479 - The Easily Missed Key to Building Critical Mass

0:02On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off, sometimes you just need a creative pep talk.

0:21Hey, you're listening to creative pep talk, a weekly podcast companion for your creative journey. I'm your host, Andy J. Pizza. I'm a New York times bestselling author and illustrator. And this show is all about everything I'm learning about building and maintaining a thriving creative practice. And it's really hard to do. So I'm just sharing all the things I'm learning throughout my own creative journey.

0:56The cold is here. I used to hate the cold weather until I started to embrace it, dress for it, build a wardrobe of layers that were made for the season, and that is where Quince comes in. They've got down jackets, wool coats, leather and suede outerwear that holds up to daily wear and still looks good. Quince uses premium materials and trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production, but because they cut out the middlemen, they can deliver the quality of luxury brands for a fraction of the price and bring you classic styles that you'll love and will hold up year after year.

1:35Still loving my Quince button-down shirt. I feel very legitimate when I wear it. I have been eyeing their affordable cashmere collection for Sophie's birthday that's coming up. Don't tell her that. And we got Quince's European linen sheet set. And let me tell you, nearly every night when we go to bed, Sophie says, I love these sheets. It's like our new nighttime ritual. They're soft, cozy, and the material just feels real and whole and homey. Very cozy for winter nights. Refresh your winter wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash pep talk for free shipping on your order in 365 day returns.

2:14now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash P-E-P-T-A-L-K. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash pep talk.

2:34Today, I want to talk about why do we support the artists that we support? Why do we purchase the merch that we choose to purchase? When I think about why someone might buy something from me, whether it's a poster or a book or bring me to a place to do a talk or whatever it is, maybe client illustration, why do they choose me instead of somebody else? I think the most obvious logical answer that comes to mind initially is it's better than the other people, than the competitors that they're considering. Like it's just about having work that's so good that it beats out the competition. But if I will put myself in the shoes of the audience or the listener or the purchaser of the merch, if I put myself in their shoes, I realized that it's not that simple because if I think about this through the lens of bands and the bands that I buy merch from or wear the t-shirts of or go to their show, there's a really interesting difference between what I'm a casual consumer of, like just listen to them on Spotify versus the artists that I actually choose to spend money on, buy the vinyl, go to the show, et cetera.

4:07And it's not as simple as how deep they move me. Now that is a factor. Like it has to be something that I really love in order to want to spend money on it. Right. But it's not that simple because actually when I started thinking about this, I realized there's a lot of bands and there's a lot of artists that have moved me at a really, really deep, profound level that I wouldn't necessarily go buy the t-shirt of. Now, on principle, before you come after me with this, on principle, if I love the band, if the band has been really important to me, I try to find ways to support them, whether it's buying the vinyl or going to a show or what have you.

4:53But musicians tend to make their money from the merch. And so I wanted to zero in on the t-shirts. Like what bands am I willing to wear the t-shirt of? And it was kind of weird because the more I thought about it, the more I was comparing these two music stars and looking at their merch and thinking, why do I wear that t-shirt, but I don't wear that one? It's more or less the same star power, star level. The merch looks about the same. It's similar classic evergreen design. It's not really about just liking the shirt more. It's something beyond that. Now, we just went through the election cycle, which I don't want to get into here, but something kind of novel that happened that you might not be aware of.

5:54I wasn't aware of it, is that Maine, the state of Maine, was voting to potentially change their flag. Now, I believe they didn't end up changing it, but I saw a little segment on the news about this, and it really intrigued me because they were talking about the process of picking which design they were going to claim to be the winner and put to the test of potentially changing the design to. and they showed the designs and these designs all looked almost the same. Like, yes, there were some that were really rudimentary and probably not really in the running. There were others that were super detailed and impressive, but the ones that they were considering as like the finalists looked pretty much the same.

6:47They have this fir tree in the middle and they have a star off to the side. and really it's just minor details that they changed with each design. And I just thought like, how in the world do these people decide which flag is the winner when they all feel so similar? And I'm watching this person on TV talk about it. And she says, the winner we picked, we really loved because their fir tree in the middle had 16 branches and that stood for, that represented and symbolized the 16 counties in Maine. And they like that they knew what it stood for. And I thought that is something. There's something interesting about that to us creative people trying to build a practice because there it was, these two flags with more or less the same design, the same star, the same evergreen design.

7:57And yet one was one that they were willing to stand under. And what was the difference? It was that they understood what it meant. They understood what it was about, what it represented. And that was key to them feeling good about flying that flag. And the same is true. If you are a creator, people are going to have a really hard time flying your flag. If they don't know what it stands for, what does it mean to be a fan of what you do? And I realized that I apply the same thing to the merch that I will proud proudly represent and proudly fly the flag of on my body. If I know this band stands for this, this is what they're about, there are things that I feel good about representing throughout my town, that's the stuff that I'll wear.

8:52And then there are other bands and comedians and movies and whatever that I might have really enjoyed on some level, but I'm not going to use them as shorthand for my identity, either because I'm not really sure what it says about who I am as a person, but, or I don't really, I'm not fully aligned. There might be things I liked about it, but I ultimately don't really agree with what it's about. Now, I'm not saying that every band has to be overly political or have a really strong message, But I think that the bands that do tend to create these really engaged followings, these wild super fans of what they do, those fans have a sense of what are these people, what is this music about?

9:49in the previous episode we talked about how my 16 year old daughter is a huge fan of the band boy genius and um why she has this connection to the band that she has but she's also a really big fan of the band 21 pilots and i was kind of testing this theory out and i thought i don't really know if she'll have an answer but i was like hey with 21 pilots why do you or not why do you like them, but what do you think they stand for? Like, what are they about? And I honestly, this was just an inkling of a theory. I didn't really, even though I felt convicted about it and I knew it was true in my own life, I didn't know if she would be able to easily and quickly verbalize this, even if she felt it.

10:38But she instantly was like, boom, boom, boom. One, they stand for taking mental health seriously. Two, they stand for platonic love, like friends forever, that kind of energy between the drummer and the singer. And three, they stand for being outsiders and not being okay. And she just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. And having just gone to a 21 Pilots concert with my son, she went a couple of days earlier with some friends before you were like, why did you take her. She didn't want to go with us. I went with my son, who's also just a mega fan. It's the only band he listens to. I was just blown away by the movement that is the fandom of this band.

11:28And this illustrates something that I think is so often missed by creative people, maybe the most important part of the process, which is the deep level of trust and connection that you have with your audience. Because for me, for the longest time, I thought there was kind of two, I probably didn't even conceptualize this, but I thought there were two parts to the process of someone engaging with my work, right? They discover my work and like it and then purchase something or support it. But of course, that is not the full journey. So we have been doing a series. This is episode three in this series.

12:20It's called The Journey of the True Fan. We talked about how there's really two journeys that you go on as a creator. You go through the creative journey, which we covered in a previous series just before this, all about how you discover the inner stuff, the stuff out there that you wanna make work about. You develop it into something and then you finalize it with this final statement of work or a gallery or a film or an album, whatever it is. And you put it all together and that's your creative journey. But that is the end of the creative journey. But that's the start of a second journey, which is the journey of the true fan, which is not your journey.

13:02You're just the guide on that journey. And that journey also has three steps that mirrors the creative journey. And so the three steps, we talked about this in the first episode of the series, they are discovery, them finding out that you exist. And the middle one, which is the one we're talking about today, which is trust. They develop a relationship. They go deeper. They learn to trust what you're all about. And then three, they purchase something. They support it. They want to own a piece of this. They want to use what you do as shorthand for their identity because it helps them explain who they are in ways that they haven't been able to in their own words with their own creativity.

13:50And so if you ask me like, who are you? I might be like, I don't know, but I'm a modest mouse fan or I'm a Y fan or I'm a fan of the movie Eternal Sunshine. Like that is one of the ways that I think about who I am and understand who I am. And when something means to me something that deep on that deep of a level, that's when I'm willing to part cash for it. But today I want to focus on that middle bit because that's a bit that I feel like we so often miss or ignore. And it probably is the most essential part of the journey. And so most of us think about discovery and sales, but we miss out on what it means, how you actually create the kind of connection that makes someone want to go from a casual consumer into a true fan, into somebody that will spend money on what you do.

14:45This is the converting principle. And a lot of great work has been done talking about this. Ryan Holiday talks about this in his work around Perennial Seller and his fandom of Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden, he talks about how they don't even have any like a string of mega hits, but they have this ravenous diehard fandom. and the same is true for Grateful Dead. Like the Grateful Dead, the band has outlasted the members of the band and 21 Pilots, I feel like, are probably going to be that kind of band. And where do you get that level of fandom? How do you help them across that chasm between consumer and true fan?

15:31You do it by helping them understand what the evergreen design means. What does your work mean? Now, it doesn't mean that you have to spill your guts, lower all of your boundaries and say everything, every opinion and every thought you have on every single topic and issue. I actually think that that's a terrible idea. I don't think, not only because I don't think it's good for your creative practice, I don't think it's good for your creative soul. I don't think it's good for you to put yourself out there to that degree. I'm a really big believer in boundaries, even within your art. And there are certain things in my art.

16:11I've told stories in my own creative practice on stage and in the podcast of my relationship to my mom and my ADHD. So those are family things and medical things, but there are a whole host of other things, even within those two topics that I will never touch. I don't say my kids' names, for an example. That's just one that I just think, Just why? Why do you need to know that? No. But there are other, like, I don't think you need to be explicit. I don't think that you need to lose all the mystery, but I do think if you want people to make that conversion, if you want them to bridge that chasm, you have to give them a sense of what is this about?

16:53What are the core values that this art means? If you give them that, If they can understand what you're about, they will be proud to stand under a flag that they fly to their friends and family. But now let's talk about some ways to actually do that.

17:28so in every episode we try to leave you not empty-handed but with an idea on how to bring this into your creative practice right now, right today, because I like getting inspired as much as anybody. Who doesn't want to feel motivated, inspired? I love it. It's a great feeling, but it turns sour quickly if you can't do anything with it. And especially if you do that consistently and you're like, man, I felt inspired for two months and I didn't actually do anything. Now I start feeling anti-inspiration, anti-motivation, right? So we don't want that. We want to leave you with something that you can do that can make a difference to your creative practice.

18:14And so we try to leave you with a creative call to adventure every single week that we do this show. And your creative call to adventure with this week's episode is make a devalues list, okay? This is kind of like a values list, but it's the opposite, and I'll explain why that is. If you stop and try to think of what are my values, what are the things, what are the qualities, the characteristics that mean the most to me, it can be kind of daunting, kind of difficult to get to those parts of your brain. And the reason I think that this is is because we have a negativity bias as humans. I've heard smart people talk about this plenty of times, way beyond my pay grade.

19:03But I think the deal here is that we evolved. We have the machinery to focus on the negative, to spot the negative really, really quickly because it helped us survive. It helped us to know what we needed to change about ourselves so we didn't get thrown out of the community or what bad thing is on the horizon or in the bushes or whatever. We have a tendency to focus on the negative, right? And so we can hack this. Now, the problem with that negativity bias is that's how we get all these groups of people collectively gathering around, concretizing what they're against. And that becomes self-identification through what you hate.

19:56And it's a terrible, miserable way to live. And it does terrible things to society. However, doing the opposite is really difficult. Gathering around what you're for is really, really difficult. And so we can not push against our negativity nature, but hack it, use it, start there, and then flip it. The first time I ever heard about this was through Austin Kleon. In one of his books, he talks about, I think it's Keep Going, he talks about this punk band that, you know, they were doing the thing that bands usually do, which is sit around and talk about their influences as they start to make music, but they couldn't agree on what they liked.

20:40And so instead, they agreed on what they didn't like, and they chose to be the opposite of that thing. And so that process is what I want you to do. It's so easy. It's so powerful. And the reason I want you to do it is because, like I said, I don't think that you need to put every opinion about every random occurrence that happens, every hot take that you have into your creative work. I don't think you need to do that. I actually think that's a terrible idea. And I think that's why getting familiar with your core values that are more timeless have a higher likelihood of being something you're going to stick with and something you're going to be proud of baking into not just the way you market your work, but the actual work itself.

21:33These are things that can bleed into the songs, the illustrations, the stories, whatever it is you make. They can be grounded in some of your core beliefs about what you think it means to be a good human or live the good life, as philosophers would say. And so how you get familiar with them is really important so that you can command them. You can do it on purpose. You can tell people what flying your flag means. And you can do it in a subtle way just by kind of injecting it into your creative work. You can do it a little bit more overtly than that in your interviews and press releases around the work, how you write your Instagram captions.

22:19There's a whole spectrum of how people do this well. But I would challenge you to think of the artist that you're willing to wear their apparel and sport their merch and be a loud fan of. My guess is you could list what are they about. And I challenge you to do that. But the creative call to adventure today is the devalues list. And so instead of trying to think of like, what are my values? Think of what do you wish society would devalue? What are the things that you cannot stand that you freaking hate? This instantly helped me find a value that I was having trouble identifying myself through just thinking of what I was for.

23:07The first thing that came to mind is I really cannot stand groupthink. I cannot stand this, the archetype of the zombie where I love this symbol of the zombie. I'm not like a horror guy. I just think this is such a powerful symbol. This Youngie in Life did a whole episode about zombies. It's a podcast. I recommend that episode. They go deep into this idea that zombies are a symbol of groupthink. They want to eat your brains. They want to eat your thoughts. They want to stop you from thinking and make you part of this brainless mass that goes around destroying other people's brains and independent thoughts.

23:53Now, I actually think it needs to be balanced with community, but I think community needs to be organized around valuing how we're different. Now, that's a whole other value. But as I was thinking about this groupthink, I hate this thing where our consciousness lowers when we get a part of a group who has a core value that in order to belong, we all have to think the same. I hate that. And so what I realized was that's a devalue list item. And the opposite of that is individuation. That's a term coined by Carl Jung. And he talked about individuation is this process in which you go on a journey.

24:37The Hero's Journey is about this and find out who the heck you are. What makes you different? What are your core values? What are you about? What are your gifts as a person? What are your opinions? Not because you're part of this or that group, but because you have experienced it, you are convicted about it. That individuation process, individuation is one of my core values. Two other core values that came to mind as I was working through this process were growth mindset. That's attached to my love of story. It's this idea that it's not as simple as you're talented at something or not, or you're smart or you're not.

25:15You have this ability to grow and learn and that conflict and challenge can be your friend and they can be the keys to your journey. And then another one that came up, the first one I thought of was this idea of you are good. One of the things that is on my devalue list is this idea that we are inherently broken and flawed. F that. I don't agree with that. I actually think that we are built or we have evolved that our hardware is freaking incredible and that we have rapidly evolved our environment to be not so compatible with that hardware. And that's where the break is. And there's so much great information around this idea of you are good, positive psychology, not positive thinking, not toxic positivity.

26:14This is positive psychology, this idea that your base nature is a good thing that needs to be cultivated, not overcome. So you can see how, if you know my work, this stuff permeates everything that I do. These are my core values. They bleed out. These are the things that I build my stories on. And I think they're more important than messages. Values are something that transcend time. And so going through the devalues list helped me identify a few of those. And if you have ever bought any of my merch, I'm guessing it's probably because on some level, you align with some value that I have and you like how I aesthetically put it together.

27:00And my argument in this is, and maybe it's not an argument to say that it's either this or that. It's either that it's about how cool the merch is or it's about what it stands for. I actually think there's probably gray area. That's just speaking to another one of my core values, which is kind of a non-dual take. This Niels Bohr quote, the opposite of a profound truth might be another profound truth. I like that space. But what I'm trying to put in front of you today to consider is that why people become not just consumers of your work, but true fans of your work are happy to fly your flag is less like wallpaper, less like they like the look of it.

27:45They like the vibe of it. That's probably part of it. That's part of the equation, but it's probably one you've already considered and got stuck on because you can only make wallpaper that it's so much more hardcore, so much more beautiful than the next wallpaper. You have to infuse it with something deeper than that. And that if you want to find your style, you got to find your substance and your substance is rooted in those core values. So make your D values list, but don't start there. Don't organize around that. Flip it before something and put that in your work and people will start organizing it.

28:21People will start organizing around it. People will start standing under it when they understand it. We have one more episode left in this series. I hope you're enjoying the journey of the true fan series. This is episode three. I want to just give you a note. We're doing it backwards because we started, the first episode was kind of explaining the concept, giving you the three pieces. The second episode was part three. This is part two. The next episode will be part one. The reason is as confusing and weird as that might seem is because it's supposed to be training our brains to think strategically.

29:04So I'm a big believer in strategic creativity. Most creativity that we talk about in society is exploratory creativity. It's kind of Ouija board creativity, as John Mayer calls it, where you're like, you start without an end in mind. You don't know where it's going to go. It's improvisational. It's pantsing. That's a super, I think leave room for that. It's really important. But for me, I've had to go on a long journey to get comfortable with having an end in mind when I started, challenging myself to know where the story was going before I started it. And I think the ideal is some mix based on your core values of that.

29:45Some mix of strategic, some mix of exploratory, finding your sweet spot between those two things, but being comfortable and capable of doing either of those. So we're doing the series backwards because we're starting with the end in mind. We did last episode about sales, making the sale. That's the end of the process. The middle is trust, building that trust to where they really trust that they are willing to fly your flag. And then the last episode, we're going to talk about what probably most people think most about in their creative practice, which is getting discovered, getting more people to hear about them, getting more eyeballs on their work.

30:24That is an important and very difficult part of the process. But I would say that if you will, if you find yourself focusing all your energy on getting discovered and then thinking you're going to figure out, building the trust, having the quality and what you're going to sell later, I would highly recommend that you just balance out that level of focus because getting discovered is only one piece of the pie and it doesn't really amount for anything if you can't do the other two. There are lots of people that have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram, have millions of followers, but they don't have any way to build trust with that audience, to let them go deeper than short form, and then ultimately have any way of supporting what they do.