566 - Creative Strategy: Less Social Media, Income Streams & 3 Essentials

24:13You can't count on it. And even if you do make a ton of money doing something on social media, the next time you try to do it, it won't work again. So like part of what I think about strategy is it can be like not always strictly repeatable, but you can iterate on it. You can learn from it. And I think social media just breaks all of that logic. It doesn't work anymore.

24:30Creative Pep Talk Host:I think you're completely right. Like this feeling of at any second, I could be David Bowie. Anybody could. It's scary even to the point where I'm not trying to be harsh on anybody, but you don't even have to have any talent or skill. I don't mean that in a harsh way. I mean, that's what it promises you. And that's dangerous because it's kind of like just because of who I am and what. And I'm very pro, like people have value without skills and talents. I'm very pro that. But I just think in a creative career, that's an odd thing. It actually keeps you from developing and trying to create something of value and interesting.

25:09Creative Pep Talk Host:And I feel so strongly about, especially TikTok and Instagram, that the only value for those platforms really is the casino, is the house. The house wins every time and they are weaponizing this feeling of I at any second my life could change. Why do you think they're making videos and they're having calls, real calls with creators one on one to coach them? Why? That's not generosity. It's because they're a TV channel that doesn't pay their creators. like it's it's so sad to me because I think I know people that have went mega viral I know people that have millions of followers and guess what it mostly didn't go well it mostly didn't do anything for them other than and the only and this is the realistic part and this is why I did build the Instagram at the time it was more meaningful and even now I'm glad that I have that following purely just because it is some level of social proof that helps me get my foot in the door in the opportunities that I want.

26:18Creative Pep Talk Host:And so it's not that it's completely meaningless. I think that some aspects of this new version of it are much more meaningless than they used to be. Social media is the casino. They're the house. We are just pulling the slot machine all day long. And I also really like your point of, yes, of course, human beings have inherent worth and also if you're a creative person and you just want to like be famous for being yourself, that's just a celebrity. That's not actually an artist. Right, it's a different thing. It's a totally different thing. And if you wanna be an influencer and try to make that work through the power of celebrity, like move yourself to LA, network effectively, get good at social media, and maybe that can happen for you.

27:02But that's not a creative business. That's a different thing. And I think sometimes people mistake these logics is different and they don't quite understand that even those business models are so different. Being an influencer is so different than being a creator. But this gets back to the strategic piece and the question that I wanted to talk through more, which is like, how do we understand where we want to go and how do we understand the path to get there? So could you share some more specifics with an example from your work around how you charted that course?

27:28Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah. So I have lots and lots of examples of this. Usually the way that I go about doing it is a strategic side project. It's a body of work that kind of tells people I am who I say I am and I can do what I am asking to do. It's a portfolio. And the easiest example of this is the podcast. And so you can see how there was strategy baked into the podcast from day one that was pretty unique to serve the goals that I had. So when I made the podcast, I always like to say this first, because if you're not ADHD, you might not realize, I take this for granted. So there's two things that have to be true for me to want something.

28:12Creative Pep Talk Host:First thing has to be, it just intrinsically interesting to me. It's just, I'm curious about it. I like spending time on that. It's, you know, it's just an authentic expression of something I want to do. The second thing, which maybe this, I don't know if this is an ADHD thing or if it's just a human thing. I actually think ADHD people really do love helping people. And I think there's a couple of reasons why I think one is because it's easier than doing stuff yourself because you have executive dysfunction. So you have all these answers, but you can't put them into practice super easily. And so it's really fun to be, there's nothing more fun.

28:46Creative Pep Talk Host:I love coaching people for that reason to be like, Hey, maybe you should do this, this and this. And then they go do it and succeed. And it's like, that's awesome. It's just like very fun. And so I think I've got a lot of dopamine from helping people. So two things always have to be true. I have to feel like, I have to feel like this is something I just want to do. And I feel like this is good for people. This is good for me and good for other people, for me to do this. And also the thing about that is that's getting my whole self on board. You know, I'm a nerd for like Jungian thought. And I like this idea of like, that gets my ego on board of like, this is something that's really cool to me.

29:24Creative Pep Talk Host:And it gets my deeper self. That's much more connected to the whole and to the community and that kind of thing. So when I did the podcast, it felt like I had done a talk that had hit that Venn diagram perfectly. I'd done some talks that hadn't gone super well in random scenarios for a whole bunch of reasons. And then I'd done this one talk that was much more story driven. And I was like, it was just a little community talk. and I just felt like this feels like something I want to do for the rest of my life. Like I just, I completely fell in love with it. And sometimes you have that moment where you're like, I feel like my life has changed.

30:03Creative Pep Talk Host:And then you check with your partner and they're like, has it though? I don't know. And that's a good, you know, that's a good indicator, right? That's a good way to check the temperature. And like, she was at that talk, my wife and Sophie, and I asked her, I was was kind of like something. And she was like, I think it was something like, I've never seen that before. I've never seen you in that zone. Like that was really cool. And so I was like a little bit tempted to be like, Hmm, maybe I should just go. I'd already, I was already an illustrator. It was already, I think full-time at that moment.

30:36Creative Pep Talk Host:And I, there was a little temptation to be like, let's just go straight into talks. Like, let's go hard into that. And, but I had kids and had already had built some of this stuff and loved that stuff too. And so I thought, okay, is there a way to like combine these two things like storytelling and doing these talks with doing illustration? It wasn't until later that I was watching some like Ted talk or something. And they were like, Hey, I want to give you a story to kind of bring this to life. Here's my illustration. And I was like, it's the same thing. They're both illustration. And so that, yeah, that didn't come until later, but I did that talk.

31:12Creative Pep Talk Host:I wanted to get more talks. I knew like this, I want to do more of this. So I knew what I wanted and I thought, okay, I want to be the person that gets booked on the design conferences and gets brought into the corporate creative teams and does talks there. So I knew what I wanted. That was my end point that I had to work my way back from. And then you say, what would the client be or the conference that I would speak at before that? And then before that, and then before that, maybe go back 10 steps even. And then what would I need to build to cold call that first one. And that's a project. And so my project was the podcast.

31:50Creative Pep Talk Host:And the reason why you can see the strategy in it from day one is I started this podcast in 2014 and I made it for the first 50 episodes. It was completely solo. It was just literally me talking. Eventually I started doing some interviews, but it's remained primarily a solo podcast throughout its entire decade plus existence. And the reason was, was because I was building a portfolio of talks so that I could send that to one of these conferences or someone would discover it at one of those conferences. And that's exactly what happened. And so that's an example. But the same thing happened for me in picture books.

32:31Creative Pep Talk Host:The same thing happened to me with editorial. The same thing has happened to me in all these different spheres. They almost all have happen that way. Sometimes I feel annoyed that so much of my career has had to be me making stuff happen. Like I would love for something just random to happen and that it was great. I've been lucky in all kinds of ways, but I'd love to be lucky in that kind of way. But I also like that my story that I tell myself around that is if I did get lucky in all these different ways, then I wouldn't be able to tell anybody else how to do it. And I have got lucky. I'm not saying I haven't.

33:08Creative Pep Talk Host:But yeah, a lot of the bigger things that have happened have been strategy. Thank you for laying all that out for us. And I also just love that you knew what you wanted to do, which was speak at these major design conferences, be the person that, you know, big firms, companies invite in to speak about creativity. So you started this side project, the podcast and you just use it as a talk reel, essentially. Like, here I am 50 times in a row. Which talk do you want? I have all these options for you. And also, like, that helped you book talks. But then the podcast became its own thing, right? Like, now it's a whole arm of your business.

33:47It's not it's obviously not just a way for you to get speaking gigs anymore. And that's something I've seen time and time again, as well as like, everything I'm doing now came out of these, you know, random side quests of my life, DJing in a community radio station. And they taught me how to podcast and that got me freelance work. And that led me to my studio and that led me here, right? Like for me personally, sometimes the strategy is more obvious in hindsight than it was when I was starting out.

34:13Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah, sure. But I like, I think as you get more experienced in your career, you know more of the moving pieces and you're able to be much more intentional. I'm also curious, something that's really happened for me a lot, and I'm curious if this has been the case for you is like, in being strategic, I have had to very consciously shed a lot of the sort of false promises of things I thought I wanted that didn't turn out that way. For instance, you know, like my first book deal didn't live up to what I thought I was going after or something like that, right? I know it truly never does. Book deals are so fraught.

34:43Creative Pep Talk Host:Book deals are, yeah. It's a complicated world for sure. And it's always a reckoning. I don't know anyone who's published their first book traditionally that didn't have like a complete creative reckoning in the process. Yeah, that's true. So that to me is always like a paradigmatic example. But do you feel like when you have worked toward a goal, it's typically just been like self-authored? Or have you found yourself chasing things that you're like, this is what people told me to do? Or this is what I thought I was supposed to do? And then I had to figure out that's not actually it for me. 100%.

35:11Creative Pep Talk Host:So all of these projects haven't worked out. Okay. And one example of that is I remember when I was, this was when I, earlier in my career, I was looking around at trying to figure out like what kind of jobs I could do that would feel right and be kind of a good fit. And I remember seeing illustrator friends of mine or people on the internet who had in their portfolio, these book cover illustrations that just looked amazing. And I just thought, this looks so freaking cool. Like, I would love to do that, right? And I came up with a project where I was going to make a handful of books from the public domain and recreate the cover.

35:53Creative Pep Talk Host:At the time, this was a little bit more unique than it is now. This is something that happens all the time now. It wasn't completely an original idea, but it was a little bit more novel than it is now. No pun intended, novel. but but i i the extra layer i was going to do was we were going to screen print them as posters and so i did wizard of oz and i did 20 000 leagues under the sea and i did moby dick and i remember posting about it and someone saying oh this is great how'd you like the book and I was like, oh, I'm supposed to read these books. You know, I was in my like early 20s, maybe mid 20s.

36:42I skimmed the Wikipedia page.

36:45Creative Pep Talk Host:I just didn't really think that much about that side of it for some reason. And that to me, I like to make fun of myself with that project. but also I like to use it as an example to say, doing the thing is the best way to know, not thinking about the thing. Like, yes, that's something I should have known before I started. Like at the time, I wasn't reading any classic books. I wasn't really reading hardly any fiction, almost exclusively nonfiction. Now a days, I'm more into fiction and even classic books than I was then. So I could probably do that project more authentically now. But I didn't know that until I had done it, you know?

37:23Creative Pep Talk Host:And so for me, those side quests are always valuable because they do get at what you're saying. Sometimes these things are just like an ego trip. They're just like, that looks amazing. And it's similar to the celebrity or the fame or whatever. So many people have had to learn that the hard way of like, ooh, all this attention is not so good. But doing those projects are some of the best way to make progress. I talked about on the show, like I've seen this meme about how to put in a USB stick and you put it in once and it's the wrong way. And then you put it in the other way and you're like, no, that's actually the wrong way.

38:00Creative Pep Talk Host:And then you put it in the right way. And that's what creative stuff is like. It's much easier to just try things and realize like, because, and here's the reason, like Steven Pressfield talks about, you're always going to feel resistance. And almost the only reason, only way you're going to know which resistance is truly the wrong resistance is by doing it the right way and the wrong way. And so, yeah, I feel like lots of the projects have been wrong, but the best way to figure that out is to actually like test it. Yeah. I often find that I have a ton of clever ideas, so many clever ideas. I mean, as strategists, all we have is clever ideas sometimes.

38:39And it has taken me years of just trying to do the clever thing to realize like, not all these have legs. Not all these are for me. But if I didn't try them, I wouldn't know that. If I didn't go down those paths, I wouldn't be able to really feel into now my like very honed sense of like, oh, this is the true thing or the real thing or like this feels right. And no one outside of you can tell you if it feels right or not. That's such an important part of developing a creative practice. I want to stay on this theme of projects and weave social media back in because you recorded a podcast episode last summer about creative people leaving social media because you and I both know that last year, everybody decided they wanted to leave social media.

39:21There was all of this like buzz around it. And people might've expected me to be like, hell yeah, we're all leaving social media. But I am a strategic thinker. And I'm also like, I always want people to do it intentionally. I want to make sure it's the right fit for you and your business. and...

39:39Creative Pep Talk Host:With the podcast, kids' books, and talks, writing has become as much a part of my job as illustration, and it can feel really hard sometimes. But I recently heard this thing from Goosebumps writer R.L. Stine that really shifted things in my mind. He said, writing is fun. Like, go sit down and have some fun. Like, that's what it's about. Don't listen to all those writers that say that it's torture. He went on to share three easy places to find ideas. He calls this the idea store, and it means mining your daily experience, your memories from the past, and your imagination. This made the prospect of returning to the page so much less intimidating.

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42:14I loved your episode because I felt like it really grounded us in like, how do you make this decision? and you provided a framework for leaving social media kind of follows the musician model of singles, albums, and tours with merch. And I had never heard anybody talk about this before. So I'm curious, could you kind of explain that to off-the-grid listeners and walk us through that framework?

42:35Creative Pep Talk Host:So at the time, I was listening to your podcast and Cody Cook Parrott's podcast and also just feeling, and the reason I was like seeking that stuff out was because I was feeling not just the burnout of social media and doom scrolling and all that. Like I was feeling all that, but I was also realizing like, I've been taught to believe this is important for my creative career. You know, people's billion dollar businesses rely on people like us believing that we need to be creating for exposure for them for free. and I was starting to realize like, this isn't really serving my creative goals like it used to.

43:20Creative Pep Talk Host:And I wanted to think about it a little bit differently. And so I was kind of exploring, I took lots of breaks from social media and different kinds of, try different things. But ultimately it got me thinking about what are my actual creative goals and what are my creative business goals and what are the things that I need to be doing? And one thing I'll just say, Like when I first started as an illustrator, I had some lucky breaks early on and then it all disappeared. Like it just that we were in the recession. This was like back in 2008, 2009. And I got, I started building some momentum, got a few lucky breaks, and then it was just kind of disappeared overnight and then didn't get any work for six to eight months or something.

44:08Creative Pep Talk Host:And just, it just all kind of disappeared. Weird. And I often joke that my rock bottom wasn't like drugs and alcohol, but it was business books and marketing podcasts. I mean, a funnel will only take you to rock bottom. Yes, exactly. It's a pretty, the funnel, it's pretty dicey, pretty dicey stuff. But, you know, I'm grateful for that time because I learned a lot of things that I think are important, are not, some of it is not compatible with creativity or you can get sucked into it. to that and lose your creativity. But there are elements of it that I think are just really, really important. And one element of it is kind of the funnel or the customer journey, which is something that I didn't, we have an intuitive sense of, but we don't really fully maybe know what that means.

44:58Creative Pep Talk Host:I think if you would ask most artists and you got them to think about what does it, when it comes to like selling my work or connecting with other people, what are the steps of that. I think I would have thought there were two things. It was, you know, you have to be discovered, you have to get on their radar, and then you have to sell the painting or sell the work. And one of the things that I learned in the marketing side of things that I saw in the music industry is that they have a more complete version of that process of how someone goes from not knowing you exist to being a casual consumer to being someone who is supporting you and being a true fan in that way.

45:39Creative Pep Talk Host:And so I think of it as like the journey of the true fan. And there's these three pieces. And so it's not just discovery and then sale. Like there's this really big middle part because you do want to get discovered. And how musicians do that is they have these singles and they have these collabs. They open for other bands, but they have singles that in the point of the single is to be discovered. But the fact of the matter is just because you like a song on the radio doesn't mean you're going to the tour or buying the merch, right? Like what is the thing in between those two events? It's the album is that you hear the single.

46:15Creative Pep Talk Host:If you really, really like it, then you're going to go check it out and you're going to go deeper. And that going deeper is developing a sense of trust in a relationship with that artist. So there's these three parts. There is the single, which is the discovery. There's the album, which is the developing of the trust and becoming like a fan. And then there's the third part, which is the way that you support them, which, you know, nowadays is tour and merch for musicians. And so I like this because this is something that the music industry built this infrastructure around music. And it's not perfect, but I do think that we can learn a lot from it.

46:52Creative Pep Talk Host:And so to me, the thing where I landed after exploring all these different ways of having a creative career without social media or with social media or all that stuff, I thought, oh, this is kind of the wrong question. It's not really the thing. It's not yes or no. It's I have to have a solution for what are my singles? What are my albums? What is my tour and merch? I have to have something for those three things. I have to get people to know about me. I have to get people to be able to go deep with me. And then I have to have something that is worth, that people are buying. And musicians have had to change that too, because it used to be people were buying the music and now they're not buying the music or that now they are again.

47:36Creative Pep Talk Host:But there was a period of time where they weren't and you had to sell t-shirts. And like, I've heard boy genius talk about like feeling like they're just a t-shirt commercial. And yeah, okay. I get that. And it's kind of, you know, it's, it's funny and sad and everything. But as practice, those are the pieces that you need. And I try to be not super precious about them. Like there were times where my podcast was the discovery engine. And then there was a time where like people weren't outwardly focused on finding new podcasts. And that wasn't so much the case. And it was more so the album. It was how people were going deep with me.

48:11Creative Pep Talk Host:And I think the biggest takeaway from all of this is that there is that middle piece. It's the most ignored. Most people are thinking about how do I get discovered? and then I'll make up the rest later. Oh, if I go viral, then I'll figure out how to monetize it. So at best, they're thinking about how to get discovered and then what am I going to sell? Almost no one thinks about, do I have ways where people can get into the deep cuts and actually make that transition from being a casual appreciator to someone who knows your name? This is another crappy thing about social media, but it's similar to the radio where it's like, If I said, hey, what's the song you've enjoyed the most lately?

48:53Creative Pep Talk Host:You might, if you exclusively listen to the radio, you might not know what they're called. You might not even know the name of the song. And the same is true for art. If I said, what illustration lit you up the most recently? You'd probably be like, I can't even find it because I don't know their name. I just saw it on Instagram or saw it on Pinterest or whatever. And so if you're trying to build a practice as either as a business or as a kind of community, you have to make the relationship that middle piece is super super essential and the only way it gets done is a long form sort of thing and that was another piece of wanting to do talks early on I realized like oh the only way I could imagine sustaining my illustration career was getting ad jobs frequently they were the only ones that had the kind of margins that I could see like this working.

49:44Creative Pep Talk Host:And I saw all of them go to people that are doing talks. And I couldn't know if it was like a chicken or an egg thing, but I was like, I do think I need to get on stages. And that seems to be a big part of how you develop a bigger presence in the industry. And at the time I didn't, I knew talks, but I didn't realize like, oh, that's just a long form piece of content. It is someone spending an hour with you. And so no matter how you, it could be a newsletter, it could be a podcast, it could be a talk, it could be a book. Like for me, books have been a big part of that. Like being published is a part of building trust for me.

50:22Creative Pep Talk Host:And that's one of the silver linings of if your first book didn't go as well as you wanted it to go, just having a book, whether it's published or self-published, even just having that as an accomplishment and as a statement and allowing people to go deep with you, that is that middle piece and it's really essential and there's not really any other way to do it. Yeah, I really appreciate how you're emphasizing these like three points. Often I'll think of it as a sort of marketing framework, like grow, nurture, sell. Like we do need all of them. It's so interesting to like the people you work with, you're really seeing like they can grow and then maybe they can sell, but they're never nurturing.

50:59And I often find with people who make their way into my world, they might only be nurturing. Like I encounter a lot of people who have an email list of like 200 people that they have been dedicatedly talking to for years. And they're like, it's gonna be a business one day, Amelia. And I'm like, well, gotta have some offers in there. I know those people too.

51:18Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah, now that you say that, that's true. It's not really maybe my nature, but I definitely see that. Yeah, there are a lot of people that are dedicated to like authenticity and doing it right and are all in for the right reasons. And yeah, I could totally see that. Yeah. And I think it has a lot to do with like, it's about like our personalities. It's about our like core wounds and what we're afraid of. It's about, you know, are we afraid of visibility? Are we afraid of making the sale? Are we afraid? You know, there's so many different places we find our comfort zone and often we stay there.

51:50But I completely agree with you. Like, it's never going to be a business without all three pieces. Like you can make music and play in bars forever. But if you don't have singles, albums, and tours, you're not going to make a living from your music. And so I often think that's an important thing to distinguish, too, when we talk about creative strategy. Is that what you want? And I often ask people when I'm working with them, is the goal here that this is a business that supports you full-time? Because if it is, we need to function differently than if this is just actually something you want to do for creative fulfillment.

52:19It doesn't really matter if it makes money. It's a hobby. It's whatever. Those are different ways of operating, once again. but I like this framework a lot and it's helping me rethink my work like even if I just chart for off the grid listeners like my first single was my list of 100 ways to share your work and life off social media that was the first thing I made that got seen by like over 25 ,000 people it got shared in all sorts of spaces I never even knew it got shared in it got translated into other languages and published in other things like that was a big single for me and then off the grid became my album and now you know it's an album with like 150 tracks your podcast is an album with 550 tracks.

52:55Lots of deep cuts there. And I'm sure people say to you what they say to me, which is like, I've been binging your show. I've been listening to so much of the Bad Cat. Like people find it and they just go deeper and deeper and deeper. They travel with you. And then there's the tour. For me, that's going to be my membership, the interweb. And then also there's the meet and greet, which is the group program I run inside the membership that you only know about if you're in there and you're a VIP and you sign up for it, right? So we build these like different layers. But I think... it can all track very nicely onto that musician model.

53:26And then sometimes, yeah, there is the t-shirt. And the t-shirt is where like your super fan carries you into the world and other people can see you.

53:33Creative Pep Talk Host:And that's great. Yeah. That ends up being that another business thing, the flywheel of now that t-shirt becomes the way that someone else discovers it. And it just kind of has this. And I think it also is important to kind of highlight this accounts for the idea of churn, where I know that if someone listens to like 50 episodes of my show, maybe even 100 or 200, they might be like super fan and they might be in the super fandom for a few years or 10 years or whatever. But a lot of people are going to eventually be like, okay, I got that. I don't need that anymore. And that's the same thing happens with music.

54:12Creative Pep Talk Host:Like as a musician, you might not want to feel like that. But as a music consumer, you definitely feel like that. You have eras where this was everything for me. And for some reason, it doesn't really do it for me anymore, or they went on a different path and, you know, whatever. And they're, yeah, they're probably a handful of bands that you're going to follow for the rest of your life. But those are the exception to the rule. But that's the other thing I like about this is that kind of accounts for, you don't need to have people in your world for the rest of their life. And it's okay to feel like, yeah, if this is hitting you at this time, then that's great.

54:44Creative Pep Talk Host:I think the other thing I just wanted to mention with that was there's a huge spectrum of creativity for yourself. That's kind of like a diary all the way to being a full-time artist. There's this, there's everything in between there. And even like, I don't feel like it's a perfect definition, but creative researchers often use the definition of creativity being something creative is both novel and useful. now there's i think there are pros and cons to thinking about creativity that way but it can be new to you and useful to you meaning it did something for you it it helped you process something whatever like that's creative and that's great in its own right i think that there are a lot of people that maybe never want to go full time but they still want part of the creative impulse is coming from being a social animal and wanting to connect with other people and have conversations about it and be seen by other people and show their audience themselves and all that kind of thing.

55:50Creative Pep Talk Host:And I think anytime it goes beyond the journal thing, you need the singles, albums, and tour. Yeah, I think that's a nice point. You can move into that sharing without it needing to be a full-time business or even a business. Even a business. Yeah, maybe the tour is the only piece that's not necessary there if you don't want to sell it. But there's an exchange there that goes beyond, yes, it's been kind of soiled by the economics and capitalism and all that in some way, but there is an exchange of energy and value and resources that goes beyond just making money. It's not for everybody. I'm not saying it is.

56:33Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, I know that you have a book coming out soon, and I was trying to figure out what book this is of yours, and I couldn't count. I don't know if you've counted.

56:46Creative Pep Talk Host:I've tried to, but I've done so many different kinds of books, I always feel like I don't even know if this number is relevant. I've done over 10 books, but there's a lot of different kinds of books. Yeah, it's like asking how many kids you have and then deciding if you count your pets, and you're like, I don't know. So I definitely count my pets on that. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, as I think we should. But could you tell us about Mysterious Things? What is this new book of yours? When does it come out? Where can folks get it? Yeah, it's right here. Ooh, exciting. Mysterious Things. And if you're listening, just audio, you won't be able to see it.

57:15Creative Pep Talk Host:But it's a follow-up companion to a book that my wife and I, Sophie Miller, did called Invisible Things three years ago. And it is about mystery. It's about trying to switch on brains to curiosity. I think at the heart of this, we don't say that it's about the knowledge paradox, but it is about the knowledge paradox because it is a picture book. But the knowledge paradox is, as we learn more and more and more, you would assume that at some point, mystery is going to be extinct. Like we're going to know everything. and the knowledge paradox is the more that we know, the more we realize we don't know and that in some ways, the universe has never been more mysterious and the reason why that's really been at the core of the Invisible Things project as a whole and then very specifically this book in that project, Mysterious Things, because I think that as a kid, I felt like Truman from The Truman Show in this very particular way where he wants to be an explorer.

58:25Creative Pep Talk Host:And if you're not familiar with that movie, it's supposed to be a young Jim Carrey in a classroom. And he's in this movie set or TV set. He doesn't know it. And everybody's filming him. And they're trying to get him to not go anywhere because he can't actually leave this set. And so the teacher's like, actually, we've explored everything. You don't actually need to explore anything. and I felt like that as a kid. I really did. I felt like it wasn't anybody's fault. It was just the way that we went to school. It made me feel like, okay, look, all the juicy stuff has already been discovered before you got here.

59:04Creative Pep Talk Host:We put it in all these books and for the next 12 years, you're going to get up to speed and then you can go get on with, you know, making value for shareholders like that. Yeah, that's what we're told. So, but it wasn't until, so I was so checked out from learning and it, I didn't become a lifelong learner until school was almost over. And it wasn't until I started getting into, you know, popular quantum physics discussions and trippy conversations you have in college and all that kind of stuff. I started being like, oh my gosh, like we live in the most incredible and mysterious universe and it just gets weirder all the time.

59:41Creative Pep Talk Host:All the time we're learning something that just seems completely impossible. And so much of our world, we don't even like even our technology, we don't know why it works. There's a lot of like, you know, things in the quantum realm and stuff that they're creating these microchips that they know work in theory, but they're like, we don't really know exactly why they work. And so the more we know, the more we realize we don't know. And we have, there was like physicists a hundred plus years ago that felt like we only got like 1 % left to figure out. Like we pretty much nailed it. And then 30 years later after that, the physicists are like, we don't even know if we know 1%.

1:00:20Creative Pep Talk Host:We are so limited. And so that to me was wanting to give this book to younger me and be like, look, the universe is crazy. Like you don't even need to understand it, but it felt like school often felt like learning to play the guitar, but I'd never heard music before. And I'm like, why am I doing this? What, what is this? Why do I care about this? Like even math, which I don't, I feel like I might have like the dyslexic equivalent to numbers. I'm not sure, but I definitely struggle with numbers. But even math now, I'm like way more friendly with math. And there's a character called math in this book.

1:01:00Creative Pep Talk Host:I'm way friendlier with math because I'm like, this is the code of the universe. This is this mystical, weird, amazing thing. And so it's both like, I always try to make my books kind of like an art book. So it's a collection of some of my favorite paintings in a way. And so for adults, I know a lot of adults bought invisible things. And I make it for that reason. Like it, it ended up in a lot of the like art galleries and gift shops, which is kind of like a dream of mine. Like I love that, that vibe. And then for kids, it's like, I just want to be like, Hey kids, I don't know if anyone's told you this, but like learning is how you dig into the juicy mysteries of being alive.

1:01:39Creative Pep Talk Host:And it's really cool. And the interesting, there's just as interesting things here as there are maybe more so than what is in the screen that you're looking at or what have you. So that's the book. I kind of went overboard telling you about it, but it's just because I'm excited about it. No, I love this. I feel like I'm like, well, we talked about plenty of mysterious things today, like marketing and the internet. And also I love like seeing dark matter and math on the cover. And I'm with you. Like, I feel like once you start learning anything about quantum physics, It will crack your brain open to how much is unknown and even understanding that like the two most popular theories of physics that we have conflict and make no sense together, even though they both are evident when you look around the world.

1:02:29And so I love that this is a children's book about the knowledge paradox. And of course, it's beautifully illustrated and like such a such a wonderful just like object in addition to being full of wisdom. So I know it comes out July 14th. Folks can get it. anywhere they get their books. Do you have preferred retailers or do you sign copies or anything like that?

1:02:49Creative Pep Talk Host:Yeah, if you go to invisiblethings.co, there's a list of the retailers, like the classic ones. And then also, if you order it from Birdie Books, which is my local bookshop that is across the road from this studio, we're going to go sign all of those. So if you want a signed copy, you can do pre-orders from there. Perfect. All right, that will all be linked in the show notes. Folks, pre-order the book. We're all authors here. Well, we're not all authors. There's enough authors here that you know pre-orders matter. Yeah, they do. Please get the book. I'm excited to get my nephew plenty of copies.

1:03:21And is there anything else you wanted to say or share with Off The Grid listeners today, Andy?

1:03:24Creative Pep Talk Host:I don't think so. This was a complete blast. Thank you for having me. This was a bunch of stuff that I don't always get to talk about. And it was just tons of fun exploring this with you. Yeah. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. And until next time, we will see you Off The Grid. There are a bunch of ways to prevent crime that no one is talking about, like how wind direction can make your community more violent or peaceful and how GLP-1 meds could reduce felonies. This is Fighting Crime, where we ask the big questions. What if we've been having the wrong conversations about crime?

1:03:59Creative Pep Talk Host:Two policies, ban the box and clean slate, don't seem to be helping even though they sounded like they should or they would. I'm your host, Christina Quinn. I'm going across the country from prisons to universities, police chiefs to inmates, to look at the evidence and question everything we think we know about how to make America safer. Economists think a lot about how people respond to incentives. If we want to reduce crime and change behavior, we need to increase the costs or reduce the benefit. Join us as we figure out new ways to fight crime and be prepared to think differently. fighting crime listen or watch on apple podcasts youtube and spotify lee c camp here if you've been enjoying this show i think you might enjoy my podcast no small endeavor produced by great feeling studios and prx no small endeavor explores what it means to live a good life we sit down with courageous impassioned people like actor martin sheen or civil rights hero James Lawson to ask what it means to live a life worth living.

1:05:03Creative Pep Talk Host:Follow No Small Endeavor wherever you get your podcasts. Living a good life is no small endeavor, and we would love to help.