Episodes

There have never been more opportunities to build a thriving creative career, but if you sit back and play it cool, you will miss them.I'm the first person to gag at the term influencer. I get it. I really really really do.But while we sit back and in our gag circles, these influencers, podcasters, youtubers and Internet personalities are taking over the internet, the art world and even the government!In this episode I want to share tactics of growing your reach online that are creative and driven by integrity... and most importantly they WORK.Don't sit back with your arms crossed judging those on the dance floor and miss your chance cut some serious creative rug! All the while, enabling your biggest career breakthroughs.In this episode:- Tactics for growing your instagram following- Influencer Life Coach Yoda- Plot Spoilers for Toy Story 4 (YOU ARE NEVER GONNA BELIEVE THIS!)LINKS3 Tips From The Latina Illustrator Who Jump Started Her Career On Instagramhttps://www.fo…

There have never been more opportunities to build a thriving creative career, but if you sit back and play it cool, you will miss them. I'm the first person to gag at the term influencer. I get it. I really really really do. But while we sit back and in our gag circles, these influencers, podcasters, youtubers and Internet personalities are taking over the internet, the art world and even the government! In this episode I want to share tactics of growing your reach online that are creative and driven by integrity... and most importantly they WORK. Don't sit back with your arms crossed judging those on the dance floor and miss your chance cut some serious creative rug! All the while, enabling your biggest career breakthroughs. In this episode: - Tactics for growing your instagram following - Influencer Life Coach Yoda - Plot Spoilers for Toy Story 4 (YOU ARE NEVER GONNA BELIEVE THIS!)

Andrea Pippins is incredible American illustrator living and working from Stockholm, Sweden. In today's episode, Andrea tells her story and we chat about the lessons she learned on the way to going full time freelance and becoming a published illustrator. We talk about the power of a supportive community, putting yourself into your work, giant leaps of faith, finding your place in the creative world and much more!https://andreapippins.com/Instagram: @andreapippins----CREDITSThanks to Yoni Wolf and the band WHY? for our theme music.Thanks to Alex Sugg for editing and the podcast!www.alexsugg.com----SPONSORSAstropad App - Turn Your iPad into a Graphics Tablet! The episode art was made using Astropad! Use promo code PIZZA for 10% Astropad Studio!http://astropad.com/?utm_source=Creative%20Pep%20Talk&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_campaign=Creative%20Pep%20TalkThis week’s episode is brought to you by Wix.com With Wix, the web your playground. Start with a blank page and desi…

Andrea Pippins is incredible American illustrator living and working from Stockholm, Sweden. In today's episode, Andrea tells her story and we chat about the lessons she learned on the way to going full time freelance and becoming a published illustrator. We talk about the power of a supportive community, putting yourself into your work, giant leaps of faith, finding your place in the creative world and much more!

202 - For When You Feel Like Giving UpDo you ever feel like you've lost your way?When you hit obstacles, setbacks and dead ends, do you sometimes feel as if you've fallen off your path?For me, the creative career path is a roller coaster. There are so many circumstantial and emotional ups and downs, and if you ride every twist and turn, it can be exhausting and discouraging. Sometimes, I almost feel like this road is somehow cursed even!!!In this episode I want to share with you ideas and tactics that have helped me breakthrough the times when I feel like giving up, and why this is the most essential tool in your creative career tool belt.This episode is chocked full of big ideas and encouragement, but we know the real encouragement comes from tactics that actually enable real breakthrough in your creative career, and we've baked that in too!This episode is pretty different and very special, we call it "The Curse of Art Island"! ----CREDITSThanks to Yoni Wolf and the…

Do you ever feel like you've lost your way? When you hit obstacles, setbacks and dead ends, do you sometimes feel as if you've fallen off your path? For me, the creative career path is a roller coaster. There are so many circumstantial and emotional ups and downs, and if you ride every twist and turn, it can be exhausting and discouraging. Sometimes, I almost feel like this road is somehow cursed even!!! In this episode I want to share with you ideas and tactics that have helped me breakthrough the times when I feel like giving up, and why this is the most essential tool in your creative career tool belt. This episode is chocked full of big ideas and encouragement, but we know the real encouragement comes from tactics that actually enable real breakthrough in your creative career, and we've baked that in too! This episode is pretty different and very special, we call it "The Curse of Art Island"!

Finding your creative gift is the most important (and difficult) pursuit in your creative career, and in this episode, I will share all the clues that have helped me make progress on this journey.From podcast interviews to speaking at conferences, I am very fortunate to get to meet a lot of phenomenal creative professionals. For the longest time, the central question for me has been this: what do the best of the best have in common? Over time, a pattern emerged: while there are an infinite amount of creative gifts, the people who know truly know what there gift really is are the ones that rise and stay at the top.And yet, most of the artists I meet seem petrified to ask themselves "what is my gift?" Maybe it's because we're afraid that we don't really have a gift? Maybe we're afraid because our gift is different than what we've spent years pretending it is?Whatever your fear of facing this deeply important question is, it's my hope that today's episode will give you the tools …

Finding your creative gift is the most important (and difficult) pursuit in your creative career, and in this episode, I will share all the clues that have helped me make progress on this journey. From podcast interviews to speaking at conferences, I am very fortunate to get to meet a lot of phenomenal creative professionals. For the longest time, the central question for me has been this: what do the best of the best have in common? Over time, a pattern emerged: while there are an infinite amount of creative gifts, the people who know truly know what there gift really is are the ones that rise and stay at the top. And yet, most of the artists I meet seem petrified to ask themselves "what is my gift?" Maybe it's because we're afraid that we don't really have a gift? Maybe we're afraid because our gift is different than what we've spent years pretending it is? Whatever your fear of facing this deeply important question is, it's my hope that today's episode will give you the tools you n…

How is it the 200th episode!? How have I been doing this for almost 4 years??! Whether I believe it or not, this is 200 baby! So to CELEBRATE it's only natural that we have one of the most CELEBRATED creative professionals on the planet, designer Michael Bierut!!! In this episode we explore how to make creativity that's valuable, why it matters that you care about your craft (even if it's not what the audience cares about) and how to stay excited about your work even after you've reached major career milestones. We also chat about Bierut's upcoming talk at the Exhibit Columbus 2018 Nation Symposium. This is in Columbus, IN (my hometown) not Columbus, OH (my current home)... I know... it's a tad confusing, but I promise it will all make sense if you just listen! :)

The first couple years of my creative career were about 99% CREATIVITY and 1% CAREER. Spoiler alert, that balance did not work! After crashing and burning, I was finally inspired to give the career / business side a serious effort. It was this season of my life that I stumbled upon a framework that completely changed my business. I want to share this discovery with you and it's my hope that it has an even greater impact on your creative career. This episode also includes my top recommendations for business books and specific business podcast episodes, as well as practical tips on the art of pricing.

The relationship between art and money is a real tricky one. One of the the biggest challenges stems from the fact that involving money into the equation puts pressure on your creativity. This is a major issue because, neurologically speaking, your best creative work comes from a place of play... AKA the opposite of pressure. This means those of us that get paid to be creative for a living face a unique battle: how do we stay loose when the pressure's on? How do we consistently execute at our best, when trying TOO HARD gets worse results? In this episode I share 17 tricks that really help me unlock my best work, even when the pressure is on.

EXTREMELY SPECIAL GUEST ALERT!!! Incredible Illustrator / Youtuber Fran Meneses (AKA Frannerd) joins us for a long chat about all things creative career! We talk about: How to make a deep connection with your audience and why it matters. Imposter Syndrome and why no matter how far you go, it still shows up from time to time! The breakthroughs that lead to this point. Daily tactics for noticing inspiration P.S. This podcast art is a collaboration between myself and Fran. I did the lettering she d...

As people who make THINGS, it's easy to be hyper focused on WHAT we make, but that should not be your only concern. WHERE you put what WHAT you make matters just as much. If you put the best restaurant in the worst location, it's going to fail, and the same goes for your art. Where you share your art matters, and in this episode we share ideas on how to get the most out of WHAT you make, by finding the right way to distribute it. CREATIVE SIDE QUEST SERIES PART 5 This is part of our Creative Side Quest series. This series is about how to take a side project and add business and marketing strategy to transform it into a Creative Side Quest AKA your secret weapon for developing your creative career! The Creative Career Path Handbook KICKSTARTER!!

It's funny that with the internet we've never been more connected, and yet also never been more tempted to isolate ourselves! In my experience, you can not build a thriving creative career or a powerful creative side quest without OTHER PEOPLE! You've got to get other people embedded into your personal projects to take them to the next level. In this episode I will give you several tactics for involving collaborators in your side quest and why it makes all the difference. CREATIVE SIDE QUEST SERIES PART 4

It's hard to get into art when it's being shoved down your throat. So, how do you get your work in front of new fans, customers or clients without directly smashing it into people's faces? You engineer organic growth. You make work that people want to voluntarily share. In this episode I share everything I've learned about doing just that.

It's noisy and no one wants to be sold anything anymore. No company is looking for new untapped talent, they just seem to sit back and wait for the "best" to rise to the top of the internet. In this climate, how is a creative person supposed to break into a new market or win a new dream opportunity? Are we just at the mercy of people discovering us? Or can we actively make stuff happen in our creative careers? In this episode, I want to share a strategy for developing work that can tackle these tough problems, and give you an edge for breaking through into your dream opportunities. CREATIVE SIDE QUEST SERIES PART 2 This is part 2 of our Creative Side Quest series. This series is about how to take a side project and add business and marketing strategy to transform it into a Creative Side Quest AKA your secret weapon for developing your creative career!

GUYS!!! THIS MAY BE OUR BIGGEST EPISODE TO DATE!! I AM SO PUMPED TO SHARE THIS EPISODE WITH YOU! 1 - We launch a new series today called "Creative Side Quest" In this series, we will walk through how to take a normal creative side project and add 4 layers of strategy that will transform it into a Creative Side Quest AKA your most powerful marketing tool!

In this episode I want to share with you the secret weapon I KNOW you have... that I'm SURE you're hiding :D This episode contains 3 lessons on creating a deep connection with your audience, and how that's THE number 1 secret to building a thriving creative career! P.S. Next week we will return to "normal" episodes, but I was deeply inspired to bring you one more "messy" summer episode! CREDITS Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band WHY? for our theme music. Thanks to my man Nate Utesch and his band M...

Today on the show, we have super special guest, Chicago based art director, designer and letterer Adé Hogue!!! Adé has worked with a very impressive range of clients, from Nike to PayPal, and his journey is incredibly inspiring. There are nuggets of wisdom and lots of vulnerability in this episode and I’m sure it’s going to be a new fan favorite! We talk through Adé’s journey, the secret to getting your best work, the blood-sweat-and-tears of freelance and how his engineering background sets him apart as a letterer.

Does planning make perfect? Or is it best to shoot from the hip? Should you meticulously obsess over the details or should you just let those creative juices flow??? In this episode I want to share a principle that has helped me strike a balance and tap into my own personal peak creative performance. Your peak performance will be a different recipe than mine, but hopefully my process will help you find yours!!! This episode comes from personal experience, studying best creative practices of others and theories around the neuroscience of creativity. Over the past few years I've tried to take all of these findings and turn them into actual practical applications.

Being a creative person is incredible... except when it's not. To be a pro creative you've got to work hard and be a professional, but playing that part can sometimes lead to ignoring your needs and emotions. There's a secret I know about most creative people. They can look all cool and collected and pro when they need to, but behind that cool facade there is often a volcano of emotions. I know the truth about you... you're emo. You may not listen to My Chemical Romance (anymore) but you still struggle with nerves, insecurities, emotional exhaustion, self doubt, etc. You can't just stuff all these feelings in the pursuit of being a professional, and here's why: this sensitivity isn't just a curse, it's your gift. This sensitivity to the human experience is one of your key superpowers!! In many ways, it's the secret to being a creative person! And that means you need to take care of it and even nurture it. In this episode I want to share ideas and tactics that have helped me get into t…

Would the people that know you best, see 'you' in the art that you make? The self discovery and artistic development required to pull this off can seem like an impossible mountain to climb, so I asked artist Jon Burgerman, how has he done it? I don't know anyone who is as good as Jon at downloading their essence into their art and in this episode I chat with Jon about what the process of getting to this place looks like.

Do you have a sense that you've yet to realize your full potential? Do you often feel like you have much more to give but can't seem to figure out how to make it happen? These feelings have haunted me my entire life and over the past few years I feel like I'm finally unlocking some of my inner hidden gems!! In this stripped back / behind the scenes style episode I share the clues that have helped me make progress in my journey of creative self discovery.

Every journey has it's ups and downs and your creative career journey is DEFINITELY going to have some serious downs... or you're not doing it right!! This episode is about failure and how you can not only get through it, but start to embrace it as the secret to success! I also offer a tactic I found that helped me complete my yearlong goal in just a few months!!!