Standout Creatives: Business, marketing, and creativity tips for solopreneurs launching their ideas

A recap of episode 78 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Kristen Fagan where she talks about letting go of your perfectionism, the power of play, and following your intuition.

Kristen Fagan has always been a creator. Even when she was young, she would create coloring book drawings for her younger family members to color in. That creative mindset helped her get a degree and a job doing graphic design. After a few years working in design, her interest in art was reignited. Her job allowed her to work on her art while also working in design, which fueled her interest in paintings and drawing. Her passion for art grew so much that it even led to creating her own painting workshops. In this episode, Kristen talks about letting go of your perfectionism, the power of play, and following your intuition. Here are three things you can learn from Kristen: Let Go of Your Need to be Pefect One thing that plagues many creatives is the idea of perfectionism. We spend all of our time worrying about making things just right, that we are petrified to make mistakes. Kristen believes we need to stop worrying about making things perfect and just let go. "Just keep letting go. Just keep letting what happens, happen on the canvas. Paint dries. You can paint over it. You can always change the outcome... and that's the same in life. You can always change the outcome. You can always do something different. Try something different. And that is so much more empowering and so much more exciting to me than being perfect." The way we let go of our perfectionism is by taking on the mindset of a beginner. Beginners aren't afraid to screw up. They go into things head on without the fear of doing something wrong. When you are a beginner, things are exciting and new. You get to experience things for the first time. Instead of worrying about how everything that can go wrong, look at how exciting it can be. "You have to be a beginner. You have to allow yourself to be a beginner. And by being a beginner, then all of these wonderful things happen. If you just came in and knew how to do something right away, there you go, it's done, what fun is in that? What did you really learn in that journey? What things did you take away in the end? Nothing. You just came in, created it, then you're done." So stop creating unrealistic expectations for yourself. The harder the struggle, the more fulfilling and unexpected it will be. "So I feel like it's within those struggles that the reward is even greater and you feel like you were really able to express yourself in a way you didn't even imagine because you didn't come in with any expectation of what you were gonna do. You just let it happen." The Power of Play One of the things that prevents many people from being truly creative, is their unwillingness to let go of their inhibitions and just play. As children, we let our imaginations run wild. We embrace the impossible. That all changes when we begin to grow up. Kristen believes we need to let go of these imaginary restrictions and learn to just play again. "As we get older... the world becomes labeled more with this and that, and good and bad, and right and wrong. And it becomes really difficult to remember that childlike wonder, and I think play is where that really brings you back." Kristen believes the symbolism of the paintbrush prevents many people from getting started. Instead of embracing the canvas, they are let the paintbrush and canvas intimidate them. "You can almost finish an entire painting without picking up a paintbrush, and that kind of gets people out of that mind. It's like when they pick up that paintbrush they get really nervous." When she removes the formality of the paintbrush people begin to let go. "If you're just playing with bubble wrap or you're playing with tissue paper or all of these random items, you don't really know what that outcome is, so you can kind of let go of it a little bit more." Once people figure this out, it becomes much easier to play. Instead of worrying about making the wrong choices, her students are able to embrace their choices. When they learn to trust their own intuition, it leads to some amazing results. "You just figure things out... As you go, as you play, you just start to figure things out on the canvas. And I think in the long run, you start to build a... trust of yourself because you're not worried about 'Oh, I'm gonna make the wrong choice.' You go 'I'm just gonna make this choice and I'm gonna do it. If I don't like it, I can paint over it... And other times you go 'Wow, what did I just make? That's amazing.' And now you have this whole new feeling of trusting your intuition and that I can do this on my own. And you don't have to show me every step. I can just play and see where this leads." Let Your Intuition Guide You Early in our creative careers it's easy to take every job that comes our way. We want to gain exposure and we want to open ourselves up to as many opportunities as possible. But as we grow, and demand for our services grow, it becomes much harder to decide what we should work on. Kristen has solved this dilemma by relying on her intuition. "You have to know what your mission is and not get too distracted. And I think the work on my intuition over the past two years with my painting practice has made it easier for me to feel like when something is right, or maybe something is a little bit off. And feeling a little nervous when you say yes to something is one thing, but if you feel sick... you should say no." Listening to your intuition is easier said than done. Some opportunities sound good on the surface, but they might also drive us crazy. In the end, it all comes down to being in touch with yourself. "It really comes back to working on your intuition and being in touch with yourself, however that means for you... and when other things arise, you can say 'Is this a feel good nervous yes or is this a uhh this sounds terrible,' And really be able to tap into that and listen to yourself." It's all about listening to what your mind and body are telling you. And just like other skills you want to perfect, honing your intuition takes practice. "When you're not practicing your intuition or you're not in touch with it, sometimes it's hard to tell. I think when you give yourself that space of self-care and all those things that allow you to make those choices when stuff comes up, because you can really listen to what it is your body is telling you." More shownotes from episode 78 with Kristen Fagan

A recap of episode 77 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with David Smooke where he talks about taking small incremental steps, the importance of community, and why you shouldn’t hold yourself back.

David Smooke studied economics and creative writing in university because he liked to write and felt economics had real world applications. He believed these two areas of study would be practical skills to have for his career. After graduating, David got a job as a journalist, but felt his creativity was being stifled. He was given assignments, and was given very little leeway in how he could apply his creativity. So he saved up a few months rent and moved to San Francisco. This turned out to be the pivotal moment in David's career. It was here that he got his first taste of marketing while working for a startup. At the startup David honed his marketing and community building skills. The lessons he learned here allowed him to start his own marketing firm called Art Map Inc. In this episode, David talks about taking small incremental steps, the importance of community, and why you shouldn't hold yourself back. Here are three things you can learn from David: Small Incremental Steps Work Many artists want to run before they even learn to crawl. They want to be a well-known, successful, artist, without figuring out what steps will help them get there. If you've had trouble reaching your goals, that's a sign you might need to slow down. Instead of trying to tackle your tasks full speed, you need to break your goal down into smaller, more manageable, parts. David believes everyone should work at their own speed. "Everyone moves at their own pace and whatever their age is irrelevant." He believes we need to position ourselves to make giant leaps by taking incremental steps. "You have to do a million of these incremental steps to even be in a position to make the leap, whatever the leap is." So, no matter what stage in life you're in, you can make strides towards your goal. You just need to be patient and practical about it. The Importance of Community One of the most important and overlooked aspects of a successful creative career is finding your tribe or community. As artists, many of us would prefer to work alone or in isolation, but we can't do everything ourselves. The most successful artists have a community they can count on in their moments of need. David believes community engagement is much more important than vanity metrics like likes. An small active community around your work can make the world of a difference. "One hundred likes aren't worth as much as one comment. Someone else actually contributing and being a part of it is always been more meaningful to me." David owes the growth of his agency and publications to the community he's built around them. "Really a lot of the initial growth, from the beginning, I owe to the community." It has allowed him to grow his following from zero to tens of thousands of subscribers. It is how he built his business. Don't Hold Yourself Back One thing that holds artists back from growing their audience is holding work to themselves. If you have a tendency to hold yourself back when sharing your art, you are doing your fans a disservice. "If you're a good artist, you're probably doing a lot more than you're putting online, and you're probably more interesting to look at your actual work and talk to you then it is to browse and search for you on the internet. So closing that identity gap is a lot of where I would start with." David also believes you should share your work before it's even finished. It allows people to see your process while you're in the act of creation. "I would also say that a major barrier that I see is that people being scared to put things out there before they're what they would call finished. You know, it's very acceptable and good marketing to put out there the process that you're doing, while you're doing it." Don't wait for your work to end up in a gallery, or in the hands of your customer, to share it. Be proactive with sharing your art. "You shouldn't wait to finish a painting, get it in a gallery, get it sold, and wait for that customer to put the painting online. You don't have to do that to market your art." What many artists fail to realize is that your work is interesting to other people. People are interested in your process and how you create. Share that with them and you will start to build a community around your work. "There are so many things around what you're doing that's interesting content to other people, that will create your audience and community." Read more shownotes from episode 77 with David Smooke

A recap of episode 76 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Melissa Dinwiddie where she talks about being happy with your self and your work, making time for your goals and creativity, and sharing your work without expectations, among many other things.

Melissa Dinwiddie spent much of her life thinking she wasn't an artist. Even though she loved doing creative things, and her parents encouraged her to become an artist, she still chose to take a different path. She was intimidated by all the people who drew better than her, so she stopped making art for 15 years. Even a stint as a dance student at Julliard, a prestigious performing arts school, didn't convince her to stick with her creative inclinations. Instead, she went to school for cultural studies and even attempted to get her PhD. While trying to fill out her PhD application, she was filled with fear. Her body was telling her something wasn't right. It was telling her to be more creative. This integral moment in her life brought her back to creativity. It led her to create a business around designing ketubahs, and eventually led her to creating her blog Living a Creative Life. In this episode Melissa talks about being happy with your self and your work, making time for your goals and creativity, and sharing your work without expectations, among many other things. Here are three things you can learn from Melissa: Be Happy With Who You Are One of the misconceptions we develop early in life is believing that people can create great things with little to no effort. We wonder why we struggle so much while those around us create amazing things. The truth is, most people don't have an innate talent. Most people go through the same struggles we do. We just don't see it. So we just assume everyone else is great and we aren't. Making this discovery changed the way Melissa viewed her art. "Part of me still believed... that if it were truly possible, if I were truly talented, if I were a genius, than I would instantaneously be able to do all this stuff. I used to looked at people's finished pieces and, without realizing it, I would assume that they just picked up a pen, picked up a brush, and went to town, and booms there's this incredible finished piece that in fact, in reality... was planned out and designed, and took them fifty-two hours or something... so I think that I knew that I must be getting better and there must be hope for improvement." That doesn't mean she wasn't envious of people who created great work. She decided that her self-worth shouldn't be tied to whether or not she was a genius. She realized that it was okay to be a normal person. "I used to flip through the pages of the premier lettering arts journal, Letter Arts Review, and I would cry because I knew my work was never going to be that good. And God, my ego was so tied up in , I think I believed on some level... that in order to be okay, in order to be worthy and a loveable person, I needed to be a genius. You know, out of this world amazing, out of this world outstanding, remarkable, and one of the really wonderful things about getting older is that... I have let myself off the hook and essentially forgiving myself for being a regular person, and life is a lot better on this side." After years of worrying about being the best, Melissa realized that happiness is more important than the constant need to feel validated. "The younger me might look at the older me and think, 'My God, you just let yourself go, you've given up,' and on this side of it, I see it really differently. I see it as, 'Yeah, but my life is so much happier.' Back then I didn't care about happiness. I wanted to be great. Why did I want to be great? I guess I thought it would give me happiness." Make Time for Your Creativity One of the most overused phrases we all use as creatives is I don't have enough time. We blame our lack of time for our lack of progress or success. But the truth is, time is just a convenient excuse. "If you can't put fifteen minutes a day into your art, you're making an excuse." Melissa used time as an excuse for ten years. She said she didn't have the time, but in actuality, she was paralyzed by fear. "I've been making an excuse for ten years, saying 'I don't have time, I don't have time, I don't have time...' It wasn't about the time. It was about fear. It was about perfectionism. It was about comparison trap. It was self-doubt. It was all those things getting in my way, but time was this really convenient excuse." If you are having trouble making room for your creative work, just dedicate a little bit of time to it every day. By spending fifteen minutes a day on her creativity, Melissa was able to keep her creative juices flowing. "When I spend just a little bit of time every day, it keeps my toe in the creative stream. So I constantly feel like I am immersed in my creativity. Whereas, imagine if I were to spend two hours once a week, which is actually more than fifteen minutes a day for seven days. But two hours once a week would not have that sense of keeping my toe in the creative stream, but just a little bit every day, does. Plus the hardest part is starting, and when the commitment is tiny... it gets you past the starting friction." If there's anything we can learn from Melissa it's that we need to stop using time as an excuse. If you really want to get something done, you have to find the time for it. You have to prioritize your time and make room for it on your schedule. "It's really not a matter of finding the time. It's a matter of making the time. You have to schedule it in. And like I said, I'm a big believer in scheduling it earlier in the day, because then you have less time for monkey wrenches to get thrown into the works... that tiny little bit of time. It's amazing baby steps will get you anywhere if you do enough of them." Don't be Afraid to Share Your Work More often than not, there is one critic in particular that prevents us from achieving our goals. This critic knows exactly what to say to keep us down. That critic is ourselves. We are so afraid that others will see the flaws in our work that we become paralyzed by it. But others don't see the flaws we see. And realizing that was one of the most empowering lessons Melissa has learned. "We're all so afraid to share our work because we're afraid people are going to see what we see. They're going to see what's not living up, where it's lacking, and they don't see that. But we're afraid they're going to and we're afraid to be humiliated, and we're afraid to be so horrified and embarrassed... My experience has been, when I just put my work out there... no comment, no apologies... just put it out there and then watch and see what happens... that has been so empowering." Even when we don't think our work is good or worthy, we can never predict how others will react to it. The work Melissa feels the least comfortable with is often the work that people appreciate the most. "I can't tell you how many times I put something out there and think 'Ugh, that wasn't my best effort... I'm embarrassed to share this but I'm going to because I'm doing this practice. I'm practicing putting things out there and that's the thing that I'm embarrassed by.' I'm cringing because I'm pushing the publish button or whatever. But that's the thing that gets a bazillion likes, that gets somebody emailing me and saying, 'Oh my god, I needed to hear that today." That's not to say you should seek validation from others. What we really need to do is publish our work and see what comes from it. "We definitely don't want to get caught up in seeking validation from other people. That's never useful... but when I can put my work out there and let go of the outcome, and just observe... it's very liberating and it's very empowering." Read more shownotes from episode 76 with Melissa Dinwiddie

A recap of episode 75 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Kerry Burki where she talks about  letting your younger self guide you, learning to say no, and shifting your mindset, among many other things.

Kerry Burki had an idea simmering in her head ever since high school. She wanted to make all women feel beautiful. This idea sat in her head for years before she would finally unleash it. Kerry's story starts like a lot of our stories. We have a kernel of an idea that sits in our heads. Sometimes we act on it, but more often than not, we let it sit. Then, something pushes us to act on it. Kerry's push came twenty years later in the form of her time in Marie Forleo's B School. Kerry was working on a blog called Handmade Success, which helps people sell their work on Etsy, when her kernel of an idea crept back in her head. The only difference was, this time, instead of pushing the idea away again, Kerry decided to pull the trigger. She asked women of all different ages and sizes to come over for a photo shoot. And with the help of a photographer friend, she began the first shoot of what became Kerry Magazine. She was finally doing her part in making all women feel beautiful. What started off as a small idea in her head has evolved into a full-blown magazine with three issues under its belt. In this episode, Kerry talks about letting your younger self guide you, learning to say no, and shifting your mindset, among many other things. Here are three things you can learn from Kerry: Let Your Younger Self Guide You We all have ambitious ideas when we're young and naive, before life gets in the way. We believe the whole world is our stage. We believe we can do anything. Most of the time we let those ideas go and we lose our way. Just like Kerry did. "I feel like we have things about ourselves when we're younger that could guide us as we get older, you know, for what we want to do in the world, the changes we would see and everything, but sometimes... you can get really way off track. And that definitely happened to me." While most of us never act on those ideas. Some of us do. All it takes is listening to what your inner voice is telling you to do. Because if you do it right, executing your ideas can change your life. "Sometimes I think it is kinda important to get back in touch with your younger self and see if you can remember what some of those ideals were and see if some ideas pop up... because since I've been working on this, it's been awesome and amazing and so fun, and it's not even anything I was thinking about over the last twenty years and there's some stuff that we knew when we were younger that I think we've forgotten." Learn to Say No One of the things that plagues many people is our discomfort with saying no. When people ask us to do something, it feels uncomfortable saying no them. But that's exactly what Kerry did. Instead of agreeing to lead a class for kids' yoga, she decided it was best to say no. Because once that door was open, she was afraid she would be known as someone teaches kids' yoga. "I didn't want that to be what I'm known for, and it's not what I do. So it was interesting to have to come and figure out who do I want to help, what do I want to be doing, and to say no to things that don't go with that." Kerry was afraid that she would fill up all her time with things she didn't want to do. Instead, she asked herself who she wanted to help and who she wanted to align with. Doing this would help clear her path forward. "I felt like I could have filled myself up so that when something did come along, I would have been like I don't have time for it. Right? And that would have been hard, you need to find where you need to be aligned , who you need to be aligned with... I started adding to what I say to myself in the morning... in the beginning of the day to say 'Please allow the people who are going to light my path to easily show up in my life today.' And when I read that, I said I need to start saying that every morning. Open myself up to allow the right people to come in that will help you see the path of you where you want to go forward." Shift Your Mindset One of the keys to Kerry's creative breakthrough was changing her mindset. Like most creatives, she used to have a mindset of fear and scarcity. After all, doing nothing is much easier than doing something. But once she re-framed her mindset, things started to work in her favor. "I feel like there's a lot I've learned. That you have to come from a place of being open to receive instead of fear of that scarcity. Like I'm not going to be able to figure it out or people aren't going to want to do it. That's just an easier place, your thoughts just go there easier, and again I just started coming up with re-framing those types of thoughts and repeating it... a lot and saying 'It's all going to work out. It's all going to come together.' And... when I do that regularly, it works." The biggest mindset shift comes from looking at things in a positive light. When you expect good things to happen, they really do start to happen. "Really, if you can switch to being open and expecting to receive good to come your way... it's almost like a light switch. It can really start to shift things." Read more shownotes from episode 75 with Kerry Burki

This is a replay of episode 28 with Mike Roy. Mike Roy is an expert on the myths that hold artists back. He has explored, examined, and dissected these ideas, and explains how they hold us back from our true potential. There's a lot we can learn from Mike, so check out our great conversation. --- Mike Roy is the creator of Artist Myth, a site dedicated to helping artists overcome the things that hold them back. In this episode, Mike talks about the common myths artists believe, what people can do to overcome those myths, and how to find work you love. Here are three things you can learn from Mike: Overcoming common artist myths Artists who want to make a career out of their art must first overcome the ideas that hold them back. According to Mike, the best way to do this is to ask questions. Far too often we let others influence our beliefs. If you truly want to become an empowered and inspired artist, you must discover it for yourself. Don’t believe everything you hear. How do you do this? First you must ask why, then you must follow up and find out why. This allows you to make your own informed and educated opinions. How to find your creative niche Many people want to live a creative and fulfilling life, but don’t know where to start. If you are in this boat, you can follow Mike’s three spotlight method for finding the work you love. First comes your passion. If you want to live an inspired life, you must find out what gets you excited. Second is your talents. What are you good at? How can you use these things to fulfill your creative purpose? Last, you must find your market. Discover those who want what you have to offer. They are your tribe. When you are able to combine these three things, you can begin to build a business around them. What to do with your passion, talent, and market It’s very hard to combine your passion, talent, and market. If you already know them, you are ahead of most people, and now it’s time for you to take action. This is where many people fall off the wagon. They can pin point everything they need, but they find it hard to do the work. But that is the most important, and most difficult part. You do this by putting your work out their and getting validation from it. If you want to know if people will buy your work, you must put it out there. Doing this will give you valuable feedback on what people like and don’t like about your work. You can use this to grow your business and become a better artist. Read more shownotes with Mike Roy

A recap of episode 74 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with Dave Conrey where he talks about the importance of connecting with others, some of his keys to building a creative business, and getting started.