526 - Your Niche is Hiding in The Last Place You’d Look

0:20You know, you have to stand out. You got to find what is different about the creative work that you make and what you have to offer. But you look around at the people doing what you're trying to do and you're like, I am not super natural at anything. I'm like, I'm not adding up. I don't know if I can even compete with these people. And I have felt like that. Like I've told you before, like I wasn't even the best drawer at my table in drawing class in high school, let alone in the illustration industry. And yet I have been able to work with clients like Xbox and Apple and Nickelodeon, and I've been able to make a nice little thing here for myself.

1:06And the same goes for color. One of the biggest comments I get on my work is the color choices that I make. And yet I have a color deficiency. I'm like red, green, colorblind. And so I can talk about why you not measuring up might not be the deficiency that you think it is. In fact, it might be in some cases the opposite. It might be the key to finding out what's different about what you do and what you have to offer. And so by the end of that episode, I hope to have convinced you of that. And also, if you stick around, I'm going to give you a tactic for defining those differentiators, finding those unique selling points.

1:52It's called Squidge the Gap. So stay tuned for that, for more talking about squidging, and for a really fun exercise that I think might help you find some of what makes you special. But first, let's talk about why your talents are really boring.

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3:57So I suspect that your unique creative offering is hiding. Let me get into why I think that. When you are a creative person, it seems to be natural to think about what am I a natural at? What am I? Am I a natural born drawer? Am I a natural born illustrator? Am I natural born? You know, is everything in me all added up to be a person that designs logos or am I a natural born podcaster? That one's particularly funny. I think because podcast didn't even exist when I was born, but this is something that I personally can obsess over. Something that I think gets talked about a lot when you're in these spaces of self-discovery or even just trying to pick a path, trying to brand your website, whatever it might be.

4:57one of the thoughts that comes up a lot that I think has some validity for sure is what have I always been? What has always been home for me? What comes natural for me? What did I want to do as a kid? You know, these are thoughts that we dwell on a lot. And like I said, I think for finding your general direction, there's some reality to this. You know, we just got my son guitar lessons. And part of the reason I felt comfortable doing that, you know, he's already doing a few different things, but one of the reasons I felt like, yeah, that seems like a good idea is he's in band and he's just, he's picked that up pretty easily, kind of understands reading it and tuning just kind of naturally, not supernaturally, not like, oh, this kid's a prodigy, but more just like, yeah, he's got that kind of groove in his brain, brain groove.

5:51He's got that. So I felt like, yeah, it seems like he's got kind of the basic nature to be able to pick that thing up. And it seems like that's been true. And I think it's probably important to think about stuff like that because as far as I know, there's like a small percentage of people, it's not even a large one, a small percentage of people cannot carry a tune. It's actually just a very, it's a sliver of people that just cannot sing, can't find the tune, don't have that brain groove, right? I think it's worth thinking about a little bit. When I think about the overall path of where I'm going, I better have some proclivity, some predisposition to being able to do, to draw a little bit if I'm going to be an illustrator, to write a little bit if I'm going to be an author, to be able to form a sentence here and there if I'm going to be a podcaster, which that comes or goes.

6:43But I think when that big kind of general direction, it's a relevant thing to consider. Here's where I think this thinking might get in the way and be more of a distraction is once you are on the path of being an illustrator, once you are heading towards making a podcast, once you're making films, whatever it is, your general thing, yeah, you should probably have a little proclivity towards that, but then you gotta just learn it, you gotta do it, you gotta be out there. And once you're out there, you've gotta figure out what do I have that is different to what other people have? How can I stand out?

7:18How can I uniquely serve or how can I find my own niche or lane? And then once you're there and you're asking that question, I wonder if trying to figure out what you're natural born at is, it becomes more of a stumbling block because I don't want to be the first one to tell you this, but you're probably not natural, super naturally born anything. you probably if you're not michael jordan if you're not christopher nolan if if if you're not beyonce you're probably not so naturally anything that it's going to give you the edge you need to find your own way and connect with your own fans and audience like it's probably not going to be enough just to be better just to be supernaturally better than other people And so how do you find something that does give you not just an edge competitively, but your own world to play in and your own like community to create within?

8:27How do you find that thing? How do you find that place? And it kind of reminds me of when I moved to where I live now, which is in the Columbus, Ohio area. I've moved all over the place throughout my life, but I've been here longest. I've been here for a little over 10 years and I really do love being here. But when I came here, when I moved here, when I was looking for someone to show me the ropes, someone to show me where to connect to the pipeline, what the good eating spots are, all that kind of stuff. The differentiator there was not, I need to find someone who is natural born Columbusite, who has always called this place home, who has always been in this place.

9:09I wanted to find somebody. I looked to the person that had lived both in the place I lived in in Indiana, which just to be really confusing, just a little side note, I wanted to believe this out because it is just muddying the waters, but I can't. It's just too dumb of a coincidence. I lived in Columbus, Indiana. That's where I went to high school as well. And yeah, so I moved from Columbus, Indiana to Columbus, Ohio. It's very confusing. We're going to Columbus, Georgia next, so be careful out there because we're coming. And we're not. I think we're here for the long haul. But I knew a guy who I went to high school with in Columbus, Indiana that moved to Columbus, Ohio.

9:48And guess what? When I wanted to connect to the scene, when I wanted to find out what was unique about this place, I went to him. Why? Because the natural born people that have always lived here, they don't understand my perspective. I know that to them, there's a way in which their surroundings are kind of white noise, right? But the person that had moved here, had put in the effort, had earned their stripes as a Columbusite, they saw it from a fresh perspective. In fact, they knew where I was coming from. They had made that journey. They knew the problem that I was trying to solve, right? And I think that there's something to journey.

10:34There's something to, I used to be this and now I'm this. There's something interesting about that. The most interesting thing about you might not be what comes natural, but maybe the opposite. What are the ways that you have become something that you didn't arrive with on this planet? When I think about who I want to talk to, I want to talk to somebody who had gone on the journey. I wanted to talk to somebody that had, could take me from where I was to where they are. And when you think about if you're going to get advice from somebody, are you going to get physical fitness advice from someone who's like, yeah, I've kind of pretty much always had this body and it just came natural to me?

11:20Or are you going to listen to the person that was in your shoes and then took themselves through a valley, through a journey, through an adventure to find a place that you've never been to. That's who I want to listen to. Not only are they a better guide, but they're also just, it's just more interesting. It's not that interesting to be like, yeah, I've always been kind of a super freakishly talented drawer. Like, okay, please, please say no more. Literally don't say anymore if i'm at a party i don't want to hear that you know like if we're talking about your general direction where you're trying to go yeah that keep that in mind but if you're trying to be interesting if you're trying to stand out if you're trying to differentiate if you're trying to figure out what am i going to talk about what am i going to make work about i want to hear your journey from where you used to be to where you are now which person you're going to listen to You're at a party.

12:20Someone's like, yeah, I've always had freakishly weird dreams and just kind of my whole life I've just been having these dreams. I got to tell you about these dreams. You're going to be like, please don't, especially if you don't have weird dreams. You're like, okay, what? Oh, you're so special. Yeah, you were born with this freakish talent for dreaming, which most people don't see as a talent. Or are you going to listen to this person over here that said, you know, I used to completely ignore my dreams. I was in a place where they were just white noise, didn't care about them, didn't mean anything, kind of just annoying distraction while I'm trying to get some sleep.

12:56I'm dreaming about all this stuff. But now, dreams are maybe the most guiding force in my life. If I said that to you, what do you have now? You have a journey. You have a story. You have a transformation. You're gonna say, probably, even if it's just a little bit interested, What changed? What happened? What did you go through? And so I want to propose just maybe that the most interesting thing about you as a creative person isn't your natural ability, isn't your God-given crazy talents from on high that were bestowed upon you in your DNA, but the ways that you didn't get it, the ways that you've changed, the way that you've transformed the battles, the journeys that you've gone through and that what if, what if your natural predilection determines a little bit of your, the industry you're in, but the niche, the way that you stand out, the way that you're different, the thing that makes people lean in might be the way that you used to not measure up.

14:03You know, so often I get asked, not asked. I mean, I just get out of the comments that I get on my work, lots of times the colors I use come up. And the funny thing is, is I'm colorblind. I'm not fully, you know, black and white colorblind, but I'm red, green colorblind. And it's hard to describe really what that means. I honestly don't know what it's like to be any other way. But I do think it's probably determining why I make not perfect color choices, but interesting ones or why I turn up my color so loud. And so this deficiency ends up becoming the difference. And the same is true in so many different ways of my creative practice and why I don't measure up with my heroes.

14:51Some of those same things end up being the things that make me different and uniquely suited for the opportunities that I do. And so that's the challenge I want to give you today. These things, you know, it kind of reminds me of the Jungian shadow work, which I'm not qualified to talk about, but here goes nothing. No, I'm not going to go deep into the psychoanalysis part of it, but it kind of, you know, I've spent a little time over there. It's a little hyper fixation of mine, the Jungian stuff. And I find it really interesting alongside the themes we've been talking about on the show for the past few weeks, this self-love positive psychology, there's an idea in Jungian thought that the gold is in the shadow, that the shadow is 99 % gold, meaning the shadow self isn't your dark side.

15:45It's not your bad side. It's misunderstood partially because of the way it's named. But really, the shadow is just the part of yourself that you're disconnected from. And you might think is your bad side or might be things about you that you have determined are things that you have to hide even from your own conscious mind.

16:08However, when you're able to look at that, when you're able to stare in the face of, these are the ways that I truly don't measure up to my heroes, you might just find that those are the things that make you different. Those are the things, you know, those things that you've hidden from even from yourself. The different ways of channeling that energy might be the thing that makes you you, that makes you different.

16:54okay on this show we don't want to just give you something to think about or something to feel we want to give you something you can do that potentially can have an effect on your creative journey or or practice today so today we're giving you this really you know self-explanatory once the cta the call to adventure is squidge the gap yeah squidge the gap the gap one of the problems, one of the problems with squidge the gap, just from the onset is squidge. I don't know if that's a word that you know. I'm barely sure that it exists, but this is one of the problems of being married to a British person and having lived over there for a little bit.

17:36I often don't know what phrases I'm saying that are British or American or whether I just made them up from just being lost as a human. But squidge, if you don't know, it means to squeeze. It means to, you know, squidge in, squidge in and make some room to squidge something like pinch a cheek. You might squidge a cheek. If you ever squidged a cheek, squidge it, squidge the gap. Don't bridge the gap. Okay. Let me explain what I mean by this real quick. I'm going to have to give you a little little tiny rundown of the different way that I think about target market, your target market narrowing down where your focus is as a creative person or running a creative business, what have you.

18:26When I use these terms that I'm about to use, this is your warning. I use them a little bit differently than others. I think when you are trying to grapple with new ideas, sometimes you have to squidge those words a little bit. You got to squeeze them, mold them, change them. You got to make them work for what you're trying to get at. And so I'm going to talk real quick about industry, market, and niche or niche. However you like to say it, don't care. I can say, I'll say it. I'll say Nick if I want to, who cares? I have the talent to say it any different way. But when I use the term industry market niche, I use it in a very particular way.

19:08And I'm thinking about it through the lens of creating a target, creating a target market, literally like a target, like concentric circles within each other. And I use this in a particular way because I think it's the only way that I've ever heard explained that it makes any sense. Often these different things are used almost interchangeably. And I find that it really gives you some hierarchy, some clarity to see how they relate to each other. So for me, you have industry. That is your field that you work within. This is the big one. This is where you probably have some natural ability, whether it's music or drawing or design or filmmaking or writing or whatever it is, the big, huge circle, part of the pie where you headed that direction as a creative person.

19:57You might have some toes dipped in a few different little industries, big industries, but for our purposes, let's just think about one of those for now. Now, within that industry, there's another circle in that big circle, and that's your market. That's a subset of the industry. For me, I'm in the illustration industry, but I'm in the kids' book market within that. I've also worked within the editorial magazine newspaper market. I've worked within the advertising market. I've worked in these little subsets of this industry, a smaller section, right? And I'm more established in some of those than others, right?

20:39Within the market though, you have a niche, a little place that you carve out and that you can think about it like a bullseye. Industry is the big circle, middle circle is market. Within that circle, you have a niche. And that's a segment of the market. That's your little area that you've carved out. That's your differentiator. We're talking about this today. We're talking about how do you stand out within your market, within your industry. You do that by finding these little places. And I would actually say it's not just one thing. I think there's a lot of pressure that gets put on your niche to be this very particular thing when really it's a few different things that often make you different than other people.

21:21It's the little, I don't mean to bring other circles into this, but it's your little Venn diagram within that. You know, even the bullseye on a dartboard has a couple little places. Niches like that, where you have a few different things make you different. I'm not the only illustrator that likes pizza, but I am one of the only illustrators with a podcast that likes pizza and dreams and invisible things. Now, all those little things create this little space that I exist within, okay? That's how I think about industry, market, and niche. The reason I bring that up is because we need to talk about how you find your uniqueness, how you find that niche where it's just you, baby, and you're uniquely serving that space.

22:05And I think one of the ways that is natural for you to think about what makes you different is what makes you better. Of course, I think we're capitalists. I'm not, but I think let's not go there. Good lordy, let's not get so off base. It's complicated and I don't understand it, but it's obvious that when we think about what makes us different, we're going to leap to what's the edge we got? How are we better than the competition? But today, I want to flip that, flip the gap. I want to squidge the gap instead of trying to bridge the gap between what I am and how the people, my quote unquote competition is better than me.

22:50So here's what I want you to do. This is how you squidge the gap. This is how you squeeze the gap. You hold the gap. You hug the gap instead of trying to bridge it or conquer it. You take a list of your market models, your comps, as they say in the publishing industry. you take other people in that kids book market or that genre within the music that you play that are in your little movement you could say movement you could say market you could say genre you take other people in that you find people that are about as comparable as they get to you list four of them say these are four people that are pretty comparable to the kind of thing i want to do.

23:33And instead of thinking, how am I better? Or how can I bridge the gap and at least be where they are? Instead of that, think squidge the gap. Squidge is a very fun word to say. I'm glad that I chose it. Good job, Andy. You squidge it. You embrace it. And here's how you do that. Instead of thinking how you're better, think of how do you not add up? List those things. Take a long, hard look at that shadow, the stuff that you're trying to ignore and say, okay, well, every person, if I'm in this, if I was doing this for myself, I might think every person on this list lives on the coasts. They live in LA or New York.

24:11Uh, or every person on this is nonchalant. They're just naturally cool. And I'm not, um, I'm whatever the opposite of nonchalant. I'm so chill on. You can't even believe it. These people have these elegant concepts. These people have perfect, subtle color theory pairing, right? So I look at all these people, they have all these things, and I'm listing the things that I don't have. Now, instead of pretending like they don't have an edge on me because they live in LA or live in New York, to pretend like that and ignore that is going to be to my detriment. Instead of trying to either ignore it or trying to bridge the gap and get there, I'm going to squidge the gap and I'm going to say, okay, let's flip it.

24:55They live on the coast. I live in the Midwest. I could be the down to earth version. I can be the pizza version to their oysters. And I mean, New York has pizza, but that's a different thing. Fancy sushi, right? How are the ways in which me being the Midwestern version gives me a different kind of edge if I squidge that gap. I love the idea of being like a motivational speaker and being, you know, in the spotlight and being, trying to be so eloquent. Like you must squidge the gap and everyone's like, yeah, that's, that's really good. But you do. And take another one. Let's say, okay, some of my favorite illustrators when I was starting out, their concepts were so self-evident.

25:42they were just like oh so so elegant on this editorial illustration where they just perfectly nail it and i was always too wordy for twitter to to you know too elaborate my ideas are just so there's just so much going on there and that's one of the reasons why yeah i could sit here and try to bridge the gap and try to be more and more eloquent and elegant in these perfect self-evident concepts or I could add words to mine and start adding lettering to my illustrations and beefing out the concepts there. And that is exactly what I did. I found a little niche where I have, I'm perfect for jobs that require both illustrations and lettering combined in interesting ways.

26:29That became a big part of my niche or my niche. For those of you that are sensitive to such a harsh pronunciation of niche. nonchalant, never going to be, not a hope in the world. I'll be the loud one. I'll be the attention grabbing one. Again, works better for some projects. Perfect color pairing. I don't really have that ability because I don't even know what these colors are, but I might have the ability to have unexpected color pairings. Now I do think, I mean, personally, my color perception is very weird, but I like the colors I use and I've heard they're weird. so every single one of these ways that you don't measure up pick a long hard look at that shadow baby and see what you can find in gold if you are willing to do the opposite if you're willing to flip it if you're willing to squidge it are you willing to squidge it

27:41All right. I hope that this episode has helped you lean into not just your natural born super predilection for creativity, but the parts of you that you have had to grow, the parts of you that you've had to squidge and bridge and journey through, because they might be the things that are most interesting about you. I would much rather hear about your breakthroughs and the ways that you have overcome things and the surprises that you found along the way. Yeah, just something to think about. Just maybe just flip this a little bit from your usual beating yourself up about it, Andy, about ways you don't measure up.

28:33I hope this was really helpful or at least give you a little pep in your step in your creative practice this week. If you want to dive a little bit deeper into this, I have a creative career path hand booklet that goes into some of that stuff, the industry market niche kind of concept, and also how to develop a perfect project that's designed to hit that bullseye and self-initiate that quest. if you want that you can get it for free by signing up to the newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com your confirmation email will have a link in there to the ebook and it's just a little booklet but it has it's kind of a workbook thing massive thanks to sophie miller for being an editor and producer on this show thanks to connor jones of pending beautiful for the audio edits the video edits the animation and sound design thank you to yoni wolf and the band y for our theme music and soundtrack.

29:29And thanks to all of you for listening. Until we speak again, stay pepped up.

29:53Okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening, but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you wanna figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our creative career path hand booklet and the whole process is in there. And you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up.