make things, at the deepest level, is expression. We make because something inside wants to come out. We make because it feels good to turn an internal experience into something real in the world. We make because creativity is one of the ways we become more fully ourselves. If your work is always a response to someone else's style, you lose that connection. You become a mirror instead of a source. The second reason personal style matters is practical. If you want to do creative work professionally, you do not want to be paid merely for your time. There is nothing wrong with getting paid for your time. That can be part of the path. But the ultimate goal is not to be treated like a pair of hands. The ultimate goal is to be paid for your vision. You don't want someone to hire you because you own a camera. You want them to hire you because only you see the assignment that way. You don't want someone to hire you because you can operate software. You want them to hire you because your taste, your judgment, and your perspective create value. You don't want to be interchangeable. The most recognized creatives in the world are not valuable because they can execute a task. They are valuable because they bring a specific point of view to the table. That's what separates craft from commodity. When people can recognize your fingerprints on the work, when they can say, "That feels like you," you begin to move into a different category. You're no longer just competing on speed, price, or availability. You're competing on vision. And that is where the upside is.

The Creative Gap

One of the most important parts of this conversation is what Ira Glass famously called the creative gap. The creative gap is the distance between what you can see in your mind and what you're actually capable of making right now. Every creator knows this feeling. You have a vision. You can feel what you want the work to be. You can almost see it, hear it, taste it. But when you sit down to make the thing, the result falls short. The photograph doesn't look the way it looked in your head. The song doesn't hit the way you imagined. The essay feels clumsy. The design feels flat. The film doesn't carry the emotion you hoped it would. That gap is frustrating. But it is also the path. Craft is how you close the gap. You make, you study, you adjust, you learn, you make again. Over time, your ability catches up to your taste. You get better at translating the thing in your mind into the thing in the world. But here's the trap: If you spend that entire process only copying other people, you might improve technically without ever developing a voice of your own. You might become skilled at imitation. But mastery is not just being able to reproduce what already exists. Mastery is being able to make what only you can make.

Personal Style Is Your Point of View

Your creative voice is not just an aesthetic. It's not just black and white photography, clean typography, heavy brushstrokes, fast sketches, cinematic lighting, sparse production, or bold color. Those things can be part of a style, but they are not the whole thing. Your style is the point of view underneath those choices. It is the reason you reach for certain tools. The reason you frame things a certain way. The reason you simplify here and exaggerate there. The reason you are drawn to certain subjects, moods, colors, rhythms, textures, or stories. The episode uses a great example from the world of design: imagine trying to design a tennis shoe inspired by a glass bottle of gin. Suddenly, the bottle becomes a filter. You might notice the transparency, the edges, the shape, the weight, the way light moves through it. Those qualities start informing the shoe. That is a useful way to think about style. Your personal style is the filter your work passes through. It's not limited to one medium. If you are a photographer, designer, musician, writer, or multidisciplinary creator, your style should still carry across what you make. The medium may change, but the point of view travels. That's when people can look at a piece and say: That feels like you. Not because you repeated yourself mechanically, but because your way of seeing is present.

How Do You Find Your Creative Voice?

Here's the part people don't always want to hear: It takes time. There is no shortcut that replaces making the work. You can think about your style. You can journal about it. You can moodboard it. You can study other artists. You can talk about your influences. You can define your values. All of that can be useful. But none of it replaces the act of making. The best way to find your personal style is to make as much as you can, at a regular cadence, ideally as quickly and consistently as possible. Because your style is not something you force into existence. It is something you discover through repetition. You make one thing. Then ten things. Then a hundred things. At first, it may feel random. You may feel like you're all over the place. You may try on other people's approaches. You may borrow. You may experiment. You may make things that don't feel like you at all. That's okay. The making is the sorting mechanism. Over time, patterns start to appear. You notice what you keep returning to. You notice what feels alive. You notice what feels false. You notice the choices you make when nobody is telling you what to do. And eventually, if you put twe...