69: Bob Baker on Following Your Curiosity, Being Persistent, and Finding Success as an Artist

Bob Baker has always been determined to make a living from his creative career. He started off his career by creating a music publication from scratch, with no prior experience. He didn’t let his lack of experience prevent him from achieving his goals. He just experimented with different ideas until he made it work.

Since that first publication he has expanded his interests well beyond a local music magazine. He has dabbled with writing, painting, and creating courses for aspiring artists. He even got into stand-up and improv comedy.

Bob has not let the starving artist mentality prevent him from making a career out of his creativity. In fact, he has thrived as an artist and creative.

In this episode, Bob talks about doing things that interest you, why you need to be persistent, and what separates successful artists from unsuccessful artists.

Here are three things you can learn from Bob:

Do Things That Interest You

Many of us have this fear of pursuing our creative careers. We are afraid that we will crash and burn, and never recover from our failures.

Bob takes a different approach to his creative interests. He doesn’t play it safe. He explores the things he thinks are fun. “I had this philosophy early on where, if something seemed liked it was fun to do, I was like, I want to take some action… I want to experience that and see what it’s like sooner rather than later. So, you know, a lot of people play it safe, or they wait til they know everything about a topic or they think everything’s perfect… before they dive into doing something. And I was just like, ‘I want to see what that’s like. That looks like fun.’ So I did that with comedy, with improv, with publishing a newspaper.”

It all started with creating his local music publication and has blossomed from there. Bob has never let his lack of experience stop him, and neither should you. “I published a local music newspaper and I had no business doing that whatsoever because I had no previous experience. Never wrote for the school paper, never really took journalism classes. You know, had just written on my own, had a passion for music. So I said I want to combine these two long standing passions, and just started publishing a local newspaper. And it was ugly. There were typos. People pointed things out. And I eventually learned just from doing and getting things out there to make it better.”

You Need to Be Persistent

There are no guarantees that you will ever make a living from your creative career. Not everyone is cut out for it. But there is something to be said for doing something you are passionate about.

That’s why Bob believes persistence is crucial if you want to make a career out of your art. You need to pursue it regardless of the outcome. “There are no guarantees. The world does not owe you a living. So even if you are persistent and keep your nose to the grindstone for years on end, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to make it, whatever make it means to you. However, I guess what I encourage is if you’re meant to do that thing, to express yourself in that way… You should do it regardless of the outcome. You should do it for the joy of it, however, at the same time, you could be strategic in doing it and learning the things that will move you to toward that greater potential of maybe supporting yourself some day. But hopefully it’s something that even if you don’t make a living at it or you don’t reach that point, that you’ll still do it for the joy.”

Bob recommends creating goals you can work your way towards so you can see the progress you’ve made. The key is to be strategic when you move towards your goal. “Making sure that your financial needs are met first just takes the pressure off to do your art more free flowingly I guess. And I kinda like that approach. But you can still be strategic in moving toward that goal if you have one of sustaining yourself like I did. It’s just… it may not happen on your time table… and that’s where the persistence comes in I guess. Yeah, if the payoff is not there in a month or two, are you willing to stick with it? And that’s another thing… that not everyone will, which is why not everyone succeeds because all of these rare… traits have to come together to make for a successful life.”

Being Successful vs. Being Unsuccessful

There are always people who will find success and those who won’t. There’s a fine line between success and failure.

Bob believes one of the things that separates success from failure is seeing thing through to completion. “There are tons of people that want to write a book. There’s tons of people that have started writing books. There’s tons of people who have even finished the first draft of a manuscript of a book. But there’s a very small percentage who actually follow it through to get the darn thing published. So there’s this seeing it concept, and I don’t know what quality that is, but it’s like, when you start on a project, make a commitment to chip away at it and to see it through to completion.”

Bob also sees another trait from many creative people: the need to jump from one project to the next. But you can’t always chase the shiny new object. You need discipline. “Another thing creative people are excited about new fresh things, and that’s cool, but you also have to follow through on the things that you’ve already started that may not be as exciting as they were those early weeks that you’re working on them. And that’s just a discipline I suppose and a personal commitment to stuff.”

Another thing Bob recommends is re-framing the way you look at marketing. Artists need to stop looking at marketing as a necessary evil and approach it as something that is creative. “To me the marketing thing, the necessary evil, is all about an attitude toward it. If you re-frame and realize that all you’re doing is just sharing your work with people who are going to resonate with it, that’s not painful, you know. You just gotta do it in a more strategic way. So get on friendly terms with marketing and don’t lump a lot of things into this “business” category.”

Read more shownotes from episode 69 with Bob Baker